No Angels
Word count: 1033
I know I’m a few years late for the clue train here, but I just now realized that there were never any angels on Buffy. There were a few good witches, painfully innocent monks, and evil misunderstood gypsies, but the good guys were never fully supernatural. Even the gods were bad guys.
It’s a malevolent view of the universe that identifies all supernatural power with evil and simultaneously restricts all goodness to humanity. (Oz, Angel and Spike are all partly human.) The constant supernatural malevolence makes Buffy a horror show, even though nothing is ever particularly scary.
The difference between horror and fantasy, then, is Elves - the good counterparts to misunderstood evil Orcs. Buffy could have used a few angels on her side; it would have saved her a lot of angst. But then, I get the feeling angst was the point - the only angel was the Angel of Angst.
August 12th, 2003 at 9:34 pm
Angels were never shown explicitly, but I think they might have been there. We know there are heaven dimensions as well as hell dimensions. The question of Joyce’s angelic appearance is open. A miracle saved Angel from the First Evil in Season 3.
Of course, lots of horror stories take the supernatural war between good and evil as a starting point, so the Elves idea doesn’t really hold.