From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #60 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Monday, March 13 2000 Volume 02 : Number 060 Today's Subjects: ----------------- o/ninth gate ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/tropes? ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/whiplashes ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/tropes? [Greg Cox <104076.2724@compuserve.com>] o/frances yates ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: o/ninth gate ["Susan J. Kroupa" ] Re: b/comments 3/11 ["Susan J. Kroupa" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 09:54:48 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/ninth gate I've been seeing the TV commercials for the new movie =The Ninth Gate= a lot (during =Buffy= for one thing), and I wouldn't have paid much attention--since it looked like just another schlocky horror movie--if it hadn't starred Johnny Depp (who does not pick his projects for their commercial potential) and if I hadn't discovered it was directed by Roman Polanski (a longtime favorite of mine). So I examined the fine print of the ad (you have to look quick on TV) to see if it was based on a book, and it turned out to be one I'd faintly heard of. If one is book-mad like most of us are, one encounters and glances at, oh, five to ten times as many books as one actually ever reads; and without this extra motivation I might never have read anything by Arturo Perez-Reverte. But I had run across his books before (the chains shelve them in the mystery section), and when I looked at the back cover of the novel in question, =The Club Dumas= (he's written at least two others), I noticed why I had a slight memory of his name: he'd been compared to Umberto Eco. So I went to the library and grabbed a copy of the book and started reading it. And I enjoyed it a lot; it could, in fact, be described as Eco Lite, not tottering under its erudition the way Eco's novels do (much as I love them), but moving along at a somewhat less stately pace. The novel is fluent in rare-bookspeak and bibliography-speak, and namechecks a number of authors and works I've run across elsewhere (there's some mention of alchemy along the way). (And not only is Eco mentioned a couple times in the text, he actually is sort of onstage briefly as a character!) The crux of the plot is two bibliophile items, the original manuscript of a chapter of =The Three Musketeers= and a 17th-century book called =The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows=. The latter features a series of nine engravings (reproduced in the book) that have the same kind of potent symbolic power as tarot cards or alchemical emblems, an aspect of the book I particularly appreciated. The idea was that these engravings could be used to summon the devil, but there was a probem of the authenticity of the three remaining copies, which is what the bookfinder protagonist is hired to investigate. Partway through reading the book I discovered that my local Barnes & Noble had remainder copies of the British trade paperback edition (confusingly titled =The Dumas Club=, though it's the same English translation--the original Spanish title was =El Club Dumas=) for $3.98, so I bought it and took the library copy back. The British edition is superior because it has more illustrations reproduced (which is important). The whole "satanist" element is really compressed into the last 15 pages or so, and the very end (last two pages) is remarkably curt and not crystal-clear as to what happened; some people might find it a very unsatisfactory ending. I was just a little puzzled; the rest of the book was good enough that I thoroughly enjoyed it, and even if the movie isn't that good the experience will have been worthwhile. Anyway...knowing the book had been filmed lent an interesting air to reading it, since I was trying to figure out how they'd changed it, just from the book itself. The first consideration is that there's a double plot (revolving around the two rare items), and the reader is kept in suspense about their relation to one another; my guess was that they would drop the =Three Musketeers= plot completely (just the change in title suggested that). Johnny Depp is probably at least ten years too young for his role as the bookfinder, and Emanuelle Seignier about ten years too old for hers (and the age difference is commented on in the book). But I knew from the commercials (which flash the engravings from the =Nine Doors= book on the screen) that the occult plot was probably there in full. Now, I haven't seen the movie yet (though I will), but I have read a handful of reviews. Their tenor can be indicated merely by the headlines: DEVILED EGGHEAD (my favorite), =Entertainment Weekly= (D+); BEDEVILED 'NINTH GATE' NEVER QUITE CATCHES FIRE, =USA Today= (2 stars); OFF TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET, TRUSTY BOOK IN HAND (=NY Times=); POLANSKI'S LATEST IS A LOSER RIGHT OUT OF THE 'GATE,' =NY Post= (1 1/2 stars), and just to be different, DEVILISHLY WITTY 'GATE' IS A KEEPER, =NY Daily News= (3 stars). (The latter reviewer was also the only one who had any use for =Mission to Mars=.) And Roger Ebert didn't like it much either (I looked up his review online; it's very amusingly written). And my guess was correct: just from the reviews I can tell that they dropped the extra plotline, combined and reassigned characters, and beefed up the satanist element. This =could= work, but the reviewers seem to be saying it didn't. A couple compare the movie to Kubrick's =Eyes Wide Shut= (now out on video), which is a danger sign: that movie has already become reviewerese for "arty," "too slow," and "not fun." But as I rather liked the Kubrick, that doesn't put me off very much. So forewarned, I think it's entirely possible I might enjoy the film anyway. We'll see. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 09:57:38 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/tropes? Here's an interesting aspect of =The Dumas Club=. There is a character (played in the movie by Emanuelle Seignier, as I mentioned) who follows the protagonist around, a young woman (nineteen, it's mentioned at one point), blonde, green-eyed, who suddenly at one point in the book displays surprising street- fighting expertise. Made my jaw drop. Not to put too fine a point on it, the character could have been played by SMG. Now, this novel was written in Spain in 1993, so it's highly unlikely that Perez-Reverte has any awareness of the =Buffy= mythology; but it makes me ask, not for the first time, how =do= these tropes replicate themselves On a previous occasion it was a novel called =Mage Heart=, which concerned a young woman--one of the few female mages, and unusually powerful--who became known as Dion the Demonslayer(!), and who in the course of saving her country fell in love with a demon(!!). This book was written by an Australian author, Jane Routley, in 1996; plausibly she could have known the =Buffy= movie, but her book predates the TV show with the Angel plotline. And then there's the Patsy Walker/Hellcat stuff that Hilary brought up. (Is this stuff collected in such a way that one could look for it in a comicbook store?) A more literal-minded critic might try to find evidence that Joss Whedon knew this stuff (and we do know now that he's a longtime Marvel reader), but I'm actually guessing that maybe he doesn't; he's stated before that the line of thought that gave rise to =Buffy= comes from horror movies, wondering what would happen if the blonde girl who always got killed could fight back. It can be pointed out, of course, that this forbidden-love plotline goes back at least as far as =Jane Eyre= and =Wuthering Heights= (and the Gothic literature that gave rise to them; one line of pursuit I haven't given enough time to is that =Buffy= is very, very Gothic in any number of definable ways), if not all the way back to demon-lover ballads and courtly-love literature. But the =specificity= of the similarity of the tropes I've mentioned here is quite startling. The ways of the creative mind are very mysterious; and it makes one believe in Jung's collective unconscious even more so. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 10:17:53 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/whiplashes [Lookee what I found. Hiding in plain sight on my computer is a file simply named "buffy," which alone indicates how early it is; I hadn't looked at it for ages. Turns out that it's my =original= essay on =Buffy=, written (from internal evidence) probably in late 1997, after "Halloween" but certainly before "Surprise"/"Innocence." It's only a draft, of course, but I hadn't realized I'd done even =this= much work on it. It's an interesting document in how it outlines my thinking on the show early on (just about two years ago, roughly 24 episodes in--we're up to 72 now, by the way), and clearly prior to my mythological research taking hold. Here's the embryo of my consideration of the Gothic aspect of the show which I just mentioned again. It seems to me that this is a separate angle about the show from =The Dharma of Buffy=, and also separate from "The Dream Life of Buffy" and whatever I do with the alchemical interpretation I've been puzzling over; I don't really see these very different approaches melding into a single sustained book-length essay, but rather as a collection of differing angles all by the same writer. Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with this, acknowledging readily that it still needs a lot of work, amplification of almost every point, more examples from later in the series, and some kind of clear direction. I haven't begun that further work, but I did fix a few typos and add some necessary attributions. I'm very interested in any comments from the rest of you.] DECONSTRUCTING THE SEGUES OR, WHIPLASHES OF AFFECT IN =BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER= I Introduction =Buffy the Vampire Slayer= embeds in its very title the contradiction of its goofy premise: a seemingly-typical California teenager discovers that she is the Chosen One, "the one girl in all the world with the skill and strength to kill the vampire, blah, blah, blah," as Buffy herself impatiently puts it. The movie Hollywoodizes the concept somewhat; the TV show is closer to creator Josh Whedon's vision. II Generic Taxonomy In considering what we now can refer to as the =Clueless= genre, it seems clear that one of the seminal works in the form is =Heathers=. That film's utterly black satire is largely absent from the amiable =Clueless= itself (call it "=Heathers= Lite" in Greg Cox's phrase), but the latter does preserve =Heathers=' other most salient quality, its quite contemporary social comedy. =Buffy= restores the darkness to the mix, but in a different relation to the comedy. In the usual formulation, =Heathers= is mainstream: it's about =inner= demons, one's own self- destructiveness. =Buffy= is fantasy, and externalizes the demons (vampires). A further expression of the chronological and generic relationship of the three works derives from the fact that we know =Clueless= to have been explicitly based on Jane Austen's =Emma=. In the same schema, =Heathers=' black satire could be described, loosely, as Swiftian; and =Buffy=, which as supernatural horror ultimately descends from the Gothic, and in fact closely adheres to the =Encyclopedia of Fantasy= definition of "new Gothic" (urban fantasy), and also retains the social comedy, would by the same token correspond to the Brontes. And think of =Wuthering Heights=: if Catherine Earnshaw were a martial-arts superhero and Heathcliff a vampire... III Whiplashes of Affect What makes this thoroughly postmodern ghoulash go is what Tom Carson in the =Village Voice= so perceptively pointed out: "earnestness in explicitly silly contexts [read: fantasy?--DGK] can have the same kind of impact that irony in implicitly serious ones once did, and for the same reason: it gets at something true." Every one of the many points of view and attitudes presented in the show is given full weight, and while each may be kidded or even admonished, it is never belittled or dismissed (without reparation). (The partial exception is resident "Heather" Cordelia, whose shallow snootiness mostly serves as comic relief; but even she is given space to be a fully complex human being.) And the writing/directing style is no pomo MTV quick cut "death of affect" routine; when a scene needs to take its time to build tension, that's what it does; high action scenes, on the other hand, get the rapid-fire editing they require. - -- The writing can be astonishingly economical. In the series premiere, a long expository scene is presented as a fight, Giles trying vainly to persuade a reluctant Buffy to take up her slaying duties again. After they exeunt, Xander (eavesdropping from the stacks) comes out and utters one bewildered word: "What?!?" Which is sufficient to reinterpret the preceding scene from the point of view of someone clueless anything is going on. - -- The opening of the second-season premiere is another case in point. We get a leisurely end-of-summer scene between Xander and Willow, taking its time assessing their relationship at that point; suddenly a vampire attacks. Equally suddenly a hand enters the frame; in a quick succession of comicbook-panel cuts--biff, bam, pow!--he goes down. Cut: Buffy (for it is she) turns her head to the camera. "Hi, guys." Turns back as vampire rises again: more comicbook, he turns to dust. Matching shot: Buffy turns to camera again: "Miss me?" Blackout. That's the long and the short of it. - -- One of the most striking moments in the whole series is in the Halloween episode, where a spell turns people into what their costume portrays--"the very embodiment of 'be careful what you wish for,'" as the spellcaster editorializes. Buffy, in her 18th-century gown, spends most of the episode as a fainting flower who does not remember that she is the Slayer. The viewer knows how this TWICE-TOLD TALE [=Encyclopedia of Fantasy= cross-reference] will play itself out: Buffy's vampire nemesis Spike will get her in his clutches, but in the nick of time the spell will be broken and Buffy will regain her memory and save the day. And so it comes to pass; but when the climactic moment arrives, when Buffy very suddenly sits up and cheerily announces, "Hi, honey, I'm home" (the requisite mayhem and denouement following), the effect is downright shocking, in excess of the eucatastrophe of the twice-told tale fulfilled. And I wondered why. The answer, I gradually realized, is that the moment is simultaneously joyful =and frightening=. The key to the moment is that for that instant we are seeing Buffy from Spike's point of view (the camera angle is right over his shoulder); and to Spike, =Buffy is a monster=. (The sudden apparition and banal tagline are characteristic of Freddie Krueger and his ilk.) A superhero (and Buffy most definitely qualifies) almost by definition is a monster: superhuman in ability, divorced from human society (at least in secret-identity mode) and from normal human moral codes, and dangerous to be around (earlier in the episode Buffy arm-twists a student bully into the coke machine). Buffy is all too aware of this, frequently agonizing wistfully over wanting a normal life, to be "a real girl." And so we have another whiplash of affect, this time a =simultaneous= one: Buffy as girl =and= monster, savior =and= destroyer, all of her aspects at once. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 11:28:39 -0500 From: Greg Cox <104076.2724@compuserve.com> Subject: b/tropes? Don, Alas, the Patsy Walker/Hellcat arc invoked earlier is way too diffuse and drawn-out to lend itself to graphic novel compilation, running through several different comic series over many, many years. It's not even a deliberate storyline as such, but just a singularly oddball example of an individual character metamorphosing over the course of decades and under the hands of wildly disparate creators. Actually, the real story behind Patsy's bizarre evolution is simply the effect of changing fashions in the comics market, which have caused Patsy to jump from genre to genre, from lightweight teen romance, to costumed superhero action, to Vertigo-style dark fantasy. (Only in a milieu as continuity-obsessed as the Marvel Universe could one character obstensibly maintain the same identity throughout all these otherwise very different comics series.) If, say, cyberpunk comics become the next hot thing, we can probably expect Patsy to reappear as a streetwise hacker chick. Beyond that, there's probably not much meaning to be derived from her story. (In other words, Don, don't worry; you're not missing a vital text.) Greg ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 20:27:50 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/frances yates "In order to keep this book within bounds, it has been necessary to curtail or omit much material, and to resist the temptation to turn every stone, or to follow every avenue branching out from the fundamental subject." - --Frances Yates, preface to =The Rosicrucian Enlightenment= p. xiv "I am entirely unable to understand all this..." - --=Ibid= p. 183 (on Michael Maier) This past payday I splurged, as I had wanted to for several weeks, and bought the copy of Frances Yates' =The Rosicrucian Enlightenment= I'd tracked down at my local Borders. And I devoured its 250-odd pages over a 48-hour span, which is very unusual for me these last two years. I designated this post as o/ because I think that the book crosses the line from "my research" to "general interest," although it does a good job of placing the alchemical stuff I've been poking around in into its historical context, as I hoped. That said, this is an absolutely fascinating book. It focuses on one brief period, from the 1613 marriage of Frederick V, Elector Palantine of the Rhine, to Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England, until the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, which brought an end to their one-year reign as King and Queen of Bohemia and touched off the Thirty Years' War. Yates extends her discussion backwards and forwards over about a century (late 16th century to late 17th century), but most of what she has to say is about this small slice of time. I'm just parroting facts here; I know nothing about this period of history ("The Thirty Years' War? That was the war that...um...lasted thirty years and...was shorter than the Hundred Year's War...right?" There's a Monty Python routine, or a =Buffy= classroom scene, there). But the burden of her argument, the history of what can be termed "Rosicrucian" ideas, is very hard to summarize, partly because it breaks the mold of a lot of received ideas (my own, anyway). We tend to have a model in our heads that religion/superstition/magic was on one side of a debate, and newly- emerging science was on the other; but as Yates tells the story it wasn't like that at all. For example, to say that "science" "triumphed over" "magic" is to oversimplify to the point of meaninglessness. Chiefly because the Renaissance maguses like Giordano Bruno and John Dee =were= the scientists of the times; and the separation of "science" and "magic" happened much later than we think. Yates constructs, not so much a line as a web of associations, that runs something like this: Hermeticism --> Cabalism --> Alchemy --> Art of Memory --> Rosicrucianism --> Freemasonry --> Science; =all= of these were opposed to organized religion, because their spiritual dimension was not according to dogma, and therefore heretical. Plus their adherents were politically liberal, and so the religio- political institutions of the day persecuted, witch-hunted, and frequently crushed said adherents. For one example, Francis Bacon, one of the pioneers of science, rejected Copernican astronomy and early work on magnetism, not because he thought them unworkable, Yates suggests, but because they smacked of magic, and in the court of James I (who was desperately afraid of anything magical) this was dangerous. Descartes wanted to be a Rosicrucian; Kepler studied disciplines we would now call crackpot; Newton was not only a scientist but also an alchemist, and the reason he never published the voluminous material on alchemy that is still among his papers, unpublished I think to this day, is that he feared for his life. My impression, at this point, is that the science that emerged from this situation, the purely mechanistic model, stripped of any spiritual dimension that could arouse the persecution of the established Church, is a simplification, an =impoverishment=, of the more holistic understanding of the universe that the Renaissance "magicians" had. That, in fact, =something has been lost=. (It's very similar, in fact, to the relationship between Freud's narrow view of human psychology and Jung's.) I'm sensible that I'm still oversimplifying (and possibly misrepresenting) a complex situation I still don't fully understand (or haven't yet succeeded in reconceptualizing). I suspect that there's more information and understanding to be had from Yates' "prequel," =Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition= (my copy of which I suppose I'll tackle next). I'm sure Jennifer can set me right on a few points, as well as confirm my faint memory (since I haven't read the books in a little while now) that =this= is the subject of John Crowley's =Aegypt= sequence and its tagline "there is another history of the world." ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 21:40:53 -0700 From: "Susan J. Kroupa" Subject: Re: o/ninth gate I've been buying Arturo Perez-Reverte's novels in Spanish and in English for our library, and have added them (in English, alas) to my to-read list. His newest THE FENCING MASTER got several starred reviews. Interesting stuff about THE CLUB DUMAS--now I'm even more eager to read it. Sue Donald G. Keller wrote: > > I've been seeing the TV commercials for the new movie =The Ninth > Gate= a lot (during =Buffy= for one thing), and I wouldn't have paid > much attention--since it looked like just another schlocky horror > movie--if it hadn't starred Johnny Depp (who does not pick his > projects for their commercial potential) and if I hadn't discovered > it was directed by Roman Polanski (a longtime favorite of mine). So > I examined the fine print of the ad (you have to look quick on TV) > to see if it was based on a book, and it turned out to be one I'd > faintly heard of. > > If one is book-mad like most of us are, one encounters and glances > at, oh, five to ten times as many books as one actually ever reads; > and without this extra motivation I might never have read anything > by Arturo Perez-Reverte. But I had run across his books before (the > chains shelve them in the mystery section), and when I looked at the > back cover of the novel in question, =The Club Dumas= (he's written at > least two others), I noticed why I had a slight memory of his name: he'd > been compared to Umberto Eco. > > So I went to the library and grabbed a copy of the book and started > reading it. And I enjoyed it a lot; it could, in fact, be described as Eco > Lite, not tottering under its erudition the way Eco's novels do (much as I > love them), but moving along at a somewhat less stately pace. The novel is > fluent in rare-bookspeak and bibliography-speak, and namechecks a number > of authors and works I've run across elsewhere (there's some mention of > alchemy along the way). (And not only is Eco mentioned a couple times in > the text, he actually is sort of onstage briefly as a character!) > > The crux of the plot is two bibliophile items, the original manuscript of > a chapter of =The Three Musketeers= and a 17th-century book called =The > Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows=. The latter features a series of > nine engravings (reproduced in the book) that have the same kind of potent > symbolic power as tarot cards or alchemical emblems, an aspect of the book > I particularly appreciated. The idea was that these engravings could be > used to summon the devil, but there was a probem of the authenticity of > the three remaining copies, which is what the bookfinder protagonist is > hired to investigate. > > Partway through reading the book I discovered that my local Barnes & Noble > had remainder copies of the British trade paperback edition (confusingly > titled =The Dumas Club=, though it's the same English translation--the > original Spanish title was =El Club Dumas=) for $3.98, so I bought it and > took the library copy back. The British edition is superior because it has > more illustrations reproduced (which is important). > > The whole "satanist" element is really compressed into the last 15 pages > or so, and the very end (last two pages) is remarkably curt and not > crystal-clear as to what happened; some people might find it a very > unsatisfactory ending. I was just a little puzzled; the rest of the book > was good enough that I thoroughly enjoyed it, and even if the movie isn't > that good the experience will have been worthwhile. > > Anyway...knowing the book had been filmed lent an interesting air to > reading it, since I was trying to figure out how they'd changed it, just > from the book itself. The first consideration is that there's a double > plot (revolving around the two rare items), and the reader is kept in > suspense about their relation to one another; my guess was that they would > drop the =Three Musketeers= plot completely (just the change in title > suggested that). Johnny Depp is probably at least ten years too young for > his role as the bookfinder, and Emanuelle Seignier about ten years too old > for hers (and the age difference is commented on in the book). But I knew > from the commercials (which flash the engravings from the =Nine Doors= > book on the screen) that the occult plot was probably there in full. > > Now, I haven't seen the movie yet (though I will), but I have read a > handful of reviews. Their tenor can be indicated merely by the > headlines: DEVILED EGGHEAD (my favorite), =Entertainment Weekly= > (D+); BEDEVILED 'NINTH GATE' NEVER QUITE CATCHES FIRE, =USA Today= (2 > stars); OFF TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET, TRUSTY BOOK IN HAND (=NY > Times=); POLANSKI'S LATEST IS A LOSER RIGHT OUT OF THE 'GATE,' =NY Post= > (1 1/2 stars), and just to be different, DEVILISHLY WITTY 'GATE' IS A > KEEPER, =NY Daily News= (3 stars). (The latter reviewer was also the only > one who had any use for =Mission to Mars=.) And Roger Ebert didn't like it > much either (I looked up his review online; it's very amusingly written). > > And my guess was correct: just from the reviews I can tell that they > dropped the extra plotline, combined and reassigned characters, and beefed > up the satanist element. This =could= work, but the reviewers seem to be > saying it didn't. A couple compare the movie to Kubrick's =Eyes Wide Shut= > (now out on video), which is a danger sign: that movie has already become > reviewerese for "arty," "too slow," and "not fun." But as I rather liked > the Kubrick, that doesn't put me off very much. So forewarned, I think > it's entirely possible I might enjoy the film anyway. We'll see. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 22:19:54 -0700 From: "Susan J. Kroupa" Subject: Re: b/comments 3/11 Don, I admire tremendously the depth of your knowledge and your patient ferreting of the underlying meanings of BUFFY, but I think that if Faith (in Buffy's body) wasn't referring to herself when she was calling Buffy those names at the end, then, at the very least, I think we were meant to _wonder_ about it. Too many other people have seen it way I saw it--which isn't to say that you're not right and Joss is once again misleading us. If Faith really was referring to Buffy and not herself, however, then the whole episode is, imo, much weaker. Part of me understands David's unsympathetic assessment of Faith, but a greater part yearns (like Buffy does, I think) for Faith to be rehabilited. The fight scene as I saw it--Faith yelling at herself after a series of shattering experiences which have made her really want to be Buffy--brought me to tears. The fact that she uses the same words as she did earlier doesn't convince me that she's referring to Buffy. People tend to use the same vocabulary when they're angry, and it is a powerful dramatic device to use the same words with an altered or opposite meaning. At any rate, didn't anyone think there was more to the Faith/Buffy mirror scene than just the evil Faith gloating over being in Buffy's body? To me, it showed again, how much of Faith's bad girl act is a desperate bravado covering a wish, deep down, to have Buffy's life, to be good. I'm not saying this wish excuses Faith's behavior. It doesn't, but it makes it more poignant or at least more interesting. Sue Donald G. Keller wrote: > > Let's take yet another bash at this very vexing most recent new episode, > "Who Are You?" (Another scan through, another swatch of notes...) > > To begin with, rather than write out some formula every time, I've decided > to use the abbreviations B/F (for Buffy-as-Faith) and F/B (for > Faith-as-Buffy). (Note to music analysts: B and F of course define an > interval of a tritone, the =diabolus in musica=, the most dissonant > interval.) > > I had another look at the climactic confrontation in the church. Starting > from the point where B/F has killed the vampire threatening F/B and > they're staring at one another: F/B then attacks B/F, getting into that > double-time punching mode we're familiar with when Buffy is really upset > and channeling it into aggression (cf. the fight against Angel at the end > of "Innocence" and the fight against Spike in "The Harsh Light of > Day"). B/F manages to knock F/B away for a moment (and could have run away > at that point, just to note again that they're evenly matched and either > is able to gain a momentary advantage). This dialogue follows (Fair Use > Only as usual): > > B/F: [tightly] You can't win this. > > F/B: [wildly] SHUT UP! Do you think I'm afraid of you? [grabs B/F, throws > her on the floor, pummels her] You're > nothing!...disgusting!...murderous...bitch! You're > nothing!...disgusting!... > > [B/F grabs her hand; the switching-device takes effect; both fall back, > dazed; FAITH scrambles up and runs away. BUFFY checks herself somewhat > wonderingly. END SCENE] > > Before I go any further, let me jump back to the confrontation between > Buffy and Faith on campus in "This Year's Girl." Not the whole scene, just > a short list of phrases uttered by Faith in the course of this one short > conversation: > > "You tried to gut me, Blondie." > > "...better-than-thou..." > > "...this self-righteous blonde chick stabs me..." > > "...the chick [Faith] she [Buffy] nearly killed for him..." > > "You took my life, B--payback's a bitch!" > > What this says to me (combined with the evidence from the dreams) is that > Faith is consumed with, obsessed by, two facts: 1) Buffy tried to murder > her 2) Buffy still thinks she's better than Faith. > > So when B/F says "You can't win this [because I'm going to beat you]," F/B > just snaps. And the whole "you're nothing, murderous bitch" is exactly in > line with what Faith said to Buffy on campus. So I'm still inclined to use > Occam's Razor in this case and say Faith was talking about Buffy, not > herself. > > About the title of the episode. Important item left out of the F/B and > Riley scene: when she scrambles off the bed, just before she says "What do > you want from...her?" she says "Who are you?" which is another curious > question. F/B doesn't know Riley at all of course, and apparently is > wondering about his motives. (I =think= the other instance of the title > line is B/F talking to the Council guys.) > > By the way, two significant lines during the Buffy/Faith battle at the end > of "This Year's Girl" > > BUFFY: "[Riley]'s not big on sleaze." > > FAITH: [re going after Riley]"...something to remember me by after I move > on." > > Both true, and as it turns out, not contradictory. > > Good point from Meredith about Faith's sexual experience being mostly as a > user (and possibly being used), and that's why Riley's straightforward > gentlemanly kindness (as Hilary pointed out) really threw her for a > loop. Not at all the experience she expected. > > Which brings me to David's point that what Faith learned in this episode > was that Buffy's life was different than Faith thought it was, and maybe > it was worth sticking with rather than sabotaging. This is plausible to > me. Is Faith capable of change? Accepting responsibility? Taking on > Buffy's life? That's not how I originally "read" the episode; and if she > =had= started to feel that way, why did she go to the > airport? However...she =did= leave the airport to go to the church, and > for that matter she stayed the rest of the night with Riley. I suppose > we'll find out as things develop how this experience has affected Faith > (I'm =sure= we'll find out how it's affected Buffy), and to my mind it > could go either way. > > An interesting parallel: what does F/B say when 1) Joyce hopes she and > Buffy can spend some time together 2) Spike foresees a confrontation > between him and Buffy? In both cases, "Count on it." Which, at those > times, before the thanks from the girl she saves (which I'm willing to > consider the turning-point if it turns out Faith "reforms"), was a > baldfaced lie. > > Another interesting parallel. I was noticing that the episode being rerun > Tuesday is "Something Blue" (definitely the funniest, and one of the best, > episodes this season), and I suddenly realized that Buffy's little "Look > at my neck..." speech to Spike was very much in the same vein as F/B's > speech to Spike. Two Slayers with but a single thought? > > And I was thinking back again to the =Entertainment Weekly= thing where > SMG said that Buffy's dream date would be Spike, but Joss Whedon said "no > more vampires." Note that the boss has now come up with =two different= > ways for Buffy to "playact" a liaison with Spike. > > Re Faith's acting like an experienced Slayer enough to cow Buffy a > little: Faith isn't =all= bluster, but she's a lot bluster; and has > absolutely no =outward= self-doubt. If she had killed, say, half a dozen > or a dozen vampires, she'd feel like she was just as good as Buffy, > despite Buffy's =much= greater experience. (Note the difference with > Riley's feeling his 17 kills/captures was dwarfed by Buffy.) > > Allen: So if you =can= understand F/B's phone conversation, what =is= the > text of the short phrase she mumbles in between the card's expiration date > and "I'll take it"? I still can't parse it. > > One more thing for this go-round. I've been thinking what an achievement > it is that the writers have taken these two young women (SMG and Eliza > Dushku), not so different in "type" from dozens of their peers in other > teen shows and movies (though obviously in the upper talent bracket) and > created for them (in collaboration with the abilities of the actors > embodying them) two characters who are not only strong, independent women, > but who are =scary=, downright menacing, whose sudden appearance on the > scene (see Faith turning around in the campus scene, for example) can be > absolutely chilling. A pair of really great characters. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #60 ****************************