August 2002 Archives - Page 11
Classic Movie(s) of the Week - August 17th 2002 - GP / BT Pt III w/ Guest Host *mundusmundi* -- OnM, 20:53:49 08/17/02 Sat
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Welcome, noble flickseekers, to the third installment of CMotW's second annual 'Guilty Pleasures /
Buried Treasures' series. First off, this is OnM here, just stopping by very briefly to give my sincere thanks
to mundus and Rob for some great guest reviews, and also for so generously providing me with a night off!
;-) Who sez there 'ain't no cure for the summertime blues...' ? Well, we got one (or actually two) for ya'all
right here and now!
Mundus is up first, with a recommendation for a film that I haven't seen yet, but that now I certainly want
to. Rob follows after with a call to go and see a current film before it disappears from its first run, which
unfortunately it already has here in my home town. While reviewing a film currently still in theaters is
technically a violation of normal CMotW protocol, since it's summer, I'll just blame it on the heat and/or
possibly excessive time spent staying up late at night, meticulously annotating the Buffyverse! ;-)
Whatever the case, it's a CMotW Guest Host Double Feature!! Enjoy, and I'll be back
next week with yet another of my own guilty pleasures or buried treasures. Take care!
Quiet on the set... aannnndd.......action!
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Uh-oh... mundus appears to have figured out the pervasive logic behind one of my standard techniques.
............ OnM
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~ ~ ~
Quotes to make review sound important:
When the speaker and he to whom he speaks do not understand, that is metaphysics.
‹Voltaire
But language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it can seldom arrange descriptive words in
such a way that they will not inflate the facts.
‹Mark Twain
Sometimes they write what I say and not what I mean!
‹Pedro Guerrero, ex-baseball player, bitching about the media
~ ~ ~
In a few short weeks I will be returning to school, entering a graduate Library Science program at a local
university. When asked why, I typically respond with a well-rehearsed litany of reasons: because I want a
technical degree to improve my chances in the job market; because I've worked in a library setting before
and feel at home there; because I'm jazzed about going back to college; because I'm getting burned-out
from teaching and am itching for something different. While all true, these are at best self-conscious
attempts to explain something that I can only feel deep down in my gut. And feelings are
notoriously difficult to explain.
Television and the Internet are, of course, businesses. But the reason they are successful is because they
fulfill a basic human need to communicate. Some of their messages we return directly to sender (remember
The Howard Cosell Variety Hour? Didn't think so); others we accept because, in one way or
another, they speak to us. When our favorite TV series and fan forum devote themselves to a certain
vampire slayer, for example, we may find ourselves avid devotees. Rare is a show that stimulates our minds
as it touches our hearts.
Yet is the era in which we are living either too intellectual or overly emotional? A few friends have argued
persuasively in favor of the latter. We don't feel enough for each other these days, they claim. We have lost
the ability to express ourselves fully. We are spending too much time living in our heads and not enough in
the actual world.
All valid points. Yet I can't help but feel a measure of sympathy for the academic community. Not only are
scholars frequently cast as cold, insensitive and hopelessly out-of-touch (in fact the complete opposite is
true, unless you're Daniel Dennett), but they have to contend with those who refuse to play by the rules of
their respective vocations. If you want to be a lawyer, a chef, a high school teacher, or a baseball player,
you go to law school, take cooking classes, get certified, try out for a farm team. But there seems to be a
general public notion that you needn't bother following the rigors of established scholarly methods in order
to practice them. This is gratifying in the sense that it shows a natural human interest in intellectual
endeavors, and academics could and should do more to make their ideas more accessible in the public
domain. There exists in some quarters, however, a double standard of condemning the life of the mind
while simultaneously craving the cachet it possesses.
Perhaps because his films are both intellectually challenging and emotionally rewarding, Steven Soderbergh
is by far my favorite of all living directors. Avant-garde tendencies aside, he shares with Joss Whedon a
mischievous humanism, a profound sense of humor at all humankind's foibles. I'm proud to say that I was a
Soderbergh fan when he was still teetering along the fringes of the industry. Before Traffic,
Ocean's Eleven, Erin Brockovich, and Out of Sight, Soderbergh had earned a
reputation as a failed wunderkind. His acclaimed 1989 debut, sex, lies and videotape, was followed
by the artsy-fartsy dud Kafka, the lovely yet largely unseen Depression-Era drama King of the
Hill (featuring Amber Benson in a small but memorable role), and the botched neo-noir The
Underneath.. Soderbergh has said that his experience with The Underneath was so unsatisfying
that for the first time he began to doubt himself as a filmmaker. (Though it should be noted that the movie
really isn't that bad, and is interesting enough to warrant a "Guilty Treasure/Buried Treasure"
column of its own). Making movies wasn't fun for him anymore. Feeling burned out and broken down,
Soderbergh returned home to Louisiana in 1995 to find the fun again.
Schizopolis, which he made during his homecoming, may not be the weirdest, funniest
movie I've ever seen, but then again it might. Employing something resembling plot structure, the film
unfolds in three swift acts. The first introduces Fletcher Munson, an anonymous Dilbert at an unnamed
omnicorp, struggling to write an important speech for his boss, the Tony Robbins/L. Ron Hubbard-like
guru of a New-Agey movement called "Eventualism." The second weaves in the narrative of Dr. Jeffrey
Korchak, a successful but lonely dentist who is carrying on an affair with Fletcher's bored wife at the same
time he is falling in love with another patient. The final act doubles back on earlier scenes, deepening them,
from Mrs. Munson's point-of-view.
If all this sounds fairly humdrum and only slightly unconventional, I should add that Soderbergh himself
stars as both Fletcher and Dr. Korchak, and that Betsy Brantley, his real-life ex-wife, plays Mrs.
Munson and the other patient (known only as "Attractive Woman #2"). Amid the doppelgangering are
gonzo newscasts (one reports the sale of Rhode Island and its planned conversion into a mini-mall),
interviews with the main characters, goofy dream sequences, send-ups of office politics, bungled drug
deals, an assassination attempt, a half-naked man pursued by asylum workers, and most importantly, the
saga of a nutso exterminator who has a way with the ladies, and who is offered to star in his own movie by
a strange married couple following him around town. A cheeky preface and coda feature Soderbergh the
director on stage, telling the audience in Whedonesque terms that, "If anything is confusing, it's your fault,
not ours."
He's only kidding. Unlike the narrative butchery of Buffy S6, the havoc wreaked in
Schizopolis is purely intentional. I wouldn't go so far to suggest that a Grand Design exists beneath
the lunacy. Only that on repeated viewings, a few threads do become visible.
Soderbergh's main theme appears to be (surprise!) communication, and the idea that words have lost their
meaning. Fletcher and his wife speak in dialogue that's meant to convey their mutual boredom and
estrangement. ("Generic greeting!" he shouts upon coming home from work. She pecks him on the cheek
and says with faux-cheeriness, "Generic greeting returned!") Other times, Fletcher seems to hear what he
believes people are secretly thinking. In a scene reminiscent of Buffy's imagining what her mom's doctor is
really saying in "The Body," Fletcher attends the funeral of a colleague and listens to the pastor eulogize,
"Don't you wish you felt something?" The pastor then asks how many of the men present think that the
widow is a babe.
As Dr. Korchak, Soderbergh displays a funny and touching sense of longing when he crafts a love letter for
Attractive Woman #2. "I may not know much," we hear in voiceover, "but I know that the wind sings your
name endlessly, although with a slight lisp that makes it difficult to understand if I'm standing near an air
conditioner." Much of Schizopolis combines a wacky sense of humor with an undercurrent of rue.
By the time Mrs. Munson tries to reconcile with her husband as his dialogue is dubbed in French, Italian
and Japanese (remember Xander's struggle to understand Giles and Anya in "Restless"?), you've either
succumbed to the film's eccentricies or have ejected the tape.
Schizopolis isn't a movie for everyone. Parts of it aren't even for me. But the
philosophically-inclined should have fun wrangling an interpretation out of Soderbergh's go-for-broke mind
games. (It should also be mentioned that unlike his new experimental head trip, Full Frontal,
Schizopolis is a feast for the eyes and ears.) Is Korchak a mere fantasy of Fletcher's? Is the whole
film a metaphor of Soderbergh's then-frustrations as a filmmaker and a family man? At its best,
Schizopolis is an entertaining and, in a screwy way, revealing confessional of a gifted filmmaker
longing in his heart to make movies that mean something, even if they don't always mean what they say.
--mundusmundi
~ ~ ~
Attractive Technicalities #1:
While, at present, Schizopolis is available only on VHS cassette, Soderbergh has promised that a
DVD is on the way. If it's anything like his other DVD presentations (nearly all of which include fascinating
commentaries and are overstuffed with extras), we are in for a treat.
The film was released in 1996, and running time is 1 hour and 36 minutes. Writing credits go to the
director, Steven Soderbergh. The film was produced by John Hardy and John Re. Cinematography was by
Steven Soderbergh with film editing by Sarah Flack. Original music was by Cliff Martinez and Jeff Rona
(both uncredited, according to the IMDb).
Cast overview:
Steven Soderbergh .... Fletcher Munson/Dr. Jeffrey Korchek
Betsy Brantley .... Mrs. Munson/Attractive Woman #2
David Jensen .... Elmo Oxygen
Mike Malone .... T. Azimuth Schwitters
Edward Jemison .... Nameless Numberhead Man
Scott Allen .... Right Hand Man
Katherine La Nasa .... Diane
Silas Cooper .... The Mysterious Couple
Liann Pattison .... The Mysterious Couple
C.C. Courtney .... Man Being Interviewed
Linda Nitsch .... Schwitters Fanatic
L. Christian Mixon .... Bad Guy
rest of cast listed alphabetically
Ann Dalrymple .... Secretary
Andre Dubroc .... Corporate Drone (uncredited)
John Hardy .... Talkshow Host (uncredited)
Margaret Lawhon .... TV Newscaster
Cristin MacAlister .... Personal Assistant (uncredited)
Ronnie Stutes .... Lawyer
Erica Welborn .... Elmo Oxygen Victim (uncredited)
~ ~ ~
Question(s) of the Week:
1. Would you say we are living in more of an Intellectual or Emotional Age?
2. Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads in your life? What path did you opt to choose? If you
could do it over again, would you have proceeded the same way or would you have done it differently?
Thanks for reading!
-- mundusmundi
~ ~ ~
[>CMotW *Double Feature* - August 17th 2002 - GP / BT Pt III w/ Guest Host *Rob* -- OnM, 21:04:26 08/17/02 Sat
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I am going to come right out and admit it.
Fishophobia, I believe, is the technical term*. Yeaggh! Every thing about them gives me the
heebie-jeebies: the scaly, slimy skin; the oily, popped-out eyes; the slippery flopping and wiggling of their
bodies; the deeply slit gills; the fins. Once while watching an episode of some nature program on TV
featuring a scuba diver, I couldn't even listen to his description of the tiny swarms of fish nibbling food out
of his hands, nor could I understand the insanity that would drive a rational human being to actually want
to be submerged in an environment replete with these creatures. My fear might not be rational or logical,
but it is still very real. The jesting tone with which I'm addressing the manner is only meant to make it
easier for me to write these words, because frankly, just having to think about fish for this long is sending
me into dry heaves.
So, Rob, you might ask, when did this F.O.F. (fear of fish) begin?
It started when I was six years old. For some inexplicable reason, around that age, I began having
nightmares about fish, which freaked the hell out of me. Honestly, it grew into a huge problem, because I
would wake my mom up in the middle of the night, screaming that fish were surrounding me, eating me
alive. I remember these dreams clearly, because, even after opening my eyes, I would still see the fish
swimming all around my mom and me, in the form of little floaters, dancing before my eyes. I would jump
into her bed and lie awake until morning came and the fish would magically disappear.
Mind you, this was not a one-time thing. This happened at least a few nights a week, until my mom taught
me a trick that actually worked. All I'd have to do before I went to bed was say over and over, at least ten
times in a row, I'm not gonna have bad dreams I'm not gonna have bad dreams, I'm not gonna have
bad dreams. And guess what? No fish!
While the nightmare fish eventually stopped coming, my fear of fish did not. To this day, I won't even
prepare myself a tuna sandwich. The tuna must already be mashed in the mayonnaise to the point where
there are no chunks and any resemblance to fish meat no longer exists. When I was eleven, I developed
psoriasis and had to take fish oil to cure it. It was like someone up there was taunting me!
And the major irony of this all? I'm a Pisces. Go figure!
Anyway, according to the news, my childhood nightmare has now come to life. Here is an excerpt from a
story, recently printed at CNN.com:
~~~
The land-walking snakehead fish that is native to Asia has now been found in seven states, and the Bush
administration will announce Tuesday a ban on all U.S. imports of this predatory fish. The snakehead,
which can grow up to 3 feet long, can walk across land to find new sources of food in other lakes and
streams. The fish can stay out of water for up to three days.
The fish came to light this summer after several snakeheads were found in a Maryland pond. The so-called
'Frankenfish' were dumped there by a local resident who had initially imported them to make soup.
Snakeheads have been found in six other states-- Hawaii, Florida, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and
Rhode Island, according to the Interior Department. "If they get into a larger water system, they could
alter the food chain and displace other species," said John Surrick, spokesman for the Maryland
Department of Natural Resources.
The people of Northern Thailand and Myanmar (formerly Burma) believe a snakehead fish is a reincarnated
sinner. The freshwater fish has an ugly wide mouth and heavy scales, making it look like a snake's head
and letting it swallow prey as large as it is. Adults eat fish, frogs, aquatic birds and small mammals, while
juvenile snakehead fish prey on earthworms, water bugs, tadpoles, dragonfly larvae and other organisms.
With sharp teeth and powerful jaws, big snakeheads can bite other fish in half.
~~~
Pardon my French in advance, but fish could never cause any harm, so I shouldn't be afraid. Yuh-huh! Call
up the nice folks at Buffy's asylum right now and reserve a room for me-- I'm definitely gonna need some
'rest time'. Or better yet, call up Anya about opening a portal to a 'no-fish dimension' and drop me in
headfirst! Recently, my mom bought a small goldfish that she keeps in a bowl in her room. (Perhaps to
make sure I don't go in there and touch any of her stuff??) I swear, every time I go in there, it swims up to
the top of the bowl and mocks me. It opens its mouth wide, lets out a glub-glub-glub of bubbles and flaps
its tail around quickly, almost the way a dog wags its tail. And then it sticks out its tongue at me and sings
Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah! I swear!
The funny thing, though, despite all of these fears, is that one of my favorite films of all time is
Jaws. What terrifies me in real life is perfect fodder for a horror movie for me. (Now, please don't
go all marine biologist on me and try to explain how, strictly speaking, sharks aren't fish!) In the second
season episode of The Sopranos, Big Girls Don't Cry, Dr. Jennifer Melfi has a discussion
with her therapist about scary movies, saying that people are fans of them for the same reasons they love
roller coasters: To experience the thrill of being terrified without the consequences. I guess that's
the same way with me. Up on the movie screen, the killer fish can't hurt me. So I get the excitement and
the thrill of being scared, and know I can't really be harmed by it. Now, believe me, I know (rationally)
that a fish couldn't really hurt me either. But that's the nature of phobias.
I also know that fishophobia is probably not as common as, say, arachnophobia. Spiders are much more
likely to be crawling in your walls than fish, although if these snakehead things aren't contained and start
taking over America, that might change. Perish the thought! And recently a film came out that capitalizes
on arachnophobia, because it takes people's fears about these non-harmful creatures (not counting
tarantulas and some African/Asian types of spiders), and elevates them by making the spiders themselves
immense. Every fear someone might ever have about spiders is capitalized upon in this film. Although it
may seem crazy to say it, people with arachnophobia almost have a primal fear that the spiders are out to
kill them (just as I know the fish are out there to kill me). And in this film they most certainly are.
The film in question is an extremely new one, Eight-Legged Freaks, so you might ask me
why I would have chosen this to be a Guilty Pleasure/Buried Treasure pick of the week. The answer is that
this delightfully campy film is both a guilty pleasure, in its gleeful homage to B-films of the 1950s, and a
buried treasure, in that it is faring abysmally at the box office, despite the fact that not only is it a film
well-worth seeing but surprisingly original, entertaining, well-acted, and well made. Even though it was
released less than a month ago, this film is already a 'buried treasure', although perhaps it will succeed on
video. And maybe I can help that a little with this review. ;o)
OK, now to the plot.
Plot? What plot? Basically all you have to know about the film is that it is about a small town whose
inhabitants find them besieged by gargantuan, killer spiders. And how do the spiders get so darn big? Why,
a tank of radioactive material rolls into the lake where the local crackpot gets his supply of grasshoppers to
feed his pet (thus, normal-sized) spiders. But the grasshoppers, having been sitting for a while in the
now-radioactive lake, have mutated, and when the spiders eat them, they start growing enormously and
increase in ferocity, at conveniently rapid rates, of course!
Just nod and smile. The film features some fine character work from David Arquette, as a young man
returning home after about a 12 year absence at the most inconvenient of times, and Doug E. Doug, as a
local radio show host, whose ongoing mad rantings about alien abductions and government conspiracies
insure that no one believes his broadcast when the real crap finally goes down.
The film also stars a precocious young chap, played by Scott Terra, who seems to embody the essence of
Zach Gilligan, the boy from Gremlins and Henry Thomas, Elliot from E.T. He is the perfect
blend of innocent charm and bookish intelligence. And, of course, he is the first to learn about the spiders;
of course, nobody believes him; and also, of course, he is smarter than all of the adults. His sister is played
by the very pretty Scarlett Johansson, from Ghost World, who manages to find a new twist on the
traditional rebellious teenage girl character.
But forget the actors for a moment. The real stars of this film are the spiders themselves. And these are no
small tiny evil spiders a la the 1990 John Goodman spider horror/comedy flick, Arachnophobia.
Film critic Roger Ebert noted at the time that that film's main flaw was the spiders were portrayed actual
size, which does not play well on the big screen. For something to be truly frightening in a movie, it must
be larger than life, and these spiders certainly are. They chomp, they stomp, they tear people to shreds.
They are truly carnivorous beasts, and are a remarkable f/x achievement. Not only do they move like real
spiders, but their features are accurate as well, just like the spiders you're used to seeing on your drainpipe.
In fact, at times, you might find yourself wondering how anything could look so real and yet not be.
The other advantage to having a film starring huge spiders is that it allows people to separate themselves
from the situation and keep it from becoming too real. The spiders of Arachnophobia were too real
for comfort for someone truly afraid of spiders. They were the size of normal spiders and still were killers.
(It would be like me going to a film about snakehead fish). While a moviegoer might jump from the fear of
these larger-than-life creatures, he or she also understands that a similar situation could never occur in real
life. So, any arachnophobe who also loves horror films would be well-advised to see this film; you get the
thrill of true fear, but the full knowledge that this is only a movie. If I can sit through (and even enjoy)
Jaws, you can sit through Eight Legged Freaks.
For all of you 'normal' people out there who aren't afraid of little things like fish or spiders, you shouldn't
have any problem at all. ELF never aspires to be anything more than what it is-- a fun campy, little
treat in the vein of Gremlins and Tremors-- and yet is not the typical 'mindless' summer
flick, despite how the ads may look. It is actually a very clever film, with some extremely inventive and
over-the-top effects, and some great dialogue and action scenes (I promise you, you will never look at
drywall, or bas-relief sculptures the same way again.). There is more quality entertainment in any random
5 minutes of this movie than in the entirety of Men in Black II.
I promise you a truly fun time at the movies and an expectedly implausible (but very fun) resolution. So
what are you waiting for? Run to your multiplex and check out Eight Legged Freaks before it
leaves theatres altogether.
And don't forget to feed your fish! (gulp!)
E. Pluribus Radioactivus Creaturus Implausibilitius, Unum,
-- Rob
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Technically something fishy going on here:
This film is still in theatres, albeit mostly only once a day at odd times, so rush there fast before it's gone!
You're definitely gonna want to see those spiders on the big screen, when they're still larger than life.
Needless to say, the film's not available on VHS or DVD yet. The run time is a nice and easy 99 minutes
so these huge arachnids don't overstay their welcome. The film is rated PG-13, for violence. You don't
have to worry about too much gore, if that's not your thing. If it is, sorry! All of the more gruesome
grossness is done off-camera.
The film was directed by Ellory Elkayem. He had a hand in the writing aspect of the film as well,
collaborating with Randy Kornfield on the story, and with Jesse Alexander II on the screenplay. The
aspect ratio of the film is 2.35:1. The cinematography was done by John S. Bartley, with film editing by
David Siegel and production design by Charles Breen. Art direction was by (fittingly) Charles Butcher. Set
decoration was by Marcia Calosio. Costume design was by Alix L. Friedberg. The original theatrical
sound mix was provided in Dolby Digital, DTS and SDDS depending of course on the particular theater.
The musical score was written by John Ottman and Rich Ragsdale.
Cast overview:
David Arquette .... Chris McCormack
Kari Wuhrer .... Sheriff Sam Parker
Scott Terra .... Mike Parker
Scarlett Johansson .... Ashley Parker
Doug E. Doug .... Harlan
Rick Overton .... Deputy Pete
Leon Rippy .... Wade
Matt Czuchry .... Bret
Jay Arlen Jones .... Leon
Eileen Ryan .... Gladys
Riley Smith .... Randy
Matt Holwick .... Larry
Jane Edith Wilson .... Emma
Jack Moore .... Amos the truck driver
Roy Gaintner .... Floyd
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Miscellaneous:
Hello, it's OnM back again, once again just briefly-ish like during the opening to mundus' previous
review thang. Just a few quick comments'n'stuff for the misc. section this week:
Humorous item #1:
According to the IMDb, one of the original working titles for ELF was 'Arac Attack'.
Humorous item #2:
http://www.gorskys.com.au/articles/fish-facts.html
Humorous item #3:
* Actually, Rob, it's ichthyophobia, but I have to concede that your term is funnier. ;-)
Humorous item #4:
If you've ever checked out the 'tag lines' that the IMDb reprints for most of the films inthe database, you'll
probably agree with me that the majority of them are pretty lame or even downright stupid. Not so the one
for ELF-- it gets right to the point:
Do you hate spiders? Do you really hate spiders? Well, they don't like you either.
( That one's right up there with the one from Tim Burton's Mars Attacks:
Nice planet! We'll take it! )
Humorous item #5:
Well, I hoped it would be funny. If the 'E. Pluribus' tag didn't bring a chuckle, please don't blame Rob,
'cos that one was my doing. Fair's fair!
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~ ~ ~ Rob's Question of the Week: ~ ~ ~
If they made a horror movie based on your own biggest fear, what would it be about and what would it be
called?
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Thanks again guys! Great job!
:-)
-- OnM
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[> [>Arac Attack ! -- Ete, 03:25:51 08/18/02 Sun
That's the name under it they released it in France !
go figure...
Mmm no that I have posted I must answer, right ? I think the things that probably scares me the most in an irrationnal way is things that go "bzzz". Say, "Bee's bises" :)
Oh, and if they're big, won't scare me as much as those little tiny insects that goes sneaking on you and you can never be really sure where there are and stay away from them. *shudder*
[> [> [>Probably changed it here because it sounds like "Iraq Attack." Nobody wants that. *snort* -- mundus, 18:45:44 08/19/02 Mon
[> [> [> [>That actually is the exact reason...Read it in an article somewhere. -- Rob, 11:03:52 08/20/02 Tue
Originally, "Arac Attack" was meant as a pun on "Iraq," but, after September 11th, the moviemakers didn't wanna have any Middle-East attack jokes.
Either way, I like the new title much better, personally.
Rob
[> [>Of fish and other things -- matching mole, 06:14:59 08/18/02 Sun
If I was to stick to my mole persona I would have to say that the scariest movie imaginable would be about a gigantic Labrador Retriever because the only mole I've ever seen in the wild was in the process of being chewed up by an example of that breed of man's best friend.
However in real life I would say that a horror movie about giving a presentation at a job interview in which your very existence became intertwined with the success of the talk might be about as scary a thing as I could imagine.
Thanks for the review Rob. I'm a big fan of bad horror movies, particularly of the mutant organism variety.
About fish - as a formal classification using cladistic principles you basically have two options. Either fish don't exist or we are fish! The key idea here is that all the members of a named group of organisms must have a common evolutionary ancestor and that all the descendents of that ancestor must be members of the group. There is no common ancestor of all the organisms typically considered fish that is not also the common ancestor of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. I don't know which option would be more comforting (or utterly horrifying) to you.
[> [> [>Re: Of fish and other things -- aliera, 05:19:57 08/19/02 Mon
Have you heard of a book called the "Seven Daughters of Eve" by Brian Sykes?
PS The thought doesn't bother me...I'm a Pisces. I wear the fish; the fish does not wear me...just kidding!
[> [>Fowl fear -- CW, 08:39:10 08/19/02 Mon
David Boreanaz has said he has a fear of birds. I don't know whether it's true or he just said it for publicity purposes. I did catch him telling Rosie O'Donnell that walking past the poultry aisle in the supermarket gave him the willies.
Scary movie titles? How about "The Life and Times of President Hillary Clinton"? Or How about "The Presidency of the Second Bush, The Golden Age of America"? Hey, OnM! What's the correct word, politicophobia or moronophobia?
[> [> [>Politicophobia or Moronophobia? The correct answer is... yes. -- OnM, 19:44:10 08/19/02 Mon
[>Re: Classic Movie(s) of the Week - August 17th 2002 - GP / BT Pt III w/ Guest Host *mundusmundi* -- matching mole, 07:01:23 08/18/02 Sun
thanks for the review mundus. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't seen a single Soderbergh film, something I'll have to rectify in the near future. Your description of parts of Schizopolis makes it sound kind of like the early episodes of 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin' a great BBC comedy from the late 70s, early 80s. The meaninglessness of most verbal communication is emphasized in this show by making the dialog extremely predictable and cliched.
As for the questions
1) My mother thinks that a major problem with western civilization is that there is an intellect/emotion imbalance. Too much emphasis in decision making is based on intellectual considerations rather than'getting in touch with your feelings'. While there may be some truth to this I feel that the ability to think about the big picture, take the broad perspective is becoming increasingly devalued. People seem to be good at problem solving but that don't seem to be very good at thinking about what the real problems might be, probably because of emotion.
2) I guess I've been at a number of crossroads in my life, although often they didn't really seem that way to me at the time. In contrast to what I said above (so I guess I'm as guilty as anyone) very few of my major life decisions where generated by long term, down the road considerations. I went to university, to grad school because I wanted to do those things for their own sakes, not for any goal that I might achieve afterwords. My wife and I got married after living together for several years in large part for immigration considerations. It didn't really mark any change in our relationship.
One crossroads in my life that I didn't even think about at the time came during my late high school, early undergraduate years. My two academic enthusiasms were Biology and English. Biology instruction in my high school was not particular inspiring but the English department was very good with a lot of emphasis on creative writing. However, I think largely for reasons of practicality (for once), I chose to major in biology as an undergrad. Once at university I really liked biology but I also loved my intro to English lit survey course. I seriously considered getting a second degree (a three year 'Pass' degree rather than a four year 'Honours' degree) in English as well as my Honours Biology degree. By using all my electives to this end I might have been able to get both degrees in five years. To that end I took a second English course, Romantic Literature, the summer after my second year. While I enjoyed reading the material I found that I didn't really like the class. Unlike my intro class which featured students from across the humanities I found myself the lone scientist amidst a group of advanced humanities undergraduates. There was an element of culture shock related to superficial things like fashion sense and smoking. But more than that I didn't get the sense of enthusiasm for the subject matter that I saw in science. (I should note that I am talking about a single class I took when I was 20 and am not intending in any way to impugn the entire study of English literature or the humanities in general). Everyone was very analytical but without any apparent love for what they were reading behind the reasoning. I never took another English course, which may be one of the few decisions in life that I regret (along with not taking any time off between undergrad and grad school).
[> [>Thanks for the fascinating backstory, other mm.... -- mundus, 08:25:00 08/18/02 Sun
As your story suggests, it seems that we're emotional about things that require more intellectual responses, and vice-versa. I'd agree with your mom that there's an imbalance. I'm just not sure where it is.
On Soderbergh: I'd recommend one of his more accessible films as a start, like Out of Sight or King of the Hill. The former is a stylish and entertaining throwback to the kind of romantic-comic, lovers-on-the-lam picture that's rarely made anymore. It's smart and sensual, and the narrative structure is tricky but always clear. The latter is based on a memoir by A.E. Hochtner about growing up in St. Louis during the Depression. It's a quiet, beautiful and touching movie, restrained yet charged with feeling.
If those catch your fancy, try some of his kookier stuff. I haven't seen the BBC series you mentioned, but somebody described Schizopolis as a cross between Un Chien Andalou and The Kentucky Fried Movie. Soderbergh directs it like sort of a user-friendly David Lynch. If you don't like it, don't worry: it moves very fast.
[>On quotage.... -- mundus, 08:08:05 08/18/02 Sun
Just so it's clear, the line about quoting was meant to convey the anarchic spirit of Soderbergh's film. That and I pinched it from Joe Queenan. Can't recall which book.
Schizopolis may be difficult to find at Blockbuster. I was finally able to reserve it at the local library, on a beautifully presented widescreen videotape. It also airs now and then on IFC and Bravo. I'm waiting impatiently for the DVD.
Thanks, OnM! 'Twas a pleasure.
-mm
[>Minds versus Hearts - or false dichotomies -- Rahael, 02:40:16 08/19/02 Mon
Thanks for the review Mundus! You know how much I love Soderbergh, and I have not properly caught up with his early work, and I see that I should.
You suggest that you like Soderbergh precisely because he is both intellectually challenging and emotionally rewarding but I'd say that all great works of art give us both of these. And those activities that we arbitrarily choose to locate in the heart and the brain really happen in the same place. I'd say that the whole of our bodies are caught up in the activity of living, and that reason and emotion are the sensations that tell us we live.
It's not so much, I think, that there is an imbalance between intellect and emotion but that they are not often married together enough. That they are falsely separated from each other. As Archbishop Abbott very nearly might have said in that Council Meeting in the early 17th Century "it seems to me that the harmony was sweetest, when intellect and emotion tuned well together".
The debate about the proper place of the intellectual - whether he/she should be engaged in ordinary life, in the market place of life or whether he/she should remain morally uncompromised in the thoughtful cloiseters of academia goes back, of course to ancient times. This question was irrelevant in the culture I grew up in, because academics had such a high status in the community, that they were inextricably involved in the big questions of the day.
Is this my perspective because I grew up in a family of fiercely emotional academics? That the burning questions of the day, discussed around the dinner table involved the lives of other people, people who were our neighbours, friends, countrymen, enemies? Because every choice had such a tremendously important outcome, and that every part of our lives, our emotions, our brains had to be used to survive, to live, to retain our humanity?
I have been lucky that most of the academics I have met have been warm, welcoming, eccentric, joyful, basically everything other than cold and dry. I remember my tutor, who taught me 17th Century history on and off for three years of my degree, who when I approached my exams, strode excitedly around his room, telling me to "reach for the stars, Rahael!" I remember a wonderful seminar group, where with great intellectual excitement, fifteen of us read and discussed our way through the Interregnum. After seminars, we'd go down the pub, and continue where we'd left off. I can never remember a more convivial, thoughtful and joyful class, filled with much laughter. I count myself very lucky to have that experience.
I count myself as both a very rational, thoughtful person and an emotional one, at one and the same time.
You ask whether we live in an Intellectual or Emotional Age. Alas, if either one were true! It sometimes seems to me that we live in the world of Unfeeling Stupidity. Hardened hearts and closed minds, which value neither the lives nor thoughts of human beings, or the true merits of complex thought. Cynical? But I've had the dubious privilege of seeing some truly crappy decisions, and having to live under their baleful effect. But I'd suggest that the tenderest hearts, and the sharpest minds can and do often coexist. I've never come across two more vibrantly emotional people than my parents. And yet, they had an acute understanding of the world they lived in. They were both academics, who ended up at the heart of political events. Their minds and their thoughts were so dangerous that many did not want them to live. In the future, I hope to remember them as people who felt and thought deeply for their country. People who had the critical grasp of what needed to be done, because they did not close their eyes, or rationalise away the suffering of others.
As for the second part of your question, it is a very noticeable feature of my life, how very little choice I've ever had. I have dislocated many times from the life that I have tried to build by circumstances that I cannot control. Even now, at the outer edges of my life, those same dark forces still threaten. All the choice I have had, all the decisions that I could make were about how I would react to them. I couldn't control how life treated me, but I could control how I reacted to events. Sometimes people laugh at me, because I take life so seriously, and because I spend so much damn time thinking everything through. Thinking about politics, life, my friends and family, my emotions, Buffy. I was always convinced that one day I would be able to reach a point in my life where I could have both emotional, and intellectual integrity.
And most of all, I value that quality that Thomas Hardy strived all his life for: "Loving-kindness". I would hate that quality to be disassociated from the quality of thought, since Hardy displayed this both through his life, and his great work. So I'd plump for hoping that we might one day approach an age which valued thoughtful emotion. Failing that, that we build our lives and our little communities around these principles.
Says Rah, who has Mozart's Die Zauberflote playing, and who keeps repeating on the Queen of the Night's wonderful aria now there's thought and emotion all packaged up together! I don't think I've ever listened to anything that is so incredibly beautiful.
Ubiqitous quotage ahead:
"The business of the poet and novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things." (1)
Thomas Hardy
1) Notebook entry for 19 April (1885), in Florence Hardy The Early Life of Thomas Hardy 1840-91 ( (1928)) ch. 13
[>Re: Life choices -- Cactus Watcher, 05:33:24 08/19/02 Mon
I don't think its so much a matter of emotion or intellect being ascendant. It's always been a matter of people not being able to use them at the same time for good. I have to say that the recent stock market crisis is largely a matter of intellect failing. Allen Greenspan did everything short of shouting, 'Hey, you stupid people! You're paying too much for stock!" But, people kept buying so they wouldn't miss out. Most of the worst corporate abuses we've seen tied with the stock mess might be called failure of emotion on the part of the public. You had to feel that many, many CEO's were making too much money for what they were doing. But, when proxy time rolled around, investors were thinking, 'Well this guy keeps the stock going up. He's making me money. Let's give him whatever he wants.' If emotion and intellect don't work together (or if either works badly) you've got a mess.
There are crossroads all the time in life. Like Matching Mole, I had a drastic change of direction in college. In highschool I realized I wasn't cut out to be an engineer like the rest of the men in my family. So I picked something that sounded interesting to major in before I'd had any classes in the subject. About two-thirds of the way through school, I started to realize that although I was easily going to get a degree in the subject I'd chosen, I really didn't enjoy working in that field at all. Although, I was even accepted into graduate school in that subject, I eventually realized I couldn't go on. I finally admitted, I really enjoyed working with languages, and with a 'wasted year' back in school, I went on to grad school in Russian which I've never regretted.
My latest big crossroads was retiring. Cutting ties with my old job meant I had to move away from where I'd grown up. If I didn't, they'd have kept calling me back, and kept asking me to keep working, I know it. The only way to get any peace was to move away. Sometimes, decisions are easy intellectually even if they are hard emotionally.
[> [>Thanks for the perspective.... -- mundusmundi, 17:18:15 08/19/02 Mon
BTW, Aquitaine just told me that you're her favorite poster: "(CW) gets everyone's message and answers in kind." I'm always grateful for your perspective.
-mm
[> [> [>Thanks to you and to Aquitaine for your kind words. -- CW, 17:36:45 08/19/02 Mon
OT - *A Working Class Hero is Something to Be* ... ( No. 4 in an occasional series ) -- OnM, 08:15:29 08/18/02 Sun
From today's Philadelphia Inquirer:
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/3888842.htm
An exerpt:
It was a chance encounter in front of a painted wall. One of those moments that seem fleeting at the time but that
smolder in the soul.
Kenny Green was walking down the street to buy his boss a cheese sandwich, his head full of worries. Halfway
to Yock's Sandwich-Ville, he lifted his head and spotted Grace Lindsay transfixed by a mural.
Curious, he took a place beside her. Grace asked Kenny if he thought the mural was beautiful. Kenny said yes.
The woman's warmth was disarming. So Kenny shared something about himself: "I work next door at the video
store."
The strangers stood there for a while, staring at the wall, the septuagenarian grandmother and the 19-year-old
video clerk.
"May I take your picture in front of the mural?" Grace asked.
*** (c) 2002 Phildelphia Inquirer ***
[>Thanks for this. -- AurraSing, 09:14:14 08/18/02 Sun
With my family's mentality that of course everyone gets a post secondary education and goes on to find a career,sometimes I lose sight of those who never get the help or the will to do better than a high school diploma-if that.
You can always do better,if you try.Good thinking!
[>Echoing thanks -- Rahael, 04:25:48 08/19/02 Mon
This article was a nice link up with the questions that Mundus posed in his CMoTW, and which prompted some more thoughts from me.
I read this article and thought how lucky I was. Not only did I grow up in an affluent family, full of people who loved learning, but I grew up in a commnunity noted for its high rate of literacy for that region. It was the only escape for a group of people who were consistently discriminated against in all walks of life. This culture of education and ambition of course, only exacerbated the tensions between my mother's community, and the one that my father grew up in. Two more different worlds could not be imagined.
My father, to me, is indeed a 'working class hero'. He grew up in a farming village where the main focus was not on education, but on living and working to survive. He walked six miles to school early in the morning, and six miles back, barefoot. He got his first pair of shoes when he departed to go to University. He didn't even have his own set of the necessary maths equipment - he shared one with another boy. And when he sat his exams, which determined his going to University, he didn't even understand their significance. It was just another day in school for him.
When he did go to University, he was the first person in the village to do so. Later on, he taught himself to read English in prison. I think of this, and it moves me deeply. I understand how lucky I am to have had the expectation that of course I would end up going to university and doing well. I understand exactly why he did all the housework, cooking and cleaning when my sister and I were going to school, so that nothing would interrupt our studies. Why he got up early to make sandwiches for our lunch. My father - the toughest, bravest, gentlest man I know. The man who quotes Goethe to me and taught me to write a properly structured essay.
I guess this is why I cannot ever properly articulate why the idea of scholarship, and learning and education raises within me the strongest emotions, of joy and sadness and just something completely inexpressible.
[> [>Re: Echoing -- aliera, 05:14:19 08/19/02 Mon
ahhhh, Goethe that explains it...and by-the-bye missed you recently.
I think it's very understandable. My father worked his way through school and grad school (with some scholarship assistance)...my grandfather worked all sorts of odd jobs, usually three at a time, he had sold their farm in Huron, OH to move to Toledo for a better future for the family. For my father and his brothers education was a way out and freedom; my fathers sadness was he chose to be an engineer when he would have like to attempt architecture...engineering was safe, you see. I made a similar decision and chose business admin not Fine Arts, since I needed the security of being able to provide for others, also.
I think the type of education you may be referring to is rather rare here now; there is a sense of the technical school about things and I wish that we were able to provide both a broader and deeper education that enabled the love of learning to continue past childhood and also encouraged thinking not by rote behavior. :-)
[>Re: OT - *A Working Class Hero is Something to Be* ... ( No. 4 in an occasional series ) -- Rendyl, 05:49:44 08/19/02 Mon
I like the message of the piece. Thanks for posting it for us. Unfortunately responses to it prove once again that my world and life are so different as to be on another planet from most of the posters here.
I do not understand why success in life is measured by the degrees and diplomas you have, or by the money you earn. There are countless people who never went to college and still manage to be successful in whatever work they choose. The unspoken message seems to be 'you must attend college when you are young and you must not choose a field that might involve ANY manual labor'. Anything less and you are either unintelligent or a poor unfortunate.
Learning does not begin with school, nor does it end there. We are learning every day. I have nothing against college and for some I think it serves its purpose. My problem is with the attitude I sometimes see and hear that -only- people who have been to college know anything and only they have meaningful jobs.
(not accusing anyone here, just relating what I am sometimes told)
My mother was 35 when she took her first college course. In the almost 22 years since she has probably amassed 12-15 total credit hours. She is a successful journalist and photographer and more importantly she enjoys what she does.
I think the myth of requiring a college education to succeed and be happy is in some ways as limiting as Grace Lindsay found the original mural to be.
Ren
[> [>Different worlds indeed -- Rahael, 06:30:41 08/19/02 Mon
And really, the world I was describing is vastly different from the European/Western world where it is possible to achieve a good standard of living with practical, non-academic disciplines.
Unfortunately, the world where I once lived, manual labour, the common lot of nearly everyone is paid with a pittance - probably the amount you pay for a cup of coffee. Though the price of fancy cups of coffees these days means that it probably stands for about 2 cups of coffees. People are cheap, things are expensive.
The reason that my mother's community has such a high standard of literacy was because a degree meant the difference between life and death. If you got a degree, you could probably have a chance of being employed somewhere, because there was such active discrimination against them. For example, my mother won a scholarship to do her PHD at Cambridge University. At the last minute, the Government took her name of the list and gave it to someone from the dominant group. The language that her community spoke was *not* recognised by the state - so if you spoke it, you couldn't get very many jobs. This is why so many ordinary people there can speak at least three languages fluently. Finally, getting a job as a lawyer or doctor meant you could emigrate, and support the family. The alternative was death, because you would get conscripted by terrorist groups. That's the reason my mother kept her part of the University up and running all during the war years, scrubbing the floors herself, preparing bodies for dissection herself, setting, invigilating and marking exam papers by herself with two technicians to help. She wanted to give a future to young men and women which didn't involve having to kill other young men and women.
So yes, it is possible in many parts of the world to do very well in life, without education. Unfortunately, this standard of living in the West is funded by the pittance paid to people living in other parts of the world. People who don't need to be educated because their future is working in a sweatshop or a factory making cheap goods.
And certainly, money is no signifier of success - which is why I argued so strongly a couple of months ago that Buffy was not a failure just because she hasn't completed her University degree, or she hasn't got some high powered jobs. But I am too much a product of the culture I was brought up in, where poverty meant living in a shack on a rubbish dump, to take education lightly. My father can now make life easier for the family who sacrificed for him.
For the country where I was born, education, and a degree still has the highest social cachet for all the right, and often tragic reasons. Because the higher educated a population gets a country's economy is helped. Even the early stages of industrialisation needs a semi educated workforce. Even a tourist industry requires people who understand what Westerners expect.
In a society where women are fundamentally mistreated, and oppressed no matter what group they belong to, a university education also gives them extra freedom.
One of the most moving stories that have come out of our bloody recent history was when a group of children were captured by the army (they were terrorists, and they surrendered) and the children gave a press conference - they were asked what they wanted to do now. All of them said they wanted to go back to school.
[> [> [>Re: Different worlds indeed -- Rendyl, 08:43:11 08/19/02 Mon
***Unfortunately, this standard of living in the West is funded by the pittance paid to people living in other parts of the world. People who don't need to be educated because their future is working in a sweatshop or a factory making cheap goods.***
I read most of your posts because they are almost always insightful and well thought out. I enjoy the look at other cultures and ways of thinking that your posts bring.
Having said that, the above quote is a very common misconception by those who do not live in the US. My standard of living is not granted me by cheap labor in other countries. If you have factories and industry paying nearly nothing for work it is the fault of your government, not mine.
Contrary to televison and movies people in the US do go hungry. People still live in poverty and they still die from malnutrition and childhood diseases we have vaccines for but they cannot afford. People still live in hovels with no running water or electricity. A portion of my taxes go to fund programs that are supposed to prevent all these things. Unfortunately it misses people. A portion of my taxes also go to fund aid programs that send food, medicine, and Drs overseas to people I will never meet and places I will likely never see. And yet I am to blame for poverty in other parts of the world?
Ren
[> [> [> [>Re: Different worlds indeed -- CW, 09:06:48 08/19/02 Mon
Having talked to many people who'd moved to this country from the world as Rahael remembers it from her childhood, most of them were astonished by how many 'poor people' in this country were overweight and drove decent automobiles. No we're not responsible for all the poverty in the world. Four hundred years ago the whole world lived under conditions we wouldn't tolerate in the West now. But, don't confuse the level of poverty in this country with what exists elsewhere. It's not the same thing at all.
[> [> [> [> [>Re: Different worlds indeed -- shadowkat, 10:21:23 08/19/02 Mon
Guess it depends on the poor people you see. I live in NYC and look at homeless people who are skin and bones sleeping on the streets every day to and from work. There's a man who sits with his dog outside the subway station.
When I was in school, I remember seeing people who lived in their cars or the streets.
Not all the poor of our country have automobiles or are heavy. Several are quite famished. If you go into the appalachians or visit some of our cities you will see them.
Yes I also know about the poor that seem to have plenty of food, but the other exists in US as well. On our Native American Indian Plantations and elsewhere.
The more I've seen of this world (been to Turkey, Mexico, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Canada)and most of the US,
the more I realize that there are many of us who go without.
Many who are starving. Diseased. Without shelter. It is UNFORTUNATELY not limited to one geographical location or one country. It is worldwide and wide spread. And I do not know how to solve it. I tried to find ways in law school and when I was younger...I'm far more cynical now.
[> [> [> [> [>Re: Different worlds indeed -- Rendyl, 10:34:13 08/19/02 Mon
In response to CW-
***But, don't confuse the level of poverty in this country with what exists elsewhere. It's not the same thing at all.***
I see. I am confused. When did it become acceptable to belittle someone else's misfortune? If someone lives in the US and is going hungry they are somehow not as hungry as they would be in another country? If someone hauls their drinking, cooking, and washing water from a well that may or may not be polluted that water is somehow cleaner and the work less hard in the US than in another country? If someone in the US suffers and feels pain it is somehow less than the pain felt by someone from another country?
If kids go to bed hungry at night why does it matter what country they are sleeping in? They are still hungry.
Ren
[> [> [> [> [>Thanks for understanding, CW -- Rahael, 10:42:07 08/19/02 Mon
[> [> [> [>Sorry, I was actually trying to acknowledge your point -- Rahael, 09:28:36 08/19/02 Mon
When I said this:
"And really, the world I was describing is vastly different from the European/Western world where it is possible to achieve a good standard of living with practical, non-academic disciplines."
I don't think I ever said that there weren't any poor people in America. I was simply trying to acknowledge your point that a university degree wasn't essential to having a useful life, with enough money to be able to support your family. But in the Western world, people/their labour is relatively expensive. Things are cheap. This is the opposite in the third world.
For example, when I was a child, I was looked after by a succession of nannies. We had a cook, we had a gardener. We had a huge garden where we grew many things, both useful and ornamental. Our family had come down the social scale (ironically because we valued education to the point where we dismissed more commercial values). However, we didn't have a television. Or a washing machine. Or a car. It's very time consuming to try and clean clothes in a tropical country by hand. Fortunately, we had people to do it for us.
When we fled with very little money at all, we ended up in Britain, probably at the very bottom of the social scale. My father had to work 7 days a week (5 days a week in a gas station, 2 days a week producing a radio programme for the BBC World service). We had things we never had before - a tv, washing machine, microwave. These were things we bought gradually, with the help of friends.
The reason we were able to so successfully thrive in a new country was because of our education. While many other immigrants fell behind in school, I shot ahead.
As for the standards of living in the West funded by the poverty in the Third world - I acknowledge that a great deal of poverty is caused by terrible governments which misuse funds. But a lot of the factories which people work in for pittances are foreign, moving wherever they can find cheap labour. I can remember my father examining carefully where goods were made before buying. (and not just from the third world. He once put down a pair of shoes made in Portugal, because he had heard that people weren't paid very well there).
There is a reason why we shopped for second hand clothing in charity shops rather than buy cheap clothing new. And why I prefer to purchase more expensive items of clothing made in the UK (helping both the native economy and not buying the products of cheap labour).
I'm an unapologetic left winger, probably quite far left compared to most of the people on this board when it comes to the way the world economy operates. Perhaps I am naive when it comes to the way the world economy functions, and the effects of globalisation. But having lived in two widely differing countries, I cannot believe that the world wide market is fair, or equitable. I think it exploits people whereever it can, and unfortunately, if you are born poor in some countries, you are virtually doomed.
Anyway, I'd welcome any comments from those who are better at economics than I am, because I avoided it like the plague whenever I could. Go on, call me a bleeding heart socialist ;)
[> [> [> [> [>Re: Sorry, I was actually trying to acknowledge your point -- Rendyl, 10:51:23 08/19/02 Mon
Sorry Rahael, I didn't mean to be so grumpy. The fire ants launched an assault on my leg while I was painting yesterday and the itching is making me more snippy than usual.
You just touched on a frustrating issue for many of us who live in the US. We know there are terrible problems in other places. We know there are still many countries where even basic human rights are ignored and because of world politics it is hard to do anything about it. There are issues where I watch the news and read the reports and just yell "Stop worrying about what you will look like and just do." But they don't. Letters and email often get brushed off as 'just the common persons opinion, too naive to take seriously'. It leaves many of us feeling we are condemned for decisions we cannot control.
Ren
[> [> [> [> [> [>Sorry I was snippy too -- Rahael, 10:59:19 08/19/02 Mon
I think I'll end my participation in this debate by saying:
Poverty bad.
Education/training good.
Whether in the third world or the first.
Which was what I was arguing the first place. Wherever you are, education/training gives a precious power to the poor and the discriminated against that they might not otherwise possess.
[> [>To go or not go to college, my own experience, Xander & Cordy -- shadowkat, 06:41:29 08/19/02 Mon
Procrastinating doing work this morning ;-)
I've read all the above posts and Ren's struck me as interesting. No, Ren I don't think anyone here is stating that the only way you can succeed is by going to college - it just sometimes seems that way. Particularly in a society where more and more jobs are only open to those of use with college degrees.
OTOH - as I'm sure many on this board may have experienced, too many degrees or certain degrees can make it equally difficult to get a job. I've been turned down for editorial and agent jobs because I have a law degree for example.
Or more degrees than the person doing the hiring. Many people in our society have become defensive about their lack of education. They shouldn't be.
My grandfather didn't pass the 8th grade. He was dirt poor when he left school. He was a farmer. Sold his farm. Built a trucking company. And retired a millionaire.
My grandmother graduated from high school but never went to college. Up until her current age of 83, she did intricate native american beaded jewelry with arthritis in both hands and sold this jewelry across the country. Some created from her own designs. A Papago woman taught her how. Up until my grandfather's retirement, she worked as his bookkeeper. They were extraordinarily successful.
My own parents were lucky to go to College. My father also came from dirt poor roots and got through school on G.I. bill and assorted summer jobs and T.A's. He graduated with an M.A. in history and post-graduate work in History. But he hasn't taught history or
worked in the field. Instead he went into Business and Management Counsulting. Without an MBA. And he was more successful than most people who have them.
Let's look at Btvs. YEs I'm bringing it back on topic!
How many of the characters on Btvs have been through
college? And which one's are sucessful?
Compare Choices Season 3 Btvs with All The Way and IWMTLY
and spec from Season 7 on Xander Harris.
Xander Harris - the Working Man's hero.
Xander had horrible grades in high school. He was the ONLY one of the gang who was not accepted to any university.
(Cordy didn't go either - but for different reasons and I'll get to her in a minute.) Xander was considered at times stupid because of his low grades and was afraid of being condemned to menial labor.
In Season 4 we see Xander jump from job to job. Feeling as if he's been left behind. Then low and behold? In Season 5, The Replacement, Xander gets a promotion and is the first of the SG to rent his own apartment. By the end of Season 5, he has actually proposed to Anya, who also isn't in college but is successfully running the Magic Box with Giles. In Season 6, Giles makes Anya a full partner and leaves the store in her care. Xander is foreman and is ordering men on the site. He has enough authority that he can briefly give Buffy (the ex-college student who got into numerous schools) a job and fire her to keep the peace. He's the one who does it not the others. You get the feeling he's the boss. This is a guy who never went to college.
Cordelia Chase - From Rich Girl to Poor Girl
After her family lost all its money - Cordy couldn't go to college. She was forced to hunt a living by other methods.
She has tried acting. She worked in retail in high school to get a dress.
She is currently co-running Angel Investigations. (Well until she got spirit lifted last season) She has a nice (albeit ghost haunted) apartment, she is gifted with visions, and struggles. But she is more or less independent.
Buffy - had to leave school and work at fast food, she - two years after Xander completed this process is now doing it herself.
Willow - who actually went to college and is still going. Has no job that we know of. Was living at Buffy's house. And got addicted to magic. Nor does Tara appear to have a job.
It's ironic, don't you think, that one's that went to college are still unemployed and living either at home, in a dorm or at someone else's home?
I'd say Btvs is supporting your view Ren.
College was important to me and I found my father's struggle heroic. But it did not guarantee him a living, any more than it guarantees me one. My father used to tell me that the point of college or an education was to teach you how to teach yourself - how to learn - how to dissemiate (sp?) information and apply it. College did that for me.
Law school taught me how to think logically and break down an argument into relevant issues. But I do NOT for one minute believe that college is the only way we learn or that everyone must go to accomplish something worthwhile or be successful. I know quite a few people who have gone further and learned more by other means.
One method is not necessarily better than another. It depends as always on the individual. As long as we continue to grow and expand our horizons..whether it be through college or other methods, that is enough.
[> [> [>Re: To go or not go to college, my own experience, Xander & Cordy -- Rendyl, 09:03:51 08/19/02 Mon
Oh I agree the advances in technology seem to demand a higher education just to understand a job, much less perform it. It just bothers me that it is becoming less of a choice and more of a requirement. My husband's cousin just found out he will be stuck taking another semester and won't graduate this spring. Not enough instructors resulted in a couple of classes never being available to fit in his schedule. He doesn't need those courses to work in his field, but he cannot graduate without them. The only one who benefits from this is the University as they happily take even more money.
I also think it sometimes limits us. We have to get our four(or six or eight, etc) years of school over and done with before we actually go live in the world. It makes college less about learning and increasing knowledge and more 'okay, check off the requirements so you can go have a decent life'. The class is a means to an end, instead of a great experience all on its own.
I think I am saying this badly. I just think college should open and encourage possibilities instead of boxing people into one field or career. I think it should add to your learning and education and not be the only source of it. And I think I need to go eat before I babble even more.
Ren
[> [> [> [>It's tough to balance the practical with the creative in school. -- CW, 09:25:04 08/19/02 Mon
And sometimes, as you point out, you're just doing things to help the university support programs you have no interest in.
From my experience (as posted today under a different thread), the better you've chosen your major to fit your interests, the more you find those possibilities, you spoke about. But, you have to be practical, as well. There aren't ever many jobs begging for people with undergraduate History or English degrees. But, in good times at least, plenty of employers won't automatically disqualify people with these degrees either.
[> [> [> [>Depends on the school -- shadowkat, 10:03:10 08/19/02 Mon
"We have to get our four(or six or eight, etc) years of school over and done with before we actually go live in the world. It makes college less about learning and increasing knowledge and more 'okay, check off the requirements so you can go have a decent life'. The class is a means to an end, instead of a great experience all on its own.
I think I am saying this badly. I just think college should open and encourage possibilities instead of boxing people into one field or career. I think it should add to your learning and education and not be the only source of it. And I think I need to go eat before I babble even more."
Not badly at all. When I chose a school - I was lucky to able to pick one outside of the public University setting.
I went to a small liberal arts college which had an experimental educational package. Instead of taking eight classes each month all year long and studying for a slew of final exams. We had one class each month.
We placed points on the classes we wanted and developed our own curriculum. We were expected to take so many credits for a major and could either develope our own minor or take a certain number of science and math courses. I was able to develop a thematic minor in Folklore and Mythology.
The school did not do multiple choice tests - instead we had five to six papers a month in my discipline (English)
and we had essay tests. Class size was limited in most cases to 15 students. We met in professors homes and for field trips since we only had one class each month - we could literally take off and go to a retreat on the other side of the mountains, several miles from the school or else-where as the case may be. Liberal Arts and Private Colleges are schools that tend to be more creatively structured - they are less concerned with you meeting a said number of checks on a box and more concerned with the process of learning. Unfortunately you do need money to afford these, but that said a good percentage of my friends in college were on work-study or other scholarship and did not have much money. The school had an excellent financial aid program.
So not all schools are like the one you mention. I've had two different educational experiences - one at Colorado College - a liberal arts college that had eight blocks, one class a month, and a scholarly symposium. The other was a state university which I had to take several classes at once and worked like most law schools.
Both schools provided a pass/fail option so you did not necessarily require a grade.
Finding a creative school can be difficult but it is by no means impossible.
Also I knew people who went to school - left for a while, did some internships and went back. This is what I did.
I graduated with a BA. Scrambled for a job. Did several internships and horrible menial jobs. Went to LAw school
and struggled some more. Several of my friends worked
through school. So some actually work in the world while going to school.
[> [> [> [> [>Re: Depends on the school -- Rendyl, 10:59:37 08/19/02 Mon
I seem to have picked the wrong schools. (grin) With all the focus on different types of intelligence and different methods we learn you would think more colleges would try the approach you mentioned. I am just glad you found some that did.
Ren
[> [> [>Re: To go or not go to college, my own experience, Xander & Cordy -- Rook, 09:42:41 08/19/02 Mon
>> It's ironic, don't you think, that one's that went to
>> college are still unemployed and living either at home,
>> in a dorm or at someone else's home?
Well, Buffy dropped out of college before suffering any of her money troubles. So you can say that the show is saying "dropping out of college will lead you to working fast food" as easily as you can draw the conclusion that it's saying something positive about Xander's not going to college at all.
And you can't really say that the others "went to college" they're "going to college." there's a huge difference. I think the living at home/dorm/other people's homes is intended to be reflective of the status of being a college student.
Drawing the conclusion that the show is saying going to college is bad because college students have a low standard of living while IN college isn't exactly accurate.
[> [> [> [>Re: To go or not go to college, my own experience, Xander & Cordy -- shadowkat, 10:11:04 08/19/02 Mon
"Drawing the conclusion that the show is saying going to college is bad because college students have a low standard of living while IN college isn't exactly accurate."
Actually agree with you. Wasn't drawing that conclusion at all. Just pointing out that the direction they took the characters away from college was an interesting one, particularly since that was their focus at the end of Season 3, all seemed to believe college was the only option, now they seem to realize there are more than one.
That's they don't necessarily have to go. OTOH a point is made in DMP that it is better to be going to school, even night school - if you have no recognizable vocational skills. (See Xander/Dawn's chat.) But Xander says after Buffy leaves school - "Welcome to the real world."
Just pointing out some interesting factors. NOT drawing any conclusions.
[> [> [> [> [>Re: To go or not go to college, my own experience, Xander & Cordy -- Rook, 10:30:37 08/19/02 Mon
>> Just pointing out that the direction they took the
>> characters away from college was an interesting one
I think this is really what it comes down to...because after "The Freshman" and "Living Conditions", and "Beer Bad" how many stories are there about "college life"?
I heard one of the Biffy writers say once that "If Joss had had one good day of High School, none of us would be here." and I think that's exactly what heppened with the college stories and why we moved away from it. Joss just really doesn't seem to have very much to say about college life, probably because it wasn't nearly as unpleasant for him as HS was. The few stories we do get relating to college life are pretty hackneyed, monster-of-the-week type episodes.
This, IMO, was one of the reasons S4 struggled and is so uneven...trying to continue the series with a formula (school-as-hell metaphor) when the writers/creator don't really feel that passionately about the subject, and aren't willing to haul out the old cliches and launh the show into prepetual mediocrity (In the hands of almost anyone but Joss, you would have gotten Xander and Anya attending UC sunnydale and Giles working in the college library, just to continue the formula). The show got much better when they moved off and started dealing with RL/grown-up issues (Death of a parent/parenthood/etc.)
[> [> [> [> [> [>Re: To go or not go to college, my own experience, Xander & Cordy -- DEN, 15:20:03 08/19/02 Mon
I'm one of those who thinks ME missed the boat on the college experience. There were a lot of promising opportunities that did not involve recycling high school, any more than a real-world college experience does. I think you have a good point about Joss not being able to pull visceral angst and misery out of his past in a college context. Maybe that's why so much of s5 and 6 seems disconnected and melodramatic, requiring major galvanic shocks like Joyce's death and its consequences,then Buffy's death and resurrection, to impel the series forward. There's no real shaping focus until Marty, for good or ill, begins recycling her young-adult memories about the middle of s6 and sets the show on the road of addiction metaphors and abusive boyfriends.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>Re: -- aliera, 16:08:06 08/19/02 Mon
Probably didn't mean that to be amusing, right? I skip over Marti quickly...but about colleges I went to several, messed up horribly...finally figured it out and put myself through the last one, I proudly redefine slow learner ( and yeah!! to independence and finally figuring out the system)...and they were the *very* best and worst of times...I definitely agree, I still laugh thinking about old friends and some of the things we did.
[> [>It's all about options. -- Darby, 06:40:46 08/20/02 Tue
I don't think that any of us believe that only the college-educated can be successful. I think that most of us remember college as being about possibilities opening for us.
I didn't go straight on to college from high school - I spent 6 years exploring other possibilities: retail sales (I turned down a management gig, so I guess that would be success of a sort), commission sales (I was horrible), door-to-door milkman (there's something you don't see that much of anymore), furniture factory worker (okay after you get past the incredible tedium). And I've enjoyed every job I've had, but most of these didn't engage me enough; I wanted more. I went part-time to college, and the furniture factory made me realize it was time to leap into the void and go full-time.
I've been part of the poverty statistics in this country, the large fraction of temporary poor that also gets forgotten - a huge part of this year's poor will not be next decade's poor. And I have to agree with CW, the level of poverty is different here - you'll be hard-pressed to find starvation deaths in the U.S., and the disease levels are orders of magnitude lower. And once you're out of the cities, where there are definitely problems (I'm not saying that poverty isn't a problem here, just trying to lend a perspective), the rural economies hardly fit the "regular" definitions due to non-monetary issues and living standard variations. End of tangent.
It can be a shame that the college diploma is taking the place in the economy that the high school diploma used to have, as a necessity for any kind of job with potential advancement. It sort of reflects the devaluement of a high school education as well as the shift in how many people go on to colleges, and the financial burden (as I know first hand - I was a long time paying back loans) can be severe for those in the "cracks" of the system. But it's an odd experience, as even you seem conflicted - on the one hand, it shouldn't just be training, but on the other, being forced to "broaden" your preparation can add years to the trail. But as shadowkat says, you can find the system that will fit you if you look hard enough beforehand (and there's a marker of potential success right there).
And you'll always be dealing with our education-based class structure, where years of school = privilege, even when it doesn't. I don't see a change in that any time soon, and many of the ways it could change are probably not good.
- Darby, who had a point when he started but seems to have lost it along the way.
[> [> [>Rural poverty -- extending the tangent -- Sophist, 08:31:07 08/20/02 Tue
Rural poverty was a major social problem in the US until very recently. One of FDR's principal accomplishments was rural electrification. Road building and other "utility" public investments also contributed greatly to alleviating the problem.
A major contributing factor was, of course, race. The rural population of the South tended to consist of African-Americans held in what amounted to serfdom. This began to change in the 1920s when that population began to migrate to Northern cities for industrial jobs (the equivalent of Hispanic immigration today). Even as late as 1967, however, I saw areas of the South that looked like impoverished parts of Mexico in the 1980s.
Though race mattered (as always), the white rural population was hardly much better off until after WWII.
The question of malnutrition in the US today is more complex. It is basically the case that few, if any, in the US suffer from inadequate quantity of food. However, many people at all income levels eat poor quality foods. This, combined with lack of exercise, leads to public health problems such as low birth-weight babies, obesity, etc.
[> [> [> [>Re: Rural poverty -- extending the tangent -- Rendyl, 08:55:53 08/20/02 Tue
A few miles down my road are several little dirt roads where people live in trailers with no doors or windows and tarpaper shacks that are falling in. Many of those 'homes' have no electric or running water. Poverty is still a major problem it just isn't visible enough for most people to see.
Ren
[> [> [> [> [>Re: Rural poverty -- extending the tangent -- Darby, 09:41:54 08/20/02 Tue
How much would you link the condition of the people you mention to a lack of education, and not necessarily college-level ed? That's kind of what got this subthread rolling.
It also sort of sounds that if anybody is poor anywhere, you would still consider it a major problem. I tend to think that more can be done, but there is a point beyond which society at large won't be able to eliminate poverty without overly controlling the lives of the poor - some of that crept into the welfare system over decades and cried for reforms. Of course, as a product of government committees its original form and the reforms are going to be flawed, but is it possible in human society to have flawless policies?. I guess I value freedom over poverty elimination at that point.
[> [> [> [> [> [>Re: Rural poverty -- extending the tangent -- parakeet, 00:56:36 08/21/02 Wed
There's problem with any discourse that covers a wide degree of people (any people, of any education, socio-economic background, or nationality). That problem is a basic misstep in logic -- one extreme is bad, therefore its opposite is good. Unfortunately, I don't think that we're going to get out of this trap anytime soon.
There are people who need help, so we dictate the help that they receive; unfortunately we over-simplify and make the problem worse. Then we overreact and make a new plan (like the form that "welfare reform" took) and just exchange one bad result for another, maybe even worse. Of course, this example is also over-simplified. Many peoples' lives were made better by the New Deal, but it had its own faults. People overreacted to these faults and have done their best to re-create the conditions that made the New Deal necessary. That isn't even bringing to account the whole "globalization" debate.
I work at a bookstore and have always been bemusedly flummoxed by the "management" subsection of "business". It consists of dozens of titles championing a one-size-fits-all approach to various problems. (Indeed, the self-help section has a similar problem, and the joke at the store goes that the difference between "self-help" and "philosophy" is the degree to which one is willing to help oneself.) However, the trick is always in finding the right approach to the right problem and adjusting it when necessary. Unfortunately, human nature tends to define itself by its opposition to what it views as the wrong extreme, sometimes by the perfectly rational response to its own experience.
This is a long-winded attempt to say that there is no simple solution to what are, by their nature, complex problems. We have to try to solve them, otherwise we would be sharks or spiders (evolutionary loners), but our socialization can only go so far because we can't conceive of all the variables. So the horrible dance of reforms continues and can't stop because that, too, is horrible.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>Uh-oh...moving WAY Off-Topic now... -- Darby, 06:46:11 08/21/02 Wed
Just a correction, and only because they're a downtrodden bunch, but sharks are not really loners. Or indiscriminate eating machines. Or dumb. At least the larger, sexier, predatory ones that people are interested in aren't.
Even Great Whites (who warm their brains, presumably to increase their efficiency) congregate for feeding purposes and adapt quickly to changes in their environment. They're not Jaws the Movie smart, but that shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.
But you're pretty much right about spiders - beyond some hatchling interaction and stuff connected to wooing mates, I don't know of any spiders that aren't solitary. Somebody out there probably does, though, but the generalization still seems valid.
- Darby, leaping to critter defense.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>Social spiders and whatnot -- matching mole, 09:25:45 08/21/02 Wed
I seem to recall from my distant past that there are social spiders in west Africa. They have communal webs or something. Unfortunately I don't have any reference material in my new office that would yield an answer and I'm too lazy to go to the library, although it's only two buildings away.
Getting back somewhat on topic - Parakeet's post seems dead on to me. Proposing simple, universal solutions to complex problems drives me crazy. I'd love to hear a politician say something along these lines. 'Here's a problem. For these reasons we think that action X will solve this problem. Let's try it. If it works, great. If not we'll look at what happened and try something else. Most likely it will work in some places and not others. That will be useful information that will allow us to modify the solution in the places where it doesn't work.'
I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to happen though.
re Education and universities. I could go on at length about various practical issues related to university education which is how I earn my living. But I'll spare you all. Outside of the practical/social issues that have been discussed at length above there is also the question of 'personal growth' if I can be forgiven for using such a vague term. To me the important thing is not when you stop going to school in a formal sense but when you stop considering yourself to be a student. Hopefully the answer is never. My sister never attended university but she spend quite a bit of energy trying to understand things about herself. The things she's primarily interested in are not the same as what interests me but the important thing is that she is still asking questions. Far too many people seem to shut down that part of themselves at some point in life (many before they have even finished their formal education). They seem to feel that they have learned everything they need to know.
Of course a lot of people don't really have the option to pursue their curiousity. But many do and don't exercise it.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>Re: Social spiders and whatnot -- mundusmundi, 14:11:32 08/21/02 Wed
It's rare if ever that I'm Information Guy, what with our excellent representatives from the scientific community, so the best I can do is play Transmitter. I googled "social spiders" and came up with this article (excerpt below):
Spider Solidarity Forever
Social spiders create the communes of the arachnid world
By Laura Helmuth
Most spiders have beastly social skills. They're aggressive, territorial loners that would just as soon eat a sibling as look at one.
Of the 35,000-odd spider species that have been described, however, a few dozen flout tradition. These social spiders live in groups. They cooperate while hunting and building their communal homes. They even care for their own‹and sometimes each other's‹young, whereas typical spiders lay their eggs and creep away.
Nineteenth-century biologists, including Charles Darwin when he voyaged to South America, discovered a few spider species that gathered in huge colonies. In the past 20 years, researchers have found more examples of gregarious spiders. Now, scientists are exploring the social webs that bind together these infamous individualists.
By looking at the social world from a spider's-eye view, biologists are gaining insights into the evolution of sociality, the costs and benefits of group living, and the ways that creatures relate to their kin....
***
The rest of the article may be found here: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/5_8_99/bob2.htm
Fascinating stuff. I've always hated spiders, but I've never thought of them as individualists and misantrhopes. Maybe I've had the little buggers pegged all wrong.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>Hmmm. "Helmuth"? suspiciously like Hellmouth, I think.. -- Arethusa, 14:26:50 08/21/02 Wed
Could these be demonic spiders, working together to vanquish mankind?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>Didn't even notice that. LOL. -- mundus, 16:00:10 08/21/02 Wed
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>Well, the Box of Gavrok did come from South America..... -- Sophist, 16:14:37 08/21/02 Wed
[>I don't understand what this story's about. Sorry. -- Finn Mac Cool, 15:41:55 08/19/02 Mon
drive by... -- Liq, 02:11:24 08/19/02 Mon
Alive and kicking.... but not too social right now.
Work good.
Life challenging.
Thinking of you all!
L
[>Come back soon -- Cactus Watcher, 04:21:43 08/19/02 Mon
[>Good to see you, Liq. -- mundusmundi, 06:29:44 08/19/02 Mon
[>Will we see you at the san Jose meet? -- Dochawk, 13:50:03 08/19/02 Mon
[> [>can someone email me w/details please? -- Liq, 15:06:30 08/19/02 Mon
"Angel" News -- RabidHarpy, 07:16:41 08/19/02 Mon
Source: theOneRing.net
URL: http://www.theonering.net/
Sean Astin To Direct Angel Episode?!
8/18/02, 8:38 pm EST - Strider
Tim Minear, the executive producer of Buffy spin-off show Angel, headlined by David Boreanaz, has revealed that Sean Astin is not only a huge fan of a show but that "it looks like he might be directing an episode for us this year". Though Minear made this claim in a situation where he didn't feel he had to guard his words, the chances of Astin directing an Angel episode look very good at this point.
[>That sounds kewl! -- HonorH, 09:17:23 08/19/02 Mon
Sean Astin's a very cool person. I'll be interested to see his directing efforts.
Now, if we could just get Neil Gaiman to write an episode . . .
[> [>Re: That sounds kewl! -- celticross, 09:27:44 08/19/02 Mon
*getting tinglies at the thought of a Gaiman ep* oh wow...
[> [> [>You aren't going to believe this, but Gaiman just wrote a "Matrix" story. -- HonorH, 11:39:22 08/19/02 Mon
I've got it in my email, if you'd like me to send it your way. Really quite good, and very Gaimanesque.
[> [> [> [>Re: You aren't going to believe this, but Gaiman just wrote a "Matrix" story. -- celticross, 13:58:28 08/19/02 Mon
That'd be awesome, HonorH (cool name, btw)! Please send!
[> [> [> [>I'd love to read it too! -- ponygirl, 14:04:51 08/19/02 Mon
If you don't mind. Pretty please and many thanks!
[> [> [> [>Very ditto...w/ please and thanks also... -- aliera, 14:09:16 08/19/02 Mon
[> [> [> [>Re: You aren't going to believe this, but Gaiman just wrote a "Matrix" story. -- Dead Soul, 14:42:35 08/19/02 Mon
Me, too, please. Just finished Stardust and am about to begin American Gods, so I'm in a very Gaiman state of mind.
Thanks,
Dead Soul
[> [> [> [> [>Ooh! "American Gods" . . . good! -- HonorH, 15:50:29 08/19/02 Mon
Extremely good. You're in for one very interesting road trip.
[> [> [> [> [>My wife is vice versa... -- Darby, 10:31:38 08/20/02 Tue
Read American Gods in July and is reading Stardust now. Immensely enjoyable but not quite appropriate for my 12-year-old.
I broke my pattern of NEVER reading books (I have a backlog of easily 6 years of magazines that I keep chipping away at) and read Coraline (we all did) - it's a fun read as well for all ages, with several mysteries to ponder.
[> [> [> [> [>Ooh! I looooove "Stardust"!!! I read it all in one three hour sitting, the first time I read it. -- Rob, 13:04:44 08/21/02 Wed
[> [> [> [> [> [>Re: Ooh! I looooove "Stardust"!!! I read it all in one three hour sitting, the first time I read it. -- Dead Soul, 14:58:38 08/21/02 Wed
It was your recommendation (albeit to someone else), Rob, that prompted me to buy Stardust and American Gods. Thanks for letting me eavesdrop.
Dead (and therefore with loads of time to read) Soul
[> [> [> [>me, too, please? -- Vickie, 16:49:29 08/19/02 Mon
[> [> [> [>Is it the one posted in the official Matrix site? -- Direwolf, 04:19:59 08/20/02 Tue
because you can get it free from there.
[> [> [> [> [>Yep. That's the one. -- HonorH, 07:30:49 08/20/02 Tue
And don't worry, dear--I'm not charging! ;-)
[> [> [> [> [>Link -- Darby, 09:49:09 08/20/02 Tue
I think this will work, but it will look slightly different from the framed version on-site...
http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/rl_neil_g.html
[> [> [> [> [> [>Read it, liked it. -- Darby, 15:40:31 08/20/02 Tue
Like any superior comics writer, Gaiman can come in, work the mythology for something new and fascinating, and leave it essentially undisturbed but enriched.
It's interesting to see him doing straight science fiction, which he claims he never does.
[>Who is... -- yabyumpan, 14:30:02 08/19/02 Mon
Sean Astin? :-)
[> [>Gomez Addams's son . . . -- d'Herblay, 14:47:56 08/19/02 Mon
Ok, ok, I guess he's done some stuff on his own.
[> [>Actually, Patty Duke's son as well ;o) -- dubdub, 17:43:26 08/19/02 Mon
He looks a lot more like his mom than like John Astin!
;o)
Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- Purple Tulip, 11:40:27 08/19/02 Mon
Hey kids! I've been reading some amazing fan fiction this summer while I was supposed to be working (good thing I only have a week left before I leave for school)! Anyway, I know that many of the posters here are avid fan fic readers, so I wanted to ask all of you what you have been reading this summer and what are some of your fave stories of all times.
Currently, I am reading A Place So Bitter by Rowan (amazing! please keep going with this one!!), Grey Lines (I'm not sure of the author b/c I just have the link up on my computer and I forgot where I found the story), A Passing Shadow by Vic Noir and Redeeming Spike's Ass by Valerie, both over at Band of Buggered. I just started reading Waking the Dead by Annie Sewell-Jennings and it's off to a good start. I've finished reading What She Deserves by Herself which is just amazing and I highly recommend it. I've also finished The Lesson of Bliss which is the last part in a sort of trilogy at Alanna.net---anything of hers is also highly recommended as I've never read anything as eloquent and poetic as what she writes. Another of my fave authors is Shoshanna- anything of hers is also gonna be good.
Ok, so now it's your turn---what fics have appealed to you? Are there certain characters that you like to read about most? What have your fave stories been? What are you currently reading? I trust and value the judgement and taste of the posters here, so I would love to know what the rest of you are reading!
[>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- Brian, 11:51:25 08/19/02 Mon
I like Dancing Lessons by Jean and its sequels at:
http://randomthought.addr.com/redemptionista/index.html
[>Two places to go: -- HonorH, 12:07:32 08/19/02 Mon
Here's one archive where you're just about guaranteed quality fic:
Better Buffy Fiction Archive
And here are my favorite authors at FanFiction.net:
Favorite Authors
Just about anything those authors have to write is worth looking into. A few exceptions, but overall, they're the best, IMHO. Also check out my "Favorite Stories" section, and, should the mood strike you, my "Stories Authored" section (hey, if you don't blow your own horn, who will?).
[>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- Dead Soul, 12:29:59 08/19/02 Mon
Seconding the recommendations for What She Deserves and A Place So Bitter (although I may be biased for this one since I'm one of Rowan's betas).
Also recommend anything else by Herself, as well as anything by Peasant. Don't have the urls, but you can get to Herself's site, Bugger This, via fanfiction, and then to Peasant's Plot via the recommendations page at Bugger This.
Warning: All of the above are Spike-centric and some are NC-17.
Dead Soul
[> [>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- HonorH, 13:19:49 08/19/02 Mon
The Better Buffy Fiction Archive, which I posted a link to, has links to all the archives you mention. Just FYI.
[>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- Rendyl, 15:10:29 08/19/02 Mon
Buffy-centric or any?
My all-time favorite Buffy fic is 'When Hellmouths Collide' by Kimberly Rector and Martha Wells Wilson. It is over on the Less than Legendary Journeys site. (yes, it is a crossover and yes, it really does make sense-grin)
If you like long (nearly novel length) fics 'Phoenix Burning' by Yahtzee is good. It is up over on Insect Reflections. 'In Harm's Way' is up there as well and has a really funny 'the scoobies go to the mall' bit.
Do you like AtS fics as well?
Ren
[> [>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- Purple Tulip, 06:14:31 08/20/02 Tue
I don't really follow AtS so I don't read the fan fic for that show because I don't know a lot of the characters, plots, etc. I really only read Buffy fics. However, I was amazed and disturbed when I went to fanfiction.net and found all of the shows that people have written fics about. People actually wrote fics about Celebrity Death Match on MTV (which is all clay-mation for those of you fortunate enough to have avoided the show altogether), and someone actually wrote an NC-17 rated fic about the children's show, Bear in the Big Blue House. Now, I am not one to comdemn anyone for their opinions, but that just seems in poor taste, and what's worse is to think that there are people reading this stuff and giving them positive feedback. Scary. But I was happy to see that Buffy by far had the most fics, as it should have.
[> [> [>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- Rendyl, 08:31:55 08/20/02 Tue
***But I was happy to see that Buffy by far had the most fics, as it should have.***
Grin.
I have seen fanfic for shows I cannot remember ever seeing. I just read a crossover (non-buffy) with a show I not only never saw, I also haven't found any mention of in searches. I skip over many that are..hmm..not to my taste..grin..but I am slightly disturbed by the 'real people' fics. Pops stars seem very popular for this and it all seems almost like the writers are stalking them without fear of being caught. Luckily we have well written stories to counteract this and some of those you mentioned.
Also, not to down fanfiction net but it seems like they post everything. Many of the fics are incomplete or haven't been betaed. You have to search out the good ones.
Ren
[> [> [> [>FanFiction.net -- HonorH, 12:48:40 08/20/02 Tue
Yep, it's a mixed bag, all right. You do happen upon treasures, though, and if you're a writer, it's the biggest audience you can get. They've also stopped accepting Actor Fic, which, IMHO, was long past due. One does often wish, however, that they had a Dreck filter.
[> [> [> [> [>Re: FanFiction.net -- Rendyl, 14:56:33 08/20/02 Tue
I don't mind wading as long as I run across good ones from time to time. I think my main complaint about the site is the overwhelming number of pop-up windows that I seem to get when I am searching it. I have had nearly twenty at once and getting them all closed is a pain. But they do seem to have fic on just about every show you can think of.
Ren
[> [> [> [> [> [>Ad Blocker -- Finn Mac Cool, 16:05:04 08/20/02 Tue
There's a thing on the blue bar at the top that reads "Ad Blocker". Use it, and no pop ups will appear for two days, when you can just refresh the Ad Blocker.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>Finn, you are my hero. ;) N/T -- Rendyl, 07:46:19 08/21/02 Wed
[>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- Deeva, 16:17:19 08/19/02 Mon
Currently I am all about jypsrose at Libidinous Desires. Simply amazing AU (alternate universe), especially Arizona, which is complete and Speedway, a work in progress. I am so hooked that I check every day for updates. There are many others that I follow (almost too many) but right now this is who I am addicted to.
[>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- Finn Mac Cool, 17:52:37 08/19/02 Mon
I like the story "Doesn't Anyone Stay Dead Around Here" by Haley Teaque, at fanfiction.net I highly reccomend it.
[>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- LadyStarlight, 14:09:37 08/20/02 Tue
I'm really liking A Place So Bitter as well (and I even get to put my .02 in, hehe). I also like the Fanged Four Fic (have you guys decided on a title yet? Or did I miss something?)
I've got lots of favorite sites/authors, but for funny stuff, I like The Mad Poetess' Small Fry duology, her Domestic Piranhas series, and Chocolaty Goodness. She writes slash , so be warned!
I also like LeeAnn's works, and that's not just because I get beta credits. ;)
Then there's Taramisu, Nautibitz, Sabre ShadowKitten, I could go on.
If anyone wants the site URL's, just email me with an appropriate subject line.
[> [>A title -- Deeva, 15:16:20 08/20/02 Tue
You did not miss something about the naming of the story. Who knew it could be so hard. I'm tempted to suggest "That Which Cannot be Named" just as an inside joke. And thank you for liking it. I don't get to hear much of the feedback so it's good to hear that it'slked by somebody.
I, too, have also enjoyed Taramisu, Nautibitz, Sabre ShadowKitten's work. *sigh* is it Spet. 24th yet?
[>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- Lunarchickk, 20:21:31 08/21/02 Wed
I've been spending lots of time reeading fanfic, before and after the season ended (such a good way to escape reality, or the reality of the show!) I'll second Redeeming Spike's Ass (which I am so in love with!) and Waking the Dead (which I am just as in love with!), and add Affinity and Wishful Thinking, both by margin (aka ginmar on fanfiction.net) and Base Elements by Limber. Affinity is a Spike and Buffy story (NC-17, very) set mid-season-6 and Wishful Thinking is set post-Grave. Oh, and Ten Thousand by wisteria is the story of Spike's journey after the cave. Love it! And, um, Lori's Spike and Giles friendship series, which is so much fun. :)
[>Re: Fan Fiction (my new favorite past time) -- Monique, 16:35:49 08/22/02 Thu
Will be checking out most of this reqs this weekend... lately I´ve been mainly reading Angel fanfic, and I just have to recommend Viola´s "Arise from thorns"- it´s beautifully written, and simply fascinating... not to mention it´s a Holtz/Justine story, and we definitively don´t seen enough of those these days. Even if you don´t like those two all that much, this is worth it.
http://geocities.com/twodimensionalwomen/thorns.html
[> [>Thanks so much for reccing this! -- HonorH, 13:00:25 08/23/02 Fri
You're right: there's far too little Holtz/Justine fic out there. Such an intriguing pair, too--I just can't understand why more people don't write them.
Buffy at Worldcon (5, yes 5 panels (and I'll be there for only 1) -- Dochawk, 14:27:59 08/19/02 Mon
The following programs will be at Worldcon regarding Buffy:
Buffy/Spike: Consensual Sexual Violence. Is It Ever Okay?
Friday 10:00am CC J2
Recent seasons of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer have presented sexual violence between non-human or semi-human people as acceptable, even desirable, before countering that presentation with rape imagery. When is sexual violence acceptable? When does humanity (or lack thereof) excuse certain behaviors?
Rebecca Moesta, Tom Whitmore, Keith R. A. DeCandido
The Buffy Season Pattern
Saturday 4:00pm CC J3
Fans of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer may have seen repeating patterns from season to season -- the 'isolation' episode, the 'separation' episode, and finally the 'you've just begun' episode. Does the show repeat itself too much, or is this a well-loved and established pattern?
Jim Mann, Ben Yalow, Michelle Sagara West, Nicki Lynch
Philosophy and Religion in SF
Sunday 10:00am CC F
Science fiction has often been seen as the literature of the humanist, the rationalist, and the skeptic. Yet as we look at the underpinnings of the physical universe, even theoretical physicists can see the possibility of the hand of God underlying our physical existence. How do authors integrate religion and science? Can it only be done in fantasy universes?
James Stevens-Arce, P. C. Hodgell, K. D. Wentworth, Mark Ferrari, Mindy Klasky, Richard Paul Russo
The Dead Lesbian Myth -- Buffy and the Death of Tara
Sunday 5:30pm CC J2
The death of Tara on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer parallels tropes in the presentation of lesbians in modern fiction -- one lover dies, while the other becomes evil. Why did show executives feel the need to swear that Tara wasn't going to die? What does this presentation mean to the fans of the show, regardless of sexuality?
Seanan McGuire, Denise Little, Richard F. Dutcher
Breaking Ground In Buffy
Monday 1:00pm CC J3
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer has repeatedly pushed the envelope for dramas of its kind, from the wordless (and flawless) direction of 'Hush' to 'The Body' and its subtle presentation of death; even 'Once More With Feeling' expanded the genre in new ways, yet the show remains snubbed by mainstream awards. Is this intentional? Does the 'genre' label condemn Buffy, the Vampire Slayer to the sci-fi ghetto?
P. C. Hodgell, Chris Garcia, Nicki Lynch, Eric M. Van
Buffy's Cast of Thousands
Monday 2:30pm CC A2A7
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer has presented us with dozens of vibrant and ever-surprising characters, from Buffy herself to Anya the (sometimes) reformed vengeance demon. Which characters have gone to just the right places ‹ and which of them may have gone too far?
Jim Mann, Ben Yalow, Tom Whitmore, Richard F. Dutcher
[>Make it 7! I missed 2 on Thursday! -- Dochawk, 14:31:30 08/19/02 Mon
The Mythology of Buffy
Thursday 4:00pm CC A2A7
In Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon has created a fully functional mythology...or has he? Over the past seven years, the 'Buffyverse' has presented an often conflicting view of its own reality. Where does the true mythology lie? How can this world function? Or should we just relax and say 'it's all just a show'?...
Laura Anne Gilman, Ben Yalow, Keith R. A. DeCandido
Film: _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ Hugo Nominee _Once More With Feeling_
Thursday 11:00pm F Imperial Ball
[> [>Darn it! -- Masquerade, 15:46:50 08/19/02 Mon
"In Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon has created a fully functional mythology...or has he?"
As self-appointed metaphysician of the Buffyverse, I'd have lots to say on this subject... but I gotta work the day-job!
[> [> [>Re: Darn it! -- leslie, 15:58:42 08/19/02 Mon
As a professional mythologist, I question whether any mythology is "fully functional" as this abstract seems to suggest. There are always holes, contradictions, retcons (yes, the Greeks did it too!), you name it. Look at the Bible, for crying out loud.
[> [> [>Re: Darn it! -- Dochawk, 16:38:12 08/19/02 Mon
Masq,
Are you coming to the con? I can bring your tapes if you are.
A
[> [> [> [>I'll be at the meet in San Jose--the dinner part -- Masq, 16:53:50 08/19/02 Mon
tapes? commentary? goodie!!
[>Okay, ignorant here--What is Worldcon? -- Dariel, 07:44:21 08/20/02 Tue
[>I assume you'll be voting for OMWF to win the Hugo... -- KdS, 08:27:19 08/20/02 Tue
Or am I totally confused?
Addendum to the Panopticon -- manwitch, 20:02:13 08/19/02 Mon
Just a little thought to add to the brief Discipline and Punish comments in the S&M thread.
Foucault does contrast the torture and dismemberment of Damiens with the seemingly more temperate punishment of the modern period (specifically he contrasts it with a timetable), but the beauty of Discipline and Punish is that by the end of it we are nostalgic for the time when punishment acted on our bodies and not our souls. While the first pages of that book are horrendously difficult to get through, you end up feeling that there was a purity, a vitality to the torture Damiens received that the "humane" punishment of modernity lacks.
Precisely this same nostalgia is illustrated in Buffy. The moment Buffy sees her Bot drawn and quartered, we transition from a time when Buffy's struggles and torments were of her very body to a time when they are of her soul, and both Buffy and the show's viewers, I think, find themselves nostalgic for that previous time. Buffy's new torments are not simply the demons, but the responsibilities, the mundane activities of everyday life. Its as though the pressures of life have reduced her, constrained her, imprisoned her, just as Foucault argues modern punishment does.
I would also add that the Panopticon, clearly illustrated in Season 4 and continued through Spike and his chip, functions, Foucault argues, to produce the "modern soul." And so Spike's chip has come to fruition. This is not the same soul as Angel's. No, Angel's is Kantian in nature, based on the intention of virtue and predicated on the existence of a benevolent God. Spike's soul is of a different order entirely, a modern soul produced by the rigid monitoring of his every impulse, until he has created for himself a pyschological prison that constrains his body and narrows his experience. Spike's is a soul that, Foucault would argue, needs to be overcome.
[>Great post! Good to see you here again! -- Rahael, 04:06:31 08/20/02 Tue
[>Wow! That was a great post -- ponygirl, 07:31:26 08/20/02 Tue
So would you suggest that Spike in enduring the very physical trials in the cave has exchanged his modern soul for the primal version? Or if the chip continues to be an issue in S7 will he be doubly constrained?
[>Some background for context -- Sophist, 08:07:28 08/20/02 Tue
I thought some background might be helpful here.
Before about 1770, in both England and the Colonies, all felonies were punishable by death. Prisons did exist, but only for the purpose of holding the accused until the trial (or, after the trial, the execution).
For a variety of reasons, Enlightenment reformers found this process unsatisfactory and began proposing imprisonment as punishment for most or even all crimes.
Jeremy Bentham was an inveterate reformer of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. He adopted the idea of imprisonment enthusiastically, and designed a model prison. In his design, the prisoners were visible at all times (hence "panopticon"). This, in Bentham's view, would leave the convicts nothing to do except contemplate the condition of their souls.
Hopefully, this segues into Foucault and manwitch's point about Spike.
[>Re: Addendum to the Panopticon -- redcat, 19:40:51 08/20/02 Tue
Extraordinary post, manwitch. It's led to musings in my brain all day, one of which is that, in
some sense, we viewers are part of the panopticonic reality of the characters. We watch
them, we see them when others in their world don't, we know about them things that even they
don't know themselves. Some on this side of the lens even write stories from inside their
heads. And others demand certain behavior modifications from the characters' creators, when
they don't do -- or "be" -- what those viewers think they should. Sometimes, but rarely, the
characters look back at us, as Buffy did in her last solo in OMWF, disrupting the seeming
omniscience of our view, making us conscious of our complicity in her virtual transparence.
Which leads me to question your last comment, that Spike's soul is a "modern" one. I think it
may be more his lack of soul that reflects the modern esthetic. His struggle with not having
and then getting a soul seems to me less a product of the 19thC "modern age" than one of our
own 21stC post-modern one. Spike's self-conscious rebellion, his adamant refusal to be
removed from the world of sensuality, emotion and risk, are not reflective merely of his role as
the tropic adolescent, but can also be seen as JW's speculative, creative dance across the
complex reflecting planes of contemporary angst over the loss of meaning at the center of the
centrist state's hegemony. His refusal to be controlled by that state is denied at every point of
contact, but the government's restrictive chip becomes the very weapon with which his
searching post-modern self opens the path to an even greater rebellion, one against his
vampiric nature itself.
And yet, does the state then win in the end? Is Spike's solution, and therefore JW's answer to
the conflict between a terribly grey morality and a horribly black-and-white one, suggest that
there can be no true revolution, no true de-centering of the inhumane state, no final cracking of
the panopticon's proprietary lens?
Hmm, I do wonder what will we "see" next season...
[> [>Re: Addendum to the Panopticon -- ponygirl, 07:06:15 08/21/02 Wed
"And yet, does the state then win in the end? Is Spike's solution, and therefore JW's answer to
the conflict between a terribly grey morality and a horribly black-and-white one, suggest that
there can be no true revolution, no true de-centering of the inhumane state, no final cracking of
the panopticon's proprietary lens?"
But doesn't it seem that Spike's decision to seek a "true" soul rather than be bound by his modern impulse controlling chip suggests that spirituality has triumphed over the state? Spike's references to his chip in SR, his comments about it "squirming around" seem to say that he recognizes the chip's artificiality, its separation from his actual person, and its ultimate uselessness in allowing him to understand morality. The state's failure is that it controls only the actions, the external. Spike seems to be rejecting the modern in seeking the ineffable.
[> [> [>Oh, pardon, that was my brain blowing up and other thoughts -- fresne, 12:56:55 08/21/02 Wed
Okay, fine. Melt my brain why don't you with brilliant observations.
The white page mocks me with it's saucy blinking black line as I flail for something adequate to say other than once again the ghost of Clockwork Orange comes to visit.
HmmmŠIt is indeed a seeming omniscience, because there is so much that we don't see. Only those selected bits that ME chooses to give us. The irrelevant minutia fined away and yet, it is out of minutia that lives are made, they just make boring TV (thus MTVs Real World is edited). ME further refines our perspective with close-ups and camera angles and music.
I would like to parallel us with the Trio. Cameras everywhere. Laughing at events that they see on screen. Discussing ad naseum which "Bond" is best. And yet, unlike the Trio, we can't enter the action. There is a 4th wall or I suppose to continue the Panopticon reference, four walls and a transparent roof.
While I know that the chip was merely a plot device to allow Spike to run among pigeons as it were, the more the device plays out, the happier a choice it seems.
The chip could stop Spike from killing that girl in the alley, but not tell him why it was wrong. That moment in Dead Things where Spike asks Buffy to explain her feelings over "killing" Katrina reminds me of Anya asking why people have to die in the Body. Although, both characters have hundreds of years more experience living in the universe, without context and compass, knowledge is just words and shape and form with no spirit.
Then we have the chip. A thing of silicone and electrical connection, growing out of the government's desire to control and perhaps use an animal. And that ultimately, as we escalate to Riley and pre-Adam, (interesting that as pre-Adam and Riley sit naming things, pre-Adam's name is unknown.) all beings under the control of the state are considered animals to be used, modified and controlled.
Of the three beings that we see most altered by S4:
-Adam chooses to kill his creator and seeks to destroy the old world and create a new one from its parts. He is defeated because he cannot comprehend that which is not concrete. Demon's are STs. A flayed boy is merely a collection of body parts. The spirit eludes him because it was something that eluded his creator.
-Riley rips the chip out and becomes a real boy again. Ultimately, unable to carve a place for himself in the Sunnydale world, he leaves to be re-minted (see T.E. Lawrence's/Ross The Mint) into a cog within the machine that tried to control/alter him in the first place.
-Spike sets out on a highly ambiguous quest and ultimately chooses to "seek the ineffable" rather than remove the concrete chip. It's like and unlike Adam's choice. Riley returned to status quo. Adam wanted to remake the world. Spike chooses to remake himself. A choice which, as already noted, is a kind of suicide. Spike no longer exists. No man (or woman or unidentified sentient being) among us here on the Panopticon knows his name yet. I wonder if that places ME one level up, watching us? Or is it Mobius strip country from here on out?
[> [> [> [>this is indeed a weird and wonderful thread -- ponygirl, 14:17:07 08/21/02 Wed
...and it's hurting my brain! I wish that most of my knowledge of Foucault didn't derive from a play that my old roommate starred in that imagined a love triangle involving Foucault and Roland Barthes.
However I love your and redcat's points about the audience being part of the panopticon. Linking us to the nerd trio is especially interesting. They spend so much of their time observing the action, imagining for themselves a larger more, significant role. Are we the nerds? Seeking to impose our views upon the narrative? And is our quest is as doomed as the Trio's attempts to remake themselves, because we like them cannot grasp the true source-- in the Trio's case inner power, and in the audience's the truly intangible nature of art?
Brilliant, brilliant observations on Adam. He is the most self-aware being in existence, with perfect knowledge of every part of himself -- the goal of modern man. Yet by removing the mystery he is doomed to be forever the exact sum of his parts. His essence can be easily grasped and therefore destroyed.
[>Re: Addendum to the Panopticon -- Caroline, 07:19:42 08/21/02 Wed
Terrific post, but your conclusion about Spike's soul is something that I would dispute. I agree with redcat that the modern aesthetic is Spike's struggle with the chip - the attempt of the state to control and discipline versus the attempt of the individual to maintain psychological integrity in the face of the state's actions. It's out of that struggle that Spike's soul is born.
The soul here IMHO is symbolic of outcome of Spike's struggle for identity. While the actions of the state in inserting the chip don't necessarily spring from a moral code outside of the functional requirements of the state to perpetuate its hegemony, the effect on Spike was to precipitate a struggle primarily within himself - a movement away from the adolescent towards maturation. Spike impulses were 'rigidly monitored' in a rather Skinnerian way, not 'intention based on virtue' but a very modern process of pain avoidance. Thus the vampiric (adolescent) nature is tamed and maturation occurs. (But if what the writers are saying is true and Spike did seek a soul to give Buffy what she deserved, then the modern struggle led to 'intention of virtue' in Spike's desire to acquire a soul.)
JW seems to be saying that the process of individuation and maturation gives birth to the soul - what he calls the moral compass. But we're not sure how this soul will operate. We know that the soul that was returned to him was his - or rather William's - soul. It may then operate in an 'intention of virtue' type of way. That seems more consistent given what we know of Joss but then I could be wrong. I guess this then presents the question of what is a 'modern soul' in Foucault's sense and is it consistent with the way Joss uses the concept?
[> [>Re: Addendum to the Panopticon -- redcat, 11:55:20 08/21/02 Wed
I agree with both you and ponygirl here. Joss does seem to be caught in a self-imposed polarity between a modernist struggle for integrated self-identity and a Kantian search for redemptive grace through a practice of the "intention of virtue." And yet he plays out the questions of an existentialist post-modern consciousness in which his own characters decenter that polarity even as they are forced to struggle within it -- surely a Foucauldian move if ever I've seen one.....
JM's birthday -- Cheryl, 11:00:00 08/20/02 Tue
I saw in USA Today that it's James Marsters birthday. They have him at 40 - wasn't there just an article somewhere that said he was 29, so now 30?
Here's the USA Today link: http://www.usatoday.com/life/digest.htm
[>Ah, the on-going debate... ;o) -- Wisewoman, 11:18:32 08/20/02 Tue
Today is James Marsters' birthday. Today he is 40. You'll see lots of references to him turning 30 today, but they're not true.
;o)
[> [>You're kidding! -- HonorH, 12:50:54 08/20/02 Tue
He looks *that good* at 40? Are you sure? He looks more 30 to me!
[> [> [>Re: You're kidding! -- Rob, 12:54:42 08/20/02 Tue
We've had long long looong discussions about this here. Yes, he looks great...yes he looks 30...but he's 40.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. ;o)
Rob
[> [> [> [>Re: You're kidding! -- parakeet, 23:25:54 08/20/02 Tue
I'm kind of glad that this subject has raised its head once again. Now, I think it's silly and don't care how old the man is, but I've been curious about how confident the "he's 40" crowd is. What is the evidence? Again, I'm sorry for trying to keep this topic alive and for rehashing what is clearly an overdone subject, but I can't remember any actual fact being cited. (This is probably because I wasn't paying attention, but I am curious, so if somebody can tell me what this is based on I would be grateful.)
[> [> [> [> [>Re: Well, from what I've found.... -- Purple Tulip, 06:25:27 08/21/02 Wed
...there is no concrete evidence that he's deffinately 40. However, if you look on his unofficial website (www.jamesmarsters.com), there is a list of all of his stage credits and it has him acting with different companies as far back as 1987. If he was only 30, then he would have been about 15 then, as opposed to 25 if he were indeed 40. I don't know a lot about how stage companies work, but I don't think that 15-year olds travel around with them, nor do they own their own companies by the time they are about 18 (which he would have done, if he were really only 30---which leads me to believe that he really is 40 and would have had his company at 28, which seems more likely). It just seems that he has a too long of a list of credits and colleges that he attended to have done it all by age 30.
Also, one site gives the d.o.b's for his brother and sister, and they are both born in the mid-60's, about two or three years apart. If James is really 40, then his birth date would be in accordance with his siblings, putting him about 2 years apart from one of them. However, if he is actually 30, then he would haveb been born in the early 70's, which would make him about ten years younger than his siblings. To me, that just didn't seem to fit, though it is entirely possible.
I really don't know how old he is and like I said above, I really don't care. He's a wonderful actor, and if he can look that damn good at 40, then more power to him- wish more men could age like that. It makes sense that he would lie about his age- a lot of actors do- if casting people knew how old he really is, then they may not want him for roles, and think that the idea of a 40-year old man having raging sex scenes with a 25-year old is a little obscene. Anyway, I hope that this helped a little---again, I can not offer any concrete evidence that he is or is not 40, I can just speculate - and he's still HOT!
[> [> [> [> [> [>More direct-indirect stuff... -- Darby, 06:37:08 08/21/02 Wed
On one of the times that this surfaced once before (his age is listed at least three different ways at various spots on the 'net, so this has been discussed a few times), someone on the JM-obsessed sites (the BloodyAwfulPoets, I think)claimed to have traced him to his birth records (I think he was born in NC, but in any case, "Marsters" is not a common name - check your phone book!) and got the 1962 DOB. With the other evidence, it seems credible.
The only real relevance this has (and Joss has brought this up kiddingly) is that if a Buffy movie ever gets rolling in the next few years, Spike may be the only major not-killed-off (and who knows about that?) character not to appear, since vampires don't age and they couldn't expect that of JM. It hasn't affected David Boreanez, who should be around 30 now and has a way to go before he looks aged, but Joss would have known JM's true age, one would think. But I wonder how surprised everyone is that he still looks more-or-less like he did in School Hard!
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>Re: More direct-indirect stuff... -- Purple Tulip, 06:52:17 08/21/02 Wed
Just one little thing---from what I've read on various sites, James was born in, I think, Greenville, California, but raised in Modesto.
And what about the fact that every memeber of his band is around 18- years old? A 40-year old front man, and a not-even-at-legal-drinking-age band? Hmmm...is someone trying to hold onto their youth???
[> [> [> [> [> [>Ahem. -- Arethusa, 07:32:49 08/21/02 Wed
When I was 25, I was seeing a 39 year-old (to whom I'm now married). Difficult, yes. Obscene? Not always. Although I do have to listen to a lot of Jefferson Airplane, which is scary for other reasons. There are many problems with such a gap in ages, but while I've always said teenagers shouldn't date older men, a grown woman is different.
It's a tricky situation, and each person has to decide for herself if she can handle such a gap in age and experience. I'm sick of seeing young women with older boyfriends in the movies; it's such a cliched fantasy played out by aging movie executives and stars. But I don't complain when Meg Ryan pairs with Hugh Jackman. I'm almost forty [two weeks left of youth ;o)] and if I started dating a 25 year-old, would that be creepy?
Age was only one of many, many problems with the B/A relationship-a bigger problem was that Buffy was still maturing emotionally, and was at a totally different stage of life than Angel, who had issues of his own. The B/S pairing was so troubled that I never considered their ages, but that is mainly because emotionally Spike was much closer to Buffy's age than Angel.
No criticism of you, Purple Tulip. Just musings on my vanishing youth, speeding by like a passing train.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>Agreeing with Areustha -- shadowkat, 07:58:33 08/21/02 Wed
Well I know a woman who married a 53 year old at the age of 28. And I know a woman who at the age of 22 married someone at 50.
Let me tell you a little secret I've learned about age -
it isn't relevant after 25. I know people who are 40 who look 25. And I know people who are 25 who look 35.
I know 40 year olds who act like teenagers. And 20 year olds who are far more mature. Why this is? Don't know.
I'm 35. I've met people convinced I'm 25 or 28 when they first see me. Been carded numerous times. Why? Have no wrinkles, just age well. Parents also age well. Whole family does. It's genetic and it helps that I don't smoke or lay out in the sun a lot.
Tom Cruise is 40 by the way. Carey Grant was damn sexy at the age of 50. So was Gregory Peck. And PAul NEwman. Personally I think MArsters is aging better than Brendon or Boreanze. He certainly looks younger than Boreanze. (But this is personal tast.) Boreanze was in his late 20s when he
played Angel to SMG's 19.
And Aresutha is right - in the show Angel was more of the adult, Buffy the child in their relationship. Spike is a very immature vampire. He acts younger than Buffy does at times. So they felt more like equals.
As far as bands go? There are some amazing musicians that are quite young. Just as there are some amazing essayists and writers who are 19 or younger. Again - the age of one's body doesn't always mean that much in the scheme of things.
MEans less and less the older I get.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>Re: And lets not forget Sir Mick - still rockin' in his middle 50's -- Brian, 09:11:58 08/21/02 Wed
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>middle 50s? -- matching mole, 09:40:49 08/21/02 Wed
A pedantic note. I believe that M. Jagger was born in July 1943 (his birthday is very close to mine and it stuck in my head) which makes him 59 now.
Welcome to the 40s Arethusa. At the end of her 40s my mother said it was the best decade of her life. One year and just over three weeks into my 40s I don't know that I would go quite that far yet but it definitely hasn't been terrible. According to my father, men in his family become quite slender after they turn 40. I'm still waiting for that to happen. Maybe those genes didn't make it to me.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>Re: Agreeing with Areustha -- Purple Tulip, 11:01:49 08/21/02 Wed
Again, apologizing for what I said and that it came out wrong. Please see my post in response to Arethusa's message. I have no problem with JM being 30, 40, or 50---I could really care less, because I still think that he is a brilliant actor and musician. I certainly didn't mean that guys in their 40's and 50's aren't still goregeous (agree 110% about Tom Cruise and also Mel Gibson is right up there too). I'm 20 and I still find a 40-year old James Marsters to be incredibly gorgeous and don't find it a bit icky. I think it's all about who you are attracted to and if you could handle being in a relationship with someone older or younger than you. My motto has always been "As long as you're happy and you're not hurting anyone else," so I am certainly not trying to point fingers and condemn people for the choices that they make, nor am I saying that the pairing of JM and SMG on-screen is disturbing because they carry it off so well. And I don't neccesarily mean the age thing they carry off, but the whole dynamic of their relationship works on numerous levels. And hey, I'm a Spuffy shipper myself so I deffinately don't object to the pairing! As for the band comment, I was trying to make a joke. Believe me, I am well aware of how talented someone can be at such a young age. When I was 15 (and I'm slightly embarassed to be admiting this), I was a huge Hanson fan, and not because I was some obsessed teeny-bopper, but because I looked at them and whole-heartedly repsected them for what they were doing at such young ages. They were writing their own songs, singing them themselves, and playing their own instruments- things that some people who have been performing for years still can't do. I sang their praises to anyone who would listen, and my friends all thought that I was crazy for listening to them and respecting them while they would change the radio station every time one of their songs came on. So I really don't judge people by how young or old they are doing something- at least I really try not to. In my opinion, the younger someone is doing something impressive, the more respect I have for them and the more I can't wait to see what they evlove into. JM's band deffinately excites me.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>Re: Agreeing with Areustha -- shadowkat, 11:24:11 08/21/02 Wed
Agreeing with Areustha's response below. No need to apologize. Just feeling my own age angst today and definitely undergoing mid-life crisis. ;-)
I do find the debate regarding Marsters age to be amusing.
LOL! Is he 40? Is he 30? Is he 33? He ain't telling.
According to his interviews? He's 30.
According to a poster on B C & S ages ago who claims to have a relative who went to high school with him and located his picture in high school year book - he's 40.
Graduated in 1981. Same poster claims to have found him in classmates.com (of course there are over 50 Marsters in classmates.com. LOL!)
Wonder if he knows we're debating his age? It would have me in stitches of laughter if it were me. ;-)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>Re: Ahem. -- Purple Tulip, 10:44:16 08/21/02 Wed
I really didn't mean what I said to sound condesending and critical---I think it didn't quite come out the way I meant it. I brought up the whole age thing because my sister and I were talking about it last night, and she wondered if JM had any problems being on a set with people so much younger than him (if he is really 40). She thought that it seemed strange and she looked at the sex scene between JM and SMG to be kind weird because because he is so much older than her, and she wondered if other people had a problem with that. I think that when people look at this show and only see the actors as being 40 and 25, then they become detatched from the show as a whole and can't distinguish between actors faking sex and people really having sex. They see, not two brilliant actors on-screen portraying these characters, but the real-life people. I think that's where the wigging-out about age comes in.
I, for one, really have no problem with two people being involved in a loving and mutual relationship, even if there are 20 years seperating them. I think as you get older, age starts to blur more and more and you begin to look at people and not see 46 stamped across their forehead, but something more like "loves writing, hates pickles, thinks the Beatles are gods"---you're drawn to people who have similar interests as you, people you can relate to, even if there is a huge age difference. I would rather hang out with people older or younger than me that I have a lot in common with than people my own age who are so shallow and vapid they give me a headache. I'm 20, and since I've been about 14 I've been hanging out with my sister who is now 26. She's my best friend in the whole world and we're so much alike that we say and think the same things at the same time. I'm more comfortable being with her and her friends than I am with my own some times, mainly because I feel like I have older views than I should have for a 20-year old. People have always told me that I look and act older than what I am, and my sister's husband often accuses me of acting like I'm 35 rather than 20. I just want to be around people that I can relate to and that don't make me feel stupid for believing what I believe and thinking what I think. So from a young girl's perspective, age is not an issue for me when it comes to the people around me; and if I were to ever fall in love with someone older than me, then I would just think that it was meant to be, and I would just go with it.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>Re: Ahem. -- Arethusa, 11:04:42 08/21/02 Wed
No apology necessary at all. I've been thinking about age a lot too, for the aforementioned reason. It doesn't help that every time I act peevish my husband says, "Mid-life crisis! Mid-life crisis!"
[> [> [>Re: You're kidding! -- leslie, 13:36:50 08/20/02 Tue
And you see what religious application of sunscreen really does do for you....
[> [> [>This might help... ;o) -- dubdub, 10:53:21 08/21/02 Wed
California Vital Records Information (http://www.vitalrec.com/ca.html) lists two James Wesley Marsters, one in Encino and one in Hermosa Beach. No need to figure out which one is Spike, as both are 40 years old!
;o)
[> [> [> [>That's actually a little scary... the info being online not the age thing -- ponygirl, 11:18:58 08/21/02 Wed
BTW has anyone ever speculated about the fictional Wesley being named for JM?
[>Re: JM's birthday -- Purple Tulip, 11:53:44 08/20/02 Tue
30...40...who really cares? It doesn't matter how old he is, he's still a brilliant actor, extremely talented musician, and absolutely gorgeous to boot. He could be 100 and I would still be a big fan. Happy Birthday James, no matter how old you are!!!
[> [>Re: JM's birthday -- acesgirl, 13:31:33 08/20/02 Tue
Except that if he were 100 and still looked as good as he does today, then that would mean that maybe vampires are real after all.
[> [> [>Re: JM's birthday -- Marginal Drifter, 15:11:11 08/20/02 Tue
Yes, happy Marstersmas folks!! God bless us, every one...
[> [> [>Re: JM's birthday -- tam, 21:28:32 08/20/02 Tue
what do you mean "maybe vampires are real after all" ?
[> [> [> [>Bias against Undead Americans -- Fate the Magnificent, 09:17:47 08/21/02 Wed
Tam, don't be offended! You just have to get used to the fact that everyone assumes that the lurkers and posters on this board are'nt vampires (little do they know...).
[> [> [> [> [>Tiresome, isn't it? -- Honorificus (the Shiny-Haired and Sharp-Dressed One), 14:56:36 08/21/02 Wed
And to think this is one of the smarter posting boards. I weep for the species, I truly do.
[>And now, to add fuel to the fire . . . -- Cheryl, 09:42:03 08/21/02 Wed
Just saw this (found link on the Slayage site):
Actor James Marsters is 33. (Born 1969) His credits include the TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewLeisure.asp?Page=%5CLeisure%5Carchive%5C200208%5CLEI20020820c.html
[> [>Re: And now, to add fuel to the fire . . . -- Purple Tulip, 10:11:32 08/21/02 Wed
But if he were really only 33 then would he be lying about it? It seems to me that 33 wouldn't be that big of a deal because David Boreanaz and Nicholas Brendon are both about 33 and they have no shame about it. Hmmm...James Marsters you are a mystery!
[> [> [>I *really* can't believe he's 40. -- HonorH, 13:29:15 08/21/02 Wed
No disrespect for anyone, but he doesn't look any older than DB or NB. Heck, he doesn't look any older than my 33-year-old sister!
And if he is 40, let's hear it for great bone structure and staying out of the sun!
[> [> [> [>If JM's 40 that makes him only 8 years younger than ASH -- Lumina, 23:32:14 08/21/02 Wed
Wonders shall never cease. ;)
[>BuffyWorld says that he is 33. -- JCC, 11:37:40 08/21/02 Wed
[>Re: JM's birthday -- jk, 18:55:18 08/21/02 Wed
He's 40 according to a search at US Search (http://www.ussearch.com/wlcs/index.jsp), which compiles its information from public records.
BTW, type in your own name and see what comes up. Check out the kind of information (about you or anyone else) anyone can buy! Kinda scary!
jk
Xena and Angel's redemption question. Spoilers to end of Xena, S2 of AtS -- Off-kilter, 14:06:17 08/20/02 Tue
Recently there have been threads that compared/contrasted Xena and BtVS regarding homoerotic subtext, character evolution, and musical episodes. Ever since then I've had a niggling question regarding Xena and Angel. I've hesitated to bring up because I never watched Xena and just started watching AtS.
In the Xena spoiler thread still in archive, Cactus Watcher commented, "it seemed pretty clear that Xena was going to end badly. Like Angel, Xena was atoning for bad things she'd done earlier in life. While she was anything but suicidal, it seemed clear that eventually part of the atonement was to die as she'd killed others while she was young".
Does this seem to be the inevitable conclusion to Angel's redemption too? I understand that there is the whole Shanshu prophesy where he's supposed to become human and live until he dies again, so that would indicate there are alternate paths. However, if there is no way for him to make up for his past crimes as Angelus, will he have to die and be reborn as human like Darla did? What if he becomes human and his body is dying like hers was? Does the prophecy ever explain what it is Angel will be doing to atone and be rewarded with being human? Is it really considered a reward?
I don't want the end of AtS (which seems a ways off anyway) to be Angel getting hacked to bits fighting the good fight, I'm just trying to puzzle out the Xena/Angel parallel. Pondering whilst I should be working.
[>Re: Xena and Angel's redemption question. Spoilers to end of Xena, S2 of AtS -- leslie, 15:37:43 08/20/02 Tue
Well, I would take issue with the notion that Xena had to come to a *bad* end--there are ways of atonement and ways of atonement. There's dying in battle for a good cause, and then there's sacrifice, mutilation, and deceit. But more to the point, the Xenaverse and the Jossverse seem to have very different takes on morality, so I don't see that the end of one would necessarily have any impact on the other. (Except if ME, perverse beings that they are, decide to go deliberately in the other direction--home! family! babies! hoppy bunnies all round! Ooops, that *is* Hell, if you're Anya!) The thing is, and the interesting thing is, Angel clearly regards his vampirism as a curse at this point; for him, death as a human might be a happy ending.
[> [>I agree... -- Rob, 08:17:17 08/21/02 Wed
It was never clear that Xena *had* to come to a bad end. In fact, Xena chose to come to a bad end in "Friend in Need," as a result of being tricked and manipulated into believing that, if she gave up her life in such a fashion in order to battle a certain god, she would be able to come back to life when she was done.
In the very first few minutes of the first episode, Xena was considering suicide. She buried her weapons and prepared to kill herself. Then the arrival of Gabrielle impeded her from doing that. By the end of the episode, Xena decided she had to live and atone for all her evil deeds. Over and over, others told her that all her good deeds ending up outweighing her evil deeds, but she never would accept that. That did not mean, however, that she owed the universe her own suicide, as she seemed to believe. A major theme of the show was redemption through love. Whether it's realistic or not, "Xena" is a myth, as much as "Buffy" is, and in the world of "Xena," an evil world conqueror was able to transform, through love, into the greatest hero the world had ever known. I think it sent a very bad message that at the end of the last show, after a season where Xena and Gabrielle's relationship finally seemed to be clearly stated as more than friends, that then Xena's happiness is taken away from her, and, furthermore, as the result of deception.
Rob
[> [> [>Re: I agree... -- Lunarchickk, 20:03:58 08/21/02 Wed
Just feel compelled here to add that Rob, I wholeheartedly agree with you. Xena's 'bad end' seemed entirely out of place and the wrong ending to a show that was about redemption through love. Her decision to remain dead (you know, I'm just not going to address the Buffy Season 6 snark that's in my head right now) and the ending scene of Gabrielle, alone in the world, seemed almost as though it was dark for the sake of being dark. Xena as a show had always seemed to me to be about living in the world and trying to make up for the things you're ashamed of, the people you've hurt; not about self sacrifice. (Admittedly, it's been a while and I was never as into Xena as I am Buffy, but still... wrong message.)
My thoughts on Angel run in similar pathways -- that Angel (the show) is all about the scene in BtVS Amends when Buffy tells him that being "strong is fighting" and that's what Angel does every day (you know, other than the days when he's having an Epiphany).
Therefore, I'd imagine things on Angel to go a bit better, and Angel to come to a noble death of some sort eventually, if his character ends in death. (Dying in battle, etc.) I think leslie's dead on with the thought that Xena didn't necessarily need to come to a bad end... I believe she could more believably have sacrificed her life, if her character needed to die to atone, in a better way that would be more satisfying to the audience. That's my thought with Angel, too -- that death, at this point, may be what he feels he deserves or wants; but it's not necessarily how Angel will find atonement.
(Wow, that was a big ramble for someone who's been barely lurking since end of season! Guess Xena's end was a bit of a raw nerve with me... :) Hi guys!)
[>Re: Xena and Angel question. Spoilers to end of Xena, S2 of AtS. -- Cactus Watcher, 20:24:46 08/20/02 Tue
Where as the Xena show continually had a 'live for the moment' feel to me, Angel definitely has an atmosphere of long term hope. I think, if Angel has a 'final' episode it won't drive fans crazy the way Xena's last episode did.
It also brings up the question of what will happen to Buffy this year. It's difficult to image a more splashy end than the one she had at the end of season five. I expect we will be surprised, by what happens upon SMG's exit from the show. Whether ME can sell another season after this one or not may determine what actually happens. So, even Joss really may not know what's going to happen right now.
Normal Again -- Cactus Watcher, 06:21:46 08/21/02 Wed
NA was one of those episodes I didn't see until the Saturday or Sunday after because of basketball on our TV station. That was particularly frustrating, because its an ep that deserves a lot of discussion, and by the time I got to see it, people were tired of talking about it.
I don't want to dredge up the which world-is-real controversy. But, I would like to say after seeing NA again last night, that stay at the mental clinic that Buffy told Willow about, probably is a delusion as far as the Sunnydale-world is concerned. First, Dawn would know about it (even if their parents tried to hide from her why Buffy was gone) and being a teenager she would cheerfully bring up her sister having been in the nut-house whenever she wanted to insult Buffy. And second, I can accept people rationalizing monster attacks as something else, but I can't believe anyone forgetting sending their child to a mental institution or exactly why they sent her there. Buffy frequently blurted out things about vampires in the first couple seasons before Joyce understood about her being the slayer. Joyce was surely an unattentive parent. But when Buffy got kicked out of school and then started occaisionally babbling about vampires again, I have to believe she'd look to a mental health professional for Buffy again. If Buffy never went to a mental health clinic then her school problems don't seem so ominous and the babbling doesn't seem significant at all.
Why did Buffy have the delusion specifically about insanity? We aren't really told. But, I can image that her sanity has concerned Buffy. Considering her lasting depression and her bout of catatonia after Glory captured Dawn, she'd have good reason to be concerned.
[>Re: Normal Again -- Purple Tulip, 06:47:13 08/21/02 Wed
Ok, well, if Buffy's illusion had been real, then there would have been no Dawn, because Buffy would not have been a slayer, thus no need to make a key into a girl and send her to Buffy to protect. Therefore, Dawn would not have been able to torment Buffy about being in a mental institution. I believe that it has been mentioned in one episode (though I'm not sure which one---could have been NA) that Joyce did have Buffy hospitalized briefly or she went to see a therapist or something, around the time she burned down the gym at her old high school and moved to Sunnydale. I really don't think that you can call Joyce "an unattentive parent" just because she went so long without knowing who her daughter really was. Obviously Joyce was concerned enough about Buffy's well-being to send her to a therapist, move her to Sunnydale to get away from whatever trouble she was getting into. She went to parent-teacher meetings, met with Snyder to get Buffy back enrolled in school after he had her expelled. And after she found out that Buffy was a slayer, she wanted to know all about it, and she even went out to surprise Buffy on patrol so that she could spend time with her and see just what she did every night (Gingerbread). Not attentive? Buffy's her whole world (until Dawn comes along) and she wants to be in on every part of her life. Some parents could care less.
"But when Buffy got kicked out of school and then started occaisionally babbling about vampires again, I have to believe she'd look to a mental health professional for Buffy again."
----> But wasn't this around the same time that Joyce found out that Buffy was a slayer? Maybe she would have thought that her daughter was crazy, had she not seen concrete evidence of what her daughter could do, how strong she is, and that demons are in fact real, then she would have thought about getting her professional help again.
NA was a really good episode for making everyone think real hard about alternate universes and altered reality. Think about how elaborate her mind would have to be if she kept coming up with all of these scenarios in her head for six years. And if they were all dellusions, why would she have made up the events of season six? I mean, in her head, why would she started having dellusions about sleeping with Spike, Willow trying to destroy the world, and Tara dying? Also, if it's all just in her head, then what about AtS? Is that all made up and controlled by her mind also? Hmmm....I deffinately have to watch that one again!
[> [>Unattentive Parent? -- CW, 07:26:39 08/21/02 Wed
How many years did Buffy sneak out of the house at night every night or at least come home absurdly late, without ever being caught by her mother? I don't know where you lived, but if I'd crawled out on the roof to sneak out when I was a kid, I'd have been caught the first time, and I was pretty sneaky. You can clearly hear a half-pound squirrel go cross a shingle roof, let alone a ninety-pound girl. Sure, Buffy could have gotten away with it once in a while, but not practically every night. Joyce was definitely one who wanted to make a show of being a good parent, by a attending the right meetings and reading the right books. But, fortunately, she did far more by setting an example of a good person for Buffy. Joyce was exactly the kind of parent Buffy needed. But, if she'd had a truly rebellious child, Joyce would have been a disaster as a parent.
And, no. Buffy's babbling begins with Welcome to the Hellmouth. It isn't always in front of Joyce, but as often as she does it, we can assume that Joyce has heard it often enough that if she was ever concerned about her daughter having delusions about vampires, she'd have to be concerned again. If she never had any concern about Buffy's sanity, then there is no reason it would sound any worse than any other adolescent babble.
[> [> [>Re: Unattentive Parent? -- Purple Tulip, 11:14:54 08/21/02 Wed
Ok, I do have to agree with you here---and no, I never snuck out of my house. Never had a reason to. My parents trusted me and allowed me to make my own decisions and use my best judgement, therefore I never had any reason to rebel because I never felt smothered or over-protected. But perhaps Buffy did. Perhaps her adolecsent antics are supposed to representative of what a lot of teens go through. She snuck out and went against her mother to kill vampires and save the world like most kids sneak out to drink beer and have sex. Like everything else in the Buffy-verse, her sneaking out and rebellion is merely a metpahor for something larger.
And I think that maybe as a single parent, Joyce had problems dealing with Buffy and just wanted to pretend that a lot of the things that were happening weren't. Isn't that logical? I mean, it's got to be hard for someone to raise a child alone, especially one who's had behavioral problems in the past. I don't think that it's fair for us to say that Joyce was a bad or unattentive parent---I think that she did the best that she could given the circumstances, and Buffy certainly doesn't hold any animosity towards her mother for whatever short-comings she may have had while Buffy was growing up.
[> [> [> [>Re: Unattentive Parent? -- desert rat, 19:44:26 08/22/02 Thu
There are different types of inattentiveness. My parents, on the surface, did everything right. Problem was, they had no idea what was going on. THey followed all of the models they thought were right for parenting, as did Joyce. However, in many ways, they totally missed the mark. My parents don't know me or understand me at all. I never really had trouble with the portrayal of Joyce. Granted, if I consider Joyce not seeing Buffy sneak out, leave bloody clothes in the laundry, and skipping so many classes as literal, it is sketchy that she was completely clueless. However, I can easily relate to parents seeing only what they want. I think the character of Joyce does a great job of depicting the inability of parents to really see their children or understand them.
[>Re: Normal Again -- Darby, 07:48:23 08/21/02 Wed
I'm divided here. On the one hand, there is too much established backstory to really believe that Buffy had been institutionalized as a freshman, but the story structure is such that this would be the only element to bleed backwards across the alternate worlds - the Asylumverse was able to rationalize away Sunnydale, but this was the only instance where the Buffyverse directly supported the asylumverse - and why would the delusion support reality, if that's what it was? Anyone who could rewrite history with Dawn could obliterate such a point of doubt from their own history. From that standpoint, I'm willing to accept repression of those memories in Joyce (she was, as you point out, really good at ignoring some obvious stuff) as an explanation.
Plus, I hate to say this, but not every teenager or family would be traumatized by 2 weeks of observation, so it might be easier to forget, or the trauma of it could contribute to burying it (if you were the parent who committed the kid who turned out to be "all right," wouldn't you be quick to forget and to not overreact to offhand comments later?).
It's a continuity weak point, sure, but toss it on the Season 6 pile. I kind of liked the "what if?" quality it added to the ep.
- Darby
[> [>Denial -- desert rat, 21:30:52 08/22/02 Thu
My parents are we-don't-like-it-so-it-never-happened types. Denial was a family policy. Yes, people can push things out of their minds and deny that they ever happened. Not a sign of mental health, but it does happen.
My mother would have dismissed a stay in a mental institution as the result of a deliberate act of rebellion designed to hurt and embarrass her. Buffy was acting out and rebelling (note the burning of the school gym). Joyce sent her to a hospital to be sure, but Buffy was being a rebellious teenager, and there is no reason to encourage her to do it again. I can buy that.
[>Re: Normal Again -- Cydney, 07:54:43 08/21/02 Wed
I was thinking what a wonderfully written and acted episode it was - and that I hope they let Diego G. write a lot of eps for S.7
[>Re: Normal Again -- Thomas the Skeptic, 08:53:35 08/21/02 Wed
One point that occured to me while watching NA that nobody ever seems to mention is that it is possible that the two weeks in the clinic did happen but, when Joyce fell under the influence of the Hellmouth she was no longer able to remember them or, at least, not very clearly. My personal theory is that the Hellmouth emanates a form of supernatural cognitive disruption that affects both the perceptions and memories of the people living closest to it. I think this also (partially) explains the obliviousness of the Sunnydale PD. Not that they are the stupidest law enforcement agency in the world (though there is some of that) but that they really can't mentally connect the dots when it comes to strange phenomena in good ol' Sunnyhell.
[> [>Re: Normal Again -- leslie, 11:28:54 08/21/02 Wed
The reference to being committed when Buffy first started "seeing vampires" reminded me the furore about upscale parents having their kids committed for basically just being teenagers in the late 1980's--too early to be directly relevent to Buffy's situation, but still. I'm trying to remember exact details from several investigative stories in the LA Times; basically, the "clinics" were largely scams to rip off the parents' health insurance, didn't really treat any problems the teenagers might legitimately have had and then kicked them out when the insurance ran out regardless of their mental condition, and the main goal was to advertise to convince parents that any sign of individuality or thought in a teenager was indicative of mental illness and that by committing their child, they were doing them a favor and being a good and responsible parent. So my gut reaction when Buffy brought up being committed for 2 weeks in Normal Again was that, if Joyce had done this and then Buffy turned out to be "okay" after all (because she was smart enough to stop talking about vampires), with the scam about these places being a topic of public discourse, she would be so embarassed and ashamed of apparently having fallen for the scam and having unfairly victimized her daughter, she would both never want to speak about the incident again, and also be very leery about mentioning any babbling about vampires and "I'm only going to hang out with the living from now on."
[>Re: Normal Again -- Rook, 14:59:00 08/21/02 Wed
>> First, Dawn would know about it (even if their parents tried to hide from her why Buffy was gone)
Well, if Buffy was 15 when it happened, then Dawn would have been 8. It's very believable that Hank andd Joyce would have been able to hide the fact that Buffy went to an institution from an 8 year old. Once you get past that, it's easy enough to write off her earlier trip to the instiution as a product of the Dawn-verse.
[> [>If the monks did their job correctly... -- CW, 16:57:44 08/21/02 Wed
and Dawn's made-up life was that of a typical younger sybling, she knew very quickly that her big sister was a slayer, even if she didn't understand what that meant. Keeping secrets from parents is something young kids understand. I agree Dawn probably would not have known why her sister was gone when it happened, but the chances of her not eventually finding out are virtually zero (too many prying questions poking holes in whatever cover story was thought up by the parents). I speak from the experience of being a much younger sibling. If it was important you found out.
I like your idea that the whole thing may be a product of the Dawn-verse.
Now that Buffy has hit the Gaming Community-- Who has played it and what do you think? -- neaux, 06:34:52 08/21/02 Wed
I dont know how many of you guys rushed out to get Buffy on Monday, but word on the street is its selling out hot!
I have read reviews stating that its Great! and ranging to Pretty good.
regardless I dont own an Xbox so I cant partake in the Buffy love.
so who here bought the game and is playing it all night?
[>Terminology check -- CW, 06:50:41 08/21/02 Wed
Make that game community . Gaming is what people my age do at slot machines, poker tables and the race track. Game/role playing is done by a smarter (I can dream, can't I?), if geekier crowd.
Sorry, couldn't resist being pedantic. ;o)
[> [>really?? -- neaux, 06:58:47 08/21/02 Wed
well that is funny. All this time I though that was called the GAMBLING community!! ^_^ hee hee
[> [> [>Re: really?? -- CW, 07:32:03 08/21/02 Wed
Yep. That's the euphemism the gambling business uses for itself. State regulatory agencies for that industry are usually called gaming commissions.
[> [> [> [>but not to be confused with wildlife and game -- neaux, 07:52:01 08/21/02 Wed
well to get back to subject..
I used "gaming" to refer to the video game community, which whether I used the term properly or not..many gamers have adopted this name.
if you visit an online gaming community, you will morelikely hear discussion of Quake and Unreal rather than blackjack and roulette.
ah times change and so do meanings.. and its sad this is the only thing we are discussing on the Buffy Board. I wish the new season would go ahead and start.
[> [> [> [> [>Well, actually... -- Thomas the Skeptic, 08:28:06 08/21/02 Wed
Well, actually, to be excruciatingly pedantic, the phrase would be "game and fish" if you are referring to the outdoor sports community (Gad! I wish the new season would start already too!).
[> [> [> [> [> [>Hmm..does that mean the thread is getting a bit 'gamey'? -- Rendyl, 10:04:50 08/21/02 Wed
[>Oh, THAT Gaming community :) Thought you meant the RPG -- Earl Allison, 10:01:54 08/21/02 Wed
Well, Earl Allison, terminal sucker and buyer of consoles for ONE game will be getting his XBox and Buffy game this week or next, much like I bought the Sega Saturn modified for the Japanese Macross game, or the original Playstation for Final Fantasy VII, or the Sega CD for the Batman Animated game and Gargoyles, etc.
The staff at the local Electronics Boutique loves to see me coming, I'm pretty sure they've put kids through college because of me :)
Of course, Ill buy the role-playing game, too.
Take it and run.
[> [>well my friend bought it and loves it -- neaux, 12:53:28 08/21/02 Wed
but since he lives in another town I must wait till NEXT weekend to see the game. He was kind enough to torment me yesterday by letting me listen to the sound effects through the phone speaker. Sounds great! wish I could see it and play it.
[>Re: Now that Buffy has hit the Gaming Community-- Who has played it and what do you think? -- ahira, 15:34:49 08/21/02 Wed
Okay, I have Buffy and spent a "few" hours playing last night...hehe For the most part, I had a lot of fun. They did a good job with combat. You will recognize moves from the show. They used her stunt double for all the motion capture so that is pretty accurate. Graphically, it all looks pretty good. The person doing voice for Buffy sounds reasonably close to SMG. All the other characters are voiced by the actual actors. Got to beat up on Spike a bit. Well, he beat me up the first time. Dialog is pretty well done and the story is in line with what one would expect. Naturally, for a mainly combat game, story is handled a little lightly.
JM interview -- purplegrrl, 13:51:09 08/21/02 Wed
I've been meaning to post this for about a week but haven't been able to get the computer. This article ran in the Show World (TV guide) section of the Austin American-Statesman on Sunday, August 11, 2002. It was accompanied by a VERY nice picture of JM giving his best Spike sex-and-menace look.
(Any typos are probably mine.)
*********************************************
Marsters Gives 'Buffy' its Bite
by Richard Harrington
The Washington Post
It's a match made in, well, not heaven. Among the most riveting developments last season on UPN's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was the odd coupling of just-back-from-the-dead Buffy Summers, (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and the drop-deadly handsome, and ageless, platinum-blond bloodsucker Spike, played by James Marsters.
Television has rarely seen anything like the passionate, sometimes violent and abusive relationship between these longtime adversaries, reluctant allies and, in the series' sixth season, haunted lovers.
This was a challenging season for "Buffy," one of television's most insightful dramas about growing up and female empowerment, with demons and vampires and the evil they conjure serving as metaphors for life's many trials. It wasn't simply because the series moved from the WB to UPN. Buffy was still reeling from the death of her mother, as well as her own death at the end of season five. Resurrected by wicca Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and reluctantly alive, she spent much of the season depressed, unable to enjoy life after being ripped out of heaven by her friends.
Many critics, and even some fans, thought last season was too dark, and series creator/executive producer Joss Whedon has conceded that two of his goals were to have the increasingly solitary Buffy face the inner demons that accompany maturity and explore the dark side of her power. The show also toyed with the notion of its human characters confronting their demon aspects and demons like Spike and 1,120-year-old vengeance demon Anya (Emma Caulfield) developing their humanity.
In exploring the morally complex relationship between Buffy and Spike, Whedon and co-producer Marti Noxon were able to touch darker, edgier and more sexually oriented story lines.
Spike has been called the most creative villain on television, and he's one of the most striking: a stylish-in-black night stalker with a killer smile and cheekbones to die for. He also has a bitingly sarcastic wit, delivered in a roguish British accent (the actor actually grew up in California).
Marsters, 29, appeared recently at Shore-Leave, the annual sci-fi fan convention in Baltimore. He signed autographs and fielded questions from an adoring throng of mostly female admires who conceded that Spike may be a psychopathic killer, but he's also incredibly sensitive and romantic and maybe, just maybe, Whedon should let him be redeemed. Already, Spike has gone from loathsome to likable to lovable.
"The thing is that Spike has been used in different ways," Marsters noted. "He's had different jobs on the show as disposable villain, hapless wreck for comedic purposes, wacky neighbor by design, and then love interest."
Last year's darker themes were facilitated by the move to UPN, Marsters said. "There were a lot of things we couldn't do at the WB, while UPN gave Marti and Joss a very long leash to explore. It's an interesting synergy."
Having both battled and bedded Buffy, Marsters is asked which is more fun.
"Man, it's one and the same, isn't it?" he exclaimed.
His conflicted emotions exploded in "Seeing Red," possibly the season's darkest, most disturbing episode, in which Spike attempted to rape Buffy on the floor of her bathroom.
"I can't watch it," said Marsters of that scene. "That's the hardest day of work in my life. I went home shattered after that."
"Seeing Red" was a crucial episode, forcing Spike to realize he can't remain in limbo between being a monster and a good guy who lacks a soul. As last season ended, Spike's soul was reinstated.
Consequences of that action whether Buffy will be able to love Spike, whether Spike will hate himself for centuries of death and torture will likely be major plot lines this year.
Plotting is Whedon's job. After signing a new four-year $20 million deal with 20th Century Fox Entertainment, Whedon will continue making "Buffy" and its spinoff, "Angel," and produce other new series: "Firefly," a sci-fi fall series for Fox; a Saturday morning "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" cartoon for Fox; and "Ripper," a spinoff for the BBC starring Anthony Stewart Head, the English actor who plays Buffy's "watcher" Giles.
"I don't know what's going to happen this year," Marsters said. The show's brain trust "may explore something else entirely. But last year I think it was important that no matter what the fans wanted in terms of redemption, we kept very cleanly to (Whedon's vision), and I'm proud of that."
As for "Buffy," whose new season begins Sept. 24, Whedon and Noxon have let it be known that Amber Benson, who as Tara died last year, will appear again, and Head will return for 10 episodes. Also reappearing is renegade slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku).
The biggest comeback will be Sunnydale High, destroyed at the end of the third season in 1999, now rebuilt and enrolling Buffy's sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg). Whedon has said that not only will the show be more positive, but Buffy "is going to find herself in the position of becoming a leader . . . . She's going to have to approach her calling, and her problems, from a very different perspective."
Marsters has done a lot of Buffy-esque things this year, including providing Spike voice-overs for the new animated series as well as the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Xbox video game from Fox Interactive. He also has just released a CD by his band, Ghost of the Robot.
One of the few obstacles the actor faces is, understandably, the sun. Spike is necessarily pale, so Marsters, who already undergoes painful peroxide treatments for his hair twice a month, stocks up on sunblock and generally avoids the beach until twilight.
Marsters' mark on the role was noted recently by none other than Barnabas Collins, that elegant vampire on the '60s soap opera "Dark Shadows."
"I just got an autographed picture of Jonathan Frid," the actor who portrayed Collins, exulted Marsters. "He said, 'You've made it, man!' "
[>Some season 7 spoilers above! -- Masq (hiding her virginal eyes), 14:14:37 08/21/02 Wed
[>I posted that article on the Trollop Board when it first came out.... -- Rufus, 15:32:29 08/21/02 Wed
Conversebuffyverse msg: 2930
Is anyone paying attention....I see lots of duplicate stuff over here long after I post it on the Trollop Board.
[> [>Lots of folks don't want to follow the Trollop Board -- Vickie, 16:31:21 08/21/02 Wed
Because of its stated "spoilery goodness" intention.
[> [> [>I also find Yahoo Groups a very inconvenient format for reading. Plus, major spam factor. :) -- Dyna, 08:57:57 08/22/02 Thu
[> [>It seems like this particular article is getting reprinted in different papers -- ponygirl paying attention but still spoiler free!, 06:50:49 08/22/02 Thu
[> [>Sorry, Rufus -- purplegrrl, 10:48:09 08/22/02 Thu
I figured someone had probably posted the article, but I didn't see it here. And I don't go to the Trollop Board (some days I have a hard enough time keeping up with this one!)
Thanks.
:-)
[> [> [>Re: Sorry, Rufus -- Rufus, 20:49:16 08/22/02 Thu
I thought you had gone to the trouble of transcribing the article when you mentioned spelling and thought you could have saved yourself some time posting a link. The articles on the Trollop Board are very clearly marked...just don't read some of the replies....;)
[>Thanks for the duplicate stuff -- verdantheart, 06:42:37 08/23/02 Fri
Most of this stuff wasn't spoily ...
It was touching/funny to hear about the Frid moment ...
I stay away from the Trollop board, so I would have missed this otherwise.
PTC Rates Buffy worst show on television -- Dochawk, 16:39:11 08/21/02 Wed
I know I am watching the right tv show when the PTC rates it the worst thing on television (PTC or Parents Television Council is a conservative "watchdog" group)
The article (the appropriate parts):
"UPN's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer ( news - Y! TV)" was rated the worst show in prime-time, with the PTC condemning it for graphic violence and sex, and an element of the occult."
CSI was condemned for its "sadomasochistic themes". Guess they didn't read Shadow's great essay below. And Sabrina the Teenage Witch was honored because it represents family values. Guess witchcraft is only occult when its black?
Full link:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=529&e=1&cid=529&u=/ap/20020821/ap_en_tv/tv_family_friendly_4
[>They sound a lot MOO-like -- Caesar Augustus, 17:15:49 08/21/02 Wed
[> [>Hey, don't knock a group that will tell you every dirty detail -- Arethusa, 18:00:20 08/21/02 Wed
of tv shows, so you don't actually have to watch them to get the smutty stuff. Just go to their web site
http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/theshield/main.asp
and they'll bare it all in excruciating detail.
It totally kills me how groups trying to eradicate "smut" will spend so much time pouring over the details of others' "perversions."
Warning: the dialogue they quote is very graphic. NC-17 only. I've never seen the show so I don't know if the quotes are accurate.
[> [> [>I can vouch for the accuracy of all quotes -- "Shield" fanatic d'Herblay, 18:49:32 08/21/02 Wed
[>Re: PTC Rates Buffy worst show on television -- Quentin Collins, 23:06:56 08/21/02 Wed
This group also named "Doc" (the PAX show starring that mullet headed achy breaky heart country singer) as the best show. That should tell you all you need to know about the group.
[> [>Just to clarify.. :) -- Rendyl, 08:57:16 08/22/02 Thu
Critisizing a show is one thing but it seems rude to slam a performer for a haircut he hasn't worn in nearly ten years.
I suspect that until a few years ago Billy Ray Cyrus may have cursed that he ever let anyone talk him into that song. It overshadowed the rest of a good album (esp the song 'Some Gave All' which should have been a hit on its own) and stereotyped a great voice into a clownish image.
Instead of reviewing the music he made afterward, most reviewers settled for making fun of his hair.
The 1996 'Trail of Tears' was an awesome (if you will pardon the term) album and the one scheduled for release this fall is supposed to be as well.
Cyrus is very active in kids' charities (like the March of Dimes) and he seems a decent actor in his music videos.
As for 'Doc', it is one of PAX's highest rated shows and it often beats out the other networks as well. I haven't seen the show so I cannot comment on acting or storylines but my in laws rave about it.
Ren
[> [> [>Re: Just to clarify.. :) -- Isabel, 09:01:51 08/22/02 Thu
I've heard Billy Ray in concert lately and I'm certain he truly hates "Achy Breaky" now too. He is a really good singer, but he'll always be just the guy who sang that song. He is a trooper and still sings it though.
[> [> [> [>Re: Just to clarify.. :) -- Purple Tulip, 11:14:44 08/22/02 Thu
Just want to get in on the Billy Ray love-fest---I know his second cousin. There. That's all. Continue on.
[>Something to be truly proud of (NT) -- darrenK, 06:42:26 08/22/02 Thu
[>They also blasted "Friends"...naming Rachel as a bad role model for being an unwed mother! -- Rob, 08:53:55 08/22/02 Thu
To paraphrase TV Guide from this morning, "What year is it, people? 1982?!?"
Rob
[> [>Somewhere, Dan Quayle is smiling...and Murphy Brown is frowning! -- Rob, 08:55:09 08/22/02 Thu
[> [> [>LOL...Dan Quayle made a statement today about the evils of "Friends"! Maybe he read my post. ;o) -- Rob, 08:50:55 08/23/02 Fri
[> [>Can you explain -- matching mole, 04:54:15 08/23/02 Fri
for those of us who didn't read TV Guide the significance of the year 1982? (If there is any). The Murphy Brown/Dan Quayle thing happened about a decade later.
Fully in sympathy with the general sentiment.
[> [> [>I think it was an arbitrary date... -- Rob, 08:48:18 08/23/02 Fri
to stand for the time when the Christian Right and other organizations that tried to censor television had more control, like around the time the Christian Right had "Soap" cancelled for having, among other things, a gay character.
Rob
[>Re: witchcraft is only occult when... -- Isabel, 08:58:06 08/22/02 Thu
Actually I think the color of magic is irrelevant. I think they like 'Sabrina' and don't consider it as 'occult and therefore bad' because she doesn't have sex. (Or at least I haven't seen it in the several episodes I've seen.) I've seen Sabrina kiss boys and have crushes but I've not seen her spend the night with a cute partner, of either sex. (Another thing that'd have that watchdog group howling would be if there was a gay character on 'Sabrina.')
Articles like this make me think of something Dr. Johnny Fever said once from 'WKRP.' The radio station was being censored by a watchdog group and he commented that he pictured the group sitting in the dark listening to the records over and over until one of the members yelled, "I heard a dirty word!"
[>Re: Whatever PTC -- Purple Tulip, 11:06:57 08/22/02 Thu
You know, it's groups like this that really get on my nerves. These are groups that like to pretend that everything is sunshine and roses in the world, and that anything that isn't should just be done away with and condemned for being amoral and obscene. Take off your rose-colored glasses people!!! Buffy may be graphic, but it represents real life and the struggles that we all go through. Personally, I have a lot easier time relating to Buffy that Sabrina, the show that is so sicky-sweet that it makes my teeth hurt to watch it. And, I'm sorry, but CSI is one of the best shows on TV, and I think that the writers for that show are amazing- and you know what PTC? Some of those crimes depicted on the show really do happen---sorry to have to be the one the break it to you. Whatever PTC. It's these close-minded, conservative, self-righteous, holier-than-thou outlooks that make me proud to be an open-minded liberal.
[> [>There's a reason that CSI is on at 10, 9 central! -- vh, 06:31:30 08/23/02 Fri
[>PTC: uhhhhhggghhhhhhhh -- Raven_NightDragon, 16:22:58 08/22/02 Thu
Buffy is unfortunately not the first show to be rated as "the worst show on TV" by the PTC. That honor went to WWF Smackdown, also a UPN show. I doubt that the PTC will go as far in the protestation of Buffy as they went with Smackdown, mainly because Buffy has respected TV critics and entertainment organizations that will back the show up, unlike Smackdown, which no one would support because its, well, pro wrestling. It warmed my heart to hear recently that the PTC actually had to apologize to the WWF (now WWE) for their campaign of misinformation they used to drive advertisers away from Smackdown.
Now, any of you out there want to see and interesting report on how the PTC does business, my suggestion to you is to read wrestler Mick Foley's second autobiography "Foley is Good". In addition to being a very interesting and funny book, the last two chapters was a well thought out and researched defense of the PTC accusations against the WWF's product. One of the more interesting pieces of information discovered by Foley: PTC founder and president L. Brent Brunzel III's father was a speech writer for Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950's! Check it out.
[> [>Impugning someone for what their father did is PTC-like tactics. -- Darby, 16:37:22 08/22/02 Thu
I'm no fan of the Parent's Television Council, but it's hard to take the high ground down in their mud.
[> [> [>You just totaly missed the point, didn't you? (NT) -- Raven_NightDragon, 18:01:32 08/22/02 Thu
[> [> [> [>Insert PeeWee Hermanesque response here. -- Darby, 11:27:15 08/23/02 Fri
[> [> [> [> [>Re: Insert PeeWee Hermanesque response here. -- Hoping, 12:57:09 08/23/02 Fri
Actually Darby I think she had a point. I thought the point of her mentioning who Bezell's father worked for was to invite a comparison of their methods. Although a fringe group, the PTC has used lies, initimadation and innuendo to condemn people and shows they don't like (and if I amremembering correctly were forced by a legal settlement to issue a public apology regarding their techniques). She didn't go into detail, but thats what I thought she was telling us, not saying that he is a bad man because of who his father was, but because he is copying his father's techniques.
[> [> [> [> [> [>Thanks... but, uhm.... I'm not a woman... -- Raven_NightDragon, 14:08:08 08/23/02 Fri
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>Re: Thanks... but, uhm.... I'm not a woman... SORRY -- Hoping, 16:21:59 08/23/02 Fri
[> [> [> [> [> [>Still... -- Darby, 16:56:18 08/23/02 Fri
I'm one of those who think Joss played into the lesbian death / insanity cliche, but would it have been fair for me to underline my feelings by saying, "Well, of course Joss is a hack, his father wrote for Leave it to Beaver!" It just makes no logical connect to paint someone with that brush. Do you use your father's methods to do things? Or would you feel comfortable with someone criticizing you based on your family's past transgressions?
[>These folks just make me laugh... -- Humanitas, 16:53:07 08/23/02 Fri
It reminds me of the real reason we have free speech: The more the idiots talk, the more they reveal their idiocy. ;)
BTW, I just saw the AICN article on the same subject, and Herc's fury is delightful!
As the son of a librarian (who brought home for her son an "I read banned books" button when he was Very Young), I for one will be proud to be watching the Worst Show on Television.
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