From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #68 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Sunday, March 26 2000 Volume 02 : Number 068 Today's Subjects: ----------------- o/amazon high ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/buffybooknotes ["Donald G. Keller" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 14:22:13 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/amazon high I'm feeling scandalized. Meredith tipped me off that I ought to watch =Xena= last week (which I don't always do; guess I've seen one out of every three or four this season) because Selma Blair was in it. Having seen her hilarious slapstick performance in =Cruel Intentions= (which sat oddly with the rest of the movie, not her fault) and a few episodes of her so-so WB sitcom =Zoe=, the thought of her on =Xena= was a very pleasant cognitive dissonance. Which they played to the hilt. Just the sight of her in her bright blue shirt standing in open country confronting an animal-skin-clad hunting party of Amazons started me giggling, and I basically laughed myself silly the whole episode. =After= I watched it, Meredith filled me in on what was going on (and can add any details I omit): Selma Blair's portion of the episode (a flashback, Xena's shamanic vision) was scenes from a pilot entitled =Amazon High= put together by the =Hercules=/=Xena= people after =Hercules= came to an end, as a replacement: the story of a young woman from our time cast back to hunter-gatherer days who falls in with a tribe of Amazons. The pilot, however, was not picked up, heaven knows why; and so what got cobbled together instead were the two half-hour shows =Jack of All Trades= and =Cleopatra 2525=, Dumb and Dumber as it were. =Jack= (starring cult fave Bruce Campbell as an American spy in 1800 fighting the French) has sometimes been =OK= (but never really that good); =Cleopatra= (about an exotic dancer in a future where machines have taken over) is one of the worst TV shows I've seen in years. (What can you say about a show that =voluntarily= sets its theme lyrics to "In the Year 2525"???) The frugal =Xena= people salvaged at least =some= of the =Amazon High= pilot by building a =Xena= episode around it as a frame (much as the original =Star Trek= pilot was reused). So at least we got to see some of it. It's =not= a new concept, heaven knows; George Alec Effinger's "Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson" (about a preppie-- nicknamed Muffy, of course--transported to Barsoom) must be something like two decades old (it had several sequels); and it seems pretty obvious that =Buffy= is a kind of variation itself. But it's a concept with obvious comic possibilities (Clueless Girl Goes Native, with the inevitable culture clashes), some of which they took up in the scenes here. And it also has not-as-obvious dramatic possibilities: even a featherbrained teen from our time Knows Things that hunter-gatherer tribes have no concept of: such as how to ride a horse (which played an important part in the episode). (Or: how about the distinct possibility that Clueless Girl took archery in gym? =Even if= she's =absolutely no good= at it, she still possesses the concept, which she could pass along to her more physically-adept adopted tribeswomen. Etc.) (And how about this: what if she did get together with the hunky cannibal tribesman who saved her life--and got pregnant? There's a whole second season's worth of plotlines there.) So I'm scandalized. =Who= thought those other two shows would "fly" better than =Amazon High=? The more I've thought about it (and I keep coming back to it) the more I think that the show had as much potential as =Buffy= (a cheerleader who fights vampires? where can you go with =that=?), and I'm seriously disappointed that we'll never get to see it. Almost makes one want to write the novel... ...but almost as in a shamanic vision I can see what research =that= would entail: Joseph Campbell's =Primitive Mythology=, Frazer's =Golden Bough=, Eliade's =Shamanism=, Neumann's =Origin of Consciousness= and =The Great Mother= (all huge tomes), heaping gobs of Levi-Strauss, all the Amazon material (fact and fiction) I could dig up, many episodes of =Xena=, a skim through =Clan of the Cave Bear= and ilk (at least to see what =not= to do), etc. etc. etc. No, I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 14:25:34 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/buffybooknotes David: I'm glad to see some more credentials in re David Lavery, and that you have reason to respect him. I have the =X-Files= book, which I'll talk about in a minute. As for his co-editor, Jennifer may recall she met Rhonda Wilcox at the International Conference on the Fantastic (where Wilcox was delivering a paper on =Buffy=, I believe), and put me in touch with her; she and I have traded e-mails and texts, and she's treated me as an "independent scholar" and colleague. In fact, when I e-mailed Wilcox, she replied that she had tried to e-mail me previously about the project, and didn't have my current address. She welcomed any ideas I had, so I sent her half a dozen mini-proposals ("Buffy's Shadows," "The Dharma of Buffy," the dream analyses, etc.) for her to choose from, and she will be getting back to me. So the wheels are set in motion. I picked up a copy of ="Deny All Knowledge": Reading the X-Files= (ed. David Lavery, Angela Hague, and Marla Cartwright, Syracuse University Press 1996) a couple years ago because I suspected (correctly) that it was a model for the kind of book I wanted to write about =Buffy=. It has ten modest-length essays on the show; the ones I've read are quite sound and very interesting. I particularly appreciated these two: "'Last Week We Had an Omen': The Mythological =X-Files=" by Leslie Jones takes a specifically Dumezilian approach (the epigraph is the first paragraph of =The Destiny of the Warrior=) to not only the mythological qualities of the show, but also the folkoric (Thompson numbers and the like). "'What Do You Think?': =The X-Files=, Liminality, and Gender Pleasure" by Rhonda Wilcox (aha!) and J.P. Williams, covers a great deal of ground very capably: Laura Mulvey's feminist film theory about the male gaze; Mulder and Scully's relationship as a sexually- sublimated partnering of equals; to use Levi-Strauss shorthand (which they do not), the correspondence Holmes:Watson::Mulder:Scully; "liminality" in the sense that both partly contradict typical gender stereotypes; and the parallels between Scully and Clarice Starling from =The Silence of the Lambs=. To my mind all this hangs together, and not only says a lot about =X-Files= but (the last two items particularly) has something to say about =Buffy= as well. In short, I think the =Buffy= book is in good hands, and it will be an honor if it works out for me to contribute to it. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #68 ****************************