Double Dose!

This week, the film class viewed Joss Whedon's Serenity to set up a contrast to last week's viewing of Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop.  There are (of course) sound pedagogical reasons for the film to be included on the syllabus, but I'll admit that it's no hardship for me to sit through this one.  I've seen Serenity literally dozens of times and there are still moments that make me snort with half-concealed laughter, catch my breath at the beauty of the composition, and - yes - make me proud of what humans can accomplish.  (River's determined "My turn" is one of those moments, incidentally.)  I'll have to see what the students thought in their longer responses this week and in the final paper, but the viewing seems to have been a success; not only in "gee, I liked that one" but also in terms of "hmm, this science fiction stuff can have some heft to it."  One of the best moments for any teacher, regardless of the age and skill level of the students, has to be those all-too-rare flashes when you actually see it coming together for the pupil.

Yay, team!

Meanwhile, over at the Rewatch, Season Seven continues.  Nikki Stafford Her Own Bad Self is the poster this week and she gives some great backstory on the season itself, as well as discussing the three episodes up for analysis this week.  I had forgotten how heartbreaking "Help" (7.4) was.

Up next week - the film students present their individual projects (topics range from robots to time travel to life in a post-apocalyptic world - then I think a little Firefly might be in order.  (Or maybe, being the week before Thanksgiving, "Pangs" should be on the menu.  Hmmm.)

Also - Slayage 5 proposals are due by December 1.  I must finish that, along with making the corrections to the next draft of my contribution for The Joss Whedon Reader, in which I examine Whedon's Dollhouse in light of the cinematic theory of the male gaze and the myth of Echo and Narcissus.  Fear not - it's easier to read than it may first appear!

Are You Living in the Real World?

Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop would sign off each episode with a tagline in the lower right corner of the blackened screen at the end of the session credits.  The most usual one was "See You Space Cowboy," but there were others.  At the end of the movie, the tagline is a question - "Are You Living in the Real World?"  A deceptively simple question - Bebop is a show that explores Big Questions such as honor, family, responsibility, identity, and, yes, reality.  Do the shimmering golden butterflies mean that this world is the real one and that Beauty exists and matters or do they signify that the brain of the viewer has been compromised, that this world is merely a dream, and an awful one at that?

It's no secret that I like Bebop.  I think it's complex, richly nuanced and the vocal talents are spot-on.  (It also makes smoking look cool, but there it is.)  I'm using Bebop in the class to set up a discussion of space opera vs. space Western by having the students examine both Bebop and (next week) Serenity.  Common themes are woven throughout both but there are significant differences and departures as well, including the pacing.  Japanese films tend to be slower paced and to take more time to build than most American films - we like quick cuts and action, action, action!  (As an experiment, imagine Michael Bay being handed the script for Kurosawa's Ran, along with a budget of a hundred million dollars.  Now go put your head between your knees and breathe deeply - it never happened.  It'll all be okay.)

Over at the Rewatch, we've begun Season Seven.  Buffy discovers that Spike has a soul - the scene at the end of "Beneath You" is simply heartbreaking.  It was then and it remains so now.  Elizabeth Rambo explains it all - Buffy is a rich text, and it's well worth paying attention to what's being said by whom.  It's all connected.  Really.

Next week -  A double dose of Whedon as the film class takes on Serenity and the Rewatch continues with Season Seven.  See you in the real world, Space Cowboy!

Is Anything On TV?

This was a question I used to ask when the choices at my childhood home were very limited.  We didn't have cable while I was growing up and there were only the "Big Three" networks.  (I know, it sounds like I spent my childhood drawing pictures of a mastodon hunt on the walls of a cave.  I didn't.  The earth was still cooling and was too hot for organized hunting trips.)  Nowadays, there are many more choices.  More networks on "regular" broadcast television, plus "netlets" like the CW, plus basic and premium cable, plus DVR technology, as well as watching-on-demand streaming technology.  But there's still that basic question -

Is anything on?


Well, yes.

Over at the Rewatch, Season Six of Buffy ends with Buffy digging her way out of a grave - her second that season.  But the world she emerges into is one that has both radically changed and one she wants to actually live in.  An excellent write up to conclude what is often a dark and unfairly derided season.

The film class took a break from watching feature-length films to look at what television can do.  I wanted to mix things up, so I included a stand alone from a classic show ("The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" from Twilight Zone), an example of "what if we broadcast through the Internet instead of waiting for a green light from the suits?" (Whedon's Dr. Horrible which also sparks good discussions on role expectations and the use of sound, which is the focus for next week) and an episode from a longer narrative arc ("Ballad of Fallen Angels" from Cowboy Bebop).  This is a hard week to winnow down the viewing - in its infancy, television was viewed as stage and film's not-quite-up-to-snuff little brother, but I'd argue (along with others, such as New York Magazine's Emily Nussbaum) that certainly isn't the case nowadays.

Wait, you say.  There's a lot of trash out there.  Indeed.  And there always has been, whether the "out there" is TV facing your sofa or the widescreen at the local multiplex.  Here's a simple plan to work around that - if it's trash, either don't watch it, or watch it KNOWING that it's trash.  (I, myself, have occasionally gotten sucked into so-called "reality" TV featuring supremely starved and toned women who wear flip-flops that retail for more than my good china.  A little bad can be good for you - just don't think it's real.)

And look for the good.  I'm finally doing an organized watch of Straczynski's Babylon 5 which looks quite promising (despite the late 80s synth pop that will apparently come back in the future, along with shoulder pads) as it asks the Big Questions - "Who are you?"  "What do you want?"  Important questions to ask, and to answer, as you go along in life.

I'm also impressed with Ringer (although I'm behind in my watching of it) which I'm finding to be a fun show with some unexpected twists.  But the one I'm really hopeful for is Grimm.  The pilot episode sets up what seems to be a solid framework - there's at least one strong female character (who hopefully will pull through and be an ongoing force; fairy tales have too many passive women), some great comic relief, and a pervasive tone of darkness that really ought to be in fairy tales, which originally were (after all) cautionary tales for adults, not bedtime stories for sleepy children.

We'll see, but until then, don't leave the path!

Side Trip!

Different focus this week, as Whedon has been a busy little bee.  It's been a big week.

First up, have you seen the first trailer for The Avengers?  Have you seen the fan-made shot-by-shot spoof of it?  Labor of love, I'm telling you.  (And thanks to Nikki Stafford for sending this our way)

The all-official trailer

Fans with too much time on their hands, but with some lovely dialogue:  "Gentlemen - and that one hot chick over there."

Time will tell if the film is anything other than a summer popcorn flick with pretty explosions, but to hear Whedon dialogue being said by Robert Downey, Jr. gives me hope.  And a happy.

Then this hit the world a couple of days ago - seems that when Whedon reached a break on Avengers, he gathered a few friends to put on a show in the barn.  The difference is that these are vertigo-inducingly talented friends, he's got a big barn, and the source material is the frothy comedy Much Ado about Nothing. 


Over at the Rewatch, Season Six hits a couple of episodes that sharply divided fans.  Is anything we've been watching for nearly six years real?  And "Seeing Red" - oh, my.  I'm telling you, when things go bad on this show, they REALLY go bad.  Let Alyson Buckman and Cynthea Masson explain it to you.

In class, we also were dealing with the question of "What is real?" with Alex Proyas' Dark City.  How can you run out of time if you can control it?  Who are you if your memories are switched around like so many
paper plates?  And how does film noir mix with science fiction?

As I said, big week.

Who Are You?

Reel One:  In the film class, we continued our exploration of the ways aliens are depicted in film.  Remember that last week was Ridley Scott's Alien, in which the alien is big, scary, ravenous, and pretty much only seen in bits and pieces until the very end.  (It's brilliant to let the audience's imagination fill in the blanks - we always manage to scare ourselves better than anything we actually SEE!)  This week was an overlooked gem of a film called Impostor.  In this film, we've been at war with the Centauris for years now and we're not doing so well.  We never actually see the enemy, for he has discovered a way to infiltrate our society.  Walt Kelly's Pogo was right - the enemy is us.  (Actually, the Pogo line is far sadder, for that enemy is us without an alien walking around in the skin.)  At its heart, Impostor asks one of the biggest of questions - something that good science fiction does very, very well.  Just what does it mean to be human?  Impostor is based on a Philip K. Dick story, and Dick was nigh-obsessed with the idea of memory and its role in making us, well, us.  Good discussion on this one and I look forward to my students proving to me that they are, in fact, human.


Reel Two:  Over at the Rewatch, we deal with some different sorts of identity crises as Willow tries to put away magic, Riley returns from the jungle all growed up, and Xander calls off his wedding with nearly perfect bad timing.  Have you ever seen that car pile-up of a show Bridezilla?  Imagine the situation with an ex-demon.  Who are you?  How do you know?  Who do you want to be?  How do you get there?

I've heard it said that Babylon 5 (a show I'm beginning to watch in the next few weeks in an organized way instead of my up-to-now scattershot approach) boils existence down to two questions:  Who are you?  What do you want?  We change, so the answers change.  And it's always wise to know the answers to those two questions.


Coming Soon:  Hold on to your hats, viewers!  The film class takes on the magnificent neo-noir that is Proyas' Dark City and the Rewatch tackles insanity, reality, and sexual assault.  (You were warned that Season Six got dark!  But how else can you see the coming of the light?)