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March 13, 2008

ONN: TV Nudity OK If It's Who?

Here's a funky little thing from The Onion News Network that freaks me out a bit:

FCC Okays Nudity On TV If It�s Alyson Hannigan

I saw this a few days ago but haven't posted it sooner because I needed a while to think about it. Obviously it's a joke 'cause it's from the Onion, but is part of the joke that Alyson Hannigan isn't all that sexy? I'm honestly confused, and I honestly need help understanding this, 'cause it's sorta relevant for a paper I have to write.

As longtime readers of my blog will know, I do scholarly work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Alyson Hannigan played Willow for seven years, and part of Willow's character was that, at least initially, she WASN'T sexy--she was the wallflower character. But does she become truly sexy and do I fail to see that about her because I am blinded by her original characterization? I honestly think she's the least sexy character on the show, even after she hooks up with Tara--I think Tara is much hotter.

I haven't stopped to think about whether or not I find the women of Buffy all that hot--too fixated on Spike, I admit--but now that I consider the matter, I think there are lots of female hotties on Buffy, but Willow really isn't one of them. I think Joyce is hotter than Willow. I think Jenny Calendar is hotter. I think Halfrek is hotter. I might even think Dawn is hotter, though her sexuality is so rarely addressed that I find it inappropriate to consider the matter. And there's no question for me as to who's the hottest woman on Buffy: it's Anya.

But is Alyson Hannigan hot in ways that Willow (regular Willow, not vamp Willow) isn't? I admit I didn't think she was hot as Trina Echols on Veronica Mars, and I didn't watch enough of How I Met Your Mother to decide if she was hot on that.

I know, I know; it's a goofy thing to worry about. But as I say it's relevant for a paper I'm writing so I welcome opinions from any and all Buffy fans who might come across this.

Posted by Holly at 9:53 PM | Comments (5)

December 18, 2007

The Lead-Up to Two Minutes In Heaven

Warning! This entry contains spoilers! If you A) haven’t seen seasons I or III of Veronica Mars and B) intend to watch them some day and C) are upset by spoilers (I’m not), then read at your own risk.

If you look at the calendar on my blog, it shows that I took a full week off from blogging, Sunday December 9 through Saturday December 15. I completely missed National Blog Posting Every Day Month or whatever November is called; I was traveling and away from home for over half the month, and much of the time I was gone I didn’t have reliable internet access, so there was just no way I could have done that gig.

I decided, however, that I’d compensate by posting every single day for a week or ten days in December, and I thought December 5 through 15 would be ideal as those days (even though that’s actually 11 days). But I got distracted on December 8, and what distracted me was a sweater I started last spring and really want to finish before 2008 rolls around, and Veronica Mars.

Several weeks ago I got this coupon from Borders offering me 40% of an dvd boxed set. It occurred to me that I had never gotten around to watching Season III of Veronica Mars, and while I’d heard it sucked, I wanted to see the magnitude of suckage for myself. So I bought the boxed set, took it home, forgot about it for a while, and then decided what the hell, I should watch it. (Especially since I had this sweater I wanted to finish up, and I like to knit while I watch tv and vice versa. It’s a good way to make tv time productive, and to keep me from getting bored with rows of stockinette stitch.)

And the season sucked. It really, really sucked. The over-arching story lines providing continuity from episode to episode sucked; the plots of individual episodes often sucked; the character development sucked. OK, there were plenty of great performances: from the first moments of the show I really enjoyed seeing both Kristen Bell and Enrico Colantoni on screen, and I especially liked them together. But great performances can’t compensate for a crappy script.

And OK, there was still plenty of witty, intelligent, sparkling dialogue, but if I wanted to watch something with lively banter but ludicrous, unbelievable plots driven awkwardly along by stupid contrivances and the most inane inexplicable choices on the parts of the main characters, I would have made it through more than four episodes of The Golden Girls--or wait, was it Gilmore Girls? I swear I can hardly tell those two shows apart: they both feature some excessively close (to the point of being kind of grossly claustrophobic) relationship between a mother and daughter living in some insular, retiring (retirement?) community; they both have characters who are obsessed with sex and money in very cliched, banal ways; and they both require you to suspend entirely not only your disbelief but your rational wits and any knowledge you might have about human beings actually behave--though one about the old ladies sharing an apartment isn’t quite so bad on that front as the one about the 30-something single mom in New England.

But I digress.

So, VM3 sucked, and one of the worst things about it was who Veronica was with when the season ended. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t with Logan, it’s that Piz, the replacement boyfriend, was SO BORING that he made Duncan (who was so boring that he was kicked off the show as a way to placate the show’s fans, because they quite rightly HATED Duncan) seem like Fourth of July fireworks. Someone in casting or production of that show has a thing for bland boys.... I was trying to figure out who Piz would be in the Buffyverse. He wouldn’t be Riley, because Riley is at least hot, and Marc Blucas could convincingly deliver a comedic line like, “You’re in the thrall of the dark lord!” from the “Buffy vs. Dracula” episode. (I have a beef with Riley haters. I think there’s a reason Marc Blucas is the only one from the show, aside from SMG, to garner many roles in feature films, and the reason has to do with the fact that he’s talented, tall, attractive and affable.) He certainly wouldn’t be Xander, the romantic underdog, because although Xander is discussed as this kind of hapless schlub, he’s really funny, pretty insightful, and quite attractive too. Piz wouldn’t even be disposable love interests Scott Hope or Parker Abrams. Instead, he’d be Graham, Riley’s emotionless and forgettable sidekick in the Initiative.

And there are other reasons why it sucked, which I may develop into a paper someday, because they have to do with the ways teenagers do and don’t interact with adults, which is part of what I analyze in teen tv. But I won’t discuss that here. Instead, I’ll tell you that I kept watching it, a bit compulsively, wondering how it could possibly get worse, only to find out. Suffice it to say, that it sucked so bad, that I had to mitigate the nasty feeling of needing a shower it left me with, and the best way I could think of to do that was to watch Season 1 yet again.

And VM1 is still fabulous. That first season is so vastly superior to virtually all other television I’ve ever seen that I can forgive the crappy follow-ups. I especially like the Logan story--but then, who doesn’t?

Of course I HATED Logan Echolls the first few episodes--couldn’t understand why the show was subjecting me to this vile, vile character. At the end of the sixth episode, he walks into a closet full of belts and selects one, tests its strength. I thought, “Great! He’s going to hang himself! I will no longer have to watch this dreadful person fuck up everyone else’s life!” But turns out he was just choosing the belt his father would beat the crap out of him with, and that it was someone else in the Echolls family would who commit suicide.

But then you realize what a thorough asshole his dad his, and there’s the whole thing with his mother’s suicide, Logan’s conviction that she’s not really dead and his request that Veronica help him track her down because he needs to know she’s all right. By the time he realizes that his mother really did kill herself and collapses, heartbroken and sobbing, into Veronica’s arms, I wasn’t sure I liked this character, but I at least felt compassion for him and saw him as complex and human.

And then, there’s Episode 18, “Weapons of Class Destruction,” where Logan, all knight-in-puka-shells-ish, comes to rescue Veronica when the creepy camo-wearing, fertilizer-buying weirdo gets in her car and instructs her to drive to the Camelot Motel, all of which Logan overhears because she was on the phone with him when the guy got in the car. He punches the guy really hard in the face several times, and, upon discovering that the guy is an undercover FBI agent, still refuses to trust him, delivering the memorable line, "Dream on, Jump Street. I’m not leaving you alone with her.”

A few moments later, Veronica walks out of the motel room after talking to the FBI dude. Logan leans against the wall, asks “Are you OK?” She murmurs “Mm-hmm,” then kisses him quickly on the lips to say thanks before shaking her head and walking away--because after all, until a few weeks earlier, she LOATHED this guy so much she could barely stand to be near him.

And Logan grabs her arm, pulls her around to face him, and the two of them make out on the balcony of this seedy hotel while the music swells and the camera pulls away and circles around them in this sweeping romantic gesture. The very first time I saw it and half the times I’ve seen it since then, I stood up and clapped and shrieked in delight, because it was really sexy and completely unexpected and absolutely earned and ever so, ever so RIGHT. (Yes, the scene plays on all sorts of stereotypes and predictable fantasies. It's still a surprise, and it still works.)

Now, believe it or not, the point I want to make about this wonderful heterosexual kiss is related to what I wrote yesterday about a really moving gay sex scene. But once again I’ve already written a lot, and I don’t want this entry to be so long no one takes the time to read it in any detail. (I know what blog-readers sometimes do with really long entries, because I’m a blog reader myself and I occasionally do it too: we skim.) So you’ll have to check back again later for the continuation of this argument.

Posted by Holly at 10:37 AM | Comments (4)

May 25, 2007

One More Reason to Love Joss

As if there weren't already so many, many reasons to love Joss Whedon, latest on the list is his speech at Equality Now, discussing his responses to the question he is invariably asked: "So, Joss, why do you write these strong women characters?"

Posted by Holly at 6:14 PM | Comments (3)

November 3, 2006

Buffy, Fiction and God

Here's an entry from Stephen Frug that speaks to several of my primary interests: good writing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, moral and artistic complexity, and religion. I recommend it with this disclaimer: it's LONG, as long or longer than some of the stuff I post. But it's really thoughtful and interesting, and worth your time.

Posted by Holly at 7:51 AM | Comments (3)

May 30, 2006

Not a Single Argument about Who Was the Better Bond

Academic conferences can bring out snarkiness, competition, cruelty in even the nicest people: they've got these intellectual territories to defend, ideas in which they have a great deal invested, and when someone threatens that territory by challenging those ideas, watch out! I've been in and observed my fair share of very heated exchanges--about like when Warren, Jonathan and Andrew argue over who was the best James Bond. (I love Andrew's resentful claim that "Timothy Dalton should win an Oscar and hit Sean Connery on the head with it"--not that I love Timothy Dalton OR Sean Connery--actually I hate the whole Bond franchise--I just can't help laughing at the line.) You'll sometimes see outright hostility flare up in the Q&A sessions after panels. It doesn't always happen, but it happens often enough.

One of the many great things about the Slayage conference was how little of that occurred: people were generally courteous and generous. I'm not saying no snarkiness occurred--it did--but the few times it happened just underscored how rare it was the rest of the time. We decided it was because we are so often attacked for having this bizarre scholarly interest in this element of pop culture most academics feel is beneath their notice, so when we got together, the main thing we felt was gratitude at being among friends. Still, it was very cool to go to a panel and hear such good-natured exchanges. By no means did everyone agree with everything they heard, but I've rarely seen criticisms presented and accepted so graciously: "Have you thought about this?" "Why no, I haven't! Thanks so much for suggesting that." OK, you hear stuff like that at conferences all the time, except that the graciousness of such statements is often a mere veneer, but when you heard it at Slayage, it seemed sincere.

Even when people discovered they had profound differences of opinion--say, someone who loved the final season found him/herself talking to someone who hated it (like me)--the difference didn't cause an argument. People agreed to disagree.

And there was plenty of well-deserved glowing praise: again, because so many of our colleagues think Buffy studies aren't serious, most people who do it try to be as rigorous and thorough as possible. One of the best panels I attended was on the musical episode, "Once More with Feeling." Cynthea Masson presented a great paper called "‘What Did You Sing About?': Acts of Questioning in ‘Once More with Feeling'" and Michelle Dvoskin presented an equally great paper called "Under Their Spell: ‘Once More with Feeling' and Queering the Audience." I also really liked a panel on three secondary characters, Xander, Anya and Faith: Claudia Rollins discussed Anya as a Shakespearian truth-speaking fool, while Reginald Abbott presented on "Xander with a Y (Chromosome)? Or ‘No More Butt Monkey': The Xander Harris Legacy of Masculine (Mis)Identity in BtVS." Abbott was especially great: his throw-away comments were hysterical. At one point he suggested that Joyce's death was NOT the only death in the show that didn't involve supernatural causes (as is usually assumed) because he felt her brain tumor was probably caused by living with the horrible blob of green energy that is Dawn.

I also really liked Elizabeth Rambo's paper on "‘Queen C' Goes to Boys' Town, or Killing the Angel in Angel's House," which discussed Cordelia in terms of the Coventry Patmore ideal of "the angel in the house." (I admit I liked this paper partly because it supports ideas I have about Cordelia.) There was even a very detailed parsing of speech patterns in character dialogue: one of the featured speakers was Michael Adams, who discussed "The Matrix of Motives in Slayer Style." (Adams has published a book on Slayer Slang, with Oxford University Press--that made a lot of the pooh-poohers do a double-take, 'cause you can't get much more reputable than Oxford UP.)

I also just enjoyed meeting people. I mentioned my blogging habit whenever it seemed appropriate, but few people seemed to share my interest. One of the few was Roz Kaveney--she does great work and is also just a very interesting person--check out her site, Glamourous Rags. I also learned that Jane Espenson, one of the writers for BtVS, has a blog, which I haven't started reading but plan to.

Several people asked me to post my paper on-line, and I'm not going to do that. It's just not wise in academia to do something like that until the paper has already been published, and then sometimes there are copyright laws that prohibit it. I will, however, give you a paragraph from the middle of the paper:

Some of you might remember a Canadian band from the early 90s called The Pursuit of Happiness. They had a single called "I'm an Adult Now," which contains the lines "Adult sex is either boring or dirty. Young people, they can get away with murder." This seems to be the attitude on Buffy. In "The Freshman" (4/1) Buffy goes to Giles's apartment and discovers him in a dressing gown; soon thereafter, a partially clad Olivia walks out of the bedroom. Buffy is horrified, and when Giles asks, "I'm not supposed to have a private life?" she replies, "No! Because you're very, very old and it's gross." In fact, the "grossness" of adult sex is a joke mined all the way through season five, at which point the Scoobies themselves are all past 21, and officially adults as well.

I plan to shape the conference paper into something I can submit to a journal, and if it ever gets taken, I'll let you know.

Posted by Holly at 6:04 PM | Comments (6)

May 28, 2006

The Joy of Being a Nerd

In "The Nerd Voice" from The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Sarah Vowell says something like (I'm paraphrasing because I don't have my copy here with me and so can't quote it verbatim, as I prefer to do) that being a nerd--which means caring too much about a particular topic--is the best way to make friends that she knows of.

I have spent the last few days at the Slayage Conference held in Barnesville, Georgia (there's a whole long story as to why it's being held at such an out of the way location, the short version being that a college here offered to host it), indulging in nerdiness, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I am currently operating on less than five hours of sleep because I stayed up way past my bedtime last night to drink cheap beer and discuss, among other things, whether or not the cruelty of "Hell's Bells," the episode in which Xander jilts Anya at the altar, was necessary or not--I argued that it was really awful in that he not only broke her heart but humiliated her, and someone else argued that it was that extra element that made her reenroll as a vengeance demon, which made all these other plot twists in seasons six and seven possible yada yada yada. The thing is, this was an extracurricular discussion: this was after a full day of organized panel discussions of the Whedonverse. This was a conversation where people took of their shoes and sat on beds and talked informally about text and subtext and so on and so forth in BtVS and Angel and Firefly/Serenity--as well as other things. There was a discussion on Harry Potter, but I'm not really into that and so could add little to it, and as for the Jane Austen hints I dropped, everyone else was content to let them lie on the floor among the bottlecaps and carpet lint.

Vowell is right: being a nerd can be a good thing, and if you find a community of nerds who share your passion, you're probably going to feel at home. Though it's odd what does and doesn't overlap: there are all these people here who love fanfiction, and I find it less compelling than a hangnail. As for Firefly/Serenity, I can state with serenity that I have yet to succumb to its charms. But I also haven't found a single person who shares my passion for nonfiction, and I've met only one Janeite.

Still, it has been great. This is not so nerdy that people dress up like characters or try to stake each other. OK, Friday night we passed out the lyrics to "Once More with Feeling" (BtVS's musical episode, in case you didn't know) and had a singalong, but we don't want to BE anyone in the Whedonverse. Believe it or not, for most of us, it really is a serious intellectual enterprise: why does pop culture matter? Why does THIS pop culture matter? How is narrative constructed in television? How do constraints like an actor's schedule influence things like plot lines? Why do people stay loyal to shows even when they end up with plot arcs everyone hates (the introduction of Dawn and the death of Tara being prime examples)? Joss Whedon is a self-avowed feminist and a devotee of comic books; how does this intersection of interests play out in his work, and what does it tell us about genre studies and about gender?

There are two sessions left, and after that, I get to go back to my hotel, maybe end up at another party and maybe just sleep heavily.... Tomorrow I get to do the air travel thing, which I loathe, but I suppose it beat driving all the way from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Anyway, the main thing is, if you ever get a chance to attend a conference like this, do it! It's part of what makes being a nerd truly worthwhile.

Posted by Holly at 3:23 PM | Comments (5)

May 25, 2006

Riley, Ultimatums, My Absence and No Comments

So.

I am one of the few Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans who really digs Riley, Buffy's cornfed Iowa boyfriend who is also a member of this covert military operation, the "Initiative." Most people find him too wholesome and bland, but I think he's physically hot, dryly funny, decent to women, and very appealing.

I would love to hear from any other Riley fans out there, if any more read my blog. Unfortunately I got up this morning to find I'd received over almost 500 junk comments in six hours, so I'm turning off all comments until I get back. At that point, I'll try to figure out some better way of filtering out the crap comments from the legitimate ones.

***

When I was home for Christmas, I ended up going on this dreadful drive out in the desert with my parents, my brother and his family. It was a Sunday afternoon and we had driven less than a mile when my brother up in this HORRIBLE cd of little kids singing the Articles of Faith (13 statements of belief for the Mormon church) set to music. It was cloying and gross, and I was revolted to be confronted with so overt a method of socializing little kids into swallowing all that codswollop. I took a deep breath; I listened for a few moments, and then I said, "If you want to listen to this, that's fine. But I can't listen to it. If this is what's going to be playing in the cd player, please take me home before we go any further, because I cannot and will not listen to this."

And Brother said, "Well, uh... OK." And he took the cd out and put in a cd of silly lyrics set to classical music.

My six-year-old nephew asked, "Why are listening to this? I wanted to listen to the cd I got today at church."

"Holly asked us to change it," Brother said. "We're going to listen to this."

"But I wanted to listen to my NEW cd," Nephew said.

"You can listen to that when we get home," Brother said. "You like this cd anyway."

I don't see how that was inappropriate. I suppose in a way I said, "Choose between me or this music," but I didn't frame it that way: I took the responsibility for the choice, and said, "I am choosing between you and music I find acceptable: I will not be miserable for the next three hours, even if I get to be miserable in your company."

Choices can be offered in ways that are more or less manipulative, but I really sort of hate people who get their shorts all in a twist when faced with a legitimate but unpleasant choice and start whining about having to deal with "ultimatums." You can't have everything you want; you often have to choose between things you'd really like to have; you often have to accommodate other people's needs and concerns. I despise people who don't realize that and try to weasel out of these choices. Everything costs.

One thing that drives me crazy about Buffy is the extent to which people tell small, stupid, unconvincing lies. "What's wrong with Mom?" Dawn asks; "The doctors don't know yet," Buffy replies, although she's just been told it's a brain tumor. Oh, so uncertainty and ignorance is preferable to the certainty and information that will have to be dealt with eventually?

Last night I watched "Into the Woods," the episode you mention, and my reaction to it is almost entirely opposite of yours. [Riley wants to know what it feels like to be bitten by a vampire, so he hires "cheap vampire trulls" to suck blood from his arm.] I think it's silly and childish of Riley to go get the suck jobs, but I have no problem understanding why he's so hurt that Buffy doesn't confide in him or even keep him in the loop about her mother's illness, that she pretty much treats him like a big sex toy. She isn't fair to Riley; she doesn't really love him; she has neither enough courage to be honest with herself about her feelings for him nor enough respect for him to be forthcoming with him any more than she does with Dawn, and he is smart enough to know this.

I don't see Riley as issuing an ultimatum, as much as he is telling Buffy that he is dealing with an unacceptable situation and he will move to find an acceptable one if she won't change things. And OK, maybe that IS an ultimatum, but nonetheless, his position seems pretty justified, and I really can't stand that Buffy acts like she shouldn't have to treat Riley as anything more than (as Xander rightly observes) a "convenient" boyfriend. OK, yeah, Riley did this gross, unacceptable thing, but she claims to be upset by it because he could have gotten himself killed and because she's too busy dealing with her mom's illness to worry about protecting him, rather than saying it's a profound betrayal and infidelity--so that the matter IS an affront to her convenience, not her heart. And Riley is always aware of what she thinks and feels about her, while she never bothers to pay much attention to what he thinks and feels about her. Why should Riley stay when Buffy thinks so little of him, and thinks of him so little?

I see Buffy in the situation as whiny, selfish, self-indulgent and unreasonable, and that episode is the one where I start to really sort of hate her. By the end of Season Five I just can't stand her, and that's beginning of the change. The only thing that made Riley's departure OK was that it allowed for more Spike--I loved the plot developments when he feel in love Buffy.

Posted by Holly at 7:32 AM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2006

Un-Funny Bones

Recently a friend, aware that I have an interest in all things Buffy, asked me if I'd ever watched some show called Bones. He asked this because it stars David Boreanaz, whose major claim to fame is his role as Angel, Buffy's (first) vampire boyfriend. I had to reply that I had not, and could have added that I had no particular interest in ever watching it.

I wasn't even that into David B. when he got his own spin-off; anyone with any sense knows that Angel was infinitely inferior to Buffy. There are so many reasons for this, the first being that Angel lacked both the sparkling repartee and the psychological complexity of BtVS; it was pretty much just a crime show with a vampire doing the detective work. Secondly, Sarah Michelle Gellar might not be the best actress in the world, but she's still more talented than David B, and thus better suited to carry the weight of an entire series. (If you don't believe me, just watch "I Only Have Eyes for You" from Season II of BtVS--I could hardly bear the way DB overacted when he was possessed by the spirit of the school teacher murdered by her teenage lover.) He also didn't age that well; I admit I thought he was very hot when he first showed up as Angel in the very first episode of BtVS, but it wasn't long before he got all thick and jowly, which was odd and unfortunate, given that his character was supposed to be eternally young.

All of which is to say, I endured rather than enjoyed Angel; I watched it because as an academic who does Buffy studies, I needed to know how the story played out--until Season Five when Spike joined the crew, that is--then I watched it because Spike was on.

So I was very gratified to find a summary of Bones from Twisty Faster of I Blame the Patriarchy. She provided reviews of several shows she's seen recently, including this on Bones. She notes that it

encouragingly, has a female lead who a) isn't costumed in a cat suit and b) is supposedly some genius forensic anthropologist. But uh-oh, she is relentlessly patronized by Buffy's former vampire boyfriend, who has morphed into a studly overprotective cop for this series. "I'm not letting you out of my sight until we determine the identity of the killer!" he declares. "I can take care of myself!" the genius forensic anthropologist protests angrily. I see where this is going, and nod off. When I come to, sure enough, there is the genius forensic anthropologist, on her knees in an abandoned warehouse, bound, gagged, whimpering, bleeding sweetly from her forehead, fetchingly chained spread-eagle at the wrists. She is being menaced by a psychopath who is of course about to cut her up alive and feed her to hungry dogs. Buffy's vampire boyfriend saves her just in the nick of time. No matter how much booksmarts a chick has, she's never gonna escape the chained-on-her-knees-in-the-abandoned-warehouse scene.

I try to imagine Buffy's stud boyfriend chained on his knees in an abandoned warehouse, getting saved by the genius forensic anthropologist, and laugh myself back to sleep.

The thing is, in BtVS, Angel the stud boyfriend WAS chained up in an abandoned warehouse/ church undergoing renovation/ derelict mansion, and it was a Buffy, a mere slip of a teenage girl, who saved his studly ass--time and time again. The humor and drama to be mined in such a situation was one of the things Joss Whedon was going for when he created BtVS--along with a matter-of-fact assertion of female power and capability. All of which is one more reason Joss Whedon rocks and one more reason I won't watch David Boreanaz in a show not written and/or created by said JW.

Posted by Holly at 9:00 AM | Comments (4)

December 12, 2005

I'm Getting in on the Slayage

I'm happy to report that my proposal for a paper on "Bad Sex in Buffy" has been accepted for the Slayage Conference 2 to be held at the end of May 2006.

Please read all about my introduction to Buffy, and check out this brief reference to my initial attempts to sketch out some broad ideas about the topic. I want to share, because Buffy is my favorite TV show, and I'm thrilled that I'll be able to spend time researching and thinking about the show, and then get to spend a nice long weekend hanging out with other Buffy-philes.

Here's my abstract for the paper I'll be delivering in May:

‘Sex Is Bad?' ‘We All Knew That': Sex and the Consequences in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

After Cordelia recovers from being impregnated with demon spawn, she tells Wesley and Angel she's learned that "sex is bad," to which Angel replies, "We all knew that" (A1012). This is not Caleb's simplistic condemnation of sex as dirty and wicked, but an observation about the consequences of sexual activity in the Buffyverse. Much has been written on the sexualized nature of vampirism, and Justine Larbelestier provides a provocative binary of human (or vanilla) vs vampire (or BD/SM) sex in "The Only Thing Better than Killing a Slayer." But given how the range of characters populating the Buffyverse traverse the roles of human/demon, I argue that sex can't be categorized until after it has occurred (unless it involves someone "old" like Giles or Joyce, and then it's "gross"), and no criticism I've read adequately addresses how perilous sex often is in the Buffyverse, not only for Buffy and her demon lovers but for all the Scoobies. Seemingly "safe" sex not only produces dire consequences (supernatural pregnancy, the loss of one's soul, the need to kill one's lover); sexual behavior often attracts danger from outside the relationship, as when Tara is killed by a wayward bullet after she and Willow resume their relationship (Buffy 6019) or when Willow turns into Warren after kissing Kennedy (7013); furthermore, Anya's very presence reminds us that sex is often used to hurt women and women find ways to hurt back. Everything--even birthday parties--can be dangerous on the hell mouth, but sex is especially dangerous. Inhabitants of the Buffyverse constantly negotiate life-or-death issues of vulnerability and power; I examine how they negotiate vulnerability and power with regards to sex, and why these negotiations so often fail--the earth may not be doomed after all, but what about everyone's sex life?

I'll be most grateful for any suggestions and insights anyone wants to offer.

Posted by Holly at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

September 5, 2005

All KINDS of Good Stuff

When I was a little girl, my favorite television program was The Carol Burnett Show. It aired on CBS from 9 to 10 p.m. on Saturday nights, and was preceded by The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show (CBS really had a way with names), which I liked but not as much as Carol Burnett. She was who I wanted to be when I grew up.

I still think one of the most inspired moments in all of television happened on that show. In a spoof of Gone with the Wind, Carol descends the stairs wearing a dress of green velvet drapes hung on a curtain rod extending beyond her shoulders. Harvey Korman, who plays the Rhett Butler character, says, "Why Scarlet, where did you find that beautiful dress?" And Carol replies, "Oh, it's just something I saw in a window."

But there have been long stretches where I watched almost no television. When I was in high school standard fare was the likes of Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, The Love Boat and Dallas, and I had better things to do than watch that crap--even sitting in the dark in my bedroom and my head against the wall (which I did a time or two) seemed preferable to wasting my time with shows like that. In college I didn't have a television, and I never felt deprived.

Of course, there have been a few periods where I watched a lot of television. In early 1987, after I got home from my mission, I lived at home for seven and a half months before going back to finish my bachelor's degree at the University of Arizona in August. The Fox Network had just started up, and I rarely missed an episode of its finest offerings, namely The Tracey Ullmann Show and 21 Jump Street. ABC had Max Headroom, which ran for 14 episodes, and NBC had LA Law, which ran forever.

But then I went back to school and back to living without television.

Even when I finally got a television I'd forget to watch it for weeks at a time. I couldn't be bothered to remember when the few shows I liked were on; instead, I'd just turn the TV on when I felt like watching something, then run through channels until I found something interesting, which was usually MTV back in the day when it actually showed music videos.

Mostly I used my television to watch movies, especially after I moved to Iowa City, which has one of the best public libraries in the whole world. At the time, the University of Iowa's film studies program was ranked first in the nation, and the public library kept a movie collection to match. You could check out ten movies for a week for free: not just the standard new releases you'd find at a rental place, but early classics like the Irene Dunne versions of Show Boat and Love Affair.

My feelings about television changed forever when my friend Connie introduced me to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, well into the show's tenure. I went to visit her in Chicago one weekend and she said early in the afternoon, "OK, now we're going to watch Buffy," and I sighed heavily. I hate horror and slasher films (I don't like being scared, and violence for its own sake holds no appeal for me), and I thought Buffy was thoroughly in one or both of those categories. I sat in stony indignation while Connie got out a couple of VHS cassettes and turned on the VCR. After we watched the first two episodes, which establish the premise of the show, I grudgingly admitted, "OK, I can see why you like it. And it's not really scary." When she suggested later that evening that we watch a few more episodes, I offered no resistance; and the next day when she suggested we watch a few more, I agreed readily; and when those were all over and she was all out of episodes, and I said, "You mean there's really no more? You should have taped the entire series!"

I went back to my house and found I couldn't get the WB with any kind of decent reception. Cable had just become a necessity. And it remained one for several years.

And I discovered there's all KINDS of good stuff out there! I was mad about Buffy (still am) but I also found I have a particular fondness for decorating shows. I especially liked the weird ones on BBC America--Ground Force and The House Doctor and Changing Rooms. I had such a crush on designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, with his dark tousled locks, leather pants, florid blouses and French cuffs, especially after I found out he was straight (!). My other great crush was Jon Stewart of The Daily Show--but most politically progressive women I know are totally in love with him as well. I also adored So Graham Norton. Thanks to the time I spent with my three young nieces, I learned that I liked Spongebob Squarepants and The Powerpuff Girls too.

Generally I couldn't bear to simply sit there and watch television; I usually did something, preferably something productive, while I watched: quilting or knitting or ironing were favorite activities. And because I watched a lot of television, I finished a lot of quilts.

About a year ago I realized that I had reached a point where I would actually plan my afternoon around a home decorating show. No wonder I never get anything important done anymore, I thought. Not long after that, I got rid of cable.

And that's when I became serious about Netflix, which I'll discuss at some point in the future.

Posted by Holly at 7:09 AM | Comments (0)