BUFFYVERSE

"Bored now."

POSTED BY: KNIBBLET
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 8, 2004 10:04
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VIEWED: 9275
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004 7:55 AM

KNIBBLET


I just rewatched the episode wherein Cordi wished that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale.

I hadn't noticed that the same "Bored now" comment Willow gave Warren when she flayed him was what Vamp Willow said to Cordelia when Vamp Xander was going to eat the prom queen.

That's what I like - the teensy touches that mean so much. Right before they flay or eat you.



"Just keep walkin, preacher man."

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Tuesday, March 23, 2004 2:02 PM

KILLEDBYRIVERSBRAIN


Yep, I liked that myself. Also nice Willow mentioned vamp Willow seemed kind of gay. A couple of seasons later, Willow is gay. As you say, these kinds of references are just awesome.

I hope you like Guinness, sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for . . . food.
-Jack O'Neill

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Tuesday, March 23, 2004 2:59 PM

LISSA


I love "bored now" :) teeheehee...

on the gay thing, the joke was continued in season 6's tabula rasa. memory-wiped willow says "and i think i'm kinda gay" just like in the wish. fun stuff:)

~lissa, spwhore

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Wednesday, March 24, 2004 2:49 AM

IDEFIX


I also liked when Willow said "I think I did pretty well" or something to that effect, in the EP where Xander got split in two and one of them is wigged out about it and says something like "Wait til you meet an evil copy of you and see how you handle it".

that's the moments where you just have to smile. he's forgotten about it at the moment but Willow has not and we have neither.

...and "bored now" is so cool a quote. I think I have to put that in a sig somewhere. I can actually hear her say it whenever I read it. Willow is the cutest even when she's evil.

Idefix

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Tuesday, March 30, 2004 7:27 AM

GHOULMAN


'Bored now' is Willows inner self screaming for love. It signifies her shell like existance in spite of her growth as a woman. When Willow forgets what a special person she is she can be very self-destructive. She regresses into that little schoolgirl who is 'bored' (a passive aggressive responce) with the world around her.

It also shows that Willow has a deep emptyness that can come out in irrational violence. Veins and all.

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Tuesday, March 30, 2004 7:31 AM

MAUGWAI


I also like in season seven when Buffy has to kill Anya and reminds Willow that she told her to "kick his ass" during "Becoming, part 2" in second season, only it was Xander who told her Willow said that when she never did. And when Willow objected to Buffy's comment, Xander cut Willow off so Buffy would never find out what he did. That's a really long memory on that reference.


"Dear diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy."

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Thursday, April 1, 2004 10:32 AM

GHOULMAN


^^^ Brill! YOU are a good viewer. PAying attention to the continuity. Not just within the show itself, but continuity over 6 seasons. SIX! Frellin' amazing moment there. Glad you mentioned it!

Willow: "I never said that..."
And Xander cuts here off.

And as we all know, the signifigance was that Xander wanted Angel gone (Xander always hated Angel, soul or not) and so lied to Buffy that Willow could get Angels' soul back in time (with a spell).

All the characters acting just as they should despite the consequences. Truely granite hard characterization. Really, really, brill stuff. So good. Makes ER look like an afternoon soap. Wow. *gush*... ok, I'll stop lovin' the Joss writing. Hell no! I just can't! It's too great!!!

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Thursday, April 1, 2004 10:56 AM

KNIBBLET


I'm glad I wasn't the only one who said "AHAH! Xander is busted ... finally ..." only to see it go by.

There are many examples of it throughout the Buffy 'verse. Canon was always respected, gotta respect that in your basic demons.

"Just keep walkin, preacher man."

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Friday, April 2, 2004 5:06 AM

GHOULMAN


^^^ it's continuity. Canon is something Star Trek nerds use to nail down detailed timelines and tech evolution, etc. Which is great fun if you're an aspiring engineer. It's not important to story telling as long as you don't really frell up something obvious ... like Romulans NOT having invisibility.

Continuity in story telling is a sign of a mature drama. Yeah Joss! :)

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Friday, April 2, 2004 5:10 AM

GHOULMAN


Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:

Willow: "I never said that..."
And Xander cuts her off.

And as we all know, the signifigance was that Xander wanted Angel gone (Xander always hated Angel, soul or not) and so lied to Buffy that Willow could get Angels' soul back in time (with a spell).

Ghoulman is a moron... that sentance is backwards. <--(in self) It should read Xander DIDN'T tell Buffy. Instead of telling the Buffster what Willow said Xander lied and told Buffy to "kick his ass".

Please continue with your regular reading.

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Sunday, May 9, 2004 1:41 PM

FARWALL


Have to say, I love the delivery of the phrase "bored now" and everyone I knew at Uni (litterally everyone I hung out with at Uni where big buffy fans, and this was a group of upto 40 people) picked up on it straight away and addopted it as common tongue (along with many, many other phrases and gramatical quirkes from Buffy, or, as I now realise from having seen Firefly, from Joss Whedon).
So it just seemed completely natural to see Willow use it again 4, or so, seasons later.

----------
I have no faith but it's all that I want
to be loved and believe
in my soul.

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Sunday, May 23, 2004 6:35 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


For me, 'Bored now' is Willow's most vivid quote. Something about it and / or its delivery by Willow just stands out. Hi-larious. Agree lots w/ what was already said here. Just one of those lines that made me chuckle to myself every time I think of it. No shortage of those, but still.... good thread.

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

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Thursday, May 27, 2004 10:00 AM

OBJECTIVEASSESSMENT


Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:

Willow: "I never said that..."
And Xander cuts here off.

And as we all know, the signifigance was that Xander wanted Angel gone (Xander always hated Angel, soul or not) and so lied to Buffy that Willow could get Angels' soul back in time (with a spell).



I beg to differ. I think Xander didn't tell Buffy about the spell because, if he did, then Buffy would have went into the fight half hearted, not wanting to kill Angelus incase Willow could turn him back into Angel. If Buffy done this she would probably have been killed. While not condoning Xander's behaviour I think he did what he thought was best for Buffy, just like he did all through the series.

"When you can't run...you crawl...and when you can't crawl...when you can't do that..."
"Find someone to carry you"

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Thursday, May 27, 2004 10:30 AM

NUR


Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
For me, 'Bored now' is Willow's most vivid quote. Something about it and / or its delivery by Willow just stands out.


I agree completely, if someone asked me to pick a completely random Willow quote "Bored now, want to play." would be the first thing to jump into my head. Someone mentioned earlier that they hear Willow's voice everytime they read it and I'm exactly the same way. It was just one of those perfectly executed moments. This is a little off topic but its the same for Drucilla's "It fills my head with singing." and Simon's "Your patient should be dead." They just seem to fit into that little nook of brain reserved for those characters and always come up when pondering.

http://www.thecherryorchard.net

Those who restrain desire, do so because thiers is weak enough to be restrained.
-William Blake

O my Lord! bestow wisdom on me, and join me with the righteous.
-Qur'an 26:83

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Thursday, May 27, 2004 2:32 PM

LENNIER


Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:
'Bored now' is Willows inner self screaming for love. It signifies her shell like existance in spite of her growth as a woman. When Willow forgets what a special person she is she can be very self-destructive. She regresses into that little schoolgirl who is 'bored' (a passive aggressive responce) with the world around her.

It also shows that Willow has a deep emptyness that can come out in irrational violence. Veins and all.


Great comments!
I have a similar take on her, though for me the key is all in Willows self-hate and self-doubt (as best illustrated by her dream in "Restless"), and she feels as if she is worthless on a fundamental level, and that everything good about her are things that she has built up as an outside 'shell', but that aren't really 'her' (this is not true, though there is a some tiny truth to it ...but Willow believes it overly much, and believes it on a 'deep' level that she's not entirely aware of). All of the coolness etc. that she's built up, she feels is a sham (again, as illustrated by Restless, though reinforced by SO many other things). Her self-hate/self-doubt, as is common, led her to use magic as a way to escape herself (magic as a drug, and also as power, or as a metaphor for anything we can use to escape) ...especially after loosing Tara, another 'external' thing that gave her some value.
Here's a better way to put it: she *thinks* she can only find value through things outside of herself. Without Tara, she has no value, and she can't face that, and has to escape into another world where these things don't matter. First it was magic-as-drug/pleasure, and finally it was magic as a way to shut out the world completely (when Tara died), as a way of escaping reality and denying her emotions (the pain emotions that is ...the anger emotions were the 'safe' ones she could escape into). That's how she became a 'different person' as evil Willow, because she had escaped herself ...though enough of her remains that this emotion-less moral-less vessel is equivalent to vampire-Willow (making her use that same phrase 'bored now').
Well, i'm writing this rushed, so it may not all be right, but you probably get the idea (in fact, you've probably thought of this all already!).
(There's also a side point about how Willow's morality was always a bit thin, and usually it wasn't a problem simply because she always is trying to *please* everyone, and wants to be liked ....but I won't get into that)

by the way, this does not apply so much to her s7 self, especially not at the end of the season, where she begins to really grow past this. But it applies for most of s1-s6 (and I'm not saying it's often 'on the surface', I'm not saying she's wallowing in self-hate all the time, though you do see the self-doubt constantly even in her speech-style), it's just something that I think is hiding on a deep level, and 'exploded' outwards in season 6.

Also, I'm failing to articulate the most important part, which is the way Willow escaped into POWER ...it was really the power that magic gave her which allowed her to escape from herself and allowed her to take value from something outside of herself (and we see this escape into power take many different forms in the different episodes).
And this sort of escape from self was a lot of what s6 was about (ties into all of Buffy's stuff with Spike, and even a lot of the other characters; Warren is the best example, on the 'dark' side, and is a great foil for Willow too).
I emphasize this power thing because a lot of fans became overly fixated on the drug metaphor, but really that was just one classic way to express a larger problem, something that can apply to any circumstance where we do something to escape something we don't like; there was only the one episode that really hit the drug thing on the end, and the other episodes (though occasionally making the references) were about something more general
(and even in that episode, I would argue that drugs are a metaphor for the way that Willow is using her magic in that episode, NOT the other way around).

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Friday, May 28, 2004 9:00 AM

GHOULMAN


Terrific and detailed comments Lennier ! Great comments indeed. Right back at ya!

Is it too obvious I've a crush on Willow? Tee hee...

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Friday, May 28, 2004 9:19 AM

JOHNCLARK


Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:
Terrific and detailed comments Lennier ! Great comments indeed. Right back at ya!

Is it too obvious I've a crush on Willow? Tee hee...


Who doesn't?

Lennier - good analysis

---------------------------------------------
Experience has taught me that interest begets expectation, and expectation begets disappointment, so the key to avoiding disappointment is to avoid interest. A=B=C=A, or whatever

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Friday, May 28, 2004 9:58 AM

ARAWAEN


Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:
^^^ it's continuity. Canon is something Star Trek nerds use to nail down detailed timelines and tech evolution, etc. Which is great fun if you're an aspiring engineer. It's not important to story telling as long as you don't really frell up something obvious ... like Romulans NOT having invisibility.

I don't think trek can fairly use the word continuity anymore.
Quote:


Continuity in story telling is a sign of a mature drama. Yeah Joss! :)


Unfortunately it also seems to be a big turn off for tv executives. They claim new people can't get into the show. I think it is 'go-se' because I didn't start watching Buffy until 3rd season and I became addicted nonetheless.

Arawaen

Um, I'm lost. Uh, I'm Angry. And I'm Armed.

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Saturday, May 29, 2004 12:46 PM

LENNIER


Quote:
Originally posted by JohnClark:
Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:
Terrific and detailed comments Lennier ! Great comments indeed. Right back at ya!

Is it too obvious I've a crush on Willow? Tee hee...


Who doesn't?

Lennier - good analysis


I second that 'who doesn't'!!

Thanks! you know, I have to say, when I try to talk about this sort of stuff on Buffy boards I usually get a "shut yer hole, season 6 sucks and your comments about Willow are wrong". That is just to give you an idea of how much I appreciate your appreciation.
Thank you ever so very much for not 'attacking' me.

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Saturday, May 29, 2004 1:04 PM

SOUTHERNMERC


Quote:
Quote:
Continuity in story telling is a sign of a mature drama. Yeah Joss! :)


Unfortunately it also seems to be a big turn off for tv executives. They claim new people can't get into the show. I think it is 'go-se' because I didn't start watching Buffy until 3rd season and I became addicted nonetheless.


TV execs can be stupid like that. I didn't get into Buffy until season six! Then I just HAD to watch the other seasons...even went out and bought them all on DVD (goin through the first season I watched right now actually, season 6)!


Jayne: "See, Vera? You get dressed up, you get taken someplace fun!"

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Sunday, May 30, 2004 5:22 AM

GHOULMAN


Lennier wrote:
Quote:

when I try to talk about this sort of stuff on Buffy boards I usually get a "shut yer hole, season 6 sucks and your comments about Willow are wrong".

What?!???

Let me get this straight... the Buffy FANS (fans thay say eh?) don't get this? I'm completely shocked and dismayed. What the frell is that all about???

It's rather plain from what I've read that your assessment of Willows' psycological makeup is bang on. And I'm sure I've read a few Marti, Tim, Joss interviews that would pan out that conclusion.

They can't be real fans, just kids who like Buffys' clothes?

Lennier, you are right on about Willow. If anyone tells ya different thay aren't paying attention. And I apparently ride a really high falutin' horse so I know I'm right and everyone is intitled to my opinion.

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Sunday, May 30, 2004 6:25 AM

IDEFIX


I have to third the "who doesn't" comment. although I'm usually into boys I can't resist Willow. and I'm almost sure no sane and healthy person should be able to resist Willow.

and about her 'problems' with magic: I have to say it seemed to me about the way you described it. she always felt useless, unimportant, not adequate and had to look for something to define herself by. magic was a way to be special and a way to help Buffy fight the good fight. be a productive part of the team.

Xander was about in the same place to start with but he somhow managed to define himself by being himself (steady, brave, goodnatured, optimistic) and being ok with it. he really treasured every time someone (Buffy or Giles) told him he did good or he was important but he seemed to be able to live with being just Joe Normal most of the time. he fetched the snackfood and helped as well as he could and somehow he was centered enough in his own personality. The Zeppo was a whole episode all about how Xander coped with being normal. and cope he did.

he did what Willow should have done. instead Willow was the computer crack and it wasn't enough for her. she was too small and not strong enough to help with the fighting and Giles was too much the brain of the gang for her intellect to be much needed and even if it were it wasn't good enough. she was always from the beginning to the end searching for something to make herself better or worth anything to the gang. and I think she was always easy to seduce by power of any kind, because she maybe felt powerless growing up, being ignored and analysed by her parents and being kicked around by people like Cordy. and she always was defensive and secretive about her search for power. she always answered any kind of caution with "Don't you trust me? Don't you think I'm good enough?". and there's probably no right answer to that one if you're in Giles' or Buffy's shoes. the warnings are valid but if she perceives it as a sign of untrustworthiness or lack of ability on he side it has to drive her deeper into the seek for power and something to make her strong and useful.
I think it had to blow up sooner or later and it was very well handled in S6.

Idefix

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Sunday, May 30, 2004 4:42 PM

LENNIER


Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:
Lennier wrote:
Quote:

when I try to talk about this sort of stuff on Buffy boards I usually get a "shut yer hole, season 6 sucks and your comments about Willow are wrong".

What?!???

Let me get this straight... the Buffy FANS (fans thay say eh?) don't get this? I'm completely shocked and dismayed. What the frell is that all about???

It's rather plain from what I've read that your assessment of Willows' psycological makeup is bang on. And I'm sure I've read a few Marti, Tim, Joss interviews that would pan out that conclusion.

They can't be real fans, just kids who like Buffys' clothes?

Lennier, you are right on about Willow. If anyone tells ya different thay aren't paying attention. And I apparently ride a really high falutin' horse so I know I'm right and everyone is intitled to my opinion.



thank you so much!

As for their reaction, there are certainly many 'mature' adults who are saying this (at least judging by their wording), this isn't just a case of some annoying kids/teens (though I'm sure that accounts for a good portion of it). The problem is, a lot of Buffy fans loved things about the first few seasons so much that they can't let go, and can't grow up with the show, or appreciate the different artistic directions joss wanted to go in. A lot of them feel betrayed by what happened later. Personally, I think the real quality showed up in seasons 4 - 6 (not that 2 and 3 aren't also brilliant and well made), even though I admit they don't tend to have the kind of enjoyable or surprising emotional payoff that the early seasons did. So when you even try to talk about stuff relating to season 6, there's a huge bias against it by many *many* fans (and I've found people on boards tend to react before thinking, or else form a fixed opinion, and may have some semi-logical reasons for it, but not be willing to take a second look at their reasons).

A lot of people seem to be of the opinion that Willow's personality in season 6 is completely inconsistent with what came before (which may be true on the shallowest level, but...), and that the writers were basically screwing up for the entire season. A lot of people especially had problems with the drug metaphor, they thought the character would never do that, and that it was just a cliche (but what isn't on Buffy or Firefly? --it's all about re-understanding cliches that we took for granted and making new use and creative of them), and they thought "Wrecked" was an 'after school special' (which is ridiculous, 'cause it wasn't at all about saying 'drugs are bad', it was just using the drug metaphor as an important part of Willow's journey, and showed that this particular way of using 'drugs', or anything equivalent could be bad ...as I said, I think they generalized it to being a universal problem with the transition-to-adulthood that was much larger than drugs specifically. And in fact, I think it's just about the best and most meaningful treatment of drugs that I've ever seen on tv, even though it wasn't 'the point' in the way that some people seemed to think it was (ie. it wasn't an episode constructed to be a pedantic message about drugs!). )
sorry to rant, I get annoyed about this stuff.
Anyhow, a combination of Willow's shift in surface behaviour, with people's distaste for season 6 and the later seasons in general, with the drug stuff that a lot of people reacted badly too (which I'll add, I think is a 'knee jerk' reaction ...we've just seen too many badly-done drug stories that whenever we see it we assume it must be bad, even in a case like "Wrecked" where it's used brilliantly), a combination of all this stuff makes people just blank out anything I have to say in trying to explain Willow's character in relation to those events. Some people I've talked to do have some developed arguements, but it always seems as if there's an obvious flaw in them that I can't get them to notice, and I can't get them to listen to my own logic not even to the point of "agreeing to disagree".
Also, in general I just feel that it's better to try to understand what the writers and actors are doing with a character or an episode or storyline before just jumping onto your first negative reaction ...I think a lot of the time people are just venting their emotions and trying to force it into logic (eg. don't get me started on fans' negative reaction to Tara's death! I don't mean negative as it "i don't want her to be dead!" but as in "the writers are evil and have comitted a crime and have made an anti-gay statement").
I think that, even if one perspective on something produces a negative reaction, we should at least *try* to see it another way, if we can see that the artists were trying to achieve something, and if there is something there that makes sense from a certain point of view (ie. we should try to fully explore the point of view from which things have meaning and are coherent, before attacking a work from a different point of view, because only after we understand a work's internal logic, and what the creator may have been expressing, can we begin to critisize it)

whoa, that was kind of winding ...anyhow, the main point is, people are just angry and annoyed about the changes in the show, cause this is a show that evolved so much. I understand, but I think it's a limiting point of view, and it's frustrating to talk to people like that ...it's a case where differences don't produce a productive discussion.
I also think this is sort of a symptom of a sort of capitalist emphasis-on-consumer attitude ...so that, if the writers aren't giving us 'what we want' (or what we've come to expect 'as advertized') then they are failing or betraying us (and who cares about what they want to say?). This especially showed up in season 6, where many people actually claimed that the fact that the season was 'depressing', or was about depression, was some sort of unforgivable failure (as if this 'commodity' has to always be pleasing to be good).
There's that sort of 'how dare they?' attitude you see over and over again. It shows up in how badly the fans reacted to Marti's "we're giving them what they need, not what they want" comment, which shouldn't have been that big a deal.

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Sunday, May 30, 2004 5:01 PM

SOUTHERNMERC


The seasons I liked best were, in order of fav to least: five, two, three, seven, six, one, and four. There are many reasons I put them in this order, the main is not just how well they were put together (which would put seasons six and seven right behind five in the favs slot), but how I felt about that year in general. Season seven had FF starting, and ending, during that run, so there are some issues there. Season six WAS a downer and, tho I loved how much it emulated real life, "down" episodes hit me rather hard emotionally. Great season, no doubt, and a WONDERFUL ending (Xander saves the world? Woo hoo!), but what a rough ride! I think the main detractors from the later seasons are just used to normal, SAFE, TV, which doesn't take its characters to such incredible depths. I guess many were just expecting Willow to "get over it" in an episode or two and move on. Very UNLIKE real life.

Jayne: "See, Vera? You get dressed up, you get taken someplace fun!"

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Tuesday, June 1, 2004 5:38 AM

GHOULMAN


Lennier,
Season 6 was the best season in my opinion as the characters went well beyond mere TV melo-drama.

The characters "grew up" in believable ways. Human ways. Real ways. So... you know, did one feel betrayed when Hamlet killed Ophilia? Jesus... who are these people that didn't like season 6? Do they hate the ep the Body? That show was what got me interested in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Joss Whedon in general.

And I have a high horse to prove it!

Willow is the ONLY character who could fall into a "drug" habit (metaphorically or not). Willow did these things all the time, whether it was drugs or magic wasn't the point. Willow would scare her mother or get irrational - and these things are psychological signs that she could, in fact, loose herself.

If the so called fans can't see this they are in for a big surprise when they grow up and thier own friends start behaving in so called "out of character" ways *chuckle*... some peoples children. Honestly!

And Mari Noxon (name right?) is right to say the fans got what they need. Anything else would be pandering... which is what most culture does and which is why most culture is crap.

Lennier... have you ever thought about becoming a writer? You know character!

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Tuesday, June 1, 2004 5:49 AM

GHOULMAN


Quote:
Originally posted by Idefix:
SNIP!er or later and it was very well handled in S6.

Idefix

You know, if one looked I bet we could find examples that demonstrate your ruminations here. Nice work. :)

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Saturday, June 5, 2004 2:22 PM

LENNIER


Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:
Lennier,
Season 6 was the best season in my opinion as the characters went well beyond mere TV melo-drama.


just for the record (though you probably didn't mean it this way), Buffy never was mere tv melodrama ...in the earlier seasons, it was too much an action/comedy/horror (and with a point) to be that, and in the later seasons, as you say, the characters grew up in believable ways (and also, the thematic content became stronger, which you don't see in tv melodrama) ...some people argue that the show became blandly melodramatic in the later seasons, that it was only creative initially ...I agree that it is 'more' like a melodrama in the later seasons (and I agree that it went 'dangerously' close to straight melodrama in certain episodes of season 6), but only in the sense that there was more drama and it was more about the characters for their own sake, which isn't itself a bad thing, as long as they don't do totally-straight-drama (which never actually happened, it always stayed a little off-key) for several episodes in a row, and as long as it still means something (drama is only bad in tv because most tv does it badly, and without a thematic reason, or with bad performances, or without a style, or with characters who are not complex enough or who don't have any 'personality', ie. things that make them unique and strange).

Also, I do think the performances became much more complex in the later seasons, 'despite' being more dramatic; the early season may have been obvious about being 'different', but the later seasons have carried that forward into more subtle territory ...particularly, the way the comedy intermingles with all the other styles becomes much more 'refined' (for lack of a better word) and integrated in the later seasons. In the first 2 seasons, you can 'see' how the styles collide, but starting with season 3, I think they actually began creating a 'new' style ...when I try to really explain it or separate out its parts, my head starts to hurt, because you can't ...they truly 'fused' everything together.
ok, I'm writing this quickly and vaguely, this may not make perfect sense... all I mean to say is that in my opinion the style is even more complex in later seasons, even though it's not as obviously 'weird' (also, part of that lack of weirdness is just that we've gotten used to it---anyone jumping in to the show still says "what the...?"), and at the same time, I appreciate that the early seasons were more blunt about it, I appreciate that as an essential phase of the show that had its own kind of value (though season 1, only barely *g*).

Since you mentioned that in your opinion season 6 is the best season, I'll just say that myself I feel that season 4 and 5 and 6 are almost exactly equal in quality (though each for COMPLETELY different reasons). And actually, as for example one of the posts by someone in this thread, I think season 4 needs defending a lot more than season 6 (season 6 got a louder negative response, but it has a LOT of people defending it, and rightly so; season 4 doesn't have so many people actively defending it, but I think it deserves it just as much---it was the intellectual/experimental season, and in a way I think the actors and writers hit the top of their game that season, just in terms of execution. In a way it's the season that is most clearly making an effort to put the show into 'art' territory; it was the first season to have a fully-coherent set of ideas developed across the season in almost every single episode, in every character and subtext ...though admitedly, the themes themselves are partly about the incoherency of exploration and discovery, so when joss calls the season 'weirdly incoherent' he's also right, and that's exactly how the season had to be to express its ideas; also, season 4 had some of their best directing and cinematography).

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The characters "grew up" in believable ways. Human ways. Real ways. So... you know, did one feel betrayed when Hamlet killed Ophilia? Jesus... who are these people that didn't like season 6? Do they hate the ep the Body? That show was what got me interested in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Joss Whedon in general.

You're right, I think they might have disliked the Body as well. I've certainly talked to many many people who hate it, or prefer to ignore it.
(by the way, I think so highly of the Body, that I rate it as one of the top 10 films of the last 5 years; and "Restless" is in my top 20).

I like your Hamlet analogy. *g*

actually, I have to vent, I just read someone's comments on a Buffy board saying something similar to this Willow thing... (spoilers for season 5 of Angel, including its finale)

Select to view spoiler:


They're so upset about Fred dying, which they read in a spoiler before actually watching the episode, cause they're lame enough to do that, that they decided not to watch any of the last 7 Angel episodes, except to fast-forward through to a few parts they read about. In their rants they were expressing anger and a sense betrayal towards the writers, and they referred to how people felt when Tara was killed, and that they understood why people hated the writers for that (again, don't get me started on that, it makes me so angry I could kill!). This sort of ridiculous behaviour and attitude is what makes me sick. Even aside from the obvious, it's just ridiculous that they didn't even watch the episode where Fred died to see how it was done, they didn't even experience it properly, they're angry about something they didn't even experience!! I mean, what an obvious example of set-in-stone 'preconcieved notions' that have nothing to do with the art in question! And of course they won't get the opportunity to see how beautiful the Illyria arc is, and how incredible Amy Acker is, and how they really 'payed off' Fred's character by giving us such a phenomenal fantasy story (which is phenomenal and beautiful exactly because it came out of the pain of Fred's death, and gave us a birth to replace her death, which is a fundamental part of what it is about, and is in fact a fundamental part of what the Angel series is about, this arc is emblematic of everything good about the series! they made that really explicit when Angel talks about how he had to give Fred's death meaning, so he did, he made something worthwhile out of it ...it's like taking a meaningless random universe and forcing it to have meaning through your own actions) ...in my opinion, it's one of the best, if not THE best arc and character-idea that joss has ever done. And without Illyria, I would never have appreciated just how incredible Amy Acker is.

additional comment about the series finale: they amplified her character even further by killing Wesley, in a mirror scene to Fred's death ...now Illyria is born from the death of TWO characters, and one could even say, born from their love ...she contains Fred's mind/body and Wesley's teachings and his caring towards her. I have to say, I am more excited about Illyria than anything else in the jossverse right now, perhaps even more than the Serenity movie! I'm obsessed! *g*
I should mention, btw, that the poster I mentioned above also was incredibly angry about Wesley dying, and of course they're not going to watch the finale at all to even take a look at it or give it a chance.



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And I have a high horse to prove it!

Willow is the ONLY character who could fall into a "drug" habit (metaphorically or not). Willow did these things all the time, whether it was drugs or magic wasn't the point. Willow would scare her mother or get irrational - and these things are psychological signs that she could, in fact, loose herself.

If the so called fans can't see this they are in for a big surprise when they grow up and thier own friends start behaving in so called "out of character" ways *chuckle*... some peoples children. Honestly!

And Mari Noxon (name right?) is right to say the fans got what they need. Anything else would be pandering... which is what most culture does and which is why most culture is crap.

Lennier... have you ever thought about becoming a writer? You know character!


ok, enough flattery!
I've thought about writing essays and finding a place to have them published ...but I'm not actually an arts student currently, so I feel like I'm not 'supposed' to do this ...and I'm simultaneously put-off and inspired by how awful and misguided many of the 'academic' papers on Buffy have been (though there are a few real gems). There was actually a paper at the most recent conference about the 'dead/evil lesbian cliche' ...that's ALL they had to say about Tara, that she was an example of the fact that joss is a Heterosexual White Male who hates lesbians, or something. Pop-culture analysis makes me sick because it just assumes what it is postulating, and assumes that the work it's talking about is too clumsy to have an internal coherency that might overide their assumptions; they just pick out whatever random elements they want to argue their case, and ignore the context, not really caring what is actually going on inside the work; all they care about are surface appearances and how they can relate them to cultural trends. I've even seen pop analysis that treats buffy as that girl-kicking-ass-in-a-miniskirt cliche that has almost nothing to do with the series at all (aside from season 1); ie. treating her as a 'xena' type stereotype that is a 'false' feminism where their sexiness 'undercuts' their power (and frankly, even xena doesn't deserve that kind of treatment! that type of analysis should be reserved for things like "Charlie's Angels"---i would actually agree in that case, they try to sell them as sex-objects 'before' showing them as empowered women).

by the way, it's "Marti Noxon".
I like your comment about people growing up and acting 'out of character'.
actually, i'm kind of in a rut like that myself right now (no drugs, but I've gone through some similar types of things, though much less extreme *g*).

one last comment: i love how, throughout the series, they manage to take characters to some really extreme and not-obvious places, but examining their 'core' you can see how it makes perfect sense for the character. eg. when they finally revealed Spike's original human self, all the way out in season 5, it was counterintuitive, totally 'new', and yet made perfect sense once you thought about it, and actually deepened our appreciation of what was already there in the current character.

p.s. i hope none of this post sounded antagonistic. sometimes I can sound that way without meaning to be. I just wanted to elaborate on my opinion about a few things. I wanted to stick up for s4 and s5, just to make clear that I myself think they're just as good, for very different reasons. But given that I think they're 'just as good', and given that I attach a lot of uncertainty to my opinions (even ones that are *trying* to be a bit objective, like these), I would say that I highly respect any opinion that says any one of them is the best season, and I think your reasons are good ones even if we don't agree about s4 and s5.
I guess part of why I wanted to make a point of saying this, is that Buffy really is about growing up, and one of its greatest accomplishments is capturing the experience of being young and growing, in a way no other tv or film has quite succeeded at. So although I agree s6 may be the best, I also see it as an 'extra' season, a season 'after the end', because it's the season that's about colliding with adult 'reality'. And although I have NO problem with s6's style, it certainly is true that the comedy acrobatics were purposely 'pulled back', and it became more closely recognizable as a 'melodrama' (and if it weren't for the preceding seasons, if it weren't a case of the series 'doing something different', and doing it for a very good reason, then i MIGHT have a small problem with it; aside: although i claim they 'pulled back' on the comedy, if you actually look at the season, the comedy acrobatics are alive and well in most episodes, and it almost becomes MORE interesting because the comedy actually makes things more depressing rather than being a funny relief! i love it! ).
This is not an explanation of why I think s4 and s5 are as good (and s3 almost as good), but an explanation of why I want to make a point of stating that opinion.

eg. I see s5 as being idealized maturation---all of the characters reached their ultimate endpoints, the most mature (and real and complex) that they could become, but within this 'abstract' world (ignoring certain cruel realities, and one might say, the "failures" of the adult world, or of reality itself), and I think that's worth quite a lot, not to mention the fact that season 5 probably has the most specific theme of all the seasons (it's not just a set of topics, it actually had something extremely specific to say about the nature of life, death and family, and it built those ideas up to a final point that coincided with the narrative climax). So for reasons such as this, I can't help but want to voice my appreciation of ALL of Buffy's later seasons.

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Sunday, June 6, 2004 6:36 AM

GHOULMAN


Quote:
Originally posted by Lennier:
SNIP!

Wow. Did I say wow? Funny but when I read your post it's pretty obvious I'm wrong about season 6. And in more than a few ways! Great post. Terrific analysis and comments.

Sorry I can't be in depth guy here but my life is tooo busy. Luckily I happened to be in the office this sunday awaiting the D-Day parade so here I am trying to come up with something intellegent to match your post. Wish me luck! I feel like i'm following a really great act... *chuckle*

Lately I've caught the earlier seasons on reruns and when I think of your comments I see the larger Joss 'verse and remembered that the continuity in character is rock solid but subject to human nature. Which is why it's sooo great! And here I am thinking you should be a writer as you've just demonstratged a natural talent for structure. Something writers struggle with all thier lives and often fail at. Nice work!

And I think I'm backwards about melo-drama just as you say though I don't think melo-drama is neccessarily a bad thing. And I think you explain that perfectly well and point out what makes it work as a drama.

... I just have compliments for you here.

Oh, I do have an opinion about the academics you mention...

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ok, enough flattery!
I've thought about writing essays and finding a place to have them published ...but I'm not actually an arts student currently, so I feel like I'm not 'supposed' to do this ...and I'm simultaneously put-off and inspired by how awful and misguided many of the 'academic' papers on Buffy have been (though there are a few real gems). There was actually a paper at the most recent conference about the 'dead/evil lesbian cliche' ...that's ALL they had to say about Tara, that she was an example of the fact that joss is a Heterosexual White Male who hates lesbians, or something. Pop-culture analysis makes me sick because it just assumes what it is postulating, and assumes that the work it's talking about is too clumsy to have an internal coherency that might overide their assumptions; they just pick out whatever random elements they want to argue their case, and ignore the context, not really caring what is actually going on inside the work; all they care about are surface appearances and how they can relate them to cultural trends. I've even seen pop analysis that treats buffy as that girl-kicking-ass-in-a-miniskirt cliche that has almost nothing to do with the series at all (aside from season 1); ie. treating her as a 'xena' type stereotype that is a 'false' feminism where their sexiness 'undercuts' their power (and frankly, even xena doesn't deserve that kind of treatment! that type of analysis should be reserved for things like "Charlie's Angels"---i would actually agree in that case, they try to sell them as sex-objects 'before' showing them as empowered women).

I read that in the U.S. there are academics looking into Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a well oiled philosophy machine. The main characters in some seasons followed Platonian ethics and such. Kant is talked about and so on. In fact, I have a friend who is a philosophy guy (you can tell because he quit a month before getting his PHd and is jobless) and we have mulled over a few Buffy-isms and he marveled at the last season where the Buffster took on a leadership role like no other. A leader with an army and an enemy. And a leader who was falible. A leader who got people killed. Drama? Oh yes! Makes West Wing look silly wha?

And I have a BIG bone to pick with smarmy little intellectually stunted English Profs who like to "cut and paste" thier cultural constructs onto anything. I feel that's a cheat. If you want to talk about the symbolism, metaphor, and meaning of Art you must demonstrate your opinions and observations onto the Art being deconstructed. That is, if the elements in the Art don't demonstrate the smarmy Profs thoery then the theory must be wrong.

Take Buffy at face value. Teen sex kitten who fights demons. Pretty comic book stuff, which is where Joss is comming from. It's a very standard school girl sex fantasy for men. All that's missing is Buffy in a Catholic mini. Now, this is certainly demonstrated in Buffy and can be said to be true. But that doesn't mean to say the show panders to this (slightly creepy) sex fantasy... though the whole Angel/Buffy romance did get so close to that even Angel and Buffy once said they were creeped out by thier own desires! Truly a show that knows itself!

So the above may seem 'bad' but the real brillience of this show is it's subversion of these comic book elements. That is, instead of pandering to sex starved Fanboys (such as on... oh say Charmed) Buffy comes across as a real person instead of the usual TV sex object.

Oh but there is bad. Remember that guy who wrote the long skreed about Firefly and how it's racist and sexist yadda, yadda... well, here is a classic example of the smarmy intellectually immature. When reading his overly long and venomous deconstruction it struck me how that bozo had to flip over backwards to demonstrate his point. He failed entirely and just as I stated above he simply failed to show that Firefly showed the symbolism and sub-text he was screaming on about (and I'm suspicious of that guy. He seemed intellectually dishonest). I myself am infamous for deconstructing Enteprise as the horrifically racist, sexist, and GWB war mongering crap it is. The reason I'm successful with that theory is that I can demonstrate it (quite easily). Notice my thread about Boycotting ENT. Notice all the smelly fanboys attacked me and not the threory. Why? Because they can't. Because unlike lazy or moronic acadamians I can actually pull out examples, lines, and clear demonstration of my theory. Thus I've successfully created a sound theory about the meaning, subtext, etc.

And yea, the Fanboys hate that. And I love Buffy and Angel and firefly and will defend it against silly people who can't get past the subversion of the genre. Luckily, I noticed that clear essays about Buffy and such are far more common than the crappy ones. At least from where I sit.

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p.s. i hope none of this post sounded antagonistic. sometimes I can sound that way without meaning to be.
*chuckle*, don't worry about me. After running down some of the GWB Nazis around here I'm regularly attacked in revenge. They are so easy to prove wrong they really resent it when someone stands up to them. So of course, like every other Nazi who ever lived they can only attack the people since thier "rightiousness" is demonstratively unethical.

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I guess part of why I wanted to make a point of saying this, is that Buffy really is about growing up, and one of its greatest accomplishments is capturing the experience of being young and growing, in a way no other tv or film has quite succeeded at. So although I agree s6 may be the best, I also see it as an 'extra' season, a season 'after the end', because it's the season that's about colliding with adult 'reality'. And although I have NO problem with s6's style, it certainly is true that the comedy acrobatics were purposely 'pulled back', and it became more closely recognizable as a 'melodrama' (and if it weren't for the preceding seasons, if it weren't a case of the series 'doing something different', and doing it for a very good reason, then i MIGHT have a small problem with it; aside: although i claim they 'pulled back' on the comedy, if you actually look at the season, the comedy acrobatics are alive and well in most episodes, and it almost becomes MORE interesting because the comedy actually makes things more depressing rather than being a funny relief! i love it!


Rather right on writing there. And I think you have shown perhaps what I was missing... the larger story. This is the story that brings Buffy out of it's own premise into a story truly about "growing up". Which is what all these seasons together demonstrate with terrific clarity.

Great stuff Lennier. I have come to the opinion that you ARE supposed to write. Perhaps watching Buffy and the other Joss shows have given your brain the window into your writers soul. I say go with it. After all, to many University is just a place people go to figure out what they should do with thier lives. Perhaps, deep down, you already know?

Cheers. You're the best!

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Monday, June 7, 2004 1:06 PM

LENNIER


Quote:
Originally posted by Ghoulman:
Wow. Did I say wow? Funny but when I read your post it's pretty obvious I'm wrong about season 6. And in more than a few ways! Great post. Terrific analysis and comments.



whoa, I wasn't trying to get you to change your mind! that's why I made a point of saying I wasn't being antagonistic... I thought you had a good point of view, that also agrees with mine 'within error margins'. I only wanted to make a point of saying what my own opinion was, and that I didn't want to leave out s4 and s5. The most I was hoping for was a "yes, s4 and s5 are also good".

Anyhow, I just wanted to make clear that I wasn't writing that to change your mind, only to offer my perspective. If I try to change your mind, you'll feel it.
I just worry that my 'voice' often comes off as confrontational, even when I don't mean to be; here I was trying to add something, i was not trying to nulify or attack anything that you said. And especially, I was not in any way critisizing s6 for any 'lack' (and I completely agree with the full extent of your praise of it), I was only pointing out that other seasons did certain things better (or just 'different'), and was trying to explain why I felt they deserved a place beside s6.

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I've thought about writing essays and finding a place to have them published ...but I'm not actually an arts student currently, so I feel like I'm not 'supposed' to do this ...and I'm simultaneously put-off and inspired by how awful and misguided many of the 'academic' papers on Buffy have been (though there are a few real gems). There was actually a paper at the most recent conference about the 'dead/evil lesbian cliche' ...that's ALL they had to say about Tara, that she was an example of the fact that joss is a Heterosexual White Male who hates lesbians, or something. Pop-culture analysis makes me sick because it just assumes what it is postulating, and assumes that the work it's talking about is too clumsy to have an internal coherency that might overide their assumptions; they just pick out whatever random elements they want to argue their case, and ignore the context, not really caring what is actually going on inside the work; all they care about are surface appearances and how they can relate them to cultural trends. I've even seen pop analysis that treats buffy as that girl-kicking-ass-in-a-miniskirt cliche that has almost nothing to do with the series at all (aside from season 1); ie. treating her as a 'xena' type stereotype that is a 'false' feminism where their sexiness 'undercuts' their power (and frankly, even xena doesn't deserve that kind of treatment! that type of analysis should be reserved for things like "Charlie's Angels"---i would actually agree in that case, they try to sell them as sex-objects 'before' showing them as empowered women).

I read that in the U.S. there are academics looking into Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a well oiled philosophy machine. The main characters in some seasons followed Platonian ethics and such. Kant is talked about and so on. In fact, I have a friend who is a philosophy guy (you can tell because he quit a month before getting his PHd and is jobless) and we have mulled over a few Buffy-isms and he marveled at the last season where the Buffster took on a leadership role like no other. A leader with an army and an enemy. And a leader who was falible. A leader who got people killed. Drama? Oh yes! Makes West Wing look silly wha?


Yes! I've been neglecting to mention season 7, only because its overall quality is not as clear-cut in my mind as s4-s6, so I'm not quite ready to call it 'a nearly perfect masterpiece' in the way that I would for s4-s6 (which is not to say that it's not just as good, but currently there are a few things that make me uncertain about it ...and my gut feeling is that it's just slightly 'under', though still extraordinary and important) ...but for reasons such as the one you mention, it is an extraordinary season that took the show to new places.
About Buffy being faliable, I'm always annoyed when people use that against her, claiming that it makes her a 'bad role model' or something. I've always felt that she's one of the best role models because she and her problems are truly 'real', and she succeeds despite it all ...she wanders but finds the right way in the end. This is especially important in the early seasons where there's a lot of emotional messiness that distracts her ...for a female saga, it's such an important thing, to truly respect the power of emotion (and the problems it can cause), and figure out a way how to keep that but still maintain your strength, intelligence, humanity, and integrity/independance (Buffy's journey towards true independence and self-knowledge is one of the most extraordinary I've seen, male or female, exactly because the show doesn't make it easy for her, and asks her to balance her humanity against her freedom ...part of the message is, true independence is an ideal but it's extremely difficult and it's something we have to grow into, we can't 'start' there or skip any steps ...again, I'm annoyed by critics and feminists who complain that Buffy is not fully independent and empowered in her high school years ...cause who is like that in high school?? or at any age for that matter ...buffy is as close as we'll get, I think, to a realistic 'handbook' towards independence, particularly for girls). Just to be clear about something: her emotional/personal side isn't just a 'distraction' on the road to independence, it's an absolutely necessary part, it's part of the purpose of living and Buffy does not 'cut herself off' from that in order to be independent---instead, she makes complex decisions about which things she should make a priority ...and furthermore, her moral sense is derived from her 'emotional intelligence' and her existential experience of the world, so you really can't separate her development of an indepedent world-view from her emotional 'failings' (and part of the whole point is that they're not failings at all, they ARE her strength even if they do create moments of weakness).

Anyhow, that was a tangent, but to tie it back in, s7 was partly about, if you've achieved this kind of independence (the kind that doesn't sacrifice your humanity, your 'self', your morality), you're still not 'free', because you then have moral obligations ...Buffy has an obligation to lead and teach now that she has achieved, and they dealt very clearly with the idea that, it's very hard for even the best of us to know that we are teaching the right thing, or leading the right way. That's what I love about the character: she's meant to be 'the' ideal, she IS the 'best' of us (not in every way, but in most ways), and her 'superiority' is a fundamental part of the character (both in her 'realistic' and her 'symbolic' forms), and yet being the best doesn't mean things are easy and doesn't mean we don't make mistakes or take a wrong path, or forget who we are (as in s6). Even when your 'job' is easy (as Buffy's is in seasons like s3), life and emotions are not.
by the way, Marti Noxon has said, quite rightly I think, that season 7 is about joss himself and people like him, ie. special people with great abilities and who are in charge of others ...s7 is sort of about the 'hard' side of that (which ties directly into the leadership stuff).

Anywho, about philosphical Buffy stuff, it's definitely interesting, and those are papers I'm 'friendly' towards! I should also say, though, that even some of those guys are trying to force it, they try to fit one specific philosphy to it and then get annoyed at the show when it doesn't totally fit (as if the show failed or something), and sometimes they come up with very 'off' conclusions because they assume the show is following a particular philosphy even when there are some clear counterexamples ...however, despite flaws (and there are certainly a few I'd call 'perfect') most of these papers definitely have something to contribute, if read with a critical mind. It's definitely interesting to see which parts of the show line up well with certain traditions of thought.

Quote:

And I have a BIG bone to pick with smarmy little intellectually stunted English Profs who like to "cut and paste" thier cultural constructs onto anything. I feel that's a cheat. If you want to talk about the symbolism, metaphor, and meaning of Art you must demonstrate your opinions and observations onto the Art being deconstructed. That is, if the elements in the Art don't demonstrate the smarmy Profs thoery then the theory must be wrong.


EXACTLY. I really like how you put it in the last two sentances. I feel very strongly about working from inside the work outwards, rather than coming in from the outside. I realize that pop analysis isn't totally useless, if you want to consider larger cultural trends, or if you want to apply to truly awful things (like bad pop music), but if you have anything that is a well-made work of art, it's kind of useless. I think trying to use it for things like that is like trying to apply statistical analysis to ONE person or one atom.

Quote:

Take Buffy at face value. Teen sex kitten who fights demons. Pretty comic book stuff, which is where Joss is comming from. It's a very standard school girl sex fantasy for men. All that's missing is Buffy in a Catholic mini. Now, this is certainly demonstrated in Buffy and can be said to be true. But that doesn't mean to say the show panders to this (slightly creepy) sex fantasy... though the whole Angel/Buffy romance did get so close to that even Angel and Buffy once said they were creeped out by thier own desires! Truly a show that knows itself!

So the above may seem 'bad' but the real brillience of this show is it's subversion of these comic book elements. That is, instead of pandering to sex starved Fanboys (such as on... oh say Charmed) Buffy comes across as a real person instead of the usual TV sex object.


see, I wouldn't even go that far (but just to be clear, I totally agree that there is a part of the show that's attacting the 'sex starved fanboys' and then giving them a real woman, and an empowered one).

Like when you say "teen sex kitten who fights demons", i mean, where are you getting that from? Other than parts of season 1, they never played Buffy up as a sexed-up creature, and most of the time (after season 1, and definitely after s2) she isn't even wearing dresses or miniskirts. I would say that every time, from s3 onwards, that they do anything remotely sexual with her, it's a very important part of a storyline or theme, and it's not 'all about her', and is never about fetishizing her (eg. tension with Angel, or a sex scene with Riley which talks about being more 'open' and positive about primal things).

What bothers me is, this whole 'sex kitten' thing comes from almost nowhere in the show, it's a cliche that exists outside the show (the 'schoolgirl' thing you refer to). It's like, ANY show about a teenage girl superhero who isn't ugly would be described that way ...I would go so far to say that it's an almost sexist type of response (this is not an attack on you, but just on cultural assumptions), assuming that girls are sexual objects in order to argue that they are being portrayed that way. I'm NOT denying that the show has had fun with the fetishistic aspect of a 'strong girl fighting vampires', or even the school-girl thing, but it never made an effort to portray buffy as this supposed 'sex kitten'.
NOTE: the clearest place it shows up is in one of the vampires---Darla! Darla is like buffy's opposite in season 1, and you could even argue they're making a point of saying "this fetishized schoolgirl is the opposite of Buffy", or perhaps even that it's what Buffy is a 'reversal' of (and obviously, she is a reversal of the more general 'dumb blonde').

As for the Angel storyline, it was first and foremost a story of true love, and an excellent depiction of what it's like to fall in love for the first time, and furthermore, Sarah and David played the romance, even in their early 'clumsy' days, like classic movie stars (played it in a way that you never seen in teen shows or movies). They mostly transcended the age issues by playing it so confidently, and of course through Angel's vampire nature, which sort of makes age irrelevent (though the subtext is still there, yes), and was a much greater transgression than age ...and whether vampire or age, it's a relationship partly about the strength of transgressive love. Furthermore, whatever weirdness was there was subverted when Angel turned evil. (all I'm saying here is that I don't see anything negative about what they did, it was all for a good reason, and it was much more about romance than a sex fetish, even before they made jokes about it ...if there is a fetish they played, it is a 'softer' one of a girl wanting to have an older boyfriend)

To pull back for a moment, I totally agree that joss is using Buffy's attractiveness (and in season 1, her sexiness) to pull people in so that he can get his message out. But complaining that her strength and 'kicking vampire butt' is part of the festish just doesn't take (i'm not arguing that it's not a fantasy, but just because someone can take pleasure out of it doesn't make it flawed or negative---it's only DISempowering if it truly plays up the fetish and objectifies the character ...and if it's not disempowering in that way, then even the 'young girl kicking ass' aspect of it IS empowering, regardless of whether individuals decide to fetishize it).

So finally, I want to emphasize that although I may once again sound confrontational, that's not my intent (though there *may* be a small disagreement here). In fact, we are basically we are saying the same thing, but with one tiny difference, and now I will try to explicitly describe that difference (which is the cause of me writing all of this):
You were saying that the potentially fetish stuff is ok because Buffy subverts it; i'm saying that, yes, it does subvert it and is aware of it, and that's great, but I don't think it even needs to go that far---it simply needs to NOT actively fetishize it, and to NOT treat Buffy as an object (to make her a real person, as you say, and one we can respect). I think that as long as the show is not 'playing up' the fetish then there should be no issue, exactly because its basic concept IS empowering, even on its simplest 'comic book' level (and the fetish is not a part of that basic concept, it's something that exists 'beside' it). Feel free to argue if you feel strongly about this, I certainly don't have my mind set-in-stone about this.

oh, and one more thing ...in later seasons, the show makes its acknowledgement of various fetish stuff much more explicit, and sex etc. becomes part of its topic. At this point Buffy the character is complex and indepedent enough that going to that place is not in any way 'harmful', especially given the fact that they are actually talking about those subjects in meaningful and artistic ways (ie. it's not there for the purposes of pleasure). I'm thinking specifically of the S+M stuff.
But I think I'm not even going far enough in saying that... I guess part of the what I'm trying to get at is, sex is not inherently bad, and neither are fetishes! (though bad things can come out of either) To be 'wimpy' about embracing these things because we are worried about implications, or 'how it will look', is damaging to art and to 'seeing ourselves honestly' (seeing our primal and sexual nature, etc.) ...and as demonstrated in s6, buffy is anything but wimpy when it comes to these things.
so I guess where I'm going here, is that even an explicitly sexualized or fetish scenario shouldn't be the issue ...what matters, with respect to Buffy, is whether or not it disempowers or objectifies the portrayal of the character as a whole (if my conditions for identifying 'bad fetishism' seem too restrictive, I'll point again to Charlie's Angels, where I would definitely say they are disempowered by the objectification and subtext). And at the end of the day, and maybe you're exactly right after all, what matters is the show has a sense of humour about it, and so should we (ie. it's not big deal, it's just sex, and there's so much more going on in the show that's its 'naughtyness' becomes irrelevent, and is entertaining without being titilating, ie. what are we, little kids? what's the big deal? *g* ).

darn, I keep thinking of an extra thing to add: just quickly, I'll say that s1/s2 Angel is objectified in a way that Buffy is not. I won't get into all the things that leads into. But I'll say that this too is 'not an issue' (and was very necessary to express Buffy's perspective).

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Oh but there is bad. Remember that guy who wrote the long skreed about Firefly and how it's racist and sexist yadda, yadda... well, here is a classic example of the smarmy intellectually immature. When reading his overly long and venomous deconstruction it struck me how that bozo had to flip over backwards to demonstrate his point. He failed entirely and just as I stated above he simply failed to show that Firefly showed the symbolism and sub-text he was screaming on about (and I'm suspicious of that guy. He seemed intellectually dishonest). I myself am infamous for deconstructing Enteprise as the horrifically racist, sexist, and GWB war mongering crap it is. The reason I'm successful with that theory is that I can demonstrate it (quite easily). Notice my thread about Boycotting ENT. Notice all the smelly fanboys attacked me and not the threory. Why? Because they can't. Because unlike lazy or moronic acadamians I can actually pull out examples, lines, and clear demonstration of my theory. Thus I've successfully created a sound theory about the meaning, subtext, etc.

And yea, the Fanboys hate that. And I love Buffy and Angel and firefly and will defend it against silly people who can't get past the subversion of the genre. Luckily, I noticed that clear essays about Buffy and such are far more common than the crappy ones. At least from where I sit.


That's cool about Enterprise (your comments, i mean). I haven't watched it enough to form a full opinion, but I noticed your comments on that and liked them. I'm not sure if it's 'strong' enough to really call the show 'down' for it (ie. say that this is something so strong and bad that it subverts anything worthwhile about the show, and merits boycotting), but it's definitely a minus, and something important to be aware of. anyhow, keep in mind I haven't seen any season 3, so I don't know what they've been doing.
I should note that sometimes I think a work of art can still be great even if its themes are unsavoury to us (but Enterprise isn't well made enough to defend it in that way). eg. 24 has had a lot of stuff that seems to try to justify some recent events, but they do it so convincingly (and yet vaguely enough that they're not *actually* talking about real events, and it's not actually propaganda, the characters and situations have important differences) that I have to give them respect, and they often turn around and hit a completely different direction, suddenly becoming subversive to real-world events (eg. the end of season 2 is insane!!) ...so really what they're doing is just 'reflecting' the public feelings and the different sides, and that has value regardless of who is 'right'. eg. their expression of post-Sept.11 Arab paranoia ...not only do they make a vehicle for expressing the paranoia, simply reflecting the fears out there (but also the reality that there ARE arab terrorists, it's not as if they don't exist), but then they also subvert it totally by playing the main Arab character as an innocent, and of course the entire reversal of s2's ending (which I won't get into).

I hate when people try to nail joss for racism. There are actually quite a few academic papers on that, it ticks me off!! Basically they're capitolizing on the absense of black characters in Sunnydale (but the show is supposed be about one of those quite-common mostly-white towns!) and so any time there is a black character they use them to claim that joss's view of race is entirely expressed in that one black character (and more often than not, any characters who come from outside Sunnydale are evil, of course ...and pretty much all side-characters have *some* sort of evil leaning! but of course the pop-critics never consider that larger picture).
My own feeling is that joss just wants to write what he knows, and he knows 'white', and so I think on Buffy race just never became an issue (and they did give us one final, awesome, 'good' black character in s7).

In my opinion, to make a case for a racist subtext, you need to claim that a character's evil (or their death ...but the death angle is much much trickier to argue than people seem to think, it's not as simple as 'this character died therefore the work hates this character and their background') ...you need to claim that their evil/death is ABOUT their race (or sexual orientation or whatever), and that the work has built up a world view that has a negative attitude towards them, motivated by their skin colour, ie. that the show as a whole has shown a trend in which evil/death is connected in story or theme to the race of its characters---that means more than just saying 'they are black and they died' (note: if you just want to chart cultural trends across many different works, you can be much looser, but if you want to attack a specific work, you need to be much more restrictive). For instance, even in the most cliche version of this so-called 'dead/evil lesbian cliche', where two girls a killed by a hate-crime or something ...that still is not necessarily an anti-lesbian subtext because the work may just be portraying the reality, and emotional reality, that it's difficult to be openly gay and that some people may hate you; ie. the work may still be extremely positive towards the lesbian relationship, but may just want to express frustration with the world's intollerance, or it may just want to tell a tragedy as a powerful story---you really have to look at the work itself to decide, and yes there may be blurry lines there.

But where they are no blurry lines in the case of Tara, where her death had NOTHING whatsoever to do with her sexual orientation (neither literally nor thematically),
and her death was played 100% as a tragedy (it's clear on every level that this was a 'bad' thing, maybe even the worst thing that ever happened on Buffy, to the best person, and it's an event we are meant to be hurt by and to mourn, not to enjoy or support! there's certainly no line of reasoning that can suggest Tara did anything to 'deserve' it, or to offend the writer's morality ...in fact, it's quite clear that this is one of joss's "random events", one of his expressions of a meaningless and unpredictable death that we have to cope with, and to my mind it had the priveledge of being THE most painfully random and meaningless, except *perhaps* for Anya). There are some further complexities, but they really don't go anywhere 'negative': first of all, the one connection you can make between Tara and Warren, other than their opposition on the 'maturity' scale (which would support my 'side' if one buys that), is through Willow and the nature of her problem and her evil tendancy (which is important to address because people jump on that as part of the dead/evil cliche); i would argue that Willow and Warren are linked, that their desire to 'make things easy', to skip the work and avoid responsibility and get 'the power' is similar and they are foils of eachother (even more so after Warren kills Tara); so one could try to use that connection to say that Willow killed Tara or something, BUT where this breaks down is in the nature of Willow's bad tendancies---they are not in ANY way related to her being gay! In fact, you can see roots of them, as we discussed, in the early season, long before she decided/realized she was gay, and in addition, we never see ANY similar tendancies in Tara or any other gay character, so there is no trend or 'worldview' whatsoever that links this evil and being gay (and you need to find those kinds of well-established trends to argue anything about the work, even in subtext). In fact, it is exactly those tendancies in Willow that break Tara and Willow up, they are exactly what Tara (who could be described as 'more gay than Willow' as silly as that sounds) doesn't like in Willow, and so it would quite natural to argue that the show sees those qualities as the antithesis of being in a lesbian relationship (and I should add, that Willow turns evil AFTER tara is gone, after that relationship is removed---it's the REMOVAL of the lesbian relationship that triggered the evil, not the building of the relationship!!).
Aside from all of that stuff, you can even just look at the insane amount of 'positive energy' there is between Willow and Tara over the years ...that speaks for itself, so much that even in if there were a 'problem' with the ending, the duration of their relationship should far overshadow it.
(note: some people make a fuss about Tara and Willow sleeping together in the same episode that Tara is killed, but again they're just looking for a connection because they're looking for the cliche ...there is no way to actually connect their sex to her death, not narratively thematically or even visually, and nowhere does the show emphasize such a connection, and furthermore they've had sex in a positive way so many times that it's ridiculous to even bring it up. on the other hand, it's true that Tara/Willow got back together just in time for some tragedy ...but then what about Fred/Wesley? or Buffy/Angel for that matter, who got destroyed after the FIRST time they had sex! this is just a matter of good storytelling and tragedy ...and if Willow is in any sense being 'punished' for her actions in s6, it clearly has nothing to do with Tara herself or with her being gay, because those are the 'few' things she was doing right!)

oops, I got into the Tara thing that I was hoping to avoid, but I sort of had to use that example because when it comes to race there isn't even anything to say at all, for or against. There is not enough racial subtext on Buffy to be worth mentioning (there is on Angel, obviously, but I won't get into that---note: i'm not saying 'positive' or 'negative', i'm just saying that there is some stuff 'about' race).
As an aside, I should say that some academic papers have actually said that vampires on Buffy are a metaphor for the racial 'other', and Buffy staking vampires is white people 'keeping the black man down'. *sigh*
I'm not even going to go there, except to say that, 'the other' is one good way to look at vampires or some of the demons (especially ones that the group has come to know and who have ceased being 'the other'), but that there is no basis whatsoever for making it racial, and the source for that ridiculous argument probably comes from outside cliches and from other situations that pop-analysists are used to seeing, so that when they see one aspect of it, they also imagine all the rest whether it's there or not.

The basic problem with this type of analysis, is the whole concept of 'pop culture analysis' and the assumption that the works they are examining do not have their own coherency (which is why it's very important to identify where there is a fully-formed 'work of art', and convince others of that, and stop people from using this clumsy pop logic).

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Rather right on writing there. And I think you have shown perhaps what I was missing... the larger story. This is the story that brings Buffy out of it's own premise into a story truly about "growing up". Which is what all these seasons together demonstrate with terrific clarity.

Great stuff Lennier. I have come to the opinion that you ARE supposed to write. Perhaps watching Buffy and the other Joss shows have given your brain the window into your writers soul. I say go with it. After all, to many University is just a place people go to figure out what they should do with thier lives. Perhaps, deep down, you already know?

Cheers. You're the best!


wow, thanks for being supportive!
You have no idea how much these comments mean to me at this moment. I'm definitely at a crossroads, and am also stuck in a project that I'm having trouble finishing due to lack of confidence.

p.s. any chance we could exchange email somehow?
I have a 'dummy' email I wouldn't care about posting on the web, if there is no way to do it in a non-public way. If you don't want to, I'll understand, but I thought it might be nice to discuss these things without using the board (though, despite apperances, I'm actually quite short on time myself right now; I just couldn't help myself from responding to these topics).

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Monday, June 7, 2004 1:47 PM

MAUGWAI


You guys have said some interesting things, so I thought I'd chime in with some loose change.

Goulman, I am not a smelly fanboy. I am neither smelly nor a boy. Also, it's completely not important to anybody but me, and it's an easy mistake to make, but Hamlet didn't kill Ophelia. She went crazy and killed herself. Hamlet's actions played a major part, but she already had issues, and she did the deed herself.

I agree that season 6 was good. It's my personal favorite. I think one of the reasons people don't like it is because they set up an expectation of what an episode of Buffy should be. If you go in looking for every episode to be "Surprise," then you're going to be disappointed. Have no expectations, and you'll like what you see because Joss is always trying something new. I love how many episode endings found me still open-mouthed and silent five minutes later. I felt that way because I never tried to predict what would happen, so I was never disappointed. I simply analyzed what I saw, like you guys are doing.

Season seven was so coherent. Every episode from beginning to end was pushing to one goal. It opens with power, it closes with power and who has it. And in between it focuses on Buffy's solitude. Good stuff.

Just some rambling thoughts I had while I was reading your posts.



"Dear diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy."

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Monday, June 7, 2004 2:47 PM

LENNIER


Quote:
Originally posted by maugwai:
You guys have said some interesting things, so I thought I'd chime in with some loose change.

Goulman, I am not a smelly fanboy. I am neither smelly nor a boy. Also, it's completely not important to anybody but me, and it's an easy mistake to make, but Hamlet didn't kill Ophelia. She went crazy and killed herself. Hamlet's actions played a major part, but she already had issues, and she did the deed herself.


I think Ghoulman meant that Hamlet the play killed Ophelia, not Hamlet the character. The analogy is that when Tara died people were angry at Buffy the show, and at the writers, NOT at Warren (well, they may have been angry at warren, but they expressed their anger at the show).

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I agree that season 6 was good. It's my personal favorite. I think one of the reasons people don't like it is because they set up an expectation of what an episode of Buffy should be. If you go in looking for every episode to be "Surprise," then you're going to be disappointed. Have no expectations, and you'll like what you see because Joss is always trying something new. I love how many episode endings found me still open-mouthed and silent five minutes later. I felt that way because I never tried to predict what would happen, so I was never disappointed. I simply analyzed what I saw, like you guys are doing.


I love that feeling of awe and silence. I was discussing this with someone recently, in response to some comments joss recently made (he said that surprise is the most holy and humbling emotion that we have, and he was talking about how much spoilers and previews sadenned him because suprise was no longer possible; he said that surprise makes us feel 'small in the world', as if things are much larger and scarier and more complicated than we imagined).
I think quite a lot of Buffy's style is about creating various kinds of shock (not just plot or emotional, but even the shocking way they hit us with jokes or style changes), and leaving us permentaly in a state of shock, and transforming that shock from comedic to dramatic to horror etc.
They play that shock so well, controlling the levels and energy, that's it's like music or like a dance. That's a large part of the art of the show, I think, and it's one of the most neglected in discussions of 'what the show is' (even though it's one of the most obvious parts of our reaction).

Refining what I said in the last paragraph:
actually, it's kind of about 'repressed shock'. I find often that my laughter is repressed, even when something is hilarious. It's like they 'keep' the shock and keep pushing the energy stronger by holding that tension tight, and transform that energy between all the different genres. It's like we live in the moment before shock, while we're watching the show. I found Hush really unnerving for this reason, becaue the stifled screams etc. were exactly how I felt when watching the show.

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Season seven was so coherent. Every episode from beginning to end was pushing to one goal. It opens with power, it closes with power and who has it. And in between it focuses on Buffy's solitude. Good stuff.


I'm definitely still re-assessing my opinion of s7, my opinions/feelings aren't set in stone. I do totally agree that it's coherent that way, that its topic was coherent ...what I'm less sure of is if what they're saying within the topic is as coherent, and whether every thread and episode in the season ties in as well as it did in previous seasons (or if what they're saying is as 'insightful' as previous seasons, though that's highly subjective of course).
Anyhow, I'm not one of the people who thinks that it's 'bad' or anything, my feeling is just that it might not be quite as coherent as the previous seasons.
But what I'd agree with, and this is perhaps what you're saying, is that it states its topic very clearly and coherently, perhaps even more so than previous season.

ah, ignore me. What I should really say is that I love hearing people thinking in the direction that you're thinking. I love thinking about what binds things together, what makes them coherent, and looking at how well the show builds up the motifs, whether they're thematic, character, or even style/visual. It's by thinking constructively, in the way that you are, that we can actually come to understand something; it's only by doing this that we can see if there is or is not coherency, and only by doing this that we can realize how unusually coherent Buffy is on so many different levels, in comparison to the other things out there (in my opinion, more so than any other tv series). In my book, that's a very large part of what qualifies something as 'art'.

If you have any comments about what you thought the season was saying about power, and how you thought that was developed across the season, I'd be very interested (even if they're quick and intuitive comments, which sometimes can be the best, when they're positive). I have my own thoughts on what they were saying, of course, but I'd be interested to hear someone else talk about it 'constructively' first (and without reacting to what I think). hmmm, maybe this should be a different thread... *g*

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Monday, June 7, 2004 3:07 PM

GHOULMAN


No, no, no, that bastard Hamlet ripped into Ophelia and she killed herself in despair. Hamlet did it!

*chuckle*, I know, it's an old argument.

And I'll be back to comment (Lennier! You go... er, boy? Whatever. And I'll message ya). Not sure when as I'm working late into the night. As the time index above will attest. Nite.

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Tuesday, June 8, 2004 6:27 AM

GHOULMAN


OK first... my eyes are bleeding. Lots of text. I read it last night and went over again to collect some thoughts. Nice work once again Lennier! You are the shabazz!

Oh, I didn't really change my mind (about season 6) as take in all you have pointed out. That is, I'm wrong because I didn't see the whole picture and thus not your point. And I'm aften confused about what season is what so bare with me. Bear with me? A bear! Undo it! heh heh. Sorry...

You are obviously talented in the higher order. Your sagacity and insight is the difference between mere existance and actually living. You are Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Plato once told a story to describe our reality. Reality, he tells us, is a tribe sitting in a cave watching a shadow play created by hidden men from behind. The people watch the shadows and believe them to be reality. One person (let's call her Buffy) walks out of the cave and discovers the sun, the sky... a higher reality. A truer reality. This person is called the Philosopher. Buffy is that person. And so are you.


Quote:

Lennier wrote:
Monday, June 07, 2004 13:06
I just worry that my 'voice' often comes off as confrontational, even when I don't mean to be...

I'm not a sensitive reader on a public BBS. Considering the attacks on me by everyone from Paramount producers, writers, TV drones @ SPACe the fanboy network, etc. I've grown a pretty thick skin. So don't worry, but when I'm aggressive you can't mistake it for anything else. I've made sailors blush. Then kiss my toes. And give me money LOL!


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About Buffy being faliable, I'm always annoyed when people use that against her, claiming that it makes her a 'bad role model' or something. I've always felt that she's one of the best role models because she and her problems are truly 'real', and she succeeds despite it all ...she wanders but finds the right way in the end.
You're comments here are the very centre of BtVS in it's entirty. At it's basic premise (the true one, not the teen sex pot one I mentioned) this is what BtVS is about. If someone asks what is BtVS about you can simply answer; "it's about a girl growing up to be a woman." and it's great stuff!

Buffy has gone through, as you deftly point out, all sorts of troubles and conflicts that are a part of all our lives (well, not the older Vampire boyfriend part but ... you know) and it's how we deal with these classic hurtles in life that is entirely what drama and stories are about. Buffy takes all that on with alacrity, at least usually. She isn't perfect but who is? Just as you say, this is a story aboyut growth - if the Buffster was superhero perfect the show would just be the pandering crap we would have expected from the teen sex scenario... which I'll comment on next. After all, your comments are still right on.

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...again, I'm annoyed by critics and feminists who complain that Buffy is not fully independent and empowered in her high school years ...cause who is like that in high school?? or at any age for that matter ...buffy is as close as we'll get, I think, to a realistic 'handbook' towards independence, particularly for girls).
I've noticed that critics only see the surface. And that's what I meant about the "teen sex kitten deamon fighter" thing. I'll explain a bit...

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Take Buffy at face value. Teen sex kitten who fights demons. Pretty comic book stuff, which is where Joss is comming from. It's a very standard school girl sex fantasy for men. All that's missing is Buffy in a Catholic mini. Now, this is certainly demonstrated in Buffy and can be said to be true. But that doesn't mean to say the show panders to this (slightly creepy) sex fantasy... though the whole Angel/Buffy romance did get so close to that even Angel and Buffy once said they were creeped out by thier own desires! Truly a show that knows itself!

So the above may seem 'bad' but the real brillience of this show is it's subversion of these comic book elements. That is, instead of pandering to sex starved Fanboys (such as on... oh say Charmed) Buffy comes across as a real person instead of the usual TV sex object.



see, I wouldn't even go that far (but just to be clear, I totally agree that there is a part of the show that's attacting the 'sex starved fanboys' and then giving them a real woman, and an empowered one).

Like when you say "teen sex kitten who fights demons", i mean, where are you getting that from? Other than parts of season 1, they never played Buffy up as a sexed-up creature, and most of the time (after season 1, and definitely after s2) she isn't even wearing dresses or miniskirts.


I do agree with you. The "teen sex kitten demon fighter" is merely the surface. Heck, it's barely the title! What I mean is, as you agreed, the sub-text takes over the 'premise' of BtVS from the first show. That is, the premise 'looks' like it is just explotitive, regular, crap TV meant to brainwash children into being more easily sodomized (not sure if I'm being metaphorical). Now... to define that a bit I will say that the 'premise' isn't intrinsically sexist but certainly it would make one think that's the case (remember the first time you saw an ad for BtVS?). It's designed to be a cult story rather like a comic book serial. Not where you'd look for female independance stories eh?

I'd have to agree fully with you in that should a cultural critic continue to agrue a sexist sub-text to BtVS (as opposed to a rather shallow surface image) then they simply have only looked at the books cover. Proverbially speaking. Wow, that's a big word. I think I hurt my tongue.

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They (SMG & David B.) mostly transcended the age issues by playing it so confidently...
Yes, I think they did great stuff. And I agree that the issue of Angel representing the "old man" in the "teen sex kitten" scenario doesn't pan out well for the reasons you detailed. It's difficult to see hard bodied Boreanaz as being the Kevin Spacey in this story. He's perhaps more of a sex figure than Buffy is, his mysterious ways and sexy Vampire chik is, somehow, more of a sex fantasy (for women) because Angel actually acts in this manner (he demonstrates his sexy object status unlike Buffy). Or am I off here?

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I hate when people try to nail joss for racism.


One of the things that bugged me about BtVS was the lilly white Sunnydale setting. At least Willow wasn't where white met bread and the other characters didn't live in giant mansions (which every movie/TV American seems to live in... it's soooo laughable). If it's racist it's racist in a mild bourgeois way. After all, Joss and his writers are all rather well off white folk. Thier perceptions of the universe come from a sheltered world (and a good education). The fact that early seasons of BtVS had so few non whites is prolly not about intent but merely the sort of sub-text that emerges into a story from the writers sub-consious mind!

After all, the scariest thing about writing is failing to recognise you've somehow revealed one of your own faults to anyone with the perception to read between the lines.

American TV is unique in that it seems determined to keep the sence of a 'white only' USA while that is simply not the reality of living in the USA. I wouldn't blame Joss for this particularly as it's a pervasive artistic slur deeply grounded into the American system. After all... the advertisers will demond whites since they want to sell to whites (ask Gloria Steinem). Now... and here is the part I split with the so called 'academics'... they seem to not ever mention the money part! Jerks wha? If they want to blame Joss for this I can't but think I could rip a few strips offa their theories. Oh... I'd luuurv to do that. heh heh...

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But where they are no blurry lines in the case of Tara, where her death had NOTHING whatsoever to do with her sexual orientation (neither literally nor thematically),


Again, terrific insight about the Tara/Lesbian death phenomena.

When slasher movies like Friday the 13th came around when I was a teen we often laughed at the fact that if any cvharacter had sex they were gonna get the axe! We soon relized the subtext - sex is bad. So the people having sex were punished by God... in the form of an axe swingin' serial killer (?!?). This is the same sort of sub-text people have applied to the arguement that (in movies and TV) all gay characters are evil, broken, or about to die. That is, the only way a gay character would be accepted in a movie that wasn't rated "R" was to portray them as 'bad' somehow. Naturally, the Tara story can be said to follow this 'rule'. Except it doesn't really seem to be what's going on, as you have demonstrated quite well. Besides, Tara lasted a few seasons right?

Quote:
wow, thanks for being supportive!
You have no idea how much these comments mean to me at this moment. I'm definitely at a crossroads, and am also stuck in a project that I'm having trouble finishing due to lack of confidence.

Oh crap. I've been writing and reading far too long and lunch is over. I really gotta bail... gots to make the toonies!

And it's so hard to gain the confidence to write down onto paper real honest feelings. Worse, you gotta let other people read it! Even worser... er, yea, is that the feeling never goes away. My advice is to close you're eyes and dive in. I am confident you can swim.

Cheers! Oh and I just got the Playboy with Charisma in it soooooo tonight... I'll be in my bunk.


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Tuesday, June 8, 2004 9:42 AM

LENNIER


I'm posting this before I read Ghoulman's response, because I'm embarassed about some of what I wrote, and want to acknowledge a problem with it---
in the 'fetish' part of the response, I became quite lost and I crossed about 5 different topics without 'realizing' it, and ended up talking
about something completely different than what I started with. The result is that what I say at the end may seem to contradict what I was saying at the beginning (i think?), and corrupt the coherency of the argument (well, it isn't coherent at all, is it? i was just sort of ranting) ...but
actually, I'm talking about something different, and if I had made that clear (and written it better) then there would be no contradiction.
Anyhow, I just wanted to acknowledge the problems with that part of my post.

One way to put it in perspective, is to say that what i SHOULD be talking about, the context within which this argument is located, is with respect
to feminist critisisms that claim Buffy is a failure as feminism, and may even be ANTI-feminist (ie. I'm not debating how the show deals with
sexuality, I'm talking about whether or not the show's message is signficantly 'corrupted' by its sexual side ...and aside perhaps for season 1, the
answer is a definite no ---for two reasons ...one is that, its active treatment of sexuality simply does not undercut its empowerment and themes, and the 2nd reason is that the dis-empowering fetishizing that COULD be attached to the show exists entirely OUTSIDE of it, and the
show should not be held responsible for how people can *choose* to objectify it).

I'm not sure if what I'm saying here is entirely clear either, but hopefully it simplifies things a little bit.

A side analogy I've been wanting to the mention is the danger of being over-cautious of female sexuality (and that's part of why Buffy's playful and wholehearted embracing of it is so important) ...eg. "women don't belong in the army
because they'll distract the men". There's a danger of going too far and
actually becoming sexist on the 'other' side, and I would say that is where some feminists have gone in attempting to trash Buffy.
One brilliant article in "What's at Stake in Buffy" actually parodied the feminist articles in this way: "Buffy can't be feminist because she has
breasts".
In a related point, there's a related set of issues regarding Buffy as a 'conventional' girl ...she's powerful, but much of her behaviour in the early seasons is 'girly' and she likes clothes, and other things that bother the feminists ...I won't get into the details, but the real issue there is that Buffy ISN'T meant to be a 100% feminist work, it's also supposed to simply be a refelction high school, and being young, which means it's wrong to judge those aspects purely in feminist terms ...and also, in later seasons Buffy clearly grows up into a better feminist model, so the critisisms really don't hold if you consider that it's supposed to be a progression. And the show never claimed that it was 'the' feminist ideal, it's more meant to be a step in the growing process (this time I mean our growth as a culture) ...though I think that by the later seasons, it's achieved a pretty good feminist ideal (regardless of whether or not it lines up with any particular version of feminism).

note to Ghoulman: I may not respond to your response for a few days.
Also, this is getting to be a lot of words even for me, so I may just need to drop some points.

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Tuesday, June 8, 2004 10:04 AM

GHOULMAN


^^^ No worries Lennier, I know you're in school so don't think you gotta reply out of politness - and you're very polite. And I hope my responces hit your meaning. I read it with an editors eye. So you went off a little, it's a BBS, it's all good.

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