Tuesday, June 4, 2013

What’s So Important About a Soul?


Okay, so yes, if you’re a follower of any number of belief systems, a soul is very important. But for the purpose of this entry, I’m more concerned with how the very concept of a soul is portrayed in various fictions. In fiction the soul is a tangible object that can be contained and felt and used as a commodity. But why? In order for something to be traded and used it must have value. So what is the value of a soul?

According to a couple of TV shows, a soul is where we get our capacity to feel emotions. Both the shows Buffy The Vampire Slayer (and its spinoff Angel) and the TV show Supernatural featured characters that had a soul and then had that soul removed. With a soul the characters were able to feel remorse and restraint with their actions. The character Angel, a vampire who was cursed with a soul, is portrayed as a constant brooder feeling centuries of guilt for all the murders he committed before his soul was returned to him. In season two of Buffy, Angel’s soul is removed after he breaks the curse by enjoying a moment of “true happiness” with Buffy (apparently having sex with Sarah Michelle Geller really is that awesome). Afterwards he becomes a complete psychopath and the main villain of that season of the series. So according to Buffy, a soul is where one gets their morality.

Similarly in the show Supernatural. At the end of season 5 of the series, Sam Winchester is possessed by Lucifer and in order to defeat him, sacrifices himself and hurls himself into a doorway to Hell. At the beginning of the following season Dean and Sam are reunited, but Dean notices that Sam is different. He’s more focused on hunting and doesn’t feel the same moral quandaries about the life he leads. Basically he becomes a complete sociopath. It turns out that while Sam’s body was rescued from Hell, his soul is still trapped there. This slightly differs from Angel because Angel without a soul could still feel joy, although it was just evil joy.  Sam seems to be numb to any emotion at all without his soul.

Supernatural also seems to place a higher value on souls than Buffy does. In the Supernatural universe, souls can be used as a power source by several supernatural beings like angels and/or demons. At the beginning of Season 7 of Supernatural, Castiel, the long time angel ally of the Winchester brothers, absorbs the souls of all the creatures in Purgatory (which according to the show is where monsters go when they die) and essentially declares himself God because he is so overpowered. This adds a new value to the concept of the soul. Some shows have treated souls as currency (G vs. E), others consider it a life force (Little Nicky), and still others just consider it to be our thoughts and feelings.

So the crux of the arguments seems to be that the soul has SOME sort of value, though no one can agree what that value necessarily is. But the value seems artificial due to what people are willing to place on it. In many ways, a soul is like a collectable. It is only valuable if you can find someone collecting them and even then the value only exists based on the lack of that individual possessing them. Rarity and quality also enter the arrangement. Like in Supernatural, when Sam’s soul is returned to him, it is severally damaged.

This is where the entire concept of a soul becomes hard to understand. Religions have been trying to define the soul for generations and have still yet to come up with a consensus for precisely what it is. That perhaps could explain why there are so many religions. But if entire conclaves of brilliant philosophers cannot explain it, then what luck do Television writers have? Perhaps it is better that the true worth of a soul is never concretely determined or else it will ruin the many fictional worlds which decide to make use of such a concept.

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