Thinking about Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I am simply thinking about him. Rotating him in my mind, as they say. It's BLORBO NATION in here.
On tumblr, a character one develops an unusually intense emotional attachment to has been dubbed a Blorbo. They can come in many forms, but a particular type of blorbo that is known to appeal widely to the tumblr demographic is a character who exhibits a collection of the following traits:
- morally ambiguous yet endearing despite their many shortcomings
- typically described as pathetic, loser, clown, and other seemingly derogatory descriptors
- often a highly sensitive person who hides their vulnerability behind layers of detached irony, sarcastic humour, or carefully crafted personas
- sometimes queer-coded, typically male
- often talked about in ways such as: 'i want to collect him and carry him around in my pocket', 'I want to study him under a microscope', 'I want to throw him around the room like a rag doll', 'I want to see him fail and suffer (affectionate)'
This particular type of blorbo has been termed a 'poor little meow meow'. This is because these characters often invoke feelings of protectiveness over someone who is perceived to be a bit of a disaster of a guy. We feel both pity and affection for him, but also laugh at his persistant cringe misfortunes.
Crucially, the poor little meow meow is morally ambigious. He is often an outright questionable type of person, someone you would avoid if you came across them in real life. Some of them even commit various atrocities that would be difficult to justify in any context. But it is precisely this ambiguity that makes the poor little meow meow so appealing: they are a bit of an asshole, but you feel for them anyway, precisely because they are such a mess.
I have had countless blorbos in my life, and many of them have been poor little meow meows. Here's a list of blorbos that I personally consider to fit into the category:
- L from Death Note
- Will Graham from Hannibal
- Raskolnikov from Dostoyevksy's Crime and Punishment
- Harry Du Bois from Disco Elysium
- Flint from Black Sails
The latest addition to my poor little meow meow collection is of course Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He is an icon among the show’s fans, and debates have raged about him for well over two decades. He is a seasoned, veteran poor little meow meow. A fan favourite despite his heinous actions, a character introduced as a cool villain who turned out to be a sad poser writing bad poetry, a chaotic evil vampire who is somehow both a hot goth boy and a pathetic wet clown of a man.
Spike is interesting to me because there were a lot of behind-the-scenes politics playing into the writing of this character. It appears that the writers of the show were not always in agreement as to what to do with Spike. This makes a lot of sense, given that Spike seems to cycle through various character tropes during the show, some of which are in conflict with one another. As his Wikipedia page aptly states: “Spike played various roles on the shows, including villain, anti-hero, trickster and romantic interest.” He truly has the range.
The audience’s enamouring with Spike perhaps began with his introduction in season two, where his evil badassery is portrayed in contrast to his genuine, sincere love for Drusilla. Here is a hot goth vampire who is evil and kills people for fun, be he also just loves his girlfriend sooo much. It probably helped that James Marsters deliberately played into that sensitive aspect of Spike on his mission to win the audience’s hearts so he could keep his job (I respect that man’s hustle so much).
But Spike really comes into his own in season 4: robbed of his ability to hurt people by a government-implanted chip in his head, he basically goes through a vampire identity crisis, and becomes a bit of a joke on the show. We learn about his backstory in season 5, in which it is revealed that when Spike was human, he was an awkward loser who lived with his mum and wrote really bad poetry. He then falls pathetically in love with Buffy, who at first consistently rejects him, but develops a relationship with him in season 6 as a result of her depression and deep sense of isolation.
Spike constantly poses as an incredibly cool, badass guy, but the show always kicks him off his pedestal by putting him into mocking and embarrassing situations. At the same time, he consistently toes the line between being a complete cunt who commits various atrocities, while also being revealed to be a highly emotionally intelligent, deeply sensitive person who is, above all, longing for love. This dichotomy, paired with his great comedic timing and James Marster’s charismatic performance, make Spike so beloved as a character.
Spike is a model poor little meow meow precisely because his status as a dreamy fan favourite made people forgive him for almost anything he did on the show. People babygirlified this man no matter what he said or did, and he said and did a lot of horrible things. This is where the behind-the-scenes politics of writing this character get interesting. In the infamous season 6 episode Seeing Red, Spike does something most of us would classify as truly unforgivable, in an uncomfortably realistic, horrifying scene between him and Buffy.
Many people were upset by this scene, including the actors involved in it. It is one of the most hotly debated scenes on the entire show: people asking whether it was necessary in the first place, whether Spike can be redeemed or forgiven, whether we’re allowed to like him at all. Here was a scene that was so uncomfortably realistic, so horrifyingly visceral, that it turned Spike from camp-mockery-of-a-threatening-man into just Threatening-Man.
According to James Marsters, Joss Whedon wanted to make the audience understand who Spike really was by making him do something truly unforgivable, thereby moralising the audience’s love for him as misguided and wrong. In the same vein, Buffy’s sexual relationship with Spike is punished by the show through repeatedly having characters mock or disapprove of her involvement with him (with the notable exception of Tara, queen of my life). The show punishes both its main character and its audience for loving Spike. The moral of the story must be clear: women shouldn’t fall for the bad guy, Buffy is reckless for her sexual desires and should have known better, just like the audience should have known better than to develop a taste for the clearly evil vampire.
Is this feminist? Not really, but I can see how a male writer in the 90s could delude himself into thinking it is. Looking back on it, the scene is incredibly difficult to watch, unnecessarily cruel, and primarily serves to further Spike’s character arc. This falls into the classic patriarchal writing trope of developing a male character by having him commit violence against women. It tells us nothing about Spike, or Buffy, that could not have been told in a much better, less traumatising way. It exists primarily as a moralising reminder to Buffy, and the audience, that Spike is Evil and we should not like him.
The thing about poor little meow meows is of course that we know we shouldn’t like them, but we do anyway. Because these are often problematic men liked by women and queer people, there is a strange sense of guilt and ambiguity surrounding those feelings. Are we sucking up to the patriarchy by liking these characters? Are we just secretly sick and twisted inside? Do we just like them because they’re hot? (That last one is a joke. Implying that women only like a male character because he’s hot is pretty lame. Also I’m a lesbian.)
Rather than being an expression of the patriarchy, I would actually argue that Spike’s popularity with female audiences has to do with how Spike as a character makes a mockery of the patriarchy. Spike’s machismo façade is repeatedly shattered by either mocking him as a form of comic relief, or by revealing him to be a sappy loser underneath his performance of masculinity. He is queer-coded not only through details in his appearance (the nail polish, the affective body language), but also through his unmasculine love of poetry, his penchant for home decoration, and his unironic enjoyment of cheesy soap operas. Spike’s exterior behaviour is consistently revealed to be act that he puts on to hide his vulnerability, and his acts of masculine bravado are usually undercut by having him fall face first into a grave or by having Buffy kick his ass to hell and back. Spike turns patriarchy into camp: he is a threatening man who is turned into a mockery. He reveals the patriarchy for what it actually is: cringe as hell. (And yeah it certainly helps that he looks hot while doing it.)
The bathroom scene in Seeing Red takes this mockery away completely, which is why the scene is so uniquely horrifying to watch. It feels out of character not in the sense that Spike would never do this (we know what Spike is capable of), but in the sense that his character ceases to be a Mockery of Patriarchy as he turns into the most horrifyingly realistic expression of it. This awkward switch is jarring to watch and feels out of place because it places a moralising message where it was not needed, due to the writer’s misunderstanding of what makes Spike appealing to audiences in the first place.
Despite his unforgivable transgressions, Spike is given a redemption arc throughout season 7. Here, we genuinely see him becoming a better person, as he moves away from playing the role of comic relief to becoming one of the central heroes of the show, as well as a sincere love interest for Buffy. In this sense, the show has given poor little meow meow lovers one of the greatest gifts: it is telling us that yes, you may feel you are as sick and twisted as this fucked up guy, but there is hope even for you.
I still think they could have done all of that without the bathroom scene, and the show would have been better for it. It’s ironic how the bathroom scene was apparently born out of a desire to make a point about feminism, but actually turns out to be a classic expression of patriarchy. A self-appointed feminist man telling women whether they’re allowed to like a guy or not is pretty preposterous. Either way, it didn’t work – we still love Spike, we will love him forever. Our poor little meow meow.
