From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V3 #60 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Wednesday, April 11 2001 Volume 03 : Number 060 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: b/divinetwins ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/redridinghood ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/pooh ["David S. Bratman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 09:01:26 -0700 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/divinetwins At 09:39 PM 4/9/2001 , DGK wrote: >In many cases in mythology, one twin is divine and one mortal: Glory is a >god, and Ben is at least passing for human (just as Willow has magical >powers and Xander is an ordinary human being). >... >Another way of expressing this difference is: one twin provides divine >help in battle, while the other is a healer and miracleworker. > >In the other pairing, it's Xander, Buffy's frequent lieutenant/sidekick, >who is the soldierly one, and Willow the quiet scientific type. So each of Willow and Xander are half of one twin and half of the other. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 09:01:18 -0700 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/redridinghood At 09:36 PM 4/9/2001 , DGK wrote: >=The Silence of the Lambs= is a version of "Little Red Riding Hood." > >Think about it: Clarice Starling with her dark red hair venturing into the >den of the wolf in grandmother's clothing (i.e. the cannibal with >old-fashioned manners). Can't you just =hear= Jodie Foster and Anthony >Hopkins: > >"What big eyes you have, Dr. Lecter." > >"The better to see you with, Clarice." > >Symbolically, it's the same moment. The best commentary on Red Riding Hood I've ever read points out that as this conversation continues, it includes a similar line about teeth: "The better to eat you with," says the wolf, which he does. However, as we learn later, the wolf swallows her whole without chewing her at all, so the teeth serve no purpose except to provide the wolf with a good punchline. This is probably a result of conflation between an original version of the story in which the wolf really does eat Red with his teeth, and a tacked-on happy ending of extreme implausibility. I mean, a talking wolf wearing grandmother's clothes is a an acceptable fantasy image, but a wolf from whose stomach two people can emerge alive stretches the plausibility of the imaginary world. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 09:01:10 -0700 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/pooh At 09:42 PM 4/9/2001 , DGK wrote: >Pooh = Xander >Piglet= Willow Or the other way around, half the time. Xander and Willow often switch roles, but for that matter so do Pooh and Piglet. >Owl = Giles >Rabbit= Cordelia(1) > >(1) "Rabbit is clever...Rabbit has brain...I guess that's why >he never understands anything." Cordelia is like that aspect of Rabbit, yes, but Giles is not Owl. The crucial fact about Owl is that, although as Rabbit tells him, "You and I have brain, the others have fluff," Owl is a faker. He doesn't really know anything. "He could spell Tuesday so you knew it wasn't Wednesday, and he could read quite well if someone wasn't hovering over his shoulder and saying 'Well?' all the time, and ..." The only reason Owl isn't caught out is that Rabbit is too self-centered to notice Owl's bluffing, Christopher Robin doesn't care, and the others really do have fluff. Giles really does know the stuff he claims to know. He's more like the other aspect of Rabbit, the part that really does know how to do things, like read and write fluently, that the others don't. His clumsiness and failings are not like Owl's, nor like Rabbit's either. The person most like Owl is Spike, whose pretentions have been whittled away over time. >Kanga = Joyce >Roo = Dawn Oh well, that's too obvious to need mentioning. I suppose that's why you made Xander as Pooh: Pooh is the special friend of Roo as Xander is of Dawn (but Piglet is Roo's other special friend). >Eeyore= Anya(2) >Tigger= Faith(3) No. Tigger is disruptive but good-hearted. Eeyore has a detectable foul side. I'd switch them. Tigger wants to be good but genuinely doesn't know how: surely that's Anya to a t. >C. Robin= Buffy(4) Partly. And partly Giles, who watches over them (note verb, please) while not being one of them. The main difference is that Christopher Robin always knows what's going on even if he isn't there (or isn't he? I have my doubts about that), while Giles sometimes doesn't know what's going on even when he is there. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V3 #60 ****************************