fidhle: (Default)
[personal profile] fidhle
A Report on Woodstake, the Slayage Conference on Buffy - Day 2

Saturday started out with the second Keynote speaker, Sue Trumbull of the La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Her paper was called ”Not Just Another Buffy Paper:” Towards an Aesthetics of Television. One of the more interesting ideas Sue had was that, in contrast to movies, which people watch in a darkened room with all attention on the screen, TV is usually watched in a lit room with many distractions, so the shows are, in a sense, glanced at, rather than watched closely. Yet Buffy, along with Angel and Firefly, are shows which have a richness which invites close watching, somewhat like what occurs in movies. She points out that many people gather in Australia to watch Buffy on DVD on home theaters, much like people watch movies, in a darkened room with little distractions on a large screen. Thus Buffy invites the viewer to experience an aesthetic experience closer to movies than to other TV shows. Further, the show has a richness of context that invites serious study, as exemplified in the Slayage Conference itself. Sue’s paper won the short Mr. Pointy award at the end of the conference for the best paper.

My favorite episode is Once More With Feeling, the first episode of Buffy that I ever saw, and which hooked me into the show. So naturally I had to attend the Once More With Feeling panel discussion which followed Sue’s paper. The presenters discussed various aspects of the episode, from the types of music and music techniques used in the episode, to tone painting in the episode, to use of techniques of Opera used in the episode. For example, most of the tunes in the episode are in a musical theater style, and those tunes are sung by humans in the episode. In contrast, some numbers are in a rock style or a jazz style. Those styles are sung by demons or vampires, such as Spike’s big number or the various numbers sung by Sweet. Dawn’s lament has many of the same elements as the recitative sections of early and classic opera, with simple harmonies under a simple melodic line with many repeated notes. Recitative was used in opera to advance the plot, and is basically replaced by spoken dialog in musical theater. Another interesting example was the chromatic descending line and dissonant ending where Buffy sings “I think I was in heaven. “ That is an almost classic example of tone painting where the music suggests the action being sung about. that is, Buffy being pulled out of heaven and send down to the hell she was experiencing. Of course, the presenter didn’t have a really good explanation as to why Spike used the same figure to tell Buffy that she had to “keep on living.” My guess is that it was simply for repetition of the music phrase, always a good reason.

The next panel I attended was on ”Pangs,” Postcolonialism, Nationalism. One of the most interesting aspects of this panel was that each of the presenters was from someplace other than the US. The first presenter, Olaf Kruithoff, who spoke on Buffy, the UN Slayer, was from Hamburg U., in Germany. Russ Jackson of the U. of Ottawa, spoke on ”Why Don’t You Just Go Back Where You Came From?” Aspects of Post-colonial Theory in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And, the third presenter, Matthew Pateman, of the U. of Hull, UK, spoke on My Name’s Buffy and Your History: The Myth/Misquotation of History. One of the rich aspects of Buffy, is that the show can provide support for a wide variety of interpretations. In the first paper, the presenter argued that Buffy was supporting Pres. Bush’s view of the world, supporting US unilateralism and use of force. I found it quite interesting that Europeans might think that of the show, which I regard as rather neutral as far as US politics are concerned, and which, in the end, supports the idea that strength is best used with others, and not alone. After all, Buffy is the greatest Slayer because she has and works with her friends and others, and her greatest accomplishment, with Willow, is to empower all the potentials to become Slayers, thus turning the mythology of the Slayer on it’s head. Needless to say, the discussion after this panel was quite intense and interesting. Also, I had the pleasure of continuing some of the discussion with Dennis Showalter of Colorado College, who was one of the distinguished speakers at the conference.

The next two panels I attended were on the subject of Religion.

I only managed to see two of the speakers in the Religion I panel, Tanya Cochran of the Georgia State U., and Michael Duricy of the U. of Dayton. Cochran’s paper was Your Own Personal Savior . . . I Mean Slayer: Buff and Religion, Buffy as Religion. Part of her presentation was in support of the idea that Joss is God, or should be at any rate. Obviously, the idea of Buffy as a religion is both attractive and freaky. Buffy certainly embodies many attributes worthy of respect, and there are far worse savior/slayer figures one could follow. But somehow I just feel that Buffy as a religious icon worthy of worship would drive mainstream religious types up the wall.

Duricy’s paper was on Marian Symbols in BtVS .. Marian symbols being those related to Mary, especially within the Catholic Church. One of the best Marian symbols in the Buffyverse occurred in Angel when Darla stakes herself to give birth to Connor. The scene takes place in an alley in the rain, and kneeling at the head of Darla during this scene is Fred wearing a covering such as a cloak or a coat over her head, very reminiscent of many of the depictions of Mary in the iconography of the church.

After that panel, I decided to stick with the religion theme and attend the panel on Religion II: Such is the Will of God. There were four panelists in this panel, Reid B. Locklin read a paper by Paul Lachance of Saint Anselm College titled: Fate and the Knowledge of Future Contingents: What Did Cassie Know? ; Tracy Tiemeier of Boston College read her paper on Self Becoming of Becoming Self? A Comparative Study of Buffy and the hindu Saint Antal on Identity and Self-Realization. ; and, Agnes Curry of Saint Joseph College presented: Gosh, Joss is a Thomist?. The fourth panelist was Maxine Phillips of Dissent Magazine, who responded to each of the papers.

If Joss is an angry atheist, I am a not-so-angry agnostic, so I found the discussions on religion very interesting. Perhaps the paper I liked best was the paper on fate and knowledge of the future in the second Religion panel. After a brief discussion of the nature of knowledge and the ability to have foreknowledge, the paper went on to discuss whether Cassie had true foreknowledge of her own death, or whether she simply believed it to be coming, and it came. I had to point out that, in the episode Help Cassie seemed to have other instances of foreknowledge, such as that Buffy would make a difference and that she would eventually tell Spike, which would seem to make her something of a seer.

After a busy day of panels, the organizers had scheduled two presentations. The first was a screening of Bake Sale, a take of on Buffy by Justin Thomas and Matt Sanchez of the U. of Arizona. Justin and Matt were students in a Buffy class at Arizona, and they did this project to earn an A, since A’s were only given out to people who did an extra project in the class. They chose to make their own episode of Buffy using sockpuppets. It was hilarious, complete with fake commercials. Of course it must be said that they are not particularly Buffy fans, and had apparently only seen episodes where Buffy cried a lot, because that’s about all she did in their version. Anyway, avoid chocolate cakes with eye of newt listed in the ingredients.

Following that, Luminosity and Sisabet showed over two hours of vids they and some others had made. Good stuff. Some of their vids are available for download at their websites. A few lucky participants won DVD’s of the vids shown at the conference as door prizes.

All in all, a very good day.

(no subject)

Date: 2004-08-09 04:39 pm (UTC)
ext_432: (Default)
From: [identity profile] zoethe.livejournal.com
Thank you so much for these reports! I'm reading them (finally) in chronological order, but I had to pause and comment on one statement:

Of course, the presenter didn’t have a really good explanation as to why Spike used the same figure to tell Buffy that she had to “keep on living.”

Actually, it does stay with the theme. Spike telling Buffy she can't quit doesn't make being on earth any easier for Buffy. It's just...necessary. She's still pulled from heaven, still in hell, but now she really has no choice in the matter and must make the best of it. The parallel in music is there, yes, but the parallel in theme - that she is wrenched from heaven - remains. Nothing is solved or resolved. She must still be Buffy, and she must live through each minute. Despite the pain. There is no happy ending.

Profile

fidhle: (Default)
fidhle

March 2013

S M T W T F S
     12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920 212223
24252627282930
31      

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags