From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #164 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Friday, July 28 2000 Volume 02 : Number 164 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/&f ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/comments7/16 ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: comments7/25 ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: Friends of Don ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: Friends of Don [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: b/comments7/16 [GHighPine@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 09:18:26 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/&f Dawn: We're apparently not making sense to each other, because I'm not sure what you mean by this: >>if Buffy and Angel had the right to defend each other with deadly force before the arrow struck, I don't see why that right would end once the poison was in Angel's system.<< Let me see if I can make my statements clearer. Look at things from Faith's perspective. Think back on Buffy and Faith's conversations in "Consequences," and how Buffy took a high and mighty do-gooder stand on killing human beings...but as soon as it suited her, she was willing to kill one, i.e. Faith. In Faith's eyes this makes Buffy a hypocrite. Not to mention Faith's own self-preservation kicking in, since Buffy is one of the few single individuals in the universe that Faith has reason to fear. Now from Buffy's perspective, Faith is not attacking her directly, but taking the cowardly way out by attacking people who can less defend themselves (and this covers attacking Angel with a vampire-specific poison), and torturing them as well (which also covers the poison--think about how Buffy must have reacted to Faith's evident relish that it was "wicked painful"). Faith is playing games with her, and Buffy's reaction is not so much righteous anger as =taking offense=--i.e. her vanity is pricked. And Faith knows this; and it only makes her want to prick her some more. Like Angelus, she enjoys emotionally torturing Buffy as a prelude to an actual hand-to-hand battle. And this just infuriates Buffy, and she reacts out of proportion. Yes, it's impressive that in the course of "Sanctuary" Faith takes the cue from Angel and begins to Get It (including the awareness that Buffy won't be ready to forgive her). Conversely, Buffy doesn't Get It at all, and by the end of the episode is acting far less nobly (note her ridiculous reaction to Angel hitting her). The contrast is stark. And notice that Buffy really doesn't back down very much in "The Yoko Factor" in her conversation with Angel. Buffy may be a hero, but her vanity makes her very unlikeable at times. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 21:39:00 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/comments7/16 I watched "Becoming II" again, finally. You may have no idea how little time I have for this right now (one reason I rarely watch tv anyway), and was able to do this only courtesy of finding myself awake in the middle of the night last night. Actually, I forwarded the tape (the commercial tape with both parts) partway through, and started at the point that Angelus is interrogating Giles. So first I have some comments about the Giles torture scenes. When Giles says, "You must perform the ritual ... wearing a tutu" (which looks in print rather like "You must cut down the tallest tree in the forest ... with a herring", but not the way ASH says it), Angelus is clearly furious, but I thought it interesting that he does not even threaten to strike Giles. Instead he gets up and makes his remark about bringing on the chainsaw. I saw no blood. Maybe that was earlier. In the next scene, Giles' face is bruised, though. Here's something of the sort I only notice on repeat viewings. When Dru sits down to take her turn, music comes in that sounds strikingly like Ligeti, suddenly turning lush when the illusion takes hold. Now, on to the ritual-and-battle scene. This works much better on second viewing. Now, at least, I am in pretty much the same position as anyone seeing it again, instead of in the anomalous position of someone knowing the outcome and nothing else. There is an important point that has not, I think, been addressed. =Is there supposed to be uncertainty whether Angelus pulling out the sword is enough to wake the demon?= The demon does not wake immediately, which, insofar as I know anything about frozen-demon behavior from other instances, is a bit unusual, but I dearly hope it's not just to drag out the suspense. We're talking a period of nearly (or maybe over) five minutes actual playing time before the vortex forms, encompassing the entire Buffy/Angelus fight plus a good part of the preceding dispatch-the-henchmen scene. That's a huge stretch by tv standards. It seems to me that Buffy is at least uncertain until the vortex forms. Her surprise when Willow's spell takes hold could be due at least partly to Xander's omission, so in that case the matter isn't entirely a red herring because of its effect on Buffy - but even if she knew that Willow was trying the spell again she'd have no way of knowing when, or even if, it would take hold. But I don't think her surprise at _that_ point is due to facing the dilemma of whether she needs to kill Angel (as opposed to Angelus, whom she was just about to dispatch). _That_ comes a little later, at the point I think Gayle was describing: hugging Angel, over his shoulder she sees the vortex beginning to form. Her horrified wide-eyed expression - very different from her earlier expression - shows, I think, that this is the point at which the dilemma faces her, not before. While I would not apply quite Gayle's superlatives to SMG's acting in this scene, it is certainly quite effective. It could so easily have been over the top. I can't recall any points where I've been embarrassed or annoyed by her acting, the way I have occasionally been by Nicholas Brendon's heavy-handed interpretation of Xander's hamminess, and firmly and absolutely have been by EVERY ANGEL-AND-DARLA SCENE EVER FILMED. (You can imagine just how much I'm looking forward to next season of _Angel_.) I know there are those who don't agree, and I think her talent is more suited to tv than films, but in this context at least, SMG is a dem fine actress. The tougher question is, what is the first-time viewer supposed to think about the question I raised? Angelus says, soon after pulling out the sword, that the demon is about to awaken. (I forget whether Buffy is there to hear this.) But he could be just boasting. During the fight itself, there's a shot of the demon: he's not at all awake, but he seems to be growling. (I am at this point reminded of the half-awake iron dog in _Half Magic_.) This is more ambiguous. What do you think? Is the viewer supposed to be one step ahead of Buffy here, all the more tormented because we're aware of a dilemma she hasn't yet fully realized? There is one more serious problem that pretty much spoils the key scene. OK, the restored Angel doesn't know what his id had just done, and he is facing away from the demon, and furthermore he's a little preoccupied with Buffy. But come on: a vortex capable of imminently destroying the world is forming less than two feet behind his back, and it's _utterly silent_? And he doesn't notice it's there? Gimme a break, as they say. One thing I enjoyed in "Becoming" was seeing the originals of several shots I'm familiar with from 3rd & 4th season opening credits. Buffy half-skidding down the hallway from the climax of part 1; Angelus balancing the sword after pulling it out; Spike's shrug as he departs. (Nitpick: Spike subdues Dru by _choking_ her. I wish they'd decide whether vampires breathe or not. Nitpick 2: how can he see through the foil he puts on the car windows?) Gayle: I didn't mean to say that Joss could do only parallelisms or only sleight-of-hand. But given scenes of one without the other, the former is characteristic of him, the latter is not. At least with emphasis: it's not Xander who emphasizes the omission, it's the shooting and placement of the scene that does it. I can think of nothing else remotely like this, not even in the Mr. Light Show episode from season 3, which is _all_ misdirection. By the way, not everything flattens out on knowing the sequel. For instance, even the first time I watched "Becoming," I found that the scene where Snyder phones the Mayor after expelling Buffy to be just as chilling, knowing everything about who the Mayor is and what he's capable of, as I imagine it was to original viewers who knew nothing. Perhaps even more so. He must have been by far the show's finest villain: no wonder 4th season has seemed such a let-down. (I haven't been too impressed by what I've seen of The Master, either, who reminds me of a _Batman_ TV series villain.) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 21:41:14 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: comments7/25 On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > I have, in fact, =four= Mabinogions > here: Patrick Ford, Lady Charlotte Guest ($2 from Dover, how can one > resist?) Jeffrey Gantz (Penguin), and Jones and Jones (Everyman), the > latter being the one cited by Garner on his copyright page. Were you aware that Gwyn Jones (of Jones and Jones) was once brought by Tolkien as a guest to an Inklings meeting? This puts him in a rare category along with E.R. Eddison, Roy Campbell, and few others. > I'll go along with =Red Shift= being "too damn difficult"; I was some > years older when it came out and I read it, but Garner had raised the bar > enough that I =still= Didn't Get It. I remember you passionately arguing to me that there is No Such Thing as "too difficult": no amount of effort required to figure out a novel passes the point of diminishing returns. Have you changed your mind? > But I did appreciate it enough to > feel like I'd go back and give it another try. (I remember Marion Zimmer > Bradley being very snippy at the time about its obfuscation.) Well, Marion was probably just wearing her "standard defense of Tolkien" hat, the same one currently appropriated by defenders of Harry Potter. > I see your point about =Macbeth=. (Curiously, there's a motif very > similar to =Macbeth= in that section of the Fourth Branch of the > =Mabinogion=.) It does give the "trick" more reason for existing. But > still a trick. OK, it's a trick, but the trick part isn't what I was objecting to. It was the arbitrary setup. In _Macbeth_ there's nothing arbitrary, because the setup is derived from the events that chronologically follow it _by the characters_ (i.e. the witches), _not_ by the author. It wasn't necessary for the trick to be that particular trick. If Birnam Wood hadn't been going to march, the witches could have said something else equally misleading. But if the demon Agatha (or whatever his name was) could have been stopped in some other way than killing Angel, then no dilemma. Re Faith/Buffy: the big change in Buffy's attitude is because Faith has now committed deliberate murderous assault, and on someone Buffy loves, coming on top of (more parallelism) the death of Allen, which was casual manslaughter, surely chilling enough. Killing Faith at this point falls into the category of capital punishment, a very different situation from the "a few eggs will break" attitude towards killing that Faith had presented to Buffy. It's not just vanity on Buffy's part: it's righteous anger on top of the preservation of the life of someone important to her. I think Faith's reaction to Buffy is less an accusation of hypocrisy per se but the dilemma of any Social Darwinist type who meets someone equally or more fitted to survive. (Of course they'd met before, but Buffy hadn't previously been that kind of a threat to Faith, or at least Faith figured she could handle her.) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 21:45:07 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: Friends of Don On Mon, 24 Jul 2000, Dawn Friedman wrote: > Ah! I understand. But then how did I stumble in? I'm only a Person to > Whom Don Keller Was Nice Years Ago, and not a faithful GEnie topic denizen. That makes you much more of a Friend of Don than _some_ of the people I remember hanging around his Genie topic, believe me. Besides, some entirely non-Genie people have been invited in because this is a good Buffy list. > >Especially because I'd be surprised if there are any other _Buffy_ lists > >like this one. The level of thorough analysis, the tolerance of it from > >others (no "gawd, why can't you just enjoy the show and stop analyzing it > >so much"), the absence of random gushing and other chaff, is unique in my > >limited experience of media lists of any kind. > > Well, yes. But it isn't a fair comparison. The level of _Buffy_ > discussion here is best compared with that on other lists evolved from the > GEnie topics of bright people with bright and talkative friends. It's > still impressive. I made the comparison because I would be much less likely to join another Buffy list. Which in turn would make me much less likely to watch the show so religiously. My favorite tv show of all time is _The Prisoner_, but I'm frustrated at how few really rewarding conversations I've had about it, and cherish the ones I've had. I belonged to the official Prisoner fan club for a year in the '80s, but dropped out. > >(It is, of course, true believers who are apt to be most crushed by > >disappointment, as you noted. I may never forget the fan of the original > >Star Wars movie who declared that in _The Empire Strikes Back_ Lucas had > >ruined, yes _ruined_, the SW universe - apparently because Luke suffers. > > I never met one of those! All the SWars veterans I know had the opposite > opinion. It just goes to show that there is no point of view so bizarre > that *someone* doesn't hold to it. Indeed. It was another devoted SW fan who, with an incredulous expression on her face that would have done SMG credit, showed me the SW fanzine that expressed this opinion. > >If I seem critical at times, you are lucky you haven't seen me on recent > >fantasy novels. I love fantasy, but even the most highly-praised novels > >coming out these days are mostly utter trash. > > If this has been discussed to death already, I'd be happy to be directed to > archives. But I'm curious. That is another topic entirely. Have you read 1) _Freedom & Necessity_ by Emma Bull & Steven Brust; 2) anything by Lisa Goldstein? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 00:04:20 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: Friends of Don In a message dated 7/27/00 6:56:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: << My favorite tv show of all time is _The Prisoner_, but I'm frustrated at how few really rewarding conversations I've had about it, and cherish the ones I've had. I belonged to the official Prisoner fan club for a year in the '80s, but dropped out. >> Did you see The Prisoner in its first US run? When it was a summer replacement, around, oh, 1968 or so? I did. I was in high school at the time. To say that it was fascinatingly, refreshingly different from anything I'd ever seen on tv before would be a massive understatement. I'd be happy to discuss The Prisoner if 30 years or so hadn't fuzzed my memory. I can still vividly remember quite a bit, though, like the giant white balloon with its weird intelligence, and the surrealistic architecture, and the way the people in the village acted. I imagine that people on the list would not object to Prisoner essays, even if we couldn't respond much. I for one would enjoy reading them. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 00:05:01 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/comments7/16 In a message dated 7/27/00 6:51:28 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: << There is an important point that has not, I think, been addressed. =Is there supposed to be uncertainty whether Angelus pulling out the sword is enough to wake the demon?= The demon does not wake immediately, which, insofar as I know anything about frozen-demon behavior from other instances, is a bit unusual, but I dearly hope it's not just to drag out the suspense. >> No, there is no uncertainty about that, on our part or Buffy's, except that we don't know exactly how he "awakens." But the delay is necessary for the timing of the story. Buffy knows that she has to draw Angel's blood to save the world at that point, and "one drop will send them both to hell" (she could have cut his hand with the same result as stabbing him in the stomach). Then she momentarily forgets when Angel changes. << vortex capable of imminently destroying the world is forming less than two feet behind his back, and it's _utterly silent_? And he doesn't notice it's there? >> Who says it can't be silent? But, at any rate, Angel would not have known its significance, and would have taken his cue from Buffy. B Pt 1 carefully established in the flashbacks the key point that when his soul was restored the first time, he spent a number of minutes in confusion unable to remember anything that had happened while he was soulless. Do I understand correctly from Don's post that you haven't seen "Innocence" or other eps in the arc? If so, you really didn't get the necessary emotional buildup for the climax. There'd been a lot of teasing about the Mayor, which made us expect somebody way scary, and made his cheery persona all the more effective when he was introduced. Oh, and Spike breaks Dru's neck, leastways that was my impression. But consistency in vampire physiology is not a priority on Buffy. Gayle ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #164 *****************************