Unfettered Brilliance: Ho, Ho, Ho!

Monday, December 10, 2012

Ho, Ho, Ho!

Hung with care - check!

Okay, let's get one thing straight. In a world which has entire radio stations switching their format to Andy Williams and Bing Crosby to saturate the airwaves with Christmas songs, there's really not a war on Christmas. Don't believe the hype - Christmas is so far from being under attack in the USA that it's nearly laughable. Retailers expect to turn a profit for the year based on sales made in the final six weeks of the year - the very name "Black Friday" comes from a business turning a profit (recorded in black ink) as opposed to running at a loss (red ink) and they certainly want to welcome Christmas shoppers. (Note: They also want to welcome Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and, I daresay, Solstice shoppers. It's the desire for profit that drives the more inclusive "Happy Holidays," not some sort of animosity towards the Christ Child. Face it - Santa sells.) For further evidence, I live in the American South which seems to have an entire cottage industry based on turning out bizarrely festooned Christmas sweaters. And yes, I own a couple, so I know of what I speak.

Radio stations aren't the only media to hop on the Christmas bandwagon. The world of the Christmas special is upon us and I thought it would be a good time to mention ten of my personal favorites.

First off, you can't go wrong with any of the Rankin/Bass stop-motion specials. Rudolph (you know, the one with the elf who wants to be a dentist), Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, and The Year Without a Santa Claus - all are lovely tales, best served with cocoa. Don't blame me if you find yourself thinking about misfit toys or humming the Snow Miser song.
Don't forget the Grinch! C'mon, Boris Karloff?? Cindy Lou Who? Plan time for this one. Plan time to ignore the Jim Carrey one.
And let's not overlook the special that gave us the "Snoopy dance" - A Charlie Brown Christmas.
The Muppet Christmas Carol. Words cannot express how much I enjoy this one. Gonzo the Great as Charles Dickens (helped out by Rizzo the Rat) was a wonderful idea, but to really make this one work, you need to understand the source material. (Think of it this way. You can enjoy Blazing Saddles if you've never seen another Western, but if you know the general structure and tropes of that type of film, the jokes become much, much funnier.)
Another parody of Dickens' tale is the Bill Murray film Scrooged. I love this one, mostly for the spin it takes in having television take the place of Scrooge & Marley's bean-counting firm. Darkly comic and it retains the transformative message that is the hallmark (if you will) of the Dickens story.
So what version of A Christmas Carol would I suggest? Honestly, there are a lot out there to choose from (see this list!), but I like the George C. Scott version. Really - watch this before you tackle the parodies listed above.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer never did "a very special episode," for which I've always been glad, but there is a lovely Christmas-themed episode ("Amends" in Season 3) that deals directly with whether redemption is deserved or a gift without strings - and what to do if you feel you don't deserve such a gift.
Supernatural has a Christmas episode ("A Very Supernatural Christmas" in Season 3) that's become a recent addition to my "must watch" list. It's irreverent and slapstick-funny in places, but also too violent for the smallest among us. It's also bittersweet as you see the young Sam and Dean try to create Christmas in one of Supernatural's many cheap motel rooms.
And the very first Doctor Who episode I saw was the Christmas special ("The Christmas Invasion") from Russell Davies' relaunch of the series - and the first full one with David Tennant.
Also, if you can find it, the short-lived 90s series My So-Called Life has a fantastic Christmas episode ("So-Called Angels") that's well worth seeking out.

There are many others, of course, but there's a decent start!

By the way, there's not a Christmas episode of Breaking Bad, for which I think we can all be grateful.

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Points of Interest

Lurker's Guide - Excellent fan-run resource guide for Babylon 5

Breaking Bad - The official AMC site for news and recaps about the best show on television

Mockingbird's Nest - What I do outside of my day job

Ensley Guffey's Blog - Musings and links worth noticing

Nik At Night's Blog - Most things TV, including the 2011 Rewatch

TV Tropes - What you've seen, over and over and why it matters

Slayage - Whedon given the scholarly treatment

Whedonesque - Clearinghouse of all things Whedon

BuffyWorld - Shooting scripts, screenshots, and more

Who?

K. Dale Koontz may have watched too much television as a child. She learned to count via Sesame Street and first learned that genres could cross-pollinate through M*A*S*H. When she discovered Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the die was cast. In 2008, McFarland published her book Faith and Choice in the Work of Joss Whedon which focused on themes such as redemption, choice, and consequences in Whedon's work up to that point. (She's fairly sure Volume 2 could be written to include Dr. Horrible, Dollhouse, and The Avengers.) She is a founding member of the Whedon Studies Association (a great group of people, but don't mention Twilight. Just sayin'). She has presented original work on the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse, Kitty Pryde, and Japanese anime. In 2014, she and co-author Ensley F. Guffey worked with ECW Press to publish the critically-acclaimed Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad. Her most recent project was to team again with Ensley and ECW to publish A Dream Given Form, which is the only guide to all the canonical works in the Babylon 5 universe. That book is currently available for preorder and will be released in September of 2017. Dale is available for speaking engagements and only occasionally uses puppets in her presentations.

What?

I have long been interested in storytelling - how we do it, why we do it, and what happens when we mix things up. This interest might be the result of being born and raised in the American South, a region that has long celebrated the involved story over the quick answer. Television - the good stuff, anyway - does this brilliantly. Far from being film's red-headed tacky cousin, good TV lets characters and relationships build slowly and often mixes up genres, so horror is next door to humor and fantasy rubs shoulders with procedurals. This blog focuses on both the "good stuff" being broadcast that catches my fancy (with a special emphasis on Babylon 5, since that's the book that's in the process of being written right now) as well as film. The films are usually new releases being watched for TV19's weekly Meet Me at the Movies, although I reserve the right to veer off into classics and under-appreciated gems as well. Older posts cover what my introduction to film class was up to - currently, I'm not teaching that course, but who knows what the future may hold.

Notable Whedon Work