From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #57 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Thursday, March 9 2000 Volume 02 : Number 057 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: b/comments3/7 ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: m/beethoven ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/comments3/7 ["Hilary L. Hertzoff" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 12:52:57 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/comments3/7 On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > Let's start with a small mystery: what did Faith-as-Buffy order over > the phone? Neither Deirdre or I could understand what she said at > the end of the conversation besides "I'll take it." Anybody else do > better? I was clearly not paying attention: I thought she was selling Buffy's credit cards (or more likely Joyce's, come to think of it: one tends to doubt that Buffy has any credit cards) to one of those illegal vendors who sell stolen credit-card numbers. > but the =most= plausible explanation > is that it was her plane ticket; falling in line with this is the > slightly odd "I've got time to kill" line and her checking the clock > at Riley's. I thought at first she'd bought a ticket at the airport, > but that doesn't make as much sense--she didn't have any money to > speak of. (And whose passport was it?) Plane ticket? I can't remember this airport scene; and I thought that, in the end, Faith left town by bus. (Since we know she'll turn up in LA, and we know where Sunnydale is, bus makes a lot more sense to get there.) > They =did= just barely touch on the conflict between Buffy and > Forrest; but Faith-as-Buffy didn't really say anything to change the > situation (another lost opportunity for Faith to mess things up). > Her statement about being a slayer, not a killer, is awfully > interesting, though; is Buffy right after all, and Faith does feel > remorse for killing several people? Or is she simply differentiating > herself from Buffy, whom she believes, deep down, is a murderer? > (More on this shortly.) Or her killings of people don't count in her mind, because they were accidental and/or necessary to her job. That sort of self-delusion is extremely common. Remember "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" -- a defintion of sex, btw, that turns out to be very widely held: Clinton wasn't lying, he was being self-delusional. > Somewhere in between these two mysteries in "size" is: what was Faith's > attitude towards Buffy's life? I have two possibilities in mind, which are > not mutually exclusive: 1) she wanted to try out Buffy's life and see how > she liked it (on =some= level, as Susan pointed out, she wants to =be= > Buffy)--but that conflicts with the fact that she seems to have bought a > plane ticket right off the bat; 2) she was simply trying not to blow her > cover, and therefore tried to do what Buffy would do. (Thus her sudden > realization that, oh yeah, she oughta go kill that vampire.) Neither of the above, I think. Faith became Buffy to keep from getting caught, plain and simple. That's what Wilkins gave her the gizmo for in the first place. As for what she was going to do next, she clearly had given the matter little if any thought and was just improvising. What makes the following events interesting is the combination of Faith's confusion, improvisation, and conflicted feelings. But this merely pushes the question back a stage. What, then, is Faith's attitude once she _is_ Buffy? A little bit of trying not to blow her cover (but not very much), and a little bit of trying out Buffy's life (but not _wanting_ to be Buffy, at least not on the conscious level: the unconscious is of course a very different matter), but mostly just trying to be herself and finding that it wasn't the same after all: with the gang, with the girl in the Bronze, and with Riley (read: whatever guy she happened to pick up; Riley was just convenient) above all. > Was the thanks from the girl a defining moment? It did seem to take her by > surprise. My surmise has always been that Faith wasn't a Slayer very long > before coming to Sunnydale; Kendra was killed in May and Faith showed up > that same October (roughly), so she only had a few months' experience. Faith gave off an air, when she first appeared, of being a seasoned Slayer, so much so that she gave Buffy a bit of an inferiority complex for a while. To what degree was this an act? Did either Buffy or Giles think, at that point, "Oh come on, she can't have been doing this for more than four months?" > And then Buffy-as-Faith shows up. Did anybody else get their loyalties a > little confused in that fight? I got thrown off myself because they > composed a shot almost =identical= to the one near the end of > "Consequences" where Faith kills Mr. Trick and saves Buffy: the vampire > threatening "Buffy" suddenly stiffens, turns to dust, and there's > "Faith" staring at her. I forgot for a moment who was who. I didn't get confused -- the characters might, since they don't know what's going on -- but to me, SMG as Faith was no more Buffy than SMG in those Maybelline commercials is Buffy. Same actor, different character, period. But the parallel with the death of Trick is very interesting. > How did Willow's "homemade" switching-device work? We really didn't see it > at the fight scene. It seems to me that both of them, on being returned to > their own bodies, were a little more dazed than they were at the first > switch; was it because of the homemade nature of the device? That was disappointing, I agree. Deus ex machina in its effect, if not in its creation. Which reminds me to agree with Allen that the spell-casting scene was really nifty! Mesmerizing choreography, beautiful camera angles and movement, cheap but well-used sfx: I found it charming. > Just a few more small things. The song that starts playing halfway through > the scene with Spike is my favorite song from the new Cure album > =Bloodflowers=. Thanks: I appreciate learning that. That's a return for my knowing what several people didn't, the identity of the music Giles plays during his lecture in "Hush". > Speaking of the Council...are they =all= utterly inept? Even Giles, if you > go back to the very beginning of the series, seemed a little bumbling and > at sea. (Though he picked up fairly quickly.) It was kind of depressing > how easily Buffy-as-Faith managed to foil them. I don't think they're supposed to be inept, any more than red-shirts on Star Trek are _supposed_ to be accident-prone: the necessities of the plot just make it always turn out that way. > Prediction: Adam gets dismembered by season's end. Please, please, oh please, pretty please? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 12:55:59 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: m/beethoven On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > David: When you go to the library you have to take potluck > sometimes. So I got Richard Goode doing the "Waldstein" and > "Appassionata" and the nameless one in between (#21-23, opp. 53-4 & > 57); Louis Lortie (a pianist I don't know; but they library has what > appears to be his complete Beethoven cycle) doing both Op. 27 > fantasias (#13-14, the latter of course the "Moonlight") plus the > "Pastoral" (#15); and #28-29 (opp. 101 & 106), the latter the > "Hammerklavier." And Alfred Brendel from his most recent cycle (I > have an entire earlier cycle on cutout LPs in storage) doing the > last three (#30-32, opp. 109-111). ALfred Brendel: I forgot about him. I have mixed feelings about him: he's not as cool and classical a pianist as I'd like. I have an LP of him performing the Waldstein. > I find that I basically don't like the middle-period ones that much, > though as always I admire Beethoven's consistent rhythmic energy; > the major exception is the "Moonlight." You realize, of course, that the "Moonlight" is early, not mid, Beethoven? 1801/02, earlier than the 2nd Symphony (which is Op. 36). > Gayle: Too bad you never got to know the rest of the "Moonlight"; > the first movement of course is a brilliant conception (kind of > proto-minimalism, in a way); the second is one of those halting > German dances (minuets) Beethoven is so fond of (which late quartet > has the "alla danza tedesca" movement?); the third finishes the sonata > with a typical =furioso= flourish. Like the 5th Symphony, the rest of the > piece continues the classic first movement in strong fashion. The first time I heard the rest of the "Moonlight" was when Schroeder played parts of the other movements on a Peanuts special. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 16:32:46 -0500 (EST) From: "Hilary L. Hertzoff" Subject: Re: b/comments3/7 On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > Let's start with a small mystery: what did Faith-as-Buffy order over > the phone? Neither Deirdre or I could understand what she said at > the end of the conversation besides "I'll take it." Anybody else do > better? I thought at first she'd ordered something expensive and > useless just to cause trouble, but the =most= plausible explanation > is that it was her plane ticket; falling in line with this is the > slightly odd "I've got time to kill" line and her checking the clock > at Riley's. I thought at first she'd bought a ticket at the airport, > but that doesn't make as much sense--she didn't have any money to > speak of. (And whose passport was it?) I thought from the start that she had called the airport and that the "I'll take it" refered to the ticket (either the cost or the flight time). And then she decided to kill a little time before her flight... I don't think she really planned what she was going to do; she just was trying to keep herself from getting bored. And I think that she was too afraid of being caught out (she has seen the Scooby gang in action) to cause the sort of trouble that might result in someone noticing she wasn't Buffy. > > The biggest mystery, perhaps, is =what= the hell happened between > Faith-as-Buffy and Riley. I'm still puzzling over this; but I'm > tending towards the opposite explanation from others here: maybe she =did= > have an orgasm, =and that's exactly what freaked her out=. =Especially= > when Riley then said "I love you," which is when she really lost it. The > possibility that David mentioned--that the mind and the body were somewhat > in dissonance, as Tara pointed out--may have had an effect (perhaps > Buffy's body responded in ways that spun out of Faith's control?). > > Anyway...her faltering statement "What do you want from...her?" > is very odd, especially to Riley, who had =no= idea what could be > wrong. Did Faith feel manipulated by the situation? Out of control, > certainly. She also says that it's "meaningless," and then insists > "nothing" is wrong. > Faith has no idea how to deal with kindness...I imagine that she's had very little of it in her life and Riley is kindness and all-American goodness personified. The fact that Riley was gentle with her and that he had continued being gentle after he'd gotten "what he wanted" from her threw her for a loop, I think. Even the mayor wanted something from her in exchange for his kindnesses. > They =did= just barely touch on the conflict between Buffy and > Forrest; but Faith-as-Buffy didn't really say anything to change the > situation (another lost opportunity for Faith to mess things up). > Her statement about being a slayer, not a killer, is awfully > interesting, though; is Buffy right after all, and Faith does feel > remorse for killing several people? Or is she simply differentiating > herself from Buffy, whom she believes, deep down, is a murderer? > (More on this shortly.) But she didn't know who Forrest was and throughout the episode she was most cautious with the people she didn't know because she couldn't gage the closeness of their relationship with Buffy and couldn't tell what they might catch her on. She doesn't attack Tara until she realizes that Buffy has never met her. > > Somewhere in between these two mysteries in "size" is: what was Faith's > attitude towards Buffy's life? I have two possibilities in mind, which are > not mutually exclusive: 1) she wanted to try out Buffy's life and see how > she liked it (on =some= level, as Susan pointed out, she wants to =be= > Buffy)--but that conflicts with the fact that she seems to have bought a > plane ticket right off the bat; 2) she was simply trying not to blow her > cover, and therefore tried to do what Buffy would do. (Thus her sudden > realization that, oh yeah, she oughta go kill that vampire.) > > But =something= persuaded her that she needed to leave the airport and go > to the church; if it wasn't the thanks from the girl, what was it? Just a > sense of Buffyesque duty? Seems dubious. > Again, very interesting dialog with Riley outside the church: "I'm > Buffy. I have to do this." (Falls under the "cover" rubric, I > think.) "Don't tell me what to do" was in character for both Slayers. Then > inside the church it was quite amusing to hear her say she was "the one > and only" Slayer. > I think it was the result of a sense of duty (her own) that she thought was long dead being stirred by a combination of kindness and respect that she rarely got as Faith. i.e. Thinking "Nobody cares if I do this or not so why should I" only to find that somebody does care and is grateful and maybe this is worthwhile after all. > > Gayle: since you know superheroes better than I do, can you talk a bit > about the "superhero monomyth," especially as Buffy follows it? For > example, her birth is pretty much normal (which the hero in Campbell's > monomyth is not). > On a really weird side note of the Buffy/superhero theme, I don't know how many of the people on this list are familiar with the Marvel comics superhero Patsy Walker/Hellcat but I noticed the following parallels: Patsy Walker started out as a star of girls romance comics in the late 40's ("The Girl Who Could be You) Pretty and popular and the perfect 50's teen. Buffy Summers was also pretty and popular and the perfect 90's teen. After her romance magazine was cancelled, Patsy hooked up with several superheroes and discovered an amazing athletic ability; she was taken away by Moondragon and developed some psychic abilities as well. Buffy was found by her watcher and discovered both amazing athletic ability and some psychic abilities as well. Patsy found love with Daimon Hellstrom (the devil's son who had renounced his evil heritage) and went off with him to California to fight demons and the forces of evil (and probably vampires) Buffy fell in love with Angel (a vampire with a soul) lives in California and fights guess what. Daimon had his dark powers restored and is currently wrecking havok on the world at large. As did Angel last season. And this is where the parallel breaks down barring future events: Patsy is currently dead in the Marvel Universe. Buffy's alive, has restored Angel to goodness and is still fighting the good fight. Although...Patsy did die in 94-95 and Buffy showed up on tv in 97... Hilary L. Hertzoff Then she was smoked, delicately. Mamaroneck Public Library She was delicately smoked. Mamaroneck, NY Delicately smoked was she. hhertzof@wlsmail.wls.lib.ny.us - _Arlene Sardine_ hhertzoff@worldnet.att.net by Chris Raschka ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #57 ****************************