But does Spike really go around telling everyone? Don't we just see his conversations with Buffy? I don't think I can agree with this at all. In BY he slugs Anya when she's just about to spill the beans. I genuinely think he wants to keep it private. Oh well.
Edited to say yes, later in Get It Done, he does announce it in front of everyone, but he's still talking just to Buffy.
I haven't watched this episode for a few months so apologies for any mistakes. Re: the last point "he's still talking just to Buffy". As I recall, the camerawork suggests as much. It's an incredibly "charged" scene. If I remember, there's just one cut away to Dawn and the Potentials (looking as though they'd rather be anywhere else than in this room) otherwise, it's a shot reverse shot between the two of them (there may be one shot where the camera moves in on Spike as he moves towards the camera). They seem to forget the Potentials are actually there. How would it have culminated in S6? Probably in an actually fight or sex - here the exchange is verbal (but – I think - unrestrained). IMO, this conversation, for various reasons, should have taken place in private.
What I think has been happening is, the "split" between Buffy and Slayer (Amanda's "high functioning schizophrenia") has been getting wider (it will culminate in Spike bringing them back together in Touched). The Slayer needs Spike for instrumental reasons - Buffy for more personal ones. It’s made clear in First Date: “BUFFY No, you have to stay. SPIKE You've got another demon fighter now. BUFFY That's not why I need you here. SPIKE Is that right? Why's that then? BUFFY 'Cause I'm not ready for you to not be here”. She’s either not ready to say why – or she genuinely doesn’t know. Much of what happens from here is down to how we read, “Why does everybody in this house think I'm still in love with Spike?”.
In the basement, she says, "I'm showing him our operation.
Us." The shooting script has a beat before "us". On transmission, she emphasises it. Beginning with Potential, there’ve been non-verbal clues that speak of the physicality between them. Physicality works on different levels – sometimes it alludes to utility/familiarity – sometimes more - familiarity/comradeship. Gradually, the text has been lessening the space (actual space and inter-subjective space) between them (this culminates in Touched). Previously, we’ve seen parapraxis (Freudian slips) on her part. Here, the clues are becoming more overt – more conscious. He’s unwilling to pick up on them. This is partly, I think, the residue of S6 - he feels/knows he "read" some signs badly and the process culminated in the AR. He’s desperately trying to avoid repeating misreading again (does it feed into the ILY? IDK). Language in S7 is related explicitly to Logos – an ocularcentric Logos the text reveals is unstable.
The shooting script has this from Anya: "You're a man. With a soul, and other working parts, and it's not like Buffy's been sending any your way lately so I just thought..." Even without this remark, it clear, this is an episode concerned with Spike's "bone" and desire (desire in its many manifestations; what the “bone” means to him and her, both personally and in terms of the slayer achieving her mission). Spike’s struggling articulating his masculinity - as the First Evil tells us in Lessons He’s "Trying to do what's right, just like her. You still don't get it. It's not about right, not about wrong...it’s about power”. Spike has a penis - defining him as male - but, as vampire, he's other and has no access to phallocentric masculinity, no access to structures of meaning, no power to define. In S6 he had only two ways of articulating his masculinity – warrior and lover and S6 ended badly. He’s barred these routes – blocked them off. We have to remember, not only is his soul new, so is his ego. In previous seasons, his sense of self was governed (primarily) by the pleasure principle and the Id. Here, his ego is reality testing. This is why he applies rational thinking to the incident with the demon, this is why he needs to clarify meaning for Buffy.
Back to this scene. As far as I can figure out, in the cuts between them, there's a lens change. When the camera cuts back to Spike, we see the real door and a representation of a door (the picture on the wall). The picture on the wall appears, then disappears from vision. Buffy says, "You keep holding back, you might as well walk out that door". Which door? The picture is (as I recall) of doors opening on to doors opening on to doors - it's mise-en-abyme – recursiveness, infinity, the unknown. Similarly – Spike moves in and out of a doorframe – doesn’t he? No one has mentioned the extent to which arches, doors, doorways, windows, architectural edges (all seen in the very first scene of the Lessons prologue) are recurring motifs. This is a season concerned with architectonics as form, function and content. It’s also concerned with “vision” (windows?) in all its manifestation including as a metaphor for the ontic-epistemic and in relation to visual forms of representation (it alludes to different films/paintings and – I think in this episode – to Plato’s cave). Most significant is perspective or viewing position in relation to the constitution of both subject and self (the “look”, the “gaze”). The “abysmal” door paintings feed into a whole nexus of meanings that forecast the void - and the absence of speech - in the very final scene. “Mise en abyme occurs within a text when there is a reduplication of images or concepts referring to the textual whole. Mise en abyme is a play of signifiers within a text, of sub-texts mirroring each other. This mirroring can get to the point where meaning may be rendered unstable and, in this respect, may be seen as part of the process of deconstruction”.
The real door leads down a well-trodden path - probably back to the pub and permitted forms of enjoyment. Look at what he says of “escape” to Anya: “Get up, get out, get drunk. Repeat as needed. It's just more elegant”. This isn’t escape – it’s entrapment - circular, stasis, no progression. I read this scene as her encouraging him to take that leap into the unknown - through the metaphoric door - just as she will later leap through the portal. However, unlike Buffy (brought back by Spike and the rest of the collective) he has only himself (and Buffy) to rein him in. This is a test in self-restraint. Can he establish boundaries without the chip? Yes – he can and, as he says, it’s “good for the soul”.
In short, she’s unlocking a door he’s closed to himself. She is licencing him a space to" enjoy" his masculinity - through violence, until another route become available (and I’m using enjoy with reference to Bakhtin and Lacan so I won’t dwell on it). That he has a “post-coital” cigarette after killing the demon brings sex and violence into juxtaposition. Watch the camera work in this scene and the cuts between one universe and another – these are match cuts. Is he fighting her (the Slayer? Or is he fighting with Buffy?). The text is collapsing time and space – it’s been hinting at this since the beginning. Look at the set – it’s the alleyway behind the magic box, I don’t think we’ve seen it since Afterlife when she put a prohibition on speech. Look at the mise-en-scene. I think the text is asking us to make our own recursion and revisit S6.
Okay - sorry
@debbicles - TL
😀R. Also - apologies for the lack of coherence. It's an incredibly over coded episode (as is all of S7). I can't fully explain my thoughts without going back to the beginning of the season. PS. I wonder if the text has him referring to the process of getting his soul in order establish what he thinks is the difference between him and Angel? However, by his own admittance, isn't (or it's not the ultimate difference): "Yeah, I went to great lengths. Lots of trouble, and now I'm unique.
Well, more or less. Got myself a soul, whatever that means” (GiD). It’s not until Dirty Girls he asserts his singularity "I am nothing like Angel". LMPTM and The Storyteller lie in between the two statements. Dunno – just guessing.
