Buffy the Vampire Abuser?

» sassiemormon - Buffy and Spike

Buffy has more or less become what Spike is because she was brought back from heaven so she is a demon. That is the reason that Spike can hit her. It is also a big turn on for both of them.

-- posted by sassiemormon

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» Jaynee - Re: Buffy and Spike

In response to message posted by sassiemormon:

Buffy did NOT come back as a demon. According to Tara's research, Buffy is quite normal, but when she was brought back her inner core just kind of shifted around, thus enabling Spike to hurt her despite the chip.

But she's not a demon.

-- posted by Jaynee

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» wonbanana - When Spike says "You always hurt the one you love," he may not h

When Spike says "You always hurt the one you love," he may not have been literally refering merely to physical pain. He has taken a lot of verbal and emotional abuse from Buffy and accepted it. He never took what Buffy was doing to him as an indicator of her true feelings.

-- posted by wonbanana

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» Agnostic - Vampire "Abuse" (old article)---Ross Misses Point

Ellen Ross's article contains some excellent observations, but her analysis is a essentially misguided. The "shades of gray" are precisely what are involved, and what make this show great. Buffy's cruelty to Spike cannot "cut to the heart of the premise on which the series is constructed" (did she mean "undercut" the premise?), because it is yet more elaboration on development of the premise--for the premise is not just about a demon-killer dusting evil (for that, one can watch a "Blade" movie), but about treating seriously what would normally be considered a black-and-white comic book character and her story. Even the motion picture "Buffy" explored the idea of a vampire-slayer with irony and emotional ambiguity, and the series has far exceeded its big-screen precursor. The heart of good or great art (from Hamlet and King Lear to the "lower," but still surprisingly impressive BtVS) is the full artistic engagement of emotionally complex and morally ambiguous relationships; in other words, worthy artists make their characters and the characters' actions (and the consequences of those actions) plausibly human. Joss Whedon et al have the vision and courage to engage their subject in just such a way, refusing to let simple moralism and moral consistency interfere with character and plot development. Throughout the series, Buffy (and other characters) has had ambiguous relationships with the mostly evil undead, and has increasingly "released" or otherwise ignored vampires not actively engaged in predation. The point, in fact, is the treatment of Buffy and other BtVS characters not as comic book cut-outs or even ordinary platitude-spewing television characters, but as complexly human--and therefore deeply flawed--characters. In other words, the "premise" of the show is not the comic-book righteousness of the heroes and heroines, but the irreducibility of relationships to a neat formula ("kill vampire, vampire bad" or "heroine is good, so heroine cannot do bad") in a fictional universe in which a modern young woman fated to be a slayer of undead and demons lives long enough, and is "human" enough, to see through her experience that not all undead and demons are unremittingly and purely evil. At the heart of the series, Whedon, Noxon, et al, refuse to offer easy consolations (see the masterpiece, "The Body"), and instead revel in the poignant ironies that spring from the collision between a more traditionally "realistic" treatment of character and a setting that is, on the surface, conventional fantasy. That messy, blood, beating heart is what has made BtVS one of the greatest and most original programs ever on television.

Ag

-- posted by Agnostic

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