“Before discussing the specific ways in which Spike enacts camp, we must first establish how he fits into the primary categories or features of camp. One such feature is what Jack Babuscio refers to within his discussion of irony: “Camp is ironic insofar as an incongruous contrast can be drawn between an individual/thing and its context/association. The most common of incongruous contrasts is that of masculine/feminine”. As early as his first appearance in Sunnydale, Spike draws ironic attention to his masculinity: in “School Hard” about to do battle, Buffy asks, “Do we really need weapons for this? ” and Spike responds, “I just like them. They make me feel all manly.” He is simultaneously replicating and mocking conventions of masculinity: he enacts masculine power by demonstrating prowess with weapons, but saying he needs accessories to make him feel manly is not, in fact, manly—witness the almost cultish status given the dangerous sport of bare-knuckle fighting in Fight Club and in staged competitions. Certainly numerous Buffy scholars have noted the muddling of this particular binary and others in association with Spike. Lorna Jowett argues, “Spike blurs boundaries between good and bad, ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine,’ hetero- and homosexual, man and monster, comic and tragic, villain and hero”. Likewise, Jes Battis refers to “ambivalent characters like Spike, who straddle the line between protagonist/antagonist in ways that continually disrupt the audience’s perceptions”. Spike, positioned as straddling these incongruous binaries, is “queer” according to Dee Amy-Chinn “Both his gender and sexuality are fluid: neither is secure and both are based around excess. […] Indeed, it is the confidence that he gains from his excessive masculinity that opens up the space in which he can enact his femininity. […] Spike is an accomplished ‘switch’, able to take either the man’s part or the woman’s; he is comfortable being completely submissive or completely in control. Spike is both male and female, masculine and feminine, vanilla and erotically varied.”
— Cynthea Masson and Marni Stanley, Queer Eye of that Vampire Guy: Spike and the Aesthetics of Camp (via deadwivesclub)
