Commentary: Us and Them
Jun. 14th, 2009 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyTo start us off on the commentary thing. Ages ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stormwreath asked for a DVD commentary on this piece of W&H backstory. I thought it might be interesting, plus it's an excuse for some meta on the role of good and evil in the Jossverse. It gets rambly and I'm not sure you'll be any wiser by the end, but...
The original version is here.
We go on, no matter what. Our firm has always been here, in one form or another.
- Holland Manners
Title: Us And Them
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~1000
Summary: This is how it starts: kill, protect, eat.
Us And Them
First of all, a caveat: there WILL be some discussion of religious/mythical themes in this – nothing in particular singled out, really, just trying to discuss the mechanics of the thing.
I realise that I keep using the word "myth" in this, a word that has different connotations. So just to clarify, let's borrow this definition from the dictionary: A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society. The idea here is more to give an explanation for the idea of Wolfram & Hart than the story of how the "law firm" itself came about; to examine what it symbolises and where its power lies.
I should also point out that I wrote this in something like an hour at 4AM, and it was 2 years ago, and I'm not sure all of it makes perfect sense to me or that I can have it make perfect sense to anyone else. But here goes.
The title and cut text is, as many of my titles are, from a song – this time, Pink Floyd's "Us And Them" which you can listen to here and read the lyrics to here if you're unfamiliar with it. As with most Roger Waters lyrics, it deals a lot with war, mental instability and the mundanity of evil.
Out of the way, it's a busy day
I've got things on my mind
For want of the price of tea and a slice
The old man died
etc. And the key line:
Me and you
God only knows
It's not what we would choose to do
This is how it starts: Kill, protect, eat.
We start out something like 30,000 years ago, somewhere in Southern Europe. Ice age. Our hero, Gakha (a generic caveman-like name as good as any, I guess) is in his late 20s which makes him a man at the height of his powers. Just to make sure we've all got our millennia straight, I should note that he's not an apeman or anything; he's cro-magnon, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, just as human as you or me. If this were today, Gakha might have a pretty unqualified job, 3.7 kids, a car that needs fixing now and then and watch a lot of sports. Except that world doesn't exist yet. Crank up the 2001 theme and join me...
He has to get close. Gakha sneaks up, downwind from his prey, bare feet sinking in the snow. Closer, wrapping the sheep's skin tighter around himself against the biting cold and to hide his scent. He's just a few feet away when the hart raises its head and turns to him, unaccustomed to this new enemy, looks in his eyes. Its eyes are alive, almost like Gakha's own, the steam around its muzzle the same as the one from his, the growling in their stomachs the same. They watch each other for what seems like an eternity, but the smell of wooly grasseater seems to calm it and it turns back to the hole it's been scraping in the snow, searching for the frozen moss below.
The fact that he's a lone man stalking a large deer tells us something: he's desperate. Man is a social animal, we live and hunt in packs. If he's doing this by himself, it's because he's out of options.
Gakha jabs the spear into its neck.
It's not the best place, hard to get a direct kill, but it's cold and the wooden weapon is too brittle to pierce the larger animal's chest. The hart screams, jerks the spear out of his hands, tries to run, stumbles, hot red blood spurting out onto the white snow. Shivering, he follows it as its strength runs out, slowing down, sinking to its knees. He picks up a stone. Looks into its eyes, so much more alive than the dumb sheep, so much more. Thinks of the eyes of his children back in the cave and brings the stone down. Crack. Its eyes glaze over, not afraid, not hating, just confused, toppling over, breathing, whimpering, panting, gurgling.
I'm very insistant about the deer – or the hart, if you prefer – being alive here, and Gakha knowing this. He's not just harvesting meat, he's aware that he's taking the life of something that is just as alive as himself. Religious historian Karen Armstrong has theorized (for instance, in The History of Myth or The Great Transformation, both of which are excellent reads) that moments like these must have been one of the first instances of man coming up with myths and stories to explain how the world works; once humans have progressed – evolved – so far that we've become conscious of ourselves, of each other, we also become conscious of other beings around us. Wolves don't feel bad for killing sheep; but killing living things becomes a lot more complex, a lot more powerful if you have a conscience – a soul, if you will. It's no wonder that many pre-monotheist religions are based around the animals man eats or which eat man; killing living things is also easier if you can tell yourself there's a purpose to it, that by letting itself be killed, the prey is sacrificing itself for your sake, buying you free from the guilt and sin of killing it. (Ahem.) And so youvenison venerate that prey. Eventually make a rite out of it. Rite or right; correct spelling won't be invented for another 29,600 years or so, after all. ;-) (I have The Master blab on about this in "Looking Just Like A Ghost".)
And it's possible that this scene is echoing Willow killing the deer in "Bargaining", too. Not sure.
Still.
Gakha kneels beside his kill. Touches the warm fur, hungrily laps up the hot blood. Grabs a leg and starts pulling it homewards. It's getting dark and he's still far from home when he hears the howls, sees the shadows running under the trees. He hurries, but his load is heavy and it's so cold and there's so many of them. So hungry. He pulls the spear out of the dead hart's neck, screams back at the wolves, stands over his prey, waiting. Us or them.
Yeah, this is The Old Man And The Sea.
This is how it starts: in blood and soot.
The flames dance across the cave walls as Gakha stumbles inside, gasping from the effort to take the last few steps. His wives and children run towards him, catching him as he falls. He lets them carry him to the warmest corner while First Wife goes outside to drag in what's left of the hart. As the women do women's work (carving, gutting, tanning, preparing) Gakha tells the children of his great hunt, of fighting off the wolves, of killing three of them even after they made off with half the meat, even after they wounded him. He dips shaking fingers in blood and draws their images on the wall, tries to impart, teach, impress before it's too late. The Wolf: danger, killer, evil. The Ram: warmth, protection, safety. The Hart: noble, beautiful, food. Never forget: need them, fear them. He holds his oldest son, squeezing his arm as hard as he can: Never forget.
Again, language is an interesting thing. For obvious reasons, we can't know exactly how evolved language was at this point; but this is roughly the same time that the first cave paintings (that we know of) were made. We can know that Gakha and his family have the same brain capacity, the same larynx and mouth as us, so they CAN speak just as well as us, but of course, being hunters and gatherers the question is just how their language needs to be – how much they have to say.
Wittgenstein (man, I'm getting pretentious) said "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world". Gakha's family's world is pretty limited so far – see wolf, see wolf run, run wolf run - but it's about to grow a bit. They're about to introduce abstract metaphysical concepts – which of course are not in any way a good or bad thing in and of themselves, but add complexities.
What Gakha is doing, he's doing for the best of purposes; he's trying to teach his children how to survive, and he knows he only has hours to pass on a lifetime of learning; he's aware of his own mortality. But in doing it the way he does, in these circumstances, he's not only creating a story – a myth – around the animals he paints, but he's also placing himself within the myth, as another sacrifice. The lifegiver who gives his own life that his children might live. Another egg without which you cannot make the proverbial omelette.
On a less philosophical note, aslynnenne correctly pointed out, polygamy is rarely the norm among hunter-gatherers; their life is simply too much about day-to-day survival for several families to depend on one hunter (though there are examples of women taking part in hunting as well). Usually, hunter-gatherers move in small groups of a few families; the fact that we have at least three women here and just one man would indicate that there used to be more, and that Gakha is now the last surviving adult hunter (of this group, I should add). And, as I hope is clear by this point, even that won't be for long.
They feast that night. Gakha, with no appetite, watches his children gorge themselves, blood running down their chins. They huddle from the cold around the small fire, and Gakha falls asleep against Third Wife's pregnant belly, his pain fading away.
In the morning, they carry his corpse outside, well away from the cave. The ground is frozen, no chance to dig a grave, so they wrap him in the sheep's skin (he must need it, he's so cold) and bury him in the snow. The children whimper, but the women tell them to be brave; there's still many many days of winter, and at least now they have meat. For a while.
Again, we see that myths have started to form; for one, the idea of an afterlife. Man is the only animal that looks after its dead. And of course, whether they want to admit it or not, they are giving Gakha's body back to the wolves, doing their part in his sacrifice.
Also, having pre-literate people use the phrase "many many" to indicate "an unknown but very large number" is a bit hoky, but I like it.
As for the founder of this new philosophy being associated with sheep throughout, I have no comment. :-)
Afterwards, the sons go out to search for wood, as they've done every day of their lives. Only today, they come back not only with firewood but also with sleek, strong branches that they sharpen into spears as night falls, hearing the wolves digging through the snow outside. Pahk picks up a charred stick from the fire. He's the man now, all of 12 summers. He becomes the first of countless to fill in the images on the cave wall left by his father, first in blood, now in soot and fire: Wolf. Ram. Hart. And underneath, he draws Man. Father. They watch the images in sorrow, fear, respect; there's big magic in this. Them or us. Need them. Fear them. Never forget.
And here we see a beginning of a shift, from a story describing (here's how you hunt) to a story prescribing (it's the [insert name]'s will that you should hunt), an imperative rather than an infinitive. Which, of course, in one way it needs to be if Pahk and his siblings are to survive. But it also means that on some level, they are taking a step towards creating a philosophy in which they are supposed by something outside, by something greater than them, to be doing it – not for their own sake, but because they have been told to and have no choice but to obey. And they derive strength from the sacrifice, from the death of something as powerful as their own father.
As they go out hunting the next morning, they pause before the drawing. Raise their spears in salute and supplication, eyes gleaming with defiance. One of the boys takes a piece of coal and draws the symbols on his chest; the others follow. The women watch as their children go out into the biting cold, to kill, to protect, hopefully to return and eat.
Key scene: they are no longer doing it in their own name, but as participants in the as yet unnamed story of the wolf, the ram, the hart, and the man who has no choice but to play by their rules - even as they themselves are formulating those rules (or laws, if you will). (ETA: as the crime writer Henning Mankell said on TV just now as I was posting this: "what makes us human is not that we are homo sapiens - wise men - but homo narrans, story-telling men." We are self-aware, and we create our own interpretation of how the world works.) They are creating a totem, putting onThe Ritz a suit... Come to think of it, and I don't think that struck me when I wrote this, it's the opposite of Gakha dressing as a sheep at the beginning of this; make of that what you will.
This is how it starts: in name and deed.
Enough of them do return, of course. And it goes on, no matter what. The images keep getting filled in, in cave after cave, generation after generation, in fear and respect; kill, protect, eat. Them or us.
Like I said, I wrote this fic on a flash of inspiration at 4 in the morning. In retrospect, it could have used some more fleshing out. I like the fast-forward effect of this, but it's a little too sudden; as at least one reviewer remarked, the jump from Gakha doing what he has to to his descendants using it to dominate the world could have gone smoother.
They look at the images, plead with them and hate them, but they don't look into the eyes of their prey anymore. Their spears are getting stronger. Their bows can kill at a distance. Their fires blaze higher. Their clothes are warmer. They move into huts, teepees, houses. The cold doesn't bite like it used to. They drive the wolves back. At some point, they abandon the caves completely. And it goes on, no matter what. In blood and soot and fire, though they know how to kill with the push of a button or the scratch of a pen; though they devise laws to protect; though they eat sushi and drink espresso.
The basic idea here, of course, is that while evil may exist in and of itself in the Jossverse, it doesn't exist independently (with the possible exception of The First Evil, where the writers don't seem to agree on whether it's the sum total of evil or the thing that created evil in the first place – and even the First Evil, as we're told time and again, is unable to do anything on its own; it needs followers to actually act). As hung up as Whedon's series are on good and evil and the acts and attitudes that surround those concepts, there is no such thing as sin in them. There are good and bad acts, good and bad people, but they are judged first and foremost by how they affect others, not as affronts against some pre-determined set of rules. The morality of the Jossverse doesn't go "certain things are bad, others are good, and that's just how it is" as much as "why are certain things bad or good, and what makes them so?"
And that's why Wolfram & Hart make the perfect Angel villains, the embodiment of everything evil done for purely human reasons (if not always by human means), and it's no coincidence that Wolfram & Hart is a law firm. (As clichéd as the "lawyers are evil" angle may be.) They control the very rules that make up society - as Holland Manners points out to Angel in "Reprise." They are the bad guys, not because they are evil, but because they represent the unreflecting, amoral application of set rules – the law – without caring whether or not those rules are right and what makes them so, but simply as tools. As with the First Evil being unable to act on its own, there might be a reason why we never see the Senior Partners themselves; why do we need them, when people like Holland, Lindsey, Lilah, or by all means Angel are perfectly willing to use the rules for their own gain anyway – as long as they get to do it in the name of the law? How would Angel be different if it turned out there were no Senior Partners at all?
But on a granite wall in the back of a dark cave, untouched by millennia, the images remain. After all, we mustn't ever forget:
It wasn't us.
We didn't do it.
It was them.
The wolf, the ram, the hart. Their will be done.
Which hopefully ties it all together; the moral of this story, I hope, isn't "we should have stayed in the caves" or "eating meat is bad" or "don't believe in anything"; it's "think about what you're doing and why, and take responsibility for it." The wolf, the ram and the hart are animals, they have no will but that which we project upon them. In the words of Patti Smith: "we created it – let's take it over." Except that's not easy when it's something so far engrained, something so old that it's part of all of us. Maybe needs to be part of all of us if we're not to starve.
Or something. Maybe it's just a story about a caveman who wanted to keep his kids safe. I just know that I couldn't not write it once it popped into my head.
stormwreath asked for a DVD commentary on this piece of W&H backstory. I thought it might be interesting, plus it's an excuse for some meta on the role of good and evil in the Jossverse. It gets rambly and I'm not sure you'll be any wiser by the end, but...The original version is here.
We go on, no matter what. Our firm has always been here, in one form or another.
- Holland Manners
Title: Us And Them
Author: Beer Good (
beer_good_foamy)Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~1000
Summary: This is how it starts: kill, protect, eat.
Us And Them
First of all, a caveat: there WILL be some discussion of religious/mythical themes in this – nothing in particular singled out, really, just trying to discuss the mechanics of the thing.
I realise that I keep using the word "myth" in this, a word that has different connotations. So just to clarify, let's borrow this definition from the dictionary: A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society. The idea here is more to give an explanation for the idea of Wolfram & Hart than the story of how the "law firm" itself came about; to examine what it symbolises and where its power lies.
I should also point out that I wrote this in something like an hour at 4AM, and it was 2 years ago, and I'm not sure all of it makes perfect sense to me or that I can have it make perfect sense to anyone else. But here goes.
The title and cut text is, as many of my titles are, from a song – this time, Pink Floyd's "Us And Them" which you can listen to here and read the lyrics to here if you're unfamiliar with it. As with most Roger Waters lyrics, it deals a lot with war, mental instability and the mundanity of evil.
Out of the way, it's a busy day
I've got things on my mind
For want of the price of tea and a slice
The old man died
etc. And the key line:
Me and you
God only knows
It's not what we would choose to do
This is how it starts: Kill, protect, eat.
We start out something like 30,000 years ago, somewhere in Southern Europe. Ice age. Our hero, Gakha (a generic caveman-like name as good as any, I guess) is in his late 20s which makes him a man at the height of his powers. Just to make sure we've all got our millennia straight, I should note that he's not an apeman or anything; he's cro-magnon, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, just as human as you or me. If this were today, Gakha might have a pretty unqualified job, 3.7 kids, a car that needs fixing now and then and watch a lot of sports. Except that world doesn't exist yet. Crank up the 2001 theme and join me...
He has to get close. Gakha sneaks up, downwind from his prey, bare feet sinking in the snow. Closer, wrapping the sheep's skin tighter around himself against the biting cold and to hide his scent. He's just a few feet away when the hart raises its head and turns to him, unaccustomed to this new enemy, looks in his eyes. Its eyes are alive, almost like Gakha's own, the steam around its muzzle the same as the one from his, the growling in their stomachs the same. They watch each other for what seems like an eternity, but the smell of wooly grasseater seems to calm it and it turns back to the hole it's been scraping in the snow, searching for the frozen moss below.
The fact that he's a lone man stalking a large deer tells us something: he's desperate. Man is a social animal, we live and hunt in packs. If he's doing this by himself, it's because he's out of options.
Gakha jabs the spear into its neck.
It's not the best place, hard to get a direct kill, but it's cold and the wooden weapon is too brittle to pierce the larger animal's chest. The hart screams, jerks the spear out of his hands, tries to run, stumbles, hot red blood spurting out onto the white snow. Shivering, he follows it as its strength runs out, slowing down, sinking to its knees. He picks up a stone. Looks into its eyes, so much more alive than the dumb sheep, so much more. Thinks of the eyes of his children back in the cave and brings the stone down. Crack. Its eyes glaze over, not afraid, not hating, just confused, toppling over, breathing, whimpering, panting, gurgling.
I'm very insistant about the deer – or the hart, if you prefer – being alive here, and Gakha knowing this. He's not just harvesting meat, he's aware that he's taking the life of something that is just as alive as himself. Religious historian Karen Armstrong has theorized (for instance, in The History of Myth or The Great Transformation, both of which are excellent reads) that moments like these must have been one of the first instances of man coming up with myths and stories to explain how the world works; once humans have progressed – evolved – so far that we've become conscious of ourselves, of each other, we also become conscious of other beings around us. Wolves don't feel bad for killing sheep; but killing living things becomes a lot more complex, a lot more powerful if you have a conscience – a soul, if you will. It's no wonder that many pre-monotheist religions are based around the animals man eats or which eat man; killing living things is also easier if you can tell yourself there's a purpose to it, that by letting itself be killed, the prey is sacrificing itself for your sake, buying you free from the guilt and sin of killing it. (Ahem.) And so you
And it's possible that this scene is echoing Willow killing the deer in "Bargaining", too. Not sure.
Still.
Gakha kneels beside his kill. Touches the warm fur, hungrily laps up the hot blood. Grabs a leg and starts pulling it homewards. It's getting dark and he's still far from home when he hears the howls, sees the shadows running under the trees. He hurries, but his load is heavy and it's so cold and there's so many of them. So hungry. He pulls the spear out of the dead hart's neck, screams back at the wolves, stands over his prey, waiting. Us or them.
Yeah, this is The Old Man And The Sea.
This is how it starts: in blood and soot.
The flames dance across the cave walls as Gakha stumbles inside, gasping from the effort to take the last few steps. His wives and children run towards him, catching him as he falls. He lets them carry him to the warmest corner while First Wife goes outside to drag in what's left of the hart. As the women do women's work (carving, gutting, tanning, preparing) Gakha tells the children of his great hunt, of fighting off the wolves, of killing three of them even after they made off with half the meat, even after they wounded him. He dips shaking fingers in blood and draws their images on the wall, tries to impart, teach, impress before it's too late. The Wolf: danger, killer, evil. The Ram: warmth, protection, safety. The Hart: noble, beautiful, food. Never forget: need them, fear them. He holds his oldest son, squeezing his arm as hard as he can: Never forget.
Again, language is an interesting thing. For obvious reasons, we can't know exactly how evolved language was at this point; but this is roughly the same time that the first cave paintings (that we know of) were made. We can know that Gakha and his family have the same brain capacity, the same larynx and mouth as us, so they CAN speak just as well as us, but of course, being hunters and gatherers the question is just how their language needs to be – how much they have to say.
Wittgenstein (man, I'm getting pretentious) said "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world". Gakha's family's world is pretty limited so far – see wolf, see wolf run, run wolf run - but it's about to grow a bit. They're about to introduce abstract metaphysical concepts – which of course are not in any way a good or bad thing in and of themselves, but add complexities.
What Gakha is doing, he's doing for the best of purposes; he's trying to teach his children how to survive, and he knows he only has hours to pass on a lifetime of learning; he's aware of his own mortality. But in doing it the way he does, in these circumstances, he's not only creating a story – a myth – around the animals he paints, but he's also placing himself within the myth, as another sacrifice. The lifegiver who gives his own life that his children might live. Another egg without which you cannot make the proverbial omelette.
On a less philosophical note, as
lynnenne correctly pointed out, polygamy is rarely the norm among hunter-gatherers; their life is simply too much about day-to-day survival for several families to depend on one hunter (though there are examples of women taking part in hunting as well). Usually, hunter-gatherers move in small groups of a few families; the fact that we have at least three women here and just one man would indicate that there used to be more, and that Gakha is now the last surviving adult hunter (of this group, I should add). And, as I hope is clear by this point, even that won't be for long.They feast that night. Gakha, with no appetite, watches his children gorge themselves, blood running down their chins. They huddle from the cold around the small fire, and Gakha falls asleep against Third Wife's pregnant belly, his pain fading away.
In the morning, they carry his corpse outside, well away from the cave. The ground is frozen, no chance to dig a grave, so they wrap him in the sheep's skin (he must need it, he's so cold) and bury him in the snow. The children whimper, but the women tell them to be brave; there's still many many days of winter, and at least now they have meat. For a while.
Again, we see that myths have started to form; for one, the idea of an afterlife. Man is the only animal that looks after its dead. And of course, whether they want to admit it or not, they are giving Gakha's body back to the wolves, doing their part in his sacrifice.
Also, having pre-literate people use the phrase "many many" to indicate "an unknown but very large number" is a bit hoky, but I like it.
As for the founder of this new philosophy being associated with sheep throughout, I have no comment. :-)
Afterwards, the sons go out to search for wood, as they've done every day of their lives. Only today, they come back not only with firewood but also with sleek, strong branches that they sharpen into spears as night falls, hearing the wolves digging through the snow outside. Pahk picks up a charred stick from the fire. He's the man now, all of 12 summers. He becomes the first of countless to fill in the images on the cave wall left by his father, first in blood, now in soot and fire: Wolf. Ram. Hart. And underneath, he draws Man. Father. They watch the images in sorrow, fear, respect; there's big magic in this. Them or us. Need them. Fear them. Never forget.
And here we see a beginning of a shift, from a story describing (here's how you hunt) to a story prescribing (it's the [insert name]'s will that you should hunt), an imperative rather than an infinitive. Which, of course, in one way it needs to be if Pahk and his siblings are to survive. But it also means that on some level, they are taking a step towards creating a philosophy in which they are supposed by something outside, by something greater than them, to be doing it – not for their own sake, but because they have been told to and have no choice but to obey. And they derive strength from the sacrifice, from the death of something as powerful as their own father.
As they go out hunting the next morning, they pause before the drawing. Raise their spears in salute and supplication, eyes gleaming with defiance. One of the boys takes a piece of coal and draws the symbols on his chest; the others follow. The women watch as their children go out into the biting cold, to kill, to protect, hopefully to return and eat.
Key scene: they are no longer doing it in their own name, but as participants in the as yet unnamed story of the wolf, the ram, the hart, and the man who has no choice but to play by their rules - even as they themselves are formulating those rules (or laws, if you will). (ETA: as the crime writer Henning Mankell said on TV just now as I was posting this: "what makes us human is not that we are homo sapiens - wise men - but homo narrans, story-telling men." We are self-aware, and we create our own interpretation of how the world works.) They are creating a totem, putting on
This is how it starts: in name and deed.
Enough of them do return, of course. And it goes on, no matter what. The images keep getting filled in, in cave after cave, generation after generation, in fear and respect; kill, protect, eat. Them or us.
Like I said, I wrote this fic on a flash of inspiration at 4 in the morning. In retrospect, it could have used some more fleshing out. I like the fast-forward effect of this, but it's a little too sudden; as at least one reviewer remarked, the jump from Gakha doing what he has to to his descendants using it to dominate the world could have gone smoother.
They look at the images, plead with them and hate them, but they don't look into the eyes of their prey anymore. Their spears are getting stronger. Their bows can kill at a distance. Their fires blaze higher. Their clothes are warmer. They move into huts, teepees, houses. The cold doesn't bite like it used to. They drive the wolves back. At some point, they abandon the caves completely. And it goes on, no matter what. In blood and soot and fire, though they know how to kill with the push of a button or the scratch of a pen; though they devise laws to protect; though they eat sushi and drink espresso.
The basic idea here, of course, is that while evil may exist in and of itself in the Jossverse, it doesn't exist independently (with the possible exception of The First Evil, where the writers don't seem to agree on whether it's the sum total of evil or the thing that created evil in the first place – and even the First Evil, as we're told time and again, is unable to do anything on its own; it needs followers to actually act). As hung up as Whedon's series are on good and evil and the acts and attitudes that surround those concepts, there is no such thing as sin in them. There are good and bad acts, good and bad people, but they are judged first and foremost by how they affect others, not as affronts against some pre-determined set of rules. The morality of the Jossverse doesn't go "certain things are bad, others are good, and that's just how it is" as much as "why are certain things bad or good, and what makes them so?"
And that's why Wolfram & Hart make the perfect Angel villains, the embodiment of everything evil done for purely human reasons (if not always by human means), and it's no coincidence that Wolfram & Hart is a law firm. (As clichéd as the "lawyers are evil" angle may be.) They control the very rules that make up society - as Holland Manners points out to Angel in "Reprise." They are the bad guys, not because they are evil, but because they represent the unreflecting, amoral application of set rules – the law – without caring whether or not those rules are right and what makes them so, but simply as tools. As with the First Evil being unable to act on its own, there might be a reason why we never see the Senior Partners themselves; why do we need them, when people like Holland, Lindsey, Lilah, or by all means Angel are perfectly willing to use the rules for their own gain anyway – as long as they get to do it in the name of the law? How would Angel be different if it turned out there were no Senior Partners at all?
But on a granite wall in the back of a dark cave, untouched by millennia, the images remain. After all, we mustn't ever forget:
It wasn't us.
We didn't do it.
It was them.
The wolf, the ram, the hart. Their will be done.
Which hopefully ties it all together; the moral of this story, I hope, isn't "we should have stayed in the caves" or "eating meat is bad" or "don't believe in anything"; it's "think about what you're doing and why, and take responsibility for it." The wolf, the ram and the hart are animals, they have no will but that which we project upon them. In the words of Patti Smith: "we created it – let's take it over." Except that's not easy when it's something so far engrained, something so old that it's part of all of us. Maybe needs to be part of all of us if we're not to starve.
Or something. Maybe it's just a story about a caveman who wanted to keep his kids safe. I just know that I couldn't not write it once it popped into my head.
