From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #142 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Thursday, July 6 2000 Volume 02 : Number 142 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/comments7/5 ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/demonscry ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/comments7/5 [allenw ] Re: b/demonscry [allenw ] re: Donald's stuff plus [Kathleen Woodbury ] Re: b/personality test ["Marta Grabien" ] b/titles ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/personality test ["Berni Phillips" ] Re: b/demonscry ["Berni Phillips" ] Re: b/comments7/5 [Robert Stacy ] Re: b/comments7/4 [Robert Stacy ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 16:33:48 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/comments7/5 Gayle: Really interesting comments on script-structure. I've never made a study of the nuts and bolts of the form, so this is fairly new to me. And though I've watched all the =Buffy= episodes multiple times, I have only an intuitive feel for the rhythms of their structure (kind of like "feeling" a musical rhythm without actually counting the meter). One of the things I forgot to mention, by the way, is that all those timings add up to 42 minutes (and that I fudged times by 30 seconds up or down in a few places, but it doesn't alter the proportions significantly). What you say makes sense: four =roughly= equivalent acts, but variable in length so that the longest relates to the shortest in a proportion of about 2:1. Plus teaser, plus credits (about a minute on =Buffy=), plus the optional breaking out of a short epilogue. And as a model, shorter acts with intenser climaxes, and the first climax being the intensest to carry the waffling viewer on into the episode. But my intuition is that =Buffy= doesn't usually work that way. It seems to me that the strongest climax is at the halfway point, with the next-strongest being at the third quarter. For example, off the top of my head I =very= clearly remember in "Ted" the halftime ("You killed him!") and third-quarter (Ted comes back from the dead) breaks, but don't especially remember the first. (The reason I use "Ted" as an example is because I remember it being the most painful commercial breaks to wait through in my experience of the show.) From what I gather from testimonials from his staff, one of Joss Whedon's genius abilities is "breaking story"; in fact one gets the impression that that's what they do at story conferences, so that the episode is already "broken" before the script is written. Which is one way the boss' stamp is visible in every episode. Want another quote about Lacan? This is from Mellard's =Using Lacan=, page 8: "Lacan's summation of his view of the determinative place of language is very explicit: 'words are the only material of the unconscious,' and so it becomes easy to see why Lacan...may be such a fruitful source of critical interpretation of the subject in literature.... For that subject is never anything but a construct of words to which only words may give us access." Oh, you want to know what that =means=? (It's easier to parse than Lacan himself, I promise you.) Lacan believes that it is the acquisition of language in early childhood that causes true consciousness (what Freud and Jung call the ego, what Lacan calls the subject)--though Lacan believes that "the subject" is an =illusion= composed of language; and as Mellard notes, this is the same situation we have in a novel, where the "subject" (protagonist) is only an illusion composed of words. I used to have a joke I made about these semiotics guys, "The text is all that is the case" (a takeoff on the opening proposition of Wittgenstein's =Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus=: "The world is all that is the case"). Apparently, it was no joke to Lacan; he really thought we are all texts. A load of hooey if you ask me. If I say to you "=The Lord of the Rings=", or "Frodo Baggins," you =don't= think of =the words that constitute= that novel or that character; what springs to your mind is an image--possibly visual, but not necessarily. The words that constitute it are only a =description=. Or so I'd argue. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 16:36:46 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/demonscry Had a strange flash in the shower this morning, and I thought I'd throw it out there. I've been chewing over this idea of the Slayer's power coming from a possessing demon, little as I really like the idea. And it struck me suddenly, having just seen again that scene where Tara scuttles the demon-scrying spell: given that we know from Buffy's dream in "Restless" that there is apparently =some= connection between Tara and the Slayer(s)...could it be that Tara was afraid the spell would pinpoint =Buffy=?? I may well be off-base here, because of chronology. The other night I did a marathon, re-watching "The Initiative," "Pangs," "Doomed," "A New Man," "The 'I' in Team," and "Goodbye Iowa," all mid-season episodes I hadn't seen in a while; and while I =think= the demon- spell happened in "The 'I' in Team" (Willow comes from the spell to help Giles with removing the tracer from Spike, which precedes Buffy showing up after being set up by Maggie Walsh, if I remember), I can't be sure. In =any= case, this is some time before Tara meets "Buffy" (Faith in residence) in "Who Are You," so there's no reason to think, that early, that Tara would have sensed the presence of a demon in Buffy, which is what I was thinking about. (Which would tie in with Tara saying in Buffy's dream "You think you know what you are?") (One thing we can be pretty sure of is that Buffy's oracular dreaming is as a result of her supernatural powers, =however= they are generated. And we should remember that at the moment we only have =Buffy's sense= that Tara "knows something" rather than knowing that Tara knows something.) Has this gotten too complicated to parse? On a more trivial note...I was amused to notice the "cheese" motif in "The Initiative" ("Buffy...she likes cheese"), which may (or may not!) explain how Cheese-Man got into the dreams in "Restless." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 16:11:26 -0500 (CDT) From: allenw Subject: Re: b/comments7/5 On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > And as a model, shorter acts with intenser climaxes, and the first > climax being the intensest to carry the waffling viewer on into the > episode. > > But my intuition is that =Buffy= doesn't usually work that way. It > seems to me that the strongest climax is at the halfway point, with > the next-strongest being at the third quarter. > At DragonCon, Jane Espenson explicitly said that the strongest climax is at the halfway point, to keep the viewer tuned in for the second half-hour. > From what I gather from testimonials from his staff, one of Joss > Whedon's genius abilities is "breaking story"; in fact one gets the > impression that that's what they do at story conferences, so that > the episode is already "broken" before the script is written. This is also explicitly confirmed by Jane. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 16:14:29 -0500 (CDT) From: allenw Subject: Re: b/demonscry On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > I've been chewing over this idea of the Slayer's power coming from a > possessing demon, little as I really like the idea. > > And it struck me suddenly, having just seen again that scene where > Tara scuttles the demon-scrying spell: given that we know from > Buffy's dream in "Restless" that there is apparently =some= > connection between Tara and the Slayer(s)...could it be that Tara > was afraid the spell would pinpoint =Buffy=?? > The thought has occurred. However, as you point out, Tara theoretically hadn't met Buffy yet. She had met Willow, of course... and we never really got an explanation for just what was speaking through Willow when she did the soul-restoring spell for Angel, did we? And whatever it was, might still be around... - -Allen W. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 15:29:47 -0600 From: Kathleen Woodbury Subject: re: Donald's stuff plus Donald, thanks for telling us how you've been "wasting time." Lots of cool stuff. So cool, I don't have anything to say/offer/comment on. (Maybe if you asked questions that we could answer/vote on?) Also, thanks, Gayle, for the explanation of the "act" structure of tv shows. And, in response to Meredith: >Here's an amusing little summertime diversion: > >http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/9315/quiz/enter.html > >Find out which Buffy character you most closely resemble! > >Apparently I'm most like Jenny Calendar. Hmmm... I'm most like Willow. (Which makes sense to me.) Phaedre/Kathleen workshop@burgoyne.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 08:12:49 -0700 From: "Marta Grabien" Subject: Re: b/personality test > > http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/9315/quiz/enter.html > > Find out which Buffy character you most closely resemble! > > Apparently I'm most like Jenny Calendar. Hmmm... > So am I! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 19:16:56 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/titles I spent a couple hours toothbrushing my two pieces today (more work to be done), weeding out irrelevant and repetitive material and re-ordering chunks of what are after all concatenations of texts written at various times. And in the process I came up with what I hope are final titles, which I present for your approval: "The Dharma of Buffy: Aspects of the Warrior Function in =Buffy the Vampire Slayer=" ("Aspects of the Warrior Function" is the English translation of the French title of Dumezil's book which was =published= in English as =The Destiny of the Warrior=.) "Spirit-Guides and Shadow-Selves: From the Dream-Life of Buffy (and Faith)" Critiques invited. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 18:08:14 -0700 From: "Berni Phillips" Subject: Re: b/personality test >From: meredith >http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/9315/quiz/enter.html > >Find out which Buffy character you most closely resemble! > >Apparently I'm most like Jenny Calendar. Hmmm... I got the same thing! Oh well, at least it wasn't Anya. Berni ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 18:20:06 -0700 From: "Berni Phillips" Subject: Re: b/demonscry >From: "Donald G. Keller" >I've been chewing over this idea of the Slayer's power coming from a >possessing demon, little as I really like the idea. I really don't like the idea either, and I see two problems with it. If there's a singular possessing demon, how can you have two slayers simultaneously possessed? Also, I would think that if Buffy were possessed by a demon, she would not be able to handle holy water. I could live with the thought of Buffy harboring an angel, for what is a demon but a fallen angel? But I prefer to think that it's closer to being like the X-factor that makes you a mutant in the Marvel universe. (Only much, much, much rarer.) >And it struck me suddenly, having just seen again that scene where >Tara scuttles the demon-scrying spell: given that we know from >Buffy's dream in "Restless" that there is apparently =some= >connection between Tara and the Slayer(s)...could it be that Tara >was afraid the spell would pinpoint =Buffy=?? Or maybe it just has something to do with the relationship between Tara and Willow. Was it moving too fast? Was she just getting cold feet? Was she testing Willow to see if she would still be her friend if a spell didn't work? Was she hoping that spoiling the spell would make Willow want to repeat it and spend more time with her? >(One thing we can be pretty sure of is that Buffy's oracular >dreaming is as a result of her supernatural powers, =however= they >are generated. And we should remember that at the moment we only >have =Buffy's sense= that Tara "knows something" rather than knowing >that Tara knows something.) This oracular power is another reason I'd prefer Buffy to be inhabited by the creatures of light rather than darkness. Besides, it wouldn't make much sense for a demon-inhabited person to be battling demons. >On a more trivial note...I was amused to notice the "cheese" motif >in "The Initiative" ("Buffy...she likes cheese"), which may (or may >not!) explain how Cheese-Man got into the dreams in "Restless." Now this I'll buy! Berni ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2000 02:01:38 -0400 From: Robert Stacy Subject: Re: b/comments7/5 allenw wrote: > > On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > > > And as a model, shorter acts with intenser climaxes, and the first > > climax being the intensest to carry the waffling viewer on into the > > episode. > > > > But my intuition is that =Buffy= doesn't usually work that way. It > > seems to me that the strongest climax is at the halfway point, with > > the next-strongest being at the third quarter. > > > At DragonCon, Jane Espenson explicitly said that the strongest climax is > at the halfway point, to keep the viewer tuned in for the second > half-hour. I've observed this on other hour-long shows (e.g., X-Files) and always attributed it to an attempt to retain viewers through the longer commercial breaks (typically twice as long as the quarter and third quarter) that occur at the halfway mark. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2000 02:00:03 -0400 From: Robert Stacy Subject: Re: b/comments7/4 "Donald G. Keller" (if that's his =real= name) wrote: > There are very simple extrinsic distractions, for example, like the phone > ringing while you're reading, or the musician's equipment suddenly failing > (I once saw a guitarist step on her cord and unplug herself > mid-song); Interesting juxtaposition . . . the irony here being that 1/4" phone plugs--the audio connector used for electronic musical instruments--are named that because they were originally designed for telepbone operators to use in routing calls at a manual switchboard. The diameter of the connectors made for a fairly easy target when pegging one into the necessary hole in a hurry, and the contact force, while strong enough to give a reliable connection, was light enough to allow easy removal. Just the sort of thing you want on your guitar, eh Don? > The late 60s was a very fertile artistic time (in rock music and science > fiction as well), and =The Prisoner= is a prime example thereof. I'm > gradually going to watch the rest of the series and make some more comments > then. (I do remember, as do you, that some of the episodes were kind of > dumb.) Yeah, some were. But when I watched it first-run, I was often astounded by some of the things they pulled off on that show. I'd not seen anything else like it on television at that time. The last two episodes were particularly memorable. I'll be looking forward to reading your comments on it, Don. (That is, of course, after you've finished your Buffy pieces.) ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #142 *****************************