From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #176 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Thursday, August 10 2000 Volume 02 : Number 176 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Unaired Buffy pilot [klh@technologist.com] b/comments8/9 ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/comments8/9 ["David S. Bratman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2000 12:58:35 -0400 (EDT) From: klh@technologist.com Subject: Re: Unaired Buffy pilot I takes a LONG time, even on a T-1, and it's not a very good copy. (had no trouble with File 1, little with F-2, but F-3 took several attempts.) That said, I understand why Fox passed (especially sincce they're still getting paid by the WB). There was serious retooling (and I don't just mean adding St. Alyson) between this one and the eventual episode. ken ---- you wrote: > http://www.slayme.com/v2.0/Downloads/pilot%20episode%20full.htm > > This is a link to the original unaired Buffy pilot. > It's in three zip files, which I haven't been able to > download yet (the site is very busy). > > Supposed to total about half an hour, and has a > different Willow and Stephen Tobolowsky as the Principal. > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Kick off your party with Yahoo! Invites. > http://invites.yahoo.com/ > - --------------------------------------------------- Get free personalized email at http://iaf.iname.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2000 13:27:49 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/comments8/9 David: Thanks very much for the critique; I think nearly all of your points are worth taking into consideration. I probably won't do anything about them right at the moment (I'm burned out on the piece still, and I want to hear from the editors about possible revision as well), but my sense on glancing back on the dharma piece in particular is that it needs some fixing. >>My first reaction was, "way too condensed." I missed the eager way in which you spin out elaborate chains of parallels, often on the same subjects, when posting here. Maybe this was editorially dictated, but it's still a problem.<< Not editorially dictated except in the sense that I was conscious I had a word limit (something I never worry about here) and needed to keep focused. I think you're right that I overdid it. >>This is because I'm not sure your readers will follow you as you leap and bound your way to conclusions. I think you're usually right: but you haven't shown yourself to be right. I suggest that you go through the essay looking for every place where you use the words "clearly" or "certainly" and look to see if you can fill in a chain of reasoning somehow. For instance: >> > Certainly this is how Principal Snyder sees Buffy and her gang >>But the "this" to which you're referring is Puhvel's description of the defender/menace ambiguousness of the warrior. Snyder doesn't see Buffy as ambiguous, at least not in the episodes I've seen: he sees her as a menace alone. My guess it that by "this" you mean "this other side of Slayerness, the menace side", but if so that's not what you say. Nor do you quote anything demonstrating Snyder's attitude, which I expect you'd do if you were writing about this online.<< I guess I thought the relevance of Puhvel's quote to the show, and to Snyder's attitude, was self-explanatory. Evidently not. (Yes, Snyder sees her as "menace alone.") Can be fixed. You're right about "clearly" and "certainly" as well. >> > Clearly[!!] Buffy is a kshatriya >>If she is any of the three functions, yes. But you've leapt over an intermediate step, which is to show that the three functions are an applicable analysis at all.<< There is a longer exposition I have somewhere about how the "Scooby gang" covers the three functions, but it's all part of the "Buffy's Shadows" sub-essay that I was trying to keep out of this more "focused" presentation. There's a sentence or two about it in the essay as presented, but patently it's inadequate. Can also be fixed. >>I'm afraid I do not follow all of the three functions discussion. Not to say you aren't right, but it's not clear. First, the striking thing of the Indra/Namuci legend as you describe it (we're at the end of Part 2 now) is how Indra evaded his pact: if there's any parallel to that in Buffy's killing of Angel, you don't discuss it. If the parallel is, as I suspect it is, that Indra, like Buffy, killed a friend, you need to rephrase the discussion of Indra to emphasize that. (Although Indra's "friendship" with Namuci, being a watchful peace, is totally unlike Buffy's with Angel, which is romantic love.)<< Points taken. As I said later, the stricture and how Indra evaded it got shifted to Angel's "double" the Judge. And I didn't go into the detail that Indra and Namuci were "buddies" (as in "drinking buddies")(hmm--think of Giles and Ethan in "A New Man"!), so that it was not just a "watchful peace," and more of a parallel, at least to my mind, with the Buffy/Angel romance. The important point, in both cases, is that it's a violation of Indra/Buffy's =dharma= to kill demons/vampires. Does that need emphasizing? My problem throughout is that so much of this has been so clear to me for so long that I feel like it's belaboring the obvious to go into it "again." But I need to consider readers encountering this all for the first time. >>Going on to part 3, Buffy's first list of sins: >> > The 2nd sin in this case is the sexual one >>This gets confusing and unclear, since sex, like money, is a third function matter. >>The Buffy/Faith/Angel list of sins: >> > She betrays her former fellow warrior Buffy by switching bodies >>But again, this is much a third function sin as 2nd, because what she does with it, as you say, is seduce Riley. (You compare it to Indra's adultery: that was the 3rd function example in the very first list, the one of Indra's sins.) >>The point isn't that these 2nd function things are really 3rd, but that it's muddled and not clear. If they are really 2nd, you have to bring that out and banish the underbrush.<< This is a very important point which I have obviously muddled thoroughly. This will absolutely have to be fixed, and I probably will carpenter in what I'm about to say as a revision. I noted at some point (but apparently have edited out: it's gone now) that Dumezil explains there is frequently some "slippage" between the functions: for example, in Norse mythology Odin is the first-function god, but he is also the god of the battlefield (the Valkyries are under his aegis), which is a second-function matter; and Thor, the second-function god (more of a lone-warrior type), also, as storm-god, presides over crops, which are a third-function matter. For another example, Starcatherus' third sin was also killing a king, which could be seen as first function; but since he took money for it, one could argue (as Dumezil does) that it's third function. So it can be up to interpretation sometimes what belongs where. Buffy's first list of sins is one of the oldest parts of the piece, and nearly every time I've read it over I've waffled as to where the second and third sins belong (since both have to do with both second and third functions); and in fact, it was only on this last revision that I finally flopped them, without apparently justifying the new order sufficiently. Here's my reasoning. Buffy's refusing her =dharma= is never presented as simply a matter of warrior honor (and thus second function), but as the endangerment of the populace (and thus third function). The third function, most of the time, is about economics (about property, as Jennifer pointed out to me once); and in the ancient societies Indo-European mythology relates to, women were part of property, and so the third-function sexual sin was, in that sense, a sin against property (=droit du seigneur=, or--not to put too fine a point on it--rape). But the examples in =Buffy= this is mostly not the case: Buffy's relationship with Angel, Faith going after both Angel and Riley, all takes place within the second function, between functional equals, and so it isn't about a power difference--it involves betrayal of cameraderie instead. (Faith took money to kill Angel, but again this is a contest of equals and a betrayal of a former comrade, so I think again it falls into second function). The exception here is Faith's dalliances with Xander, where she can have sex with him or kill him at her pleasure--this clearly is about power, and so in my mind does falls into the third function. In short, sex =per se= is not necessarily a marker of one function or another; it's the relationship that the sex expresses that needs to be examined. It's not cut and dried, and I won't pretend my arguments are airtight, but I think it makes sense my way. >>One other tiny query: >> > Beowulf's second great deed was killing a dragon >>"Last" for "second", surely? 1. Grendel. 2. Mom. 3. Dragon. Um, right, I guess. =Beowulf= falls into two halves, and Grendel and his mom both fall in the first half, which is why I said "second" for the dragon. But "last" is clearer. >>Once the show is completed and issued commercially, all 60 or 80 hours or whatever it turns out to be, how would you recommend that a new viewer watch it? All at once is physically impossible. Would you say one episode at a time, with gaps in between? That was how you originally saw it: it conveys suspense, and allows one to digest each episode before going on to the next? Or the way you'd read a novel? That is, as much as you want at one sitting and finishing it up in the course of a week or a month? Would watching, say, 3 episodes at once - remember, this is someone seeing them for the first time - give one surfeit?<< I can only speak for my own experience, which is that "=Buffy=" and "surfeit" don't seem to belong in the same sentence. If I grab a tape to check a reference--a single line, say--I'm liable to watch a whole episode; if I initially intend to watch one episode, I'm just as likely to watch two; and it isn't unheard-of for me to watch four or more at a time. And I know that on more than one occasion when I've sent my daughter a six-hour tape she's sat down and watched it all in one go. Certainly an episode or three at a time, at a less frantic pace, would work as well for most people. But remember we're not talking only about a first viewing: this is a work of art that invites (or compels) repeat viewings, where the earlier portions are re-charged with meaning when seen again after the later portions. It's a time sink and no mistake, judging from =my= life. I think the best parallel, actually, is to comics: I came in on Neil Gaiman's =Sandman= (very like =Buffy= in a number of ways) in the middle somewhere, and didn't have the opportunity until later to catch up on the chunks I'd missed via the trade paperbacks; I =could= have spent time and money combing through comicbook stores, but I waited until it was somewhat easier to get hold of the whole sequence. (And in fact, one of the latter subsequences--which ran for almost a year in its monthly installments, which I read but didn't own--didn't make much sense to me until I reread it, in one go, in the trade paperback.) By the way, I made a good find yesterday: a copy of Charles Williams' book on Dante, =The Figure of Beatrice= (which in Jungian terms could be called a study of the anima). And also Aldo Carotenuto's =A Secret Symmetry=, the =other= book about Sabina Spielrein (the protege--for lack of a better term--of both Jung and Freud), worth having along with John Kerr's extraordinary =A Most Dangerous Method= because Carotenuto includes much more primary material (letters and such; but I'm still waiting to find an English translation of Spielrein's important paper on the death drive). I paid $4.01 including tax at the Strand for those two books. Hard to beat. They had as well a small stack of the hardcover of John Crowley's =Daemonomania= (volume 3 of the =Aegypt= sequence); I probably will go back and grab a copy when next I get paid. What I didn't find was a book Meredith had mentioned in an e-mail to me: =Fantasy Girls: Gender in the new universe of science fiction and fantasy television=, edited by Elyce Rae Helford. Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 273 p. Has chapters on Xena and Buffy. I'll keep an eye out for it in the future. I forget who mentioned the novel =Dreamland= here; I had run across a mention of it somewhere, and glanced at it in the library. It's fairly long (400+ pages?), and seems to be mostly about the experience of an early-20th century immigrant; the Freud and Jung stuff seems to be a fairly small subplot. I figured I was unlikely to read it anytime soon so I didn't take it out. There's also, I discover, a mystery novel called =Henry James' Midnight Song= (hm, didn't write down the author's name) which has not only James as a character but also Edith Wharton, Jung, Freud, and Spielrein. Might be mildly entertaining. Todd: Interesting about the =Buffy= pre-pilot being online. I've read about it, but never seen it. Don't have the equipment to access it here, either. But I guess now I might have a chance to see it at some point. Phaedre: I don't know much about Myers-Briggs (except that it exists), but yes, it does seem to be the same schema. What's up with that, I wonder. Maybe they are the authors of the test to determine one's type. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2000 18:18:00 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/comments8/9 On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > I guess I thought the relevance of Puhvel's quote to the show, and to > Snyder's attitude, was self-explanatory. Evidently not. (Yes, Snyder sees > her as "menace alone.") Can be fixed. It is self-explanatory to anyone who knows Snyder, so what you wrote comes off as infelicitously expressed rather than unclear. (I responded in the way I did because I've become gun-shy: I was afraid that someone would come up with an episode in which Snyder's reaction to Buffy was ambiguous, rather than hostile.) > Points taken. As I said later, the stricture and how Indra evaded it got > shifted to Angel's "double" the Judge. And I didn't go into the detail > that Indra and Namuci were "buddies" (as in "drinking buddies")(hmm--think > of Giles and Ethan in "A New Man"!), so that it was not just a "watchful > peace," and more of a parallel, at least to my mind, with the Buffy/Angel > romance. The important point, in both cases, is that it's a violation of > Indra/Buffy's =dharma= to kill demons/vampires. Does that need > emphasizing? Definitely. (And I'd describe Giles and Ethan's relationship in "A New Man" as a watchful peace at best.) > My problem throughout is that so much of this has been so clear to me for > so long that I feel like it's belaboring the obvious to go into it > "again." But I need to consider readers encountering this all for the > first time. Yes, I think so. I don't think you have to consider readers new to the show (more on that when I comment on the other essay), but readers new to your ideas, yes. > I noted at some point (but apparently have edited out: it's gone now) that > Dumezil explains there is frequently some "slippage" between the > functions: Be careful that this doesn't become an ad-hoc way of explaining anything. > Buffy's first list of sins is one of the oldest parts of the piece, and > nearly every time I've read it over I've waffled as to where the second > and third sins belong (since both have to do with both second and third > functions); and in fact, it was only on this last revision that I finally > flopped them, without apparently justifying the new order sufficiently. If you've been uncertain for that long, you have ambiguity. Needs to be addressed. The paragraphs in your last e-mail beginning "Here's my reasoning" address them well: it only remains to be seen how to fit that info into the essay properly. > I can only speak for my own experience, which is that "=Buffy=" and > "surfeit" don't seem to belong in the same sentence. If I grab a tape to > check a reference--a single line, say--I'm liable to watch a whole > episode; if I initially intend to watch one episode, I'm just as likely to > watch two; and it isn't unheard-of for me to watch four or more at a > time. And I know that on more than one occasion when I've sent my daughter > a six-hour tape she's sat down and watched it all in one go. > > Certainly an episode or three at a time, at a less frantic pace, would > work as well for most people. But remember we're not talking only about a > first viewing: this is a work of art that invites (or compels) repeat > viewings, where the earlier portions are re-charged with meaning when seen > again after the later portions. It's a time sink and no mistake, judging > from =my= life. > > I think the best parallel, actually, is to comics: I came in on Neil > Gaiman's =Sandman= (very like =Buffy= in a number of ways) in the middle > somewhere, and didn't have the opportunity until later to catch up on the > chunks I'd missed via the trade paperbacks; I =could= have spent time and > money combing through comicbook stores, but I waited until it was somewhat > easier to get hold of the whole sequence. (And in fact, one of the latter > subsequences--which ran for almost a year in its monthly installments, > which I read but didn't own--didn't make much sense to me until I reread > it, in one go, in the trade paperback.) Well, I was talking about a first viewing. I have certainly had the experience of being surfeited on tv/movies that I liked, especially if they were emotionally powerful: when I first saw "Surprise", the friend whose videotapes I was watching asked if I wanted to go on and see the sequel, and I said, "Not right now: let's watch a lighter one instead." Re-reading is an entirely different experience for me than reading. I can go through much more material at a much faster rate. It took me over a month to read "Titus Groan" the first time; some years later I found myself careening through the entire trilogy in a weekend. (But I did feel a bit surfeited.) I'm not sure how this would apply to tv/movies, though, since unlike reading speech, watching speed is not easily condensable. I can say, however, thinking specifically of "Sandman", that when I'm reading something divided into episodes, no matter how strong the arc, something is lost when I re-read too many at once. An awareness of choppiness becomes slightly apparent. > Phaedre: I don't know much about Myers-Briggs (except that it exists), but > yes, it does seem to be the same schema. What's up with that, I > wonder. Maybe they are the authors of the test to determine one's type. I found the Myers-Briggs personality test impossible to take. For almost every question, my answer was either, "Sometimes one, sometimes the other," "Compared to whom?", or "What do you mean by that?" I have not had this problem with other personality tests. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #176 *****************************