Self-Transcendence and the Road to Redemption:
Why Spike Is Way Cooler Than Angel
By enigmaticblue
For fans of Spike, the title of this little piece may seem a trifle redundant. What I mean is that of course Spike is much cooler than Angel, the King of Broodiness. Put the two vampires side by side, and the conclusion is an easy one to make. Not to say that I don’t like Angel, just that I like Spike better. A lot better, when you get right down to it.
Honestly, it has nothing to do with the hair or the coats or anything like that. Nor does it have anything to do with whom I’d like to see with his shirt off. It has everything to do with the path to redemption, and the rather silly thought that somehow Angel’s path is the purer one, or that he’s less evil than Spike, or that he’s better because he got cursed by gypsies.
Even before Spike went to
Arguably, the season 6 finale, “Grave,” left us with more opportunities to speculate than any other finale in the past. By the sheer volume of fanfiction out there dealing with the aftermath of Spike’s choice to get his soul, it’s something that was on a lot of fans’ minds. Would he come back all broody like Angel? Would he be changed in any way? Would he be the William we saw in the season 5 episode, “Fool for Love”? Would he be human? And how would Buffy react to any and all of these scenarios?
Sometime towards the beginning of season 7, I ran across a little essay on slayage.com, where the author put forth the idea that Angel’s soul was better than Spike’s soul. Her/his thesis was something like, “Because Spike only wanted to get into Buffy’s pants again, and that’s why he got his soul, Angel’s soul is better and more altruistic.” In short, “Angel is way cooler than Spike.” (And was that a snort of disbelief?)
At the time, I was outraged, of course, but I didn’t have any reasoning to back it up. Spike changed for true love, but this author seemed to feel that only change for yourself is “good” change, never mind where it leads you. In fact, the same opinion has been espoused by a number of the writers and actors associated with Buffy, and it fits in quite nicely with the American ideals of autonomy and individualism.
But does the argument that change for oneself is the “best” kind of change work?
I would say not, and was brought fully to this conclusion after reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. But really, when addressing this argument, there are two points that must be made. (The third, that Spike is just cool, needs not be addressed. It should be obvious to anyone with eyes.) The first is that Angel is not altruistic at all, certainly not at first. The second is that the reasoning behind self-actualization, or changing for oneself, is faulty at best, and down-right imbecilic at worst.
I daresay most reading this will be Spike fans, and so won’t want to spend any time at all on the character of Angel, but let me quickly make my point. First, it’s utterly stupid to think that getting yourself cursed by gypsies makes a character stronger, or in any way better. Why Angel thinks he’s special is beyond me, especially as he spent the first one hundred years doing nothing at all. Let’s recap, shall we? Gets his soul, gets tossed out on his arse by Darla, tries to be evil again, fails, spends the next 100 years brooding.
There are precisely three times in his P.B. (pre-Buffy) past that we know Angel may have helped, or tried to help, someone. The first, chronologically, was in the Angel season 4 episode, “Orpheus,” where he and Faith share dreams/hallucinations. In fact, he rescues a puppy, but cannot stand to be around humans lest he eat someone. The second is in the 1940’s, which we see in the Angel season 5 episode, “Why We Fight.” Here, Angel is forced at crossbow point to help the Americans fight the Germans, and he ends up turning a young sailor to complete the mission. Finally, in the Angel season 2 episode, “Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been…?” Angel tries to help a woman, gets betrayed, and then leaves her at the mercy of a demon. No altruism there.
At some point in the 1970’s, Angel feeds on a dead or dying man, again seen in the episode “Orpheus,” and spends the next decade eating rats in alleys and feeling sorry for himself. What changed, might you ask? In a word, Buffy.
What changed is that the Powers That Be sent Whistler to show him Buffy, with whom Angel falls in love, and then wants to help. Nothing in his unlife before he catches a glimpse of her, (and she was fifteen, might I add) indicates that this vampire would one day be a Champion. I’m not saying this because I think Angel is inherently evil, but to demonstrate that if you do want to talk about self-actualization through altruistic intent, Angel isn’t the example to use.
But on to Spike, and self-actualization in general. To begin with, it’s a faulty concept. Not even the man who coined the phrase, Maslow himself, knew the real meaning. He talked about reaching your potential, becoming entirely authentic, but it’s a subjective term, and impossible to quantify. Postulating that Angel is the better vampire because he changes for himself demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the show, for one, and a misunderstanding of personal change, for another.
In reality, the changes that Spike makes, from bad-ass Big
Bad to babysitter, to Champion, is a fuller and more realistic picture of why
people change in the first place. To say that Spike’s motives behind his trip
to
Let me bring in an illustration from real life. There are those that would argue that because Spike changed for someone else, rather than himself, it’s not as good. But what about someone who is addicted to alcohol or drugs? Leave that person alone, and they will most likely fall further into the cycle of addiction, though admittedly there are some exceptions to the rule. Generally speaking, only those confronted by friends and family, or those who realize they will lose everything and everyone they love unless they change, do change. One might hope that eventually they begin to make progress for themselves, but that doesn’t change the fact that the catalyst was love.
Just as one can hardly blame the addict who changes out of love for their spouse or children, it’s ridiculous to say that because Spike initially changes for Buffy (at least in the beginning) that it doesn’t mean much. If you’re comparing him to Angel, they don’t decide to change for different reasons (aka Buffy). And it took Angel one hundred years to truly change after he got his soul, and it was still about Buffy.
This is assuming one can rate change for the better on a scale. It is also assuming we’re assigning the approprate value to motivations. Even if we accept the claim that Angel changed because he wanted to better himself, and Spike changed because he wanted in Buffy’s pants (or because he loved her, depending on who you’re talking to), who’s to say that Spike’s motives aren’t the more pure? Who’s to say that change for someone else isn’t better after all?
This brings us to the difference between self-actualization and self-transcendence. Both concepts are psychological ones that stress reaching one’s own potential, becoming as much as you can be. Self-actualization emphasizes your own person; self-transcendence assumes a catalyst. In the words of Viktor Frankl (emphasis mine):
“…I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic “the self-transcendence of human existence.” It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is only a side-effect of self-transcendence.” (Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, pg. 133.)
In other words, Spike is way cooler than Angel.
At the end of the Buffy season 5 episode, “Out of My Mind,” Spike has a dream revealing his love for Buffy to himself and the audience. After that, he starts to act a little differently. While it doesn’t always go quite so well for him, we do see interesting changes in his actions. In “Triangle”, Spike helps the wounded. In “Fool for Love”, he comforts Buffy, rather than killing her. In “Intervention”, he allows himself to be tortured rather than giving up the identity of Buffy’s sister as a mystical Key. And when Buffy sacrifices herself, Spike sticks around, protecting Dawn and helping the other Scoobies. All arguments that Spike was only interested in sleeping with Buffy die with the Slayer at the end of the season 5 finale “The Gift” and the season 6 opener(s), “Bargaining.” The changes Spike has wrought in himself for love of Buffy keep him doing the right thing long after he can expect to get a reward.
What we see at the end of season 6, after Spike has done the
one thing he promised never to do—hurt Buffy—he commits the ultimate act of
self-nihilation, or self-transcendence. In some ways, Spike commits the
equivalent of suicide, going off to get his soul for Buffy, because he knows
his demon will never be the same again. In taking the journey to
By the end of season 7, we have seen Spike go from the Biggest of the Bad, in season 2 “School Hard” to Champion who dies to save the world, in “Chosen.” And most of the change takes place before he ever gets his soul.
(As a side-note, I wrote my story “Et Lux In Tenebris Lucet”
to address the question of whether Spike would have been able to make the
changes without getting his soul. Personally, I think the answer is yes, if
he’d had a little help from Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies. After all, we
become what is expected of us.)
Where Angel’s change is mostly directed inward, focused on himself and his past crimes, Spike is able to reach his full potential by losing himself in love for another person—the ultimate act of self-transcendence. It is perhaps why so many identify with Spike. Who among us hasn’t sought to change ourselves—for better or worse—for the person we love? Spike’s love for Buffy put him on the path to redemption, and ultimately allowed him to save the world.
How cool is that?