I found it quite cliche in many respects. The girl "needing" the boy of her dreams to feel complete. The girl has sex and bad things happen to her (punishment for normal sexual exploration). Even the goes to bed with a good guy and wakes to a monster that Joss admitted he was going for in the story is cliche. How many horror films do we see the girl who has sex is the next victim?

Kathleen

In my opinion, no. It was a Romeo/Juliet love angstfest. Both of them were honestly more in love with the idea of being in love and the whole "We can't be together becayse you're a slayer/human and I'm a vampire who can lose his soul if I get too happy but let's make out anyway" thing. They never really got to know each other and despite what she said in that one episode about loving his vampire self, Buffy had to forget the vampire part and only remember the man part to be with him. Many times she shoved other guys in his face and well, they kind of brought out the worst in each other. Plus the whole leaving for your own good part.

However, I think anything could be made subversive based on who's doing the interpretation. I'm friends with a few B/A shippers and their answer would be yes. One of them was going on the other day about how epic their love was and how it went against the norm.

*uses the Cordy/Wes making fun of the Buffy/Angel relationship icon*
Aww hell, here's the video:


*hopes it works. Youtube vids tend to be iffy with me*

Edited at 2009-07-28 10:15 pm (UTC)

Bangel is anything but subversive in my opinion. Much as I protest Buffy's attraction to Angel, their relationship was highly predictable to me. Bangel is stereotype personified. I expect Buffy to fall for a vampire, soul or no. I expect it not to work out. I expect him to leave here for her own good. I expect her to be disturbed by his past, but still strangely attracted. I expect him to be tempted by evil once more. I expect her to have trouble killing him at first, but then succeed. From the line "I really didn't like him" all the way to his departure, their relationship dabbled in every stereotype that could possibly be applied to it. "People still fall for that Anne Rice routine?" I actually liked some of the Bangel stuff they did on AtS, but Angel and Bangel in BtVS rank very low on my list of favorite ships and characters.

I'm abstaining from the voting till I hear everyone's arguments. I try not to think about Bangel very much, so I have no opinion.

Argue well, y'all! Convince me!

Buffy and Angel are pretty cliche. The only thing that could be considered subversive about them is that Angel eventually dumps her. Though originally, their ending was supposed to be through Angel's death, which would have been more cliche, but the ended up bringing Boreanaz back so he could get his own show. But yeah, more cliche than subversive, but not either one (cliche or subversive) completely.

So not subversive. Although admittedly I have never had any interest in Bangel, and my favorite scenes with Angel were when he came back from hell, because then he was a) shirtless and b) not talking.

I'd be interested to see the arguments that say that B/A IS subversive to be honest. I'm not quite sure how you can argue that given what we see in canon and basically what Joss says himself. I mean, it is pretty much the standard R&J cliche. Fall in love. Love is forbidden (pick reason). Love is consumated. Bad things happen. Lovers die. Granted Buffy didn't die and she did kill her lover but you could maybe argue it was suicide by Slayer? I still don't see how it's subversive because to me, it doesn't feel like the old cliche was change, especially when Angel returned and it was like watching Dawson's Creek with monsters week to week.

ETA and totally OT: I am still working on your sadistic pollgirl icons. I got way carried away with them, picking caps, etc. LOL

Edited at 2009-07-28 10:39 pm (UTC)

I don't think it's at all subversive. The whole thing was just ... so expected. Dark mysterious guy who turns out to be a vampire. Vampire killer falls for him. He falls for her. They have a relationship that's clearly doomed from the start, everyone knows it's doomed and ... it is doomed. That's not a bad thing but I really don't understand the idea that it's anything other than what it is - huamn/vampire romance only ever ends well if the human becomes a vampire, at least in pretty much anything I've ever read. What's meant to be subversive about it?

(disclaimer - I have always found Angel/Buffy a crushingly boring pairing but I'd like to think that doesn't actually colour my opinions here.)

I would say tentatively yes - not completely, certainly, but occasionally and in the little details. It's cliched as hell in a lot of ways, but the way it plays out and ends, the fact that they don't end up happily ever after, yet don't end up dead either, and indeed eventually both start to move on from what is a highly idealised and blinkered relationship for both of them... a tiny bit, yeah.

Plus, I still say that a substantial part of Angel sees Darla everytime he looks at Buffy. Which is a bit creepy, but creepy is good.

It depends.

If you look at the classic trope of the vampire as a dangerous predator, the idea of one falling in love with a human is subversive. The problem is that what was once going against cliché has now become a cliché itself, thanks in no small part to Buffy/Angel (and also to Anita Blake, Charlaine Harris and Stephenie Meyer).

However, the idea that from forth the fatal loins of two foes
a pair of star-crossed lovers would take their life is a different cliché, and B/A falls straight into that one. At first, at least. I think in the early seasons, it was meant in a completely unironic way. But by S3 at least ('The Zeppo') I think the writers were aware of how clichéd it was, and - if not subverting it - at least pointing out the ridiculousness and showing the real-life consequences. Even more so by S4 when Buffy has realised how (comparatively) immature her love for Angel was.

("You know, I have someone in my life now. That I love. It's not what we had, it's very new. You know what makes it new? I trust him. I know him.")

I picked "not sure."

I've seen comparisons to Romeo and Juliet by other commenters, and I have to say that I don't think Buffy/Angel in S1-2 is like Romeo and Juliet at all. Romeo and Juliet were torn apart by fate. They were two, innocent young people whose love was doomed to fail because their parents were caught up in petty bullshit. They were BOTH victims.

Buffy and Angel? That was a case of a waaaay older man stalking, lying to, and manipulating a teenage girl with NO history of any real relationships. Fate is not what doomed their love. The fact that Angel has a merciless killer lurking inside him ready to come out at any time is what doomed their love. It would've been cliche to have, say, Giles try to forcibly prevent Buffy and Angel apart, only to have Buffy run away with Angel because their love is that. strong...but then he winds up dying in her arms because of some freak accident and she weeps over his body. Cliche. Having Angel reveal himself to be the bastard he really is, ripping out her heart and eating it, having her blame herself for it and eventually have to be the one to kill him? Subversive.

BUT.

Then we get to season three, where I get the strong sense that the writers do think their love is star-crossed, that Angel is just as much of a victim as Buffy is and besides the stuff he did wasn't really his fault because it wasn't really Angel, see? And it becomes cliche. And yet, I do get the sense that Joss is still trying to show us that Angel's relationship with Buffy is BAD for her, as she's willing to kill Faith AND herself in order to save him. And he winds up leaving her anyway.

So I'm STILL not sure.

So I picked "yes" to be subversive, but I really mean other/not sure.

For me the subversion is NOT in the main outline of the story, but rather in the commentary on it. If you think that's what's going on, there's a lot to be said for the theory. "every time I kiss you I want to die" being pretty much like "the hardest thing in the world is to live in it." The latter subverts the heroic swan song trope, IMO. The former subverts the idea that we should take B/A on the up and up. (Especially since it's not hardly the only instance of it. Lots of subtle things. Less subtle: The Zeppo; Parker as Angel echo; the way Angel obsession is presented in The Freshman; the details like him giving her a book of poetry she doesn't get or showing him reading Sartre in French when we've already seen she can't master Freshman level French.)

But maybe they were just in the ah isn't it romantic zone and didn't notice that they were satirizing themselves!!

Well, my vote was pretty easy! :D I thought I'd bring over my comment, but in a slightly better form -

For me Bangel follows the cliché of the gothic/tragic/Romeo-and-Juliet romance and that remains unsubverted though Joss opens avenues for criticism of it (say in The Zeppo, where it's shown as OTT). Such romances are rarely shown as healthy or from a deep basis (Romeo and Juliet's is a good example - their romance is formed in a moment, is criticised by several other characters for various reasons, and ultimately ends in death), but are nevertheless presented as necessary and inescapable: the cliché is that 'love' cannot be denied. For the entirety of S3 Buffy lives that cliché. The most clear symbol, for me, is when her setting down of the Claddagh ring brings Angel back - the moment that she tries to put her love behind her (the Claddagh ring out and out stated to be a symbol of Bangel in Surprise), she is forced to face it again by the physical return of Angel, who spends the rest of the season getting her to recommit to their relationship/love. And ultimately he drinks a load of her blood and leaves her devastated not long after. I suppose you could say that it's subversive that she doesn't actually end up dead, but it's hardly a reversal of the expected.

The whole B/A thing makes me too weary to really come up with an opinion. Aside from: I hate B/A.

But...yeah, I'd go with extremely cliche, with a side of slightly subversive that goes unnoticed in the creepiness and clichedom and boringness.

I'm sorry I don't have any fancy explanation, but I don't think it was subversive in any way, to me it seemed too clichè, too Romeo and Juliet dramatic adolescent love that didn't even need to be that dramatic but it's always made into. Also clichè in the sense that it was the heroin in pretty much every vampire novel falling for the dark, misterious guy that ends up being 'what?' yeah, a vampire!

If there had been a "Could their relationship be</i< any more cliche?" option, I would have marked that one. :-P Anyway, I'm supposed to avoid gross generalizations and bringing up Spuffy, so I'm just gonna stop here to avoid temptation ;-)

1. Is Buffy/Angel subverted in canon? {...} 3. If it is subversive, what cliche is it subverting?

Okay, I had one knee-jerk answer, then a slower, deeper answer. And, I think the response can be divided into two parts basically boiling down to questions of whether the Buffy/Angel pairing is at all subversive or whether their story is subversive. I'd say that their story can be subversive. However, the pairing most definitely is not. That was my knee-jerk reaction: No. Oh, hell no.

Why do I say that the pairing isn't subversive? Because it just isn't. It would have been... thirty years ago (okay, it probably actually requires going back further than thirty years) back to when vampires were primarily associated with "Vampires! "Ooh scary!" However, Anne Rice's broody vampire seeking redemption in the form of endlessly kvetching anti-hero Louis de Pointe du Lac was written large in pop culture in best seller form way back in 1976. Dark Shadows and Barnabas Collins version 1.0 date back to the 1960s. Dark Shadows and Barnabas Collilns 2.0 date back to 1991 (and version 3.0 is in pre-production now). Guilt-ridden vampire (detective!) anti-hero in constant search of redemption and humanity along with a human love interest hit television in 1989 with Forever Knight and hit television as an on-going series in 1992. I've got Wendy Haley's These Fallen Angels complete with brooding vampire (detective!) anti-hero romantic lead on my bookshelf with a publishing date of 1994 (and it was the sequel of a book I don't have). And I was reading Maggie Shayne's Wings of the Night vampire series chock full of a wide assortment of romantic 'hero' vampires back when it was first printed by Silhouette/Harlequin romances way back in 1993.

The evolution of vampire from "ooh scary monster" to 'sexy, tormented, romantically alluring outsider' happened well before the Buffy/Angel pairing hit television screens. So there's nothing particularly subversive in the human/vampire pairing. It was long a staple in the Silhouette Romance Novels supernatural series.

How darn subversive can mainstream Harlequin romances possibly be?

Then there's the more broad category of the mysterious, broody, alpha-male romance hero. That hasn't been subversive since Jane Eyre was obsessed with Mr. Rochester. The entire Buffy/Dark, Mysterious Stranger is 100% pure Gothic staple (and stereotype) dating from trope invented when Anne Radcliffe was writing (along with Jane Austen gently subverting and mocking the genre in the early 1800s with Northanger Abbey). Even the fact that Angel actually has done horrible things (that the heroine totally forgives) was done in Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca in the 1930s.

So, as a pairing, plucky heroine falls for Gothic outisider alpha male with mysterious past pretty much is the template for genre romances since almost forever. The Buffy/Angel pairing in no way subverts that.

However, their story may. I say that because of the "Angel went evil" phase in Season 2. That was actually what first drew me to BtVS. I'm used to the anti-hero skirting close to 'going bad' but Angel going full-on big 'E' Eeeeeeeevil was a delight because it wasn't hopelessly cliched. They didn't pull back (until the whole resurrected re-souled bit). That Buffy's mysterious alpha-hero actually was the Big Bad was subverting the genre. That she became independent instead of victim of it, could have been subversive. So, in that respect, I do think their story subverted the genre... at least in Season 2. And, if we push it, perhaps the fact that if I'm allowed the luxury of believing they grew apart and parted amicably, I could also say that they then subverted the genre because Gothic romances rarely feature relatively peaceful partings based on relationship incompatibilities.

If, however, I'm to take the "someday" cookie-dough stuff and supposed to look at them simply as starcrossed lovers who will inevitably be reunited... someday, we're back to their being stock Gothic romance characters.

Edited at 2009-07-29 03:03 am (UTC)

I think it was subversive in canon, because it was an anti-romance of sorts. The whole point is that the two of them are wrong for each other. S3 is all about how it can't possibly work, and how the two of them finally do the grown-up thing and acknowledge that.

Now, whether or not this subversion works for the viewers is another matter. Many B/A fans like the fact that it's doomed; they like the tragedy of it. But there's also a large contingent who feel that it really is a destined and forever love, and Buffy and Angel will (or should) eventually get a happily ever after. (Spuffy shippers do pretty much the same thing, so I don't think that this is by any means restricted to B/A shippers.)

The notion that the B/A relationship is subversive...well, just never occurred to me. It's a standard-issue romance, nothing more. And Angel's character, while part of a subversive trend in the long view, is likewise bog-standard these days ("friendly" vampire seeking redemption). The only potentially-subversive character in the relationship is Buffy, and it just doesn't come through in this context, at least 95% of the time. It could--to take an elementary consideration, Buffy's stronger than Angel just as certainly as she's stronger than Spike--but these things only ever come up in S2, or in very momentary conflicts (like when they hit each other in IWRY).

I never really concerned myself with it--I don't care much about romances in general, except insofar as they drive other plots. Angel interests me as a character, but not as a love-interest for Buffy, or really even as a "hero" in the conventional sense. He's more of the original sense of an anti-hero--a lead character who isn't able to meet the challenges he faces. (By which I don't mean to denigrate Angel's victories--just that I think they're the least of what he could potentially have accomplished.) And I know that's my own idiosyncratic reading of the character--I don't expect anyone else to share it.

I'm here via petzipellepingo's "bag of sausages" links...

I think it would be helpful to distinguish between a trope and a cliche for this discussion. Joss certainly works with tropes, and "star-cross'd" lovers is one of them. But that doesn't mean it's a cliche - the difference lies in how the trope is handled, not what it is, and I would certainly say that if you look at the details, the Buffy/Angel relationship is interestingly different from other treatments of the star-cross'd lovers tropes. I also think it suffers from having had so many second rate imitators, who have turned it into a cliche (just as Tolkien nowadays come across as utterly derivative, because we've all read so many fantasies with elves and dwarves and magic swords and... yawn).

As for subversion, whether or not that's a good thing depends on what use the subversion is put to. It would be perfectly possible to claim that Buffy/Spike fails to subvert the trope "Bad boy reforms for love of a good woman" whereas Buffy/Angel subverts it ("Reformed man relapses because of the love of a good woman"). But what makes Buffy/Spike interesting is the details of the way that trope is worked out, and similarly I think the details of the way the star-cross'd lovers trope is handled makes Buffy/Angel far more than just a cliche.

Not that I can stand Angel until he stops being the romantic hero and gets to play comedy but I blame the actor for that, rather than the writing. I think Angel on BtVS is more interestingly written than he is portrayed.

I voted subversive. It subverts the most popular cliche used in fairy tales: a kiss (metaphor for sex) destroys the evil curse.

Bangel is the cliche' soul mate relationship that devolved into the cliche' unrequitable love** angstfest that The Zeppo so cleverly recognized and poked fun at.

**AKA star crossed love, a term I couldn't remember until I read the comments after posting.

Edited at 2009-07-29 12:52 pm (UTC)

Question: Are you planning to do a subversion poll for Buffy/Spike? Because that would also be very interesting.

Fascinating discussion, btw.

Late to the debate as usual.

Can only echo your own view, which is that B/A subverted the standard harlequin romance trope in season 2 by having Angel go bad and Buffy killing him. If it had ended there, we would probably still be commenting on Joss's breath taking originality when it comes to writing romance. However, Angel came back, and though Buffy and Angel's unsuitability for each other is hammered home pretty hard in that season, the romantic side of the relationship is never allowed to quietly die the way it should have been.

I suspect Fox is as much to blame for that as Joss. B/A as star-crossed lovers appeals to many people, and Fox had merchandise it wanted to sell.

:is a cynic:

I'd love to link this on the su_herald, if that's okay? You've had a lot of interesting comments on this short poll.