Like most female leads in any story, Buffy has a romantic interest. Her and Angel became a team; they depended on each other and fought for each other. This makes Buffy and Angel's relationship different than most other female leads relationships because one of them was not always saving the other. They fought together. That makes their bond extremely strong, and also still leaves Buffy to be a strong female superheroine as opposed to being a damsel in distress.
When Angel lost his soul, he set out to slowly torture Buffy. Even though she loved him very much, she was able to differentiate between Angel, her boyfriend, and Angelus, the evil vampire, and to fight the vampire version of the man she loved over and over. While she couldn't kill him at first, I think she still deserves a lot of credit for being able to fight him at all. Angel and Angelus have the same body, so to Buffy, it's essentially like she has to keep fighting the man she still loves. She is strong enough to see past that and stop him over and over, which in my mind, makes her a true superheroine.
Great point. While Buffy obviously isn't a perfect character, she displays immense strength when fighting, and eventually damning Angel. Their relationship is depicted to viewers as "the perfect relationship," so it comes as even more of a shock when he becomes Angelus. Buffy is definitely skilled at working towards the greater good. In the season finale of the first season, Buffy is willing to die to save the world, displaying this selfless strength yet again.
ReplyDeleteBuffy is such a strong character not because she can fight well but because she is able to rise above love and be completely selfless. Fighting someone who looks exactly like the man you love is easier said than done. I question my ability to do such a thing because as we said in class, we are identified by our appearance and it is extremely difficult to think past that.
ReplyDeleteI think her duty as a slayer and her friends in the Scooby Gang help make her stronger than she would be otherwise. I agree that she is incredibly strong for killing the man she loves and then getting back together with him afterwards, and especially in "Enemies" when she had to see Angel "turn" and kiss Faith. I think that she is one of the best role models we have in our time.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, because Angel and Buffy had this theme of forbidden love as an essential part of their relationship, viewers found the couple more interesting and attractive. Because their romance was pretty ironic in a sense that she is a slayer and he is a vampire, I sort of could guess from the beginning (from the moment when he turned into a bat face when Buffy kissed him) that Buffy would have to fight Angel eventually.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with other people that being able to set aside her feelings for Angel and fight Angelus makes Buffy a true superheroine. Sacrificing personal interests for a greater common good has always been an essential quality of a superhero (or a hero in general), and this conflict between Angelus and Buffy is essential in the show to delineate the process of Buffy maturing into a real slayer. If you think about how Buffy was portrayed at the beginning of the season 1 (where she declares that she wants to quit being a slayer to be a normal teenager), she is definitely becoming more mature and "heroic" as the show goes on.
Buffy is a very good example of great balance between emotions and logic, the heart and the mind. She is emotional enough to have and keep friends that like her a lot but at the same time when she has to she turns down her emotions and makes rational decisions.
ReplyDeleteI think this is what makes her Buffy.
I think Buffy was able to fight Angelus because her relationship with Angel was anything but superficial, she was deeply bonded to him on an emotional level. All Angelus and Angel share are the same body, so with the emotional loving foundation gone from the relationship, his looks alone couldn't totally rid of Buffy's ability to fight him.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Buffy does continue to love Angel throughout, I felt when watching him kiss Faith that some of that love Buffy felt for him slowly went away. It was not only painful for the viewers to watch him kiss Faith, but then once I found out it was all a trick to fool Faith, I felt even more betrayed by Angel. I know Buffy knew what was going to happen, but even still, did he really need to be her little sex toy for that time? Couldn't he have pretended he was an a-sexual soulless demon? What do you guys think? Did anyone else see Buffy's love for Angel die a little after that scene?
ReplyDeleteI admired her courage to fight against the man she loves in order to save the world from chaos because he had lost his soul. She was able to rationalize in such a difficult moment for her especially that Angelus enjoyed toying with her feelings and fooling her, since he and Angel appeared to be the same person.
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