I'm a sucker for this stuff . . .
Nov. 11th, 2002 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
logovo1From Salon.Com ---- some excerpts from Deconstructing "Buffy" By Stephanie Zacharek
"... the first-ever academic conference organized around a show with a ridiculous name that a respectable number of sensible grown-ups -- myself included -- take pretty seriously. Blood, Text and Fears: Reading Around 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, on Oct. 19 and 20, brought together some 160 of the faithful, who came not only from the United Kingdom but also from the United States, Italy, Canada and Australia."
.............
"Some papers would start out droning and ponderous, and you'd find yourself looking anxiously for the exit (even as you knew that, out of politeness, you really shouldn't leave a room with only 30 or so people in it to begin with). But if you listened for five or 10 minutes, eventually a dazzling insight of some sort would emerge -- somehow, something would catch fire."
"Many people used brief clips from the show in their presentations, and you could feel ripples of pleasure and recognition pulse through the audience as they watched those clips -- we hadn't come to sit around and watch TV all day, but no one wanted those clips to end. The experience of TV watching, which is usually a fairly private one, suddenly became a communal one, more like being at the movies."
.........
"The more you know about 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' the easier it is to understand why academics find it so fascinating. For one thing, over the course of six and a quarter seasons, Whedon has rarely allowed the plot to take conventional routes, which makes the show consistently refreshing. He's not afraid to face up to heartache and tragedy -- his characters are modern kids who speak in the pop vernacular and shop at the Gap, but the challenges that befall them (not to mention the ways in which they face up to them) are often operatic in their intensity.
Whedon has a feel for the classical forms of drama, from Greek tragedy to Shakespeare and beyond, and a firm grasp of (not to mention a love of) the more modern forms, like movie musicals. If you're used to thinking critically about art or literature, it's not such a stretch to apply those same modes of thinking to 'Buffy.' "
I'd probably die a happy fangirl if ever I attended one of these things.
"... the first-ever academic conference organized around a show with a ridiculous name that a respectable number of sensible grown-ups -- myself included -- take pretty seriously. Blood, Text and Fears: Reading Around 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, on Oct. 19 and 20, brought together some 160 of the faithful, who came not only from the United Kingdom but also from the United States, Italy, Canada and Australia."
.............
"Some papers would start out droning and ponderous, and you'd find yourself looking anxiously for the exit (even as you knew that, out of politeness, you really shouldn't leave a room with only 30 or so people in it to begin with). But if you listened for five or 10 minutes, eventually a dazzling insight of some sort would emerge -- somehow, something would catch fire."
"Many people used brief clips from the show in their presentations, and you could feel ripples of pleasure and recognition pulse through the audience as they watched those clips -- we hadn't come to sit around and watch TV all day, but no one wanted those clips to end. The experience of TV watching, which is usually a fairly private one, suddenly became a communal one, more like being at the movies."
.........
"The more you know about 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' the easier it is to understand why academics find it so fascinating. For one thing, over the course of six and a quarter seasons, Whedon has rarely allowed the plot to take conventional routes, which makes the show consistently refreshing. He's not afraid to face up to heartache and tragedy -- his characters are modern kids who speak in the pop vernacular and shop at the Gap, but the challenges that befall them (not to mention the ways in which they face up to them) are often operatic in their intensity.
Whedon has a feel for the classical forms of drama, from Greek tragedy to Shakespeare and beyond, and a firm grasp of (not to mention a love of) the more modern forms, like movie musicals. If you're used to thinking critically about art or literature, it's not such a stretch to apply those same modes of thinking to 'Buffy.' "
I'd probably die a happy fangirl if ever I attended one of these things.