From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V3 #375 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Tuesday, December 16 2003 Volume 03 : Number 375 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [chakram-refugees] Peekabo [KTL ] [chakram-refugees] OTish - Raimi, Tapert take on new Gellar film ["S. Wil] [chakram-refugees] Xena timeline ["Creation (Sharon Delaney)" Subject: [chakram-refugees] Peekabo KT: > > But for women of a certain age, (like you and I, Ife) what we saw on > > screen in XWP we had never seen in anything before. >> > > IFE: > True, but I realize now that it was not just Xena, but the fact that her > world was so woman-centered. Oh absolutely. Lucy as Xena hooked me. But I remember looking up at the screen the first time I saw Hooves and Harlots and suddenly realizing with a real frisson of joy that the screen was filled with women. (Half naked women, sadly, but still, women all the same.) IFE: There are plenty of shows where men go about their > business with passing reference to "the little woman." But to see a show where > women relied on themselves, drove the action, and didn't spend at least half > the time caring for or discussing men? Where their emotions, thoughts, > behavior, and every little thing they did was significant? Where it was okay to > express every side of themselves without being seen as "too masculine" or "too > feminine"? Now *that's* what I didn't see in Emma Peel's world. Absolutely. And gods bless Tapert and Stewart for that. KT: > > Art is always interactive. Art is communication and without an audience, > > there's no art. Without an artist there's no art either though. THEY > > generate the response we bring to the event. >> IFE: > > Yes, I'm emphasizing the "we bring," while you're emphasizing "generate," but > I think we're both agreeing you need both for the "communication" to occur. Well the generate is the most important part because without it there's nothing. Or, there's only Wonder Woman-grin. (What I wonder about Wonder Woman is how the new one, post Xena will be different than the TV one of years ago. As so many people state in so many venues, Lucy's Xena transformed the female hero and spawned numerous "daughters".) But anyway, you gotta start with someone's creation. If not, there'd be no such thing as "artists". Nor those of us who critique them. KT > > LOL! I cut out the parts we don't agree on in this thread, the parts > > where we're doing nothing but repeat ourselves. >> > IFE: > > Ah, it's the agree parts I experience as more repetitive.. With the disagree > parts I feel we might still have something to discuss and learn from. Every > now and then I find gems I overlooked in stuff that's been repeated -- > sometimes because it's said differently or somebody else has said something that made > me interpret it differently. Interesting difference of perspective. > I give people (and usually me also) about three posts to say what they want. If nothing new comes up, at that point the exchange far too often degrades into people just refusing to accept that other people don't share their opinion and wanting to try to beat some sense into them through endless repetition. It's exactly like when people go to places where people don't speak English. And the methodology is to SCREAM out, in endlessly escalating volume, "Water! WATER! Where can I get some *WATTTTERRRR*!!!!!????" In about seven years on line I haven't seen much variation to discount this belief that if you're not saying anything new after three posts or so it ain't gonna happen in the fourth nor the twenty-fourth. I find it boring to read when others do it. Which is why I USUALLY restrain from doing it myself. Snip snip IFE: > > < Are you also saying that visual art > > >produces more "objective" data or interpretation, since presumably we're > > all looking > > >at the same "board"? That what we take away from the visual image is less > > >subjective than if we'd read it in a book? KT > > Yes. But only in terms of the fact that onscreen we see the artifact and > > therefore it is the same for everyone. Unlike in a book where we each see > > our own imagined artifact. > > IFE: > See, that's why I hesitate putting emphasis on the thing itself. Yes, the > thing itself is the same, but that doesn't mean it is the same for everyone. We > see/perceive it differently. A structure we see in XWP could be viewed as a > home, a shack, a "quaint" abode, or something else that influences our "take" > on things, regardless of what the characters say or do. But those are all living quarters. In XWP we pretty much had low class homes or palaces. Since there was no middle class then, there was nothing in between. They had "rich and powerful" and they had "poor". And that says something too and it's saying it to all of us. Nobody would confuse who's rich and who's poor in XWP (unless they were in disguise) because of these distinctions which they created in living conditions and costumes. No matter how you designate it, it stayed consistent from ep to ep and so always represented the same thing. Taverns were very like lower class houses except they were bigger, both houses and taverns were different from Amazon huts, and all of these were different from palaces. I strongly believe that everybody realized this. Whether they realized it consciously or not. Based on Cyrene's inn, > some folks think Xena's family wasn't well off, while others think the family > did pretty well. I have to say that I NEVER heard any discussion on that point. The tavern was just a tavern to me. I really didn't see any difference in any of the taverns-they pretty much all looked alike as I remember. They all had the same wooden mugs, the same wooden bar in the same place, the same table and chairs-and I mean the SAME. Grin. Except of course for Meg's Tavern which had all those Creation artifacts. If it mattered to the story, there would have been a difference between Cyrene's tavern and others, just like there was in Meg's. But there wasn't. So there wasn't. SMILE. Some of us don't even notice a particular person, object, > expression, while others do. Well, sure. Much of our surroundings are only absorbed sub-consciously even in real life. I truly believe that we eventually do take, if not all, then at lest most of it in. Static art like a picture is easy to process just because it's static and always available in an unchanging state. Filmed moving pictures are a lot tougher to assimilate in one shot because there is so much going on. And because moving pictures are composed to highlight the main actor or the main action, so the things in the background don't get noticed so quickly and easily. This is why if something in the scene matters to the story, then we always get a close up of it to showcase it. As Cleanthes mentioned in his post about the falling pillar. (Which, by the way, had nothing in it that I saw that was an attempt to insult anyone on the list.) But everything that appears in the scene is collected and placed on set by the director and the set designer to create what's called the Mise en scene. The look of the show. And they do this with an eye to creating an environment that plays a big part in telling us about the world the characters live in and therefore things about the character themselves. Having home video players has literally changed the way we "see" movies. Because now we can endlessly rewind, thus making the moving picture static also, and peruse it at our leisure. I always wonder if anyone noticed the propane tank under the table in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun on their first viewing. Certainly the cinematographer and the director missed it during filming, as did the editor and the director on the final cut. (Presumably-otherwise they could have CGI'd it out?) But someone finally noticed it and now it's one of the many delights in GJWHF. IFE: I have art in my home that I've looked at for > years and suddenly "see" something I'd missed before. To me the richness of XWP > has come from all the varied perspectives on the "same" thing, which each > person will argue is based on "what we all saw." And we all saw the exact same physical appearance. There's no arguing that for example, Xena is a brunette and Gabrielle is a blond with sometimes red highlights. We can say, "Oooooo, this says that Xena's a dark soul and Gabrielle's a light" but that's interpretation. First and foremost, Tapert chose to have both of the grrls dye their hair, thus controlling the image of the characters he wanted to present to us. And which we all saw. Some people have pre-conceived notions about people's hair colors. For example, does the term, "Irritating brunette" sound quite so apt as "Irritating blond"? How about "Aggravating brown haired person"? How about temperamental redhead? (And why did the phrase, "redhead" come into use instead of just red like blond or brunette?) Uh...just wandering KT: > > > For example, Tarzan's Aunty Kathleen lives in a very lush apartment in a > > very expensive part of town. This tells us things about her. It tells us > > not only that she's rich but that she wants to live rich. And that tells > > us things about her character. AND it's an immutable fact about her.>> IFE: > > Funny you mention that. I thought she seemed a bit helpless in her home, > certainly given her supposed social status. It occurred to me that Kate's place > had been a family (or her dead brother's) home, possibly owned jointly with > Richard or by some family entity. If so, then she couldn't necessarily stop > Richard from barging in when he pleased or sending in police he'd made payoffs > to. She could possibly lose it in some legal battle with him. > > We have no idea how financially stable her newspaper is or what she'd be left > with in a battle with Richard. I didn't find her place to be all that > "lush," but I'll grant it was supposed to project wealth. In other words, it didn't > tell me much in the way of "immutable facts" about Kate except that she > stayed in a nice place. What happened in it left me questioning just how much > wealth, power and independence from Richard she actually had. Or whether her nice > place was actually hers. Mind you, I didn't hurt my brain too much with that, > because I never knew what was intended or accidental in terms of what I saw > in Tarzan. > Ife, the FURNITURE didn't tell you about the conflicts between Kathleen and Richard. The actions of the characters and their dialogue did. As you happen to admit, you "grant it was supposed to project wealth." Which is exactly what they wanted to show. Or else they wouldn't have. I called it a sterile environment. I would suggest that this is to tell us how Kathleen's life is sterile without close family ties. But that's interpretation of what's there, that's going beyond the mere fact that it exists as is (which is immutable) and gets into attempting to understand why they used these props the way they did. KT: > > > > Xena is homeless. Xena has relegated herself to a spartan life. No more > > fancy yurts nor big tents with servants for her. This also is absolutely > > true. Differing interpretations come in when we think about why it's true.>> > > > Yes, with XWP I had confidence that every critical aspect about Xena -- from > her armor to what she traveled with -- had been given careful consideration. I think Tarzan did too. The mere fact that something is on the set means that a choice was made to put it there. > I had confidence that the structures I saw, the objects in dwellings, the > clothing of villains, etc. "meant" something. The only thing above that I might > quibble with is "Xena is homeless." No, she didn't live in a "house." But > though she didn't know how she'd be received in Amphipolis at the beginning of > Sins, she called it and Cyrene's place "home." She chose to leave, once > welcomed, yet knew she could return. BWAAHAHAHAH! Gods, you crack me up. Now let's see-you say that Kathleen's house which is referred to as numerous times as "Kathleen's house", "his aunt's house", "your sister's house" or just "Kathleen's", is probably NOT her house. But Xena, whom we see every week living without a house in the forest, does have a house-even though she hasn't lived there for over ten years and everybody calls it "Cyrene's". Uh-huh. KT: > > Now I would further say that Xena denying herself creature comforts is > > part of her "atonement thing". THAT absolutely gets into speculation. That > > has never been stated directly in the series. And that is where the > > interpretation of what we see onscreen comes in. >> > IFE: > KT, I just think it's too difficult to say where an "immutable fact" ends and > interpretation begins. The immutable fact is the mere existence of an object onscreen. Sure if someone was wearing a red cap and you'd had memories of someone in your real life who was "known" for wearing a red cap, then the existence of a red cap is special for you. It will remind you of that person. But even when other people see it without having the memories you have, you're ALL seeing a red cap. As I wrote this, I realized that the color red was used very sparingly in Xena. And you know, in film/TV classes, they will tell you that red is a very evocative color for human beings. (One suggestion is because it is the color of blood-so we REALLY pay attention to red. Aside from being memorable, it's also a very disquieting color. It's "hot" for humans to see onscreen.) And I'm thinking, Xena wore red to seduce Caesar in Destiny. Then she wore red at his party in When In Rome. And of course she is dressed in a red robe by the ghosts in FIN. (I'm kind of surprised Xena the Conqueror didn't wear red.) The Furies wear red too, don't they? I LOVE realizing things like this. Like when I just recently realized that she didn't have her chakram in The Debt. IFE: Take "spartan." That's an interpretation of how many > somethings would have been more or less than or equal to other somethings. > I saw a lot of migrant folks -- especially warriors -- living/traveling like > Xena. Hercules seemed more "spartan" than Xena. How? What did Xena have that he didn't? Argo? But Argo was her companion, a part of her like her sword and chakram. And in Xena whenever we saw migrants, they often talked about why they were wandering along the road-somebody had done something to put them in those straits. Like the wandering poor folk in Warrior...Princess for example. IFE: The main reason it means > anything vs. anybody else is because we compare it to what she gave up, and we > know she could have more if she wanted. We might feel she was "denying" herself > creature comforts, not just being practical, because we saw a propensity for > her to be hard on herself. > Uh-that's what *I* said, how I interpreted that. That when she was "naughty", she used to live luxuriously compared to how she lives now. That was exactly my point. > To me, the bare "thing" would be a description like, "She traveled with a > bedroll, her weapons, a saddlebag that could hold a department store," etc. So > what? How many people will argue that she also carried a cell phone? Uh, not many, I wouldn't think, since a cell phone was never part of any scene and is therefore not part of the objective reality of the show. But what's wrong with using the word "spartan" in its accepted usage to describe a minimal life style? I'm not using it as a pejorative, just as an adjective. Once you > get beyond detailing what somebody can point to (which usually requires > words, which can mean different things to different people), you're probably > already in the realm of interpretation. > > -- Ife Yep. Once you start talking about what the things there mean, that goes beyond the immutable fact that they're there. But first they gotta be there. KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 07:57:11 -0600 From: "S. Wilson" Subject: [chakram-refugees] OTish - Raimi, Tapert take on new Gellar film Dec. 15, 2003 Gellar holding a 'Grudge' against Raimi, Col Pics http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2051539 By Josh Spector Sarah Michelle Gellar, most recently seen on the big screen in "Scooby-Doo," will take on a more frightening role in her next starring gig as she is set to topline the horror remake "The Grudge." The project, being produced by Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures and distributed domestically by Columbia Pictures, is an English-language version of the Japanese thriller "Ju-On." The film's title refers to a curse that befalls someone who dies in the grip of a powerful rage. Those who encounter this murderous supernatural curse die, and a new one is born -- passed like a virus from victim to victim in an endless, growing chain of horror. The project is being directed by the original's writer-director, Takashi Shimizu, from a script by Stephen Susco. Raimi is producing along with his Ghost House partner Rob Tapert and Taka Ichise, who produced the original film. Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane of Senator International will serve as executive producers alongside Roy Lee and Doug Davison, who originally gave GHP a look at the project. Columbia co-president of production Matt Tolmach and director of production Shannon Gaulding are overseeing for the studio, with a January start date planned. The film will shoot in Tokyo at Toho Studios. Gellar, best known for her starring role on the long-running television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," has appeared in such films as "Cruel Intentions" and "Scream 2." She next appears in the upcoming "Scooby-Doo" sequel and also is attached to star in "Romantic Comedy" for MGM. Gellar is repped by the Firm, ICM and attorney Kevin Yorn. ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 12:46:09 -0800 From: "Creation (Sharon Delaney)" Subject: [chakram-refugees] Xena timeline Is there a web page out there that someone has put together with a timeline of the events in Xena's life? Thanks, Sharon ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 15:54:01 -0800 From: "Creation (Sharon Delaney)" Subject: [chakram-refugees] moral dilemma of Orphan I'm interview Steve about Orphan for the next newsletter and came upon these questions posed by fans. They got me to thinking about friendship in general and the friendship between Xena and Gabrielle. These are the questions. Anyone got any thoughts? Sharon Gabrielle gets quite harsh with Xena as they argue over how a mother could ever give up a child. This seemed to place their friendship on some pretty shaky ground. Later on Gabby apologizes for her questioning Xena's actions, she states that she isn't saying she agrees with her decision, but will always be there for her. Gabrielle realizes that she should have been less judgmental and more of a friend, which is what Xena needed. Gabrielle is slowly learning how to be a friend to Xena while keeping her moral code. There's a larger view here about how to be a friend to someone you disagree with? And where do you draw the line and realize you can no longer be their friend? ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 21:55:13 -0500 From: "Cheryl Ande" Subject: [chakram-refugees] RE: Did Ares ever kill anyone? Yes in The Reckoning. Remember he killed those merchants so Xena would be blamed. He of course brought them back once Xena tricked him but he still killed them. He also killed an unarmed baddie in Family Ties when he was impersonating Xena's father. CherylA ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V3 #375 **************************************