> >>> Paul Henry Rosenberg <rad at gte.net> 02/23/99 03:52PM >>
> Still, what did make my argument more empirical is that I was talking
> about SPECIFICS, about one particular program that I can discuss with a
> fair degree of familiarity, having seen virtually every episode.
> _________________
>
> Charles: The empircism of an argument is not defined by its
> level of specificity. It is defined by the level of objectivity
> of evidence supporting the argument. Most science seeks to
> establish valid empirical GENERALIZATIONS, not empirical
> specifics. What Paul means here is that he might be able to
> make more accurate empirical generalizations about the specific
> show, because he saw almost every episode.
My 40 Whacks on a Dead Horse:
Since we're talking about a specific show, the salient kind of empirical evidence is that which is SPECIFIC to that show.
(2) frances bolton wrote:
> I don't own a TV, never have. Now, when Seinfeld was on and people were
> always talking about it, I almost bought a TV just to watch it. Then they
> announced their last season, so I didn't.
>
> Is Buffy worth giving up 30 years of non-TV ownership?
More than Seinfeld was. But can'tcha just find some friends to watch it with, so you can make up your own mind before deciding to take the plunge? (I lived without TV for about 15 years myself.)
(3) Michael Hoover wrote:
>
> > We ALL say foolish things on a
> > fairly regular basis.
> > Paul Rosenberg
> > "Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"
>
> such as the silly sig line that accompanies all your posts? When
> was there information to put BACK into the 'information age' (a
> marketing & public relations ruse if there ever was one)...is
> there empirical evidence pointing to when 'the information' (what
> information?) was removed? As Stuart Ewen has pointed out, style
> has become information...Michael Hoover
It's a goof, dude. A goof on "putting the Christ back in Christmas" that simultaneously points to the utter vacuity of the term "information age." And you're bent out of shape because I'm not politically correct (and humorless) enough in the way I point it out?
No Buffy for you!
(4) Carrol Cox wrote:
> Liza Featherstone wrote:
>
> > why must leftists believe that because THEY enjoy a TV show it must be
> > ideologically above all criticism and analysis?
>
> If communists want to enjoy life at all, certainly if we
> want to have the minor pleasures of everyday life inside
> capitalist society, we have to learn not to put our pleasures
> through an ideological sieve. There aren't any pleasures
> available that will pass the test.
EVERYTHING is politically incorrect!
>
> ...<SNIP>...
>
> Anyhow, Paul seems both to want to enjoy that delightful
> 40 minutes called *Buffy* but *also* to feel like an active
> leftist intellectual while he is watching it. And that of
> course simply won't do.
So send me to my room, why don'tcha?
> Because if he wants to play leftist intellectual and
> *partly* analyze *Buffy*, then he has to stand still as
> it were for an extensive ideological analysis of the
> series. And there never has been a TV series, movie, song,
> painting, what have you, within bourgeois high, low, pop,
> or middlebrow culture that can withstand such a demand.
TV series: (A) The Twilight Zone (B) The Simpsons (C) The Prisoner (D) Rocky & Bullwinkle (E) Homicide
Movie: (A) If (B) Weekend (C) Cool Hand Luke (D) Modern Times (E) Thelma & Louis (F) Nothing But A Man (G) Les Miserables (the mid-90s version set in WWII)
Song: (A) Only a Pawn in The Game (B) The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (C) Listening Wind (D) Take This Job and Shove It (E) Born in the USA (F) People Have The Power.
Many more where all those came from.
> the art is mean or high, glorious or despicable, one will
> find at its core the fantasy of the abstract individual,
> existing prior to and independently of social relations,
> by an act of will creating social relations where none
> existed before, the resulting social relations being as
> rapidly dissolved and requiring recreation anew by a
> new act of will of isolated individuals.
I'll take your word for it, Procustes.
>
> ...<SNIP>...
>
> Since beginning this I have read Paul's reply to Angela in
> which he tells her in ALL CAPS that pop culture is about
> enjoyment. Precisely, but after all it was the Buffy fans,
> including preeminently Paul, who seemed to be dragging
> extra-pop enjoyment questions of ideology or something or
> other into discussion.
But I ENJOY the questions of ideology of something or other. They're inextricably interwoven with everything I enjoy about the show.
You just don't want folks to enjoy themselves is all.
Unless they do it YOUR way, of course.
> As long as Buffy is just another beer, and on the same
> footing with whatever those shows are -- I haven't seen
> any of them -- to which Paul alludes sneeringly, there
> can't be any argument, or at least there won't be any argument
> from me. But as soon as "extra-entertainment" claims
> are made for it , then I still insist that those making
> those claims must confront its implicit approval of
> genocide, or else provide a set of principles of literary
> interpretation that can exclude that possibility.
A set of princples of literary interpetation? Is that what you think I need, bunkie?
In case you hadn't noticed, I'm at WAR with all these prefab sets of principles that regard the real world as a distracting annoyance.
> Who are the Vampires? This is not daily life, and it
> won't do to say that in this context a cigar is only a
> cigar. Until someone can argue persuasively to the contrary,
> I insist that they are African Americans breaking into the
> suburban dream; and the show (probably not intentionally)
> is a stroking of the suburban resentment of the threat
> of the ghettoes to break out of their encirclement.
Well, it just so happens that Gar has just what you asked for. Of course, this will require some original thinking on your part. It does not compute.
(5) Gar Lipow wrote:
> I wonder if the assertion that the lack of black people makes the
> vampires in Buffy black is not itself a racist one. Back in my own
> teen years, an essay was included in a literature class I took
> suggesting that black people identified with King Kong in the original
> King Kong movie. The black students immediately said "Come on; he's a
> big black hairy monkey -- so we are supposed to identify with him?"
Excellent, Dude! Nailed it perfectly.
> The nearly complete absence of black people in the series is real. I
> don't think I've missed an episode, and have seen only two blacks in
> the whole series: Kendrick, the first of the "extra" Slayers who was
> killed off, and Mr. Trick who was killed off last episode.
KENDRA! Not Kendrick. Does everyone watch the show from an alternate universe?
Or is it just me?
> Kendrick was portrayed as less than Buffy in just about
> every way (except hotness). She was technically better
> at fighting, but lacked Buffy's ability to tap into her
> rage, and thus was worse in real fights.
So, let's get this straight. She's MORE rational, MORE in control -- good ole signs of European/White superiority, and this makes her LESS???
> She was a "good" type, obedient to her watcher, and thus
> lacked the social circle or help Buffy had.
Well, she had a much shorter period of time as a Slayer, and we only got to see her out of her element. She was pretty damn adventurous in even coming to Sunnydale in the first place.
> She was portrayed pretty much as a naïf,
> sort of a little sister for Buffy.
Buffy was a Slayer more than twice as long as Kendra was during the time Kendra appeared on the show. Plus Buffy had all the advantages of companionship you list. Kendra was culturally out of her element. Yet she had a strong sense of duty and this stood her in remarlably good stead in negotiating a foreign land.
All of which is to say I didn't see her as less than Buffy in any of the ways you do. She was less developed -- heck she was minor recurring character -- but I think it was a real loss that they didn't keep her.
> Mr. Trick the second black character, was one of many vampires. He
> was portrayed as smarter than the average vampire, but also cowardly.
> (Many of the vampires portrayed seem quite fond of risk taking.)
All the dumb vamps are fearless. The smart ones aren't. Mr. Trick was not only one of the smart ones, he was deliciously stylish about it, and a real technophile to boot.
The whitebread homogeneity is a real problem with the show. But there's no need to go overboard about it.
> And that is it for black characters on the show. The crowd scenes with
> students milling in the hallways or walking on campus, or in the
> classroom -- no black students. Dances at the Bronze (the only teen
> club in town) -- no black teens. Sunnydale streets -- day or night
> -- no black people. Grungy vampire bars -- no black people. You
> don't even see a black janitor or waiter or sales clerk.
Actually I don't think this is true. They aren't common, but they're there occassionally. Still, that's irrelevent. What's missing is major characters.
> I grew up in Southern California, and I'll tell you I don't care
> how whitebread a town is: you don't get a Southern California town
> with no black people. (Not to mention Latinos, Asian...)
Correction: Sunnydale is in Northern California (she got kicked out of her previous high school which was in LA, and Sunnydale is several hundred miles away. By the sea. Which makes it Northern California.) But your point stands: I went to high school in Northern California and it was nowhere near as monochrome.
> Now there is an interesting question: is there a possible explanation
> other than racism for this? To start with it is very unusual for a
> series with a lot of crowd scenes to completely exclude blacks. Even
> series without token black characters usually cover their ass by at
> least including them as part of the background. Could this be a
> conscious rather than unconscious decision?
>
> One possibility is that it is a way to exaggerate the whitebread
> nature of the town hiding a hell beneath. Sunnydale is imagined as a
> town of a few hundred thousand with a murder rate five times that of
> Washington D.C. But since it is "white" no one thinks of it as a high
> crime town.
Actually, this HAS been pointed out a couple of times -- most recently by Mr. Trick. It makes sense to me.
> There may be something to the allegation that you cannot portray a
> U.S. town without blacks, that something has to take the "psychic"
> space that black people normally do. I think you could make the
> argument that in this case, it is not the vampires, but the white
> townspeople themselves.
> Think about it. The power structures in town (including leading
> politicians and business people) are controlled by vampires and
> demons. Nobody admits that vampires and demons exist. The high death
> rate in Sunnydale is just taken for granted as a fact of nature.
> (Sample conversation the first day of school -- one sports fan to the
> other: "If we just have a fewer mysterious deaths , I think the team
> can go all the way this year".)
A great throway line, which does support your argument rather nicely.
> So the white Sunnydale residents inhabit the psychic space left empty
> by the missing black people. The vampires represent not blacks but
> whites -- their existence denied in much the same way official
> mythology denies the existence of white privilege.
A nice analogy. I'll have to play with it.
> Then again maybe there are no black people in Sunnydale because the
> writers forgot to put them in, and devoting this much energy to
> analyzing "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is absurd. Anyone for a good old
> fashioned Meta-narrative?
Nothing absurd about it. Wanna do "The Simpsons" next? The only blacks are the doctor & his family. What's that say?
(6) Maureen Therese Anderson wrote:
> Likewise, the FMs were anti-religious and secular, all the
> while bringing preoccupation with hierarchized rituals and
> "mysteries" to new heights, and fetishizing secrecy for the
> sake of secrecy more than their Renaissance alchemist
> ancecedents ever did. It seems pretty clear these masonic
> paradoxes inevitably flow from all those Enlightenment paradoxes
> we know so well: Science and Reason (Europe, men, etc.) vs.
> religion and superstition (non-European others, the masses,
> women, etc.), constituting self and other in such dichotomous
> ways that the repressed inevitably returns, etc.
It doesn't seem the least bit clear to me, except in the sense that you've got your pre-fab theory, and the Freemasons pop out as part of a conceptual bonus pack.
Myself, I'm a terribly unfashionable fan of the Enlightment. Sure I know it was riddled with contradictions. But it gave us the critical context to see that with. And besides, we're STILL riddled with contradictions ourselves. I look to material conditions and the conceptual adaptations surrounding them as the source of contradictions permeating that, as any other time.
> Enter Buffy, our Enlightenment rebel without a God: is her democratic
> entourage of humanity-saving friends a welcome utopian social model? In a
> way, sure. Go Buffy, go! OTOH, like the Freemasons, there something a bit
> overdetermined about the privileged Sunnyvale whitebread setting--something
> that doesn't just reduce to the writers' need to market the show for the
> 90210 crowd.
And I find Gar's suggestion a whole lot kinkier than what follows from Maureen, which is pretty much a standard read from the PoMo meta-narrative:
> (David quotes in his article:)
>
> >Giles: It's a reliquary. Used to house items of religious significance.
> >Most commonly a finger or some other body part from a saint.
> >Buffy: Note to self. Religion: creepy.
>
> I didn't see this episode, but reading it reminded me of how,
> the couple times I did see the show, I just couldn't get past
> Buffy's Brady Bunch-aspect. Because, while this "Ew! Body
> parts--yuk!" is supposed to be a critique of Jerry Falwell
> ("isn't religion dumb? isn't Jerry Falwell/US religious
> right-fundamentalism abhorrent and ridiculously
> superstitious?"--this is the part David picks up on), it
> inevitably overreaches. Buffy's "ew, creepy" sqeamishness
> simultaneously casts out Condomble, Vodun, and hell, most
>cultural practices outside of the Enlightenment west.
Except, of course, that Willow, who, if anyone, is the Enlightenment incarnate on the show, has gotten herself into magic, following the example of Ms. Callandar, the shows next-most perfect embodiment of the Enlightenment.
Note, this: There's not a man in sight on the show who show any mastery of math, science and computers, but there've been TWO such female characters. The only exception being the John Ritter character (ONE episode) who recreated himself as an android.
The show routinely shreds all kinds of received dichotomies, which you simply ignore with aplomb, honing in on the ones that HAVE to be there, according to PoMo Theory 101.
Could it be that real live art HAS to assume some dichotomies in some ways, if only as a semi-stable foundation from which to wreck havoc with others?
> So, as with Masonic flickering between opposites, do we
> need Sunnyvale sterility, and Buffy's everyday whitebread
> goodness, as the site that also happens to reside directly
> atop Hellmouth, font of Bad, hyper-supernatural energy?
Except, of course, Buffy is not seen as whitebread goodness. She's a troublemaker. Her lover is a vampire. And this year, even her friends don't understand anymore. Doesn't this mean ANYTHING to you?
> As some other post mentioned, try putting any of Toni
> Morrisson's heroines (who truck with body parts all the
> time) on the same page as Buffy. It won't work.
No. It wouldn't be a teen action show, that's for sure.
> And it won't work because of the ways the Buffy zone
> reinforces Enlightenment dichotomies: everyday life is
> all rational and bloodless, and then we switch into
> "supernatural" mode, fight vampires who are far more
> horrifically evil and supernatural than anything that
> exists within non-Enlightenment material/spiritual
> conceptualizations.
But this is just plain wrong as a description of "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer." It's not how the show works at all. In fact, this shows how wrong the cookie-cutter PoMo take on Buffy is: Everyday life is FAR messier. Fighting vampires everything is good and evil, no shades of grey, no confusion. Where reason has a hard time of it is dealing with
the mundane world. The issues of being a teenager--issues with friends, with society, with parents, all that stuff. And, of course, with Angel, who crosses over from "'supernatural' mode" to everyday life.
>
> ...<SNIP>...
>
> ...But though the program may contradict itself, Buffy is large and
> contains multitudes--that much seems clear from recent postings. I've seen
> it twice in the past year,
Which is the problem. Once again, theorizing on autopilot.
> and couldn't get past its (well-intended)
> hokiness to feeling any wicked spectator jouissance. But I do plan to give
> it another whirl tonight, with LBO Cliffnotes in hand.
Looking forward to tomorrow. Watch the fur fly!
--
Paul Rosenberg
Reason and Democracy
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"