From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #9 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Friday, January 14 2000 Volume 02 : Number 009 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/willow ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/buffypress ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/willow [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: b/willow ["David S. Bratman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 05:56:35 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/willow I found the whole =Salon= article in my e-mail box yesterday, so I can forward it to anyone who wants it. I thought it was sharp analysis and very funny, and I think (like all of us) the author knows very well she can't =really= influence Joss Whedon. I was particularly intrigued by the idea that Joss Whedon majored in feminist film theory--is this true? That's yet another angle I've been desultorily pursuing over the last couple years; I've got =Men, Women and Chain Saws=, Laura Mulvey's =Visual and Other Pleasures=, and a few more things. (Mulvey is very heavy reading and very Freudian.) Maybe my idea of writing an essay called "Buffy's Gaze" is not so out to lunch after all... Maybe we all watch too much =Xena= (and I don't watch that much), but Tara's interactions with Willow, combined with what we know about Vampire Willow's proclivities, made it seem pretty unmistakable what was going on. Last night I was looking over some old material I'd saved to my hard drive, in particular the discussion we had after "Graduation Day" Part I. Interesting to reread what Gayle predicted for Part II and how little of it came true... A topic we could still discuss. And we've never discussed "Earshot," either. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 06:00:32 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/buffypress [=Entertainment Weekly= Best of 1999--Television] [#2 (behind =The Sopranos=--#1 last year)] "BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (The WB) and ANGEL (The WB) "Like a shrewd blackjack player, writer-producer Joss Whedon doubled-down this season, splitting Buffy Summers from her love interest by sending the broad-shouldered vampire Angel to fight evil in Los Angeles. The result? A familiar show stepping into fresh territory: college life (and an underground rebel group as interested in vampires and demons as the Slayer is), plus a spin-off full of swirling film-noir promise."--Ken Tucker [=TV Guide= The Very Best of TV '99--Shows of the Year] [#5 (#4 for '98, #10 for '97) BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER] "This cult favorite is quite possibly the funniest yet most searing series on our list. Though =Buffy='s heroes greet Sunnydale's supernatural horrors with a wicked, barbed humor, the show also looks so deeply into the adolescent heart of darkness that two episodes, including the explosive season finale, were postponed in the wake of the Columbine tragedy. =Buffy= spawned the year's best spin-off in =Angel=, and the long-distance romance between coed slayer and relocated-to-L.A. vampire...can still--during crossovers- - -produce some of TV's most torrid tear-jerking."--Matt Roush [=TV Guide= Cheers and Jeers 1/1/2000] "CHEERS to quiet successes. The December 14 episode of =Buffy the Vampire Slayer=, titled "Hush," was a masterpiece of suffering in silence and one of this season's best episodes--of =any= series. Written and directed by the show's creator, Joss Whedon, "Hush" was a largely wordless nightmare, thanks to some voice-stealing demons called Gentlemen who float around doing some literally unspeakable things to victims who can't yell. Whedon devised any number of ingenious ways to propel the plot without dialogue, proving that the unsaid can be scarier than all the screams in Hollywood." I also had a nice paragraph from =USA Today= (12/30/99), but managed to lose it. If anybody managed to save it I'd still like to see it. One more slightly-out-of-context quote: "[Director Mike] Leigh grows characters along with stories; the characters flower slowly rather than suddenly. Because you don't know what small surprise awaits you must around the next bend, an aura of mystery permeates every scene in Leigh's films. This aura inspires a pleasant anxiety on the part of the viewer, who senses that things are being withheld, and is willing to hang tight until the masks come off. When the masks do come off, we don't get reductionist high school revelations....Rather, what we see when the mask is lifted is a clearer picture of the person we already sensed through the eyeholes....Leigh's films are not about phony surprise; they're about deferred moments of clarity." - --Matt Zoller Seitz, review of =Topsy-Turvy=, =New York Press= 12/29/99 I think this is a pretty good description of the way we react to Joss Whedon as well. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 13:03:29 EST From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/willow I guess I made the mistake again, clicked "Reply" without noticing that that sends the post to the individual -- anyway, a couple of observations. First, Willow would be bi at most, not gay, since it has been established that she likes guys, and, also, her doppelvamp was bi. If she suddenly turned =exclusively= gay, that would look like a rebound-reaction to her recent sour experiences with men. But, also, that would lose IMO the best thing about showing Willow as bi, which is the continuity with the "Doppelganger" character. Second, all past romantic relationships in BUFFY have developed slowly, and we have gotten to know the characters somewhat before any romantic connections developed between them. Now here a brand-new character appears out of nowhere without the slightest speck of foreshadowing, and before she's had ten minutes of screen time an embryonic romance is developing? It =appears= as though the character was introduced solely as a romantic interest for Willow. But that is just not consistent with the BUFFY style. I can't help but think that Joss is playing with our expectations, and that, even if Willow is shown to be bi, things are not going to go in any obvious way. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 17:15:49 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/willow An "um, yeah" to both Allen and Gayle. A bi Willow (the Salon article did point out that if this relationship develops it's more likely to leave Willow bi rather than exclusively gay) would be an excellent use of foreshadowing from all the way back in the middle of last season ... but, OTOH, to conclude there must be an affair in the brewing because these two women held hands (for non-romantic reasons) and like each other - -- it's the same fallacy that an oversexed male commits when he assumes that any woman who's friendly must want to have sex with him. (I think we've been over that one with Xander.) Allen & Gayle are quite right to issue caution and warning signals. I brought this up mostly because I was tickled that the idea had come up in this other place. Maybe the romance will happen, but at this point it's crystal-ball gazing to say, with full awareness that what we're analyzing is art, not life. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #9 ***************************