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She had it rough. Different circumstances, that could have been me No way, some people just don't have that in them.
What do we mean when we talk about evil? In modern parlance we understand that evil goes beyond the scope of 'bad', to describe someone as evil is to place them somehow beyond humanity. There is something inhuman about the things they have done, their acts, for reason of their savagery or their premeditation or their randomness or the emotions they invoke, are incomprehensible to the normal rational person. First we must be sure exactly what Faith has done. Let's follow her thirteen steps to damnation. Consequences Some might claim that her fall began earlier, with the death of Deputy Mayor Finch (a killing which would be legally excused see Was Faith guilty of murder?) , but that incident at most displays Faith as nothing more than reckless, she had no evil intent, rather the opposite. When she offered her services to the Mayor, however, she was making the choice to ally herself with the dark forces in Sunnydale. Dopplegangland Enemies 4. Attempting to seduce Angel in order that he would lose his soul. 5. Playing her part in 'stripping' Angel of his soul. 6. Appearing perfectly willing to torture Buffy to death. Choices 8. Grabbing Willow after the theft of the Box of Gavrok. 9. Threatening Willow when she found her reading the books of Ascension. (Killing of the Bug of Gavrok)
Graduation 11. Shooting Angel 12. Fighting Buffy 13. At the last throwing herself off the roof to deny Buffy the slayer blood she needed. (Buffy's dream, though there is no way to know for sure whether or not it was really Faith. It would seem from Buffy's reaction to her afterwards that she believed it was.)
We have little idea of the terms of the agreement hammered out between the two behind the closed doors of the Mayor's office, but later episodes demonstrate that neither the tasks nor the rewards were well-defined. The Mayor had an incalculable effect on the fall of Faith, not only did he set the pace of the acts that she would be told to accomplish he also presented that such acts were approved by his authority. Finally he provided an incentive, a temptation, rewarding her in the form of money and, far more significantly, with attention. Through his regulation and authority he gradually immersed Faith in increasingly dark acts. Faith's conversion was not instant, it was not some parody of a Damascene experience, it was one that was accomplished as Macbeth's, one step at a time. This is evident from the list above, all Faith does at first is pass over information of the threats her employer faces, Willow is trying to hack into government files, a demon is offering information to the enemy. Her first act that goes beyond that, killing the demon, is something that Buffy herself considers when he approaches them. This particular demon seems harmless enough, but so did the Gingerbread one, and it is a Slayer's duty to rid the world of demons. There is no provision for judgement over their individual characteristics. Buffy's comment "Oh let him go, I don't think he falls into the 'deadly threat to humanity' category." is at odds with the typically absolute nature in which she carries out her slayer duties. The most notable exception that Buffy has made has been for Angel, and she was already in love with him before she found out his special circumstances. And despite all he has done there is an argument that the threat he represents is too great and that he should be staked for the protection of society. The Mayor's comment in Dopplegangland when he decides to eliminate Willow is indicative of the gradual nature of Faith's turn: "Don't worry I wouldn't ask you to do it, not this early in the relationship." He may be referring to how much trust he can place in Faith at this stage, or more likely he does not believe that Faith is mentally ready. She has not yet sunk so low to be willing to kill a former acquaintance. At this point Faith has not done anything that we could possibly consider beyond humanity and she has been rewarded handsomely, attention lavished upon her, a beautiful apartment, far more than she ever received for all the risks she had run under the Watchers. There can be no question that what she did was wrong, what we are concerned her is whether she is evil. I think we can be sure that her acts so far are not beyond human understanding, are not repulsive to us, in other words that she can not be considered evil at this point. The Mayor continues the process of gradually increasing the severity of the acts he requests, authorising them. In Enemies the Mayor knows, perhaps even initiated, the plan to seduce Angel and when that failed he contacted the person who he believed could strip Angel's soul. It is also here that Faith first displays her willingness to kill a mortal, namely Buffy, once again under orders to make it as slow as possible. Buffy is, after all, a player. She has killed countless times in the past, she is not an innocent even though she fights on the side of good. In Choices Faith moves further, she begins to take the initiative by killing the courier after he refused to get in the car. The courier's status, whether mortal or demon, has never been noted. He didn't crumble to dust as a vampire would, but that has appeared to be something peculiar to vampires, other demons in The Wish, Gingerbread, Enemies, Earshot etc. have not crumbled. The courier did appear human, but then so does Anya, and his intricate tatoos might indicate inhumanity. Either way this was, once again, a blackhat. His death should not be dismissed but there is a world of moral difference between killing him and the murder of the professor in Graduation. Faith's initiative was applauded by the Mayor, the one she looks to for authorisation, at that time and then again when she captures Willow after Buffy and the gang attack the Mayor's office. The nifty kill of the Gavrok bug could be seen as a good act, it perhaps saved Wesley from the fate of the curious security guard. However this opinion is critically undermined by the danger Faith herself faced from the creatures. She was saving herself as much as anyone else, and it cannot be regarded as a benevolent act. Faith's most damnable act is the murder of the innocent professor, even though it was authorised and initiated by the Mayor. This is her lowest moral point. But it was one that was reached by degrees. It might be thought whether the fall is gradual or not makes no difference, that there are some absolutes that no rational human being could cross. Only a person who is evil could do certain things. That might be true, but consider this: there was an experiment into human behaviour, testing the influence of authority. They had volunteers taken from perfectly normal society, they were confronted with a series of buttons, a shock generator. The volunteers were told that it was wired to a patient in an adjoining room. It wasn't. There was only an actor, whose voice could be heard through the intercom. The volunteers were, at intervals, instructed to press the next button along. They were told to gradually increase it. The "victim" began begging them to stop. They were told to increase it again. This time the victim started screaming. After a while the screams were choked off to be replaced by silence. The volunteers were told to increase the voltage once more. Nearly 80% of those tested carried on administrating shocks after the "victim" begged them to stop. Nearly 60% continued even after they believed that they'd killed him. They were ordinary people and they were prepared to torture people to death just because they were told to by someone in authority.
Faith herself Almost all of Faith's actions are comprehensible by a rational person (with the notable exceptions of the killing of an innocent and the readiness to torture, recognised as a crime against humanity), they are wrong but they do not so repel to make us doubt her humanity. What is far more disturbing, what makes us far more willing to consider her evil is the mood she displayed while carrying these acts out. How can we not consider evil anyone who has such obvious glee at the thought of torturing another person to death? Conversely if she undertook killing another only after the most serious consideration we would be less ready to pin the 'evil' label upon her. It is within her reactions, her emotions and the reasons for them that she can be more fairly evaluated. Are the feelings she displays those of an evil person?
Her actions after the death of Finch are of classic denial, she claims instantly that it wasn't her fault, that she didn't know. She dumps the body in the river, not in any real attempt to conceal it from the police (they find it extremely quickly), but rather to deny that it happened to herself. Then she precipitates Buffy by going to Giles and fingering the other Slayer and finally, after she has been imprisoned twice and betrayed by her Watcher, she attempts to flee, attempting to obliterate all of Sunnydale from her memory. A few have claimed that all it was all a lie, that it had been Faith's agenda from the beginning to isolate the Mayor by eliminating his advisors, Finch and Trick, before assuming their position, that Faith had been lying from the start. I believe that Faith's emotions were sincere simply because she had no reason to lie. There was no measure to be gained by these sloppy, irrational acts. A fabricating Faith could have conceived of far more effective ways to gain what she has been accused of coveting. It is particularly telling that Faith initially chose to run rather than turn to the Mayor for help. Her first reaction was not to betray those people she had become close to, rather it is to escape from it all. So, there she was, all ready to depart, Buffy catches up with her, they talk, Faith goads her into a fight, vampires attack, Buffy gets brained by a crate, Trick leans in to bite her only to be dusted by Faith. They look at each other, then... Buffy's talking to Giles about how everything will be alright and Faith is working for the Mayor. So what happened in that ... ? Whatever it was it must have been something capable of making Buffy believe that everything was hunky-dory and have so affected Faith that she disregards her previous impulse to flee, not to return to the fold but rather to betray them. As it has been portrayed, if nothing had happened, it shows Faith in the worst light possible, almost giving credence to the theory that this is what she planned all along.
Dopplegangland Neither of them liked the other, neither of them would have shed tears over the other's disappearance from their lives. This makes it all the more surprising that Faith actually reacts when the Mayor threatens her life. This can be attributed to her worrying that this would undermine her undercover position within the Buffy clique, but I find that unconvincing, Willow's murder could no doubt be arranged without pinning her as a suspect. Her moment of pause (her look of dismay?) was not because she valued Willow's life in particular but because she was taken aback at the lengths to which she believed she was being asked to go, this was something that she had not bargained for. It is clear that she does have some respect for life, if only at the very least that, at this stage, she does not want to be the one to take it. What if the Mayor had asked her to kill Willow? Would she have accepted it? Possibly, to please this rapidly emerging father figure. Would she have actually gone through with it? Again possibly, but I believe that she would not have displayed the obvious pleasure that she later did in Enemies, which originates far more from the individuals involved than in the act itself, and it may have acted as a bucket of cold water, a sudden realisation of the end of the road she was travelling. Perhaps enough to turn her back. The fact that the Mayor so successfully corrupted her by degrees is a testimony to his own sharp reading of her character, she may have been a natural born slayer, but she is not a natural born murderer. Enemies (Her explanation "I don't think he falls into the deadly threat to humanity category" is out of sorts for a person who has followed the notion that there is no excuse for demons guilty of the crime of existence. The only exceptions to this have been Angel, who she had feelings for before she discovered his nature; and Spike, who was offering his aid in an extreme situation. This should be her reasoning in this instance. It is the aid that he can provide that should be (according to her previous attitude) the only thing which restrains her from killing him, whether this is what her attitude should be is a whole other topic see Slayers and the Right to Slay.) While killing this demon, this entity that under the Slayer ideals has no right to life, is relatively straightforward Faith still reacts badly when she sees its blood on her hands. While her distress can be explained to how close she herself came to death, her fixation on the blood itself would seem to refute this. Perhaps it is that this is the first time she cannot deny what she has done, that no one else can take the blame; whatever the reason, it is apparent here, while she's alone and her pretence of bravado can fall, that she is still not comfortable with the realities of killing. The next time we see her, she appears shaken and unsure at the door of Angel's domicile. We discover later that she had intended to seduce him in order that he should lose his soul in her. We don't know whether or not she has returned to the Mayor after her encounter with the demon, whether this entire meeting was orchestrated though it can be drawn by implication from their following conversation that the idea had been broached at some time in the past. This might have been a cold, calculated charade (it would be pretty obvious to the Mayor that Faith's standard approach to 'seduction' would not succeed with Angel), equally she might have been exploiting sincere feelings in order to be more convincing. Similarly with the Mayor, her attitude that it had all been faked could be correct or that in turn might have more to do with a 'tough-girl' pretence covering her own wounded pride. Add to this the possibility that Angel was acting as much as Faith might have been (as we never discovered exactly when the plan to expose Faith went into effect), and it becomes sadly obvious that any conclusions that can be drawn on the strength of this scene, would be fatally undermined. The next significant moment comes at the point where Angel is 'stripped' of his soul. Her pleasure at this event is patent. Once again it can be attributed to simple sadism but to do so would ignore the significance of this event to Faith. This is far more than the creation of another employee for the Mayor; Angel is, in many respects, the perfect man in Faith's eyes. He fills both the 'equal' and the 'boy-toy' categories in her evaluation, the only person we've ever seen her meet to do so, and he's Buffy's which makes him all the more significant for reasons that are explored below. But as Angel he can never be hers, Angelus is another matter. For Faith this is not the infliction of pain, rather the creation of her companion. Who wouldn't be rubbing their hands at that? The end of Enemies sees the most memorable, and most damning, indication of her descent where Faith demonstrates that she has every intention of torturing Buffy to death. This is no act, no pretend tough-talk, cast aside the fact that she was explicitly ordered to make Buffy's death as slow as possible in order to avoid the appearance of another Slayer. Torture goes beyond those concerns, and when one can torture with a smile on their face and a song in their heart, it delves into to realms of the truly monstrous.
Call it in love, call it obsession; whatever, by this point she has it with Buffy, with who she is and what she has. Buffy is the only true equal she will ever find. Has there ever been someone for you who is so important to you that you would do anything to be a part of their life, to have a part of their heart? That is what she wanted in Bad Girls, for the two of them to be closer than anyone else, best friends (if friendship is truly a word that is adequate to the task), platonic lovers with an unspoken bond between them. When that failed, when Faith's own pride prevented her from acknowledging her mistake over Finch, when it appeared to her that everyone had judged her against Buffy and had found her wanting, when she had convinced herself that Buffy could never want anyone like her, the obsession changed.
So where does that, somewhat oratorical, piece of pop-psychology get us for the purposes of this question? Faith's elation was not in the act but in the person, in the fact that it was Buffy, in the place it will win her for as long as she lives. Undoubtedly this is not rational, it borders on insanity, but there the distinction lies. Angelus' evil is drawn from the pleasure he takes in the act, Faith is not evil because she would not take pleasure if it was anyone else. She is not a monster that takes pleasure in the infliction of pain, rather at this time she is an unbalanced obsessive who receives encouragement where she should be censured. Buffy plays her hand, they fight, Faith flees after (what I have heard best described as) her Judas kiss. But it's more than that, it's an expression of her feelings for Buffy which she downplayed as much as possible before her fall, but now she gives them full vent. For her the innuendo (in Enemies and Graduation) serves another purpose, it becomes a weapon to shock and distract, which serves to remind Buffy of how close they had been and pours salt into the wound of the betrayal.
After the theatrics of Enemies, the relatively innocuous scene at the airport speaks far more about Faith's descent. Here she does not carry any of the tumultuous emotional baggage, she does not express joy or pause, she has every outward appearance of a casual killer. Was the courier human? It does not really matter for these purposes, the point is that he could have been either to her, and yet still she killed him.
Capturing Willow after Buffy led an attack on the Mayor, pales in comparison. Their conversation, however, is interesting. Her timely kill of the Bug of Gavrok, saving Wesley's life, is one of the few redeeming events that can be trumpeted in her sorry decline. But just as her moment of weakness with Angel in Enemies, this opinion is critically flawed. This moment cannot be ascribed with confidence to anything more than self-defence. Even if the Bugs did not threaten the Mayor they certainly did her. Her contemplative look back at the Gang before she left the cafeteria is, perhaps, the last choice of the episode. After all, this is the first time that she has seen the Gang in action apart from their abortive charge in Enemies, the first time that it has really been brought home to her what she has given up in order to follow her path of self-interest. Of course, the last choice is no choice at all for Willow made it quite clear that Faith has no place with them, nor is it likely that she would accept if it was offered. Her moment of indecision is indicative of her human regret. Graduation Once again her most objectively damnable act is casually thrown out at the beginning of the episode. Poisoning Angel to reduce both him and Buffy as a threat as the Mayor's ascension draws near is vicious but considering her past with the pair of them it's not on a par with what has gone before. It actually feels almost reassuringly direct and rationally judged. What sets Angel apart from Professor Worth is that both he and Buffy are players. The fight the battles and they now the risks and if they had an opportunity to destroy Faith and the Mayor, at this point they would take it. The same applies to the fight between Buffy and Faith later on.
Which leaves us with the dream. The argument about whether or not dreamFaith was actually Faith or a manifestation of Buffy's unconscious can kicked around interminably with no conclusion until she recovers. What can be said is that Buffy herself (who has had communicative dreams in the past in Amends) believes that it was her. There are slightly fewer interpretations of what that dream meant than there are fans who watched it, but that's still quite a few. dreamFaith claims new awareness, Buffy understands the key to destroying the Mayor and is offered some of Faith's 'stuff'. One interpretation that has been argued is that this is analogous to her power, her strength. The reason that Buffy recovered so quickly, and that Faith has taken so long is because Buffy drew from her for her fight at Graduation. It is this dream which is the most puzzling part of Faith's fall, if it truly was her (which I believe it was). It brings into doubt the antagonistic relationship between the Slayers for the last half of the season. Certainly the fact that the only other person that Buffy has ever shared that experience with has been her 'destined love for all eternity' has added fuel to the fires of the Faithful. Their amiable conversation, Faith's apparent reversal of loyalties in this place which brooks no deception or façade are hard to reconcile, difficult to interpret and extremely tempting to disregard for their dubious validity. Even with its most generous interpretation it would not forgive or redeem Faith for what she has done, but it would place beyond doubt that she was actually evil. For no-one who is evil could have done such a thing, and I do not think if Faith was evil Buffy would ever grant her even that lightest kiss of forgiveness. If it wasn't her, it means nothing; if it was, it could mean everything.
Conclusion I must admit that in writing this piece my own opinion of Faith has altered. To catalogue her crimes one after the other is enough for me to reconsider my previous generous attitude. However, not to the degree that I am convinced that Faith is evil. Some of her most horrific acts revolve around her own peculiar and most definitely dysfunctional relationships about that person. Others owe more to the corrupt figure of authority that filled her life, and his, quite deliberate, gradual immersion of her into the darkness. Perhaps I should finish by making my opinion perfectly clear: Faith is vicious, jealous, arrogant, obsessive, proud, disturbed, lacking in empathy, gullible, weak and well deserves to be punished for that which she did,
I do not believe that: Go to Masquerade's Is Faith evil?
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