Lorna Jowett Quotes

Throughout the relationship Spike has ignored Buffy's denials, even though it was fairly clean that Buffy's "no" didn't mean no and ambivalent scenes such as this paved the way for the "real" violence of the attempted rape...there are strong links between love, sex, and violence, and Spike uses romantic heterosexual love as a "defense" of sexualized violence.

Spike is sensitive not only in that he is easily hurt but also in the "feminine" way of being attuned to situations, relationships, and underlying emotions, as his frequently perceptive comments demonstrate. this ability to articulate his emotions also explains why his character fits so well into "Buffy", a show that consistently values this trait...

...the new man cannot exist without the old monster masculinity. All the new men are aware of how masculinity is constructed and therefore how they differ from its traditional form...new men do not have to "lack" the attributes of real men, and therefore make them more appealing to viewers, but it also closes down some of their potential for a revisioning of masculinity.

I suggest that across the seasons of Buffy there has been an increasing exaggeration of bad girls...In some ways, instead of challenging these stereotypes of bad girls, the show has emphasized them. This matches the development of the show's good girls.

...his [Angel's] body is displayed semi-naked at least as often in scenes of woundign or torture as in "bedroom" scenes (season 2 scenes with Drusilla conflate the two throuhg S/M)..."Angel spends a ludicrous amount of time in chains, shirtless.

That both Riley and Warren are attracted to independent young women is an interesting contradiction that serves to valorize the agency of the "girls" and to underline the static macho masculinity of those guys- they cannot or will not change, therefore they cannot keep the girl.

The beatings are further proof that Spike's "humiliation," the level to which he has sunk, and a physical sign of vulnerability. But they are also "sexy wounds" (as Buffy playing Robot-Buffy says in "Intervention"), since Spike's body is displayed to be looked at. Further, as with Angel and Dru, Spike and Buffy's relationship uses pain/violence as eroticism (when Spike tells Buddy "I love you," she responds "You're in love with pain" ["Smashed"]). Mulvey's association of voyeurism, sadism, and narrative is useful here.

...Spike may be the most "hybridized" character in terms of gender, within the show he is presented until the last moment as a failure.