From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #39 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Saturday, February 19 2000 Volume 02 : Number 039 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/ergonomics of weapons ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/dharmabook ["Donald G. Keller" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 02:16:28 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/ergonomics of weapons About a year ago a coworker of mine in the proofreading department at the investment bank where we work pointed out a curious phenomenon concerning the bankers and their beepers. While most of them wore it in what might be termed "holster" position (right side front of the belt) and a few of them wore it in "wallet" position (right side rear of the belt), a substantial number of the women bankers wore theirs square in the small of their backs. Which struck us as an odd and awkward position. I actually went up to one of them who was on good terms with the proofreaders and asked her about it; while she pondered the question she reached behind her and in one smooth motion pulled her beeper off her belt and looked at it, which pretty much demolished the "awkward" theory; the only answer she could come up with, though, was that when she wore a suit jacket it covered the beeper. After that I began noticing that it wasn't just beepers; both Buffy and Faith had a habit of stowing weapons in the small of their backs. In the teaser to "Prophecy Girl" Buffy carefully pulls a stake from under her jacket behind her back; in "Band Candy" when she takes the gun away from Ethan Rayne she stows it in her rear waistband; in "Graduation Day" I Faith pulls a knife on Lester the professor from the same spot. So you can imagine my amusement during "The 'I' in Team" when Buffy stowed her new beeper in the small of her back... ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 02:25:21 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/dharmabook I think I've found the epigraph (or maybe =another= epigraph; I think I may have a couple already) for =The Dharma of Buffy=: "I shall approach the [work] as a psychological document, a record in symbolic imagery of an intense inner experience--as though it were a dream which needs interpretation and elaboration of its images for their meaning to emerge fully. I shall not explore to what extent [its creator] was conscious of the general or the personal implications of his own symbols. Whether he was or was not is irrelevant to our purpose....We can only be sure that there is much more [therein than its creator] realized or consciously intended." - --Edward Edinger, Introduction, =Melville's Moby-Dick: A Jungian Commentary= While I'm at it, let me do something I've been meaning to do since this list started, and get some feedback from the assembled multitude. Here is the table of contents, as I currently have it, of: THE DHARMA OF BUFFY Introduction: "You've Thought Way Too Much About This" 1. Buffy as Hero/Buffy as Superhero 2. Buffy's Shadows 3. Dumezil and Trifunctionality a. The Three Functions of the Slayerettes b. Aesir:Vanir c. Pandavas::Slayerettes 4. The Dharma of Buffy a. Buffy the Kshatriya b. Indra the Demonslayer c. The Three Sins of the Slayers 5. The Triple Father as Adversary a. "Helpless" and =The Silence of the Lambs= b. =Heathers= and "The Zeppo" To annotate briefly: the introduction would set the stage, briefly describing the show and justifying my attention toward it (the quote is Willow to Xander in "Innocence" re Buffy). "Buffy as Hero/Buffy as Superhero" would relate her "hero's journey" to Joseph Campbell's monomyth in =The Hero with a Thousand Faces= (to establish the show's =fundamental= mythicity), and then to distinguish the ways in which Buffy =doesn't= follow that pattern (no extraordinary birth, for example) because she follows the superhero pattern. (This is the weakest part of my exposition because I don't have to hand any critical literature on superheroes, and it's not a part of pop culture I know very well. I wish I could simply do without this first part, but I don't see how I can.) "Buffy's Shadows" introduces the character-schema we've just been talking about, how this relates to Jungian archetypes, and how it describes the basic character-tensions of the show. "Dumezil and Trifunctionality" (need a snappier title) introduces a series of mythic patterns discerned by Georges Dumezil and how they relate to =Buffy=: the war (and subsequent joining of forces) of the Aesir and Vanir in Norse mythology (Odin/Thor, 1st/2nd functions, vs. Frey and Freya, 3rd function) and how this relates to the Slayerettes; similarly, how the Pandava brothers, heroes of the =Mahabharata=, break down according to the three functions in parallel to the Slayerettes. "The Dharma of Buffy" is the central portion of the essay: specifically linking Buffy to the warrior function in Hindu and other Indo-European mythology; the parallels between the career of the warrior-god Indra and Buffy's exploits; and the theme of the "three sins of the warrior" as it applies to both Buffy and Faith. "The Triple Father as Adversary" is a close structural reading (with diagrams!) of two =Buffy= episodes, paralleling their structures with other recent pop-culture works. At the moment parts 2, 4, and 5 exist in some sort of draft (having formed the basic text of the "lectures" I've delivered at science fiction conventions); the rest is pretty much still in my head. Does this make sense as a structure for a long essay? Too much stuff? Too little? Should it be separate essay? I welcome your comments. It seems to me at the moment that whatever else I have to hand probably can't be shoehorned in; "The Dream Life of Buffy" is going to be pretty long on its own, and I'm not sure =what= to do with "The =Coniunctio= of Buffy and Angel," the application of the alchemical symbolism. But I'm thinking that if Readercon wants me to do more =Buffy= stuff this year I may do the two dream analyses I've so far completed plus take a shy at the alchemical stuff. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #39 ****************************