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Buffy Goes Dark
- Thread starter roguerouge
- Start date
roguerouge
First Post
Got anything I could read of yours? If you want something of mine, try this one, on Buffy's opening title sequence: Slayage 22: Kociemba
or this one, on The Wish: Slayage 23: Kociemba
or this one, on The Wish: Slayage 23: Kociemba
roguerouge
First Post
One student this semester did a presentation on the connections between Lost and Buffy, based on a writer in common to both series. Do you think there's much there? I'm only really familiar with the first season...
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
Much where? In LOST? Definitely.
If you mean a comparison of Lost and Buffy - I don't know.
Honestly, haven't paid that much attention to what individual writers do - I am much more concerned with narrative unity/plurality that emerges from multiple authors writing what is "supposed to be" a coherent continuity (I write about superhero comics, too).
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
When I have something in a form worth reading, I promise to share.
I've been too busy finishing my Master's thesis ("Collection, Identity & the Narratives of Gentrifying Brooklyn in Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude").
I need to print out the essays at those links - fascinating stuff, but ultimately I am too "old school" to do any kind of detailed reading off a computer screen.
That would be my issue as well. The multiple authorship of the medium at every level troubles a lot of the assumptions that inform traditional criticism, and I don't really see that reflected in any of these anthologies (although granted, it's a methodological issue and would require some interpretive gymnastics to connect to the show proper).
roguerouge
First Post
Neither did I, honestly, until a stellar student did a thematic analysis of Espenson's writing for BtVS and Angel. I helped her get that published (here: Slayage Watcher Junior: The Undergraduate Journal of Buffy Studies). That started me thinking about it more seriously. Then the Muse hit me with the possibility of writing about her writing techniques. The Muse got a boost when one screenwriting prof. pooh-poohed the idea, while another thought that it might be possible to think of individual writers without the created by credit in this way. (Antagonists have always been a good way to help me beat writer's block and the support helped me overcome some nervousness...)
As far as Lost goes, I think it was a comparison of tJohn Locke and Buffy via David Fury's scripts.
roguerouge
First Post
I agree. It makes television studies exponentially more complex, but possibly more accurate as well. The metaphor that I've liked is that creators like Whedon are catalysts as well as artists. They serve as a Muse. After all, what makes Team Whedon (in ain't it cool's phrase) Team Whedon is that Whedon can delegate as well as write and produce.
Not to mention that if we take communal authorship seriously, then the performers start to look like creators as well, which makes for some very interesting canon issues around the comics.
I think TV, movies, comics, video games, etc. just literalize some of the problems all academic critics are (or should be) dealing with at this point. Instead of a philosophical critique of the subject that makes Joe Everydude go "hwha?", we actually have multiple independent creators involved at all levels of the process,* which forces us to reexamine how we value and what we value about these texts in a more concrete and practical way. If nothing else it's a fantastic remedy to the Romantic notion of art as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, the overflowing of the soul, and other such trite nonsense.
The issue I see with something like the "Espensode," though, is actual document evidence of who's responsible for what. How can you be sure the characteristics you identify as Espensonian aren't really the work of Whedon or one of the other writers, actor improv, something else? (Which also makes me wonder whether one day some library will have a Buffy collection, allowing you and others to puzzle such questions out.)
*Which is less common in literature, though there are still examples, like The Waste Land.
Absolutely. I was thinking of production, direction, acting, editing, etc. in addition to the writing.
roguerouge
First Post
True enough, all of this became more apparent once people looked more closely at the actual productive role of book editors and publishers or the journeymen assistants of old Master painters, for example.
The article spends a goodly amount of time emphasizing the difficulties with understanding what exactly Espenson did as an author, especially since her defining trait is collaboration on scripts even within the collaborative process of putting on a TV show, where there can be six versions of a story, or more, by the time it's broadcast. Fortunately, Jane Espenson is really, really prolific in writing and talking about her process on her blog and she's worked with enough different shows and producers that the similarities start to mean something more than they would if I just looked at her work with Team Whedon. That's why I ended up watching things like Tru Calling, Gilmore Girls (she loved the creators, but left the show due to the way they broke stories), BSG and Andy Barker, PI.
The article spends a goodly amount of time emphasizing the difficulties with understanding what exactly Espenson did as an author, especially since her defining trait is collaboration on scripts even within the collaborative process of putting on a TV show, where there can be six versions of a story, or more, by the time it's broadcast. Fortunately, Jane Espenson is really, really prolific in writing and talking about her process on her blog and she's worked with enough different shows and producers that the similarities start to mean something more than they would if I just looked at her work with Team Whedon. That's why I ended up watching things like Tru Calling, Gilmore Girls (she loved the creators, but left the show due to the way they broke stories), BSG and Andy Barker, PI.
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