Apologies to those who don't care... (which is most of you)
Cribbed from my blog:
As long as I'm ranting and raving like a lunatic and exposing myself for the shlock-loving cheesemeister that I am, Joss Whedon was REALLY influenced by Stephen Sondheim, did you know? Um-- his three favourite songs from the three shows he talks about (Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park, Pacific Overtures) are also MY favourite songs from those musicals. Spot-on.
He's god. That's just how it is. Holy smokes. Anyway, it's a great article.
It's just such... a good... article...
But sorry to you non-Buffy, non-Sondheim (read: non-me) people.
Labels: Tavie
posted by Tavie @ 10:40 PM
18 Comments:
you crazy. I am the QUEEN of buffydom! like, DUH! also, a few other contributors that shall remain nameless were jossaholics.
PS come on nameless folk. out yourselves. you know you wanna.
I saw a bunch of Buffy episodes on DVD and liked them well enough. But what I'm really amazed by is the infiltration of Buffy as the predominant nexus of pop culture and the academy. Whenever you want to talk about a pop culture phenomenon that has academic appeal, Buffy is always (ALWAYS) the first example out of people's mouths. Honestly, from my limited exposure, I just don't understand it. As a TV show, there may be plenty there to talk about, but from an culture studies standpoint, I just don't get what people are so worked up about. Somebody enlighten me?
I don't have the answer, but I learned from some trivia game I was playing that Buffy is the tv show that's been most written about by academics-- the subject of the most theses in history. Seconded by The Simpsons.
Got me, Phil. I feel about Buffy what I felt about Sassy magazine in the early '90s - that there must be something to it, but that I just don't get it.
sassy was more about having a teen magazine marketed in a "you. yes. you. you're cool too." as opposed to "look at the pretty long haired blue eyed teen girls which you'll never, ever resemble!" very smart. but it was a teen magazine for girls, so I'm not sure I'd like it now that I'm no longer a teenage girl.
as for buffy, it's a show that's built entirely on metaphor. but with incredibly well-written characters (with their own quirks, vocabulary, backgrounds, levels of intelligence & empathy). so you could watch it in a soapy way OR you could watch it to try & figure out what the larger message was.
joss whedon, the show's creator, was a women's studies major at university. he also comes from a family of tv producers so he had a fair idea where he was headed professionally. whedon has repeatedly said that his studies made him want to create & explore in a tv show format the story of a powerful but otherwise exceedingly ordinary teen girl. rather than make her a teen activist or something that would've ensured the show's immediate cancellation, he chose to make her a vampire slayer. & off he went. & it turns out that the perils of high school, coming of age & life in general are sometimes worse than saving the world from half men/half fish, vampires & killer clowns.
but really, if you don't like something, how could anyone ever convince you otherwise? all I know, is I thoroughly enjoyed my tuesday nights thanks to that show. & that tearing it apart to find larger meaning was part of its appeal for me.
Yeah, what d said. On Buffy and Sassy.
And the show really emphasized, almost fetishized, the value of study and research, which may be part of it's appeal to academics. (A.K.A. Nerds.) Buffy may have been great in a fight, but if Willow and Giles weren't backing her up with the right spell/talisman/computer hack/etc., she never would have lasted.
Sigh. Giles. He's dreamy.
What is great about Buffy is that you have some awesome paranormal shit going on while these teenagers are trying to live their lives and not fuck up too much.g. If you've watched Buffy from the inception, then you would know that the show portrayed kids (yes, just kids, they were in highschool), growing up and dealing with crap that we all had to deal with and screwing up and making there own choices. Not to mention all of the allegories that were going on...it's really hard to go into it if you haven't seen many episodes, but it's a great show to watch.
taster's choice, therese? favorite giles moments: a) busted singing "freebird" by spike, b) listening to "achilles' last stand" with joyce when they were accidentally turned into teenagers, & c) "what's a stevedore?"
it is great how they never tried to make buffy the smartest girl in the world. she had to be somewhat ordinary to counteract all that phenomenal ass kicking.
Personally, I'm tired of Buffy being used as an intellectual football to kick back and forth between nerdy academics and neurotic anti-academics. Who gives a rat's ass about its "significance"? It was a great show from a couch-potato standpoint, as well as from a dramatic standpoint, which works for me.
I have no problem with nerdy academics holding seminars on buffy. they're not hurting anybody, sheesh. but who the heck are the neurotic anti-academics? they don't hold symposiums, so where do they go? & what do they do?
I like every Giles. Favorite moments probably are: a) the first Ethan Rayne episode, which is the first time we get to see him kick ass, b) teenaged Giles with Joyce c)unemployed Giles watching admitting that he's been watching Passions with Spike and d) every scene he had with Anya. Tony Head and Emma Caulfield were fantastic together.
that's right! "timmy's fallen down the bloody well & I'll kill you if I miss it!" - the whole spike/giles/joyce thing with passions was great.
FYI- the ENTIRE series will be released in a mondo box set sometime in the very near future for those who miss or need to brush up on their Slayer action...
yup, I believe it comes out next week to the tune of something like $200.
The whole episode where Giles is the demon and he gets out of the car to go all booga-bogga at the evil professor lady.
No, wait, or when he has amnesia and he and Spike think they're father and son.
There are too many Giles moments that are my favourite.
Busted singing in the coffee shop is good too.
While we're on the Buffy subject, a guy in Chicago made a collage of every Season One utterance of the titular Slayer's name.
oh gosh. I just realized I'm on crackity crack. it's not "achilles' last stand" that giles is listening to, it's "tales of brave ulysses". sorry! I was temporarily confused by the ancient greeks. it happens.
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