For those not keeping up with the comments on my last post, you should know that Dorothea has been kind enough to translate one of my favorite poems about the relationship between human beings and God from its original Spanish. Now, when I say that I am bad at translation, that is neither false modesty nor culturally constrained humility speaking. I suck at trying to translate things, especially poetry, because I fall in love with meter and rhyme scheme and the way the words sound, and I can't bear to change any of it. But Dorothea is very good at this translation thing -- a lot better than she gives herself credit for -- and she's 100% right in pointing out that a sonnet can be rendered very nicely in English blank verse. (I always assumed that the sixth line was less a request/command than an observation, parallel with the one in lines 4-5: God does clothe Godself in our pleas and desires. But I'm not sure that works grammatically as well as what Dorothea's got. Hmmm.) I also want to register my amusement at discovering that today's Friday Five is all about religious belief and choice. I had nothing to do with it, honest! But I can enjoy it nonetheless. ;)
While I'm on the theme of translation, though, I had promised to talk about last week's Buffy episode, "Selfless." Considering my predilections, there was pretty much no way I wouldn't've enjoyed this episode, but there are certain things it did especially well. So, spoilers and random bits of early medieval history follow.
You see, I like the character of Anya. I hadn't expected to -- sure, she was fun in S3 and occasionally amusing in S4, but she was also an ex-vengeance demon who didn't seem to feel the least bit sorry about visiting horribly creative death and destruction on mankind for about a thousand years. I may find evil characters interesting, but I don't generally like them. I definitely don't identify with them. But somewhere in between "Triangle" and "The Body" in S5, I started to feel this creeping sense of...camaraderie. I sympathized with Anya's desire to get a "big bomb clock" to notify her if Xander felt like leaving -- suffice it to say that I'm not too perceptive about these things either -- and it finally sunk in that here was one character who felt out of the loop with all the Scoobies' cutesy little inside jokes, many of which annoy me even when I know their pop-culture references. "You're referencing literature I have no way to be familiar with!" Anya complained in "Triangle" as Willow and Tara made cute Cat in the Hat jokes. "Tell me about it," I murmured sympathetically to the TV screen.
Well, by that point in the series -- an all-time low, in my opinion -- I couldn't care less about Buffy, Willow, or Xander. Tara was still a boring nonentity, Spike was off on his own little path of stalkerdom, and Giles wasn't getting enough screen time (some things never change). But I went from feeling sorry for Anya to identifying with her, with her anger at the Scoobies (who have always been an insanely cliquish buunch), with her attempts to define herself by means of Xander (been there, done that, got the T-shirt, never doing it again), with her very real bafflement about how to behave in the face of death. And when Xander treated Anya like crap for large parts of S6 (nevermind the leaving-at-the-altar business; the let's-not-tell-anyone-we're-engaged business would've been a dealbreaker for me, not to mention the I-regularly-join-my-friends-in-mocking-you business), it just made me dislike Xander. When Anya became a vengeance demon again, I shrugged -- no wonder, with the way all her "friends" ignored her after the Wedding That Wasn't. When she slept with Spike, I snickered and congratulated her for getting to play tonsil hockey with all the male regulars in a single season. When she helped save the world from Willow, I smiled, sniffled at the cute Anya/Giles vibe, and prayed that she wasn't about to get back together with Xander.
"Selfless," the episode in which Anya faces up to not only the moral implications of her job as a vengeance demon, but also the psychological implications of her relationship with Xander, was a long time coming. It was built up carefully over four seasons. And it was mostly pretty great. I don't actually buy that Willow wouldn't've figured out the importance of Anya's necklace by this point on the show -- I can think of several ways to plug that plot hole, but none of them were employed -- and I missed Giles more than ever, because S4 was all about how Buffy shouldn't be going off to fight demons without doing any research. (How exactly did she plan to kill Anya, anyway? Chopping her into lots of pieces? Buffy should know better; she'd already seen that swords couldn't kill a vengeance demon in "Older and Far Away.") But this was an entire episode in which I didn't want any of the regular characters to just go away and die, which is pretty impressive, since I haven't been able to muster up any enthusiasm for Willow in approximately ever. Plus, it was fun. And I don't think Xander and Anya are getting back together, at least not any time soon. So... yay.
I especially enjoyed Anya's remark to Buffy while they were fighting: "[I]s this like one of your little pop-culture references I don't get 'cause I'm a vengeance [demon]?" Because this episode was all about references that weren't pop culture (OK, maybe the Abercrombie & Fitch joke), and I got just about every one. Willow's summons of D'Hoffryn in Latin, but otherwise the same phrasing Anya used in "Something Blue"? Gotcha. The 1905 Revolution and Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg? Gotcha. Spike making incomprehensible allusions to "The Cask of Amontillado"? Well, after all, the poor guy's insane. But the Swedish flashbacks... those were hilarious, and not just for the improv Swedish. As Anya sang in "OMWF," "I've read this tale / There's wedding then betrayal...."
I'm not much of an expert on either Icelandic sagas or early medieval history; I took a course here and there, and I do have a dear friend who will go into embarrassing detail about the year 1000 and the conversion of Iceland to Christianity at the drop of a horned Viking helmet, but it's safe to say that early medieval Scandinavia is Not My Thing. Still, I recognized the name "Aud," especially in conjunction with "Olaf." There aren't that many women in the first generation of famous Icelandic settlers. And Aud shows up in a lot of sagas, albeit briefly -- a quick run through some books on my shelf and the Online Medieval & Classical Library at Berkeley tells me that she was mentioned in Erik's, Njal's, Grettir's, Laxdaela, Eyrbyggja, and the Orkneyingers' sagas, not to mention the Landnamabok.*
Aud was the daughter of Ketil "Flatnose" Bjornsson, descended from various Norwegian lords of Sogn, living somewhere around about the Hebrides. (One of the problems with talking about this part of the world in the ninth century is that "Scot" can refer to someone from either Ireland or Scotland. Thus, the geography tends to get messy.) In the mid 850s, Ketil married Aud off to Olaf the White, another Norwegian prince newly arrived in the region. Aud and Olaf had a son, Thorstein the Red, and then the stories start fracturing. In all of them, Aud and Thorstein part ways with Olaf. The sagas and the historical record agree that Thorstein carved out a kingdom around Caithness until he fell in battle. Aud promptly packed up her household and emigrated to Iceland around 890, settling one of her granddaughters with a husband in the Orkneys en route, politely refusing to live with either of the brothers who had preceded her to Iceland, setting up her own (extensive) homestead, erecting crosses along the coast (she had apparently been baptized into Christianity, a relative rarity in that time and place), and triumphantly marrying off her favorite grandson and heir (another Olaf) before finally dying in her sleep -- not losing one ounce of dignity -- during his wedding feast. (The comparisons with "Hell's Bells" have not escaped my attention.)
What Olaf the White did after leaving Aud is a little less clear in the sagas, some of which have him falling in battle in Ireland and others of which simply ignore him. Why and how Olaf and Aud parted ways is also not emphasized, although I'd welcome a citation to substantiate the claim I read in the atbtvs newsgroup that there's a version where she wreaks vengeance on him for sleeping around. The "sleeping around" part is easy enough to substantiate, though: the historical record indicates that Olaf the White married an (unnamed) Scottish princess, won a sizeable kingdom around Dublin, dabbled heavily in the Pictish slave trade, and eventually went back to Norway to take up an inheritance there. His ship burial is still being examined by archaeologists. Unfortunately, there are no signs of troll bones.
It's safe to say that the flashbacks in "Selfless" are at best an indirect homage to the Aud of the sagas, who is well-off, well-born, fiercely family-centered, and -- according to a translation of Laxdaela Saga -- "a woman both tall and portly," which Emma Caulfield (the actress who plays Anya) most certainly is not. Also, even if we assume that "Sjornjost" is a play on "Sogn," "c. 880" isn't the same as c. 855, when Aud's and Olaf's relationship went pear-shaped. (Presumably the discrepancy was due to making Anya's age match her claim to be 1120 in "Doppelgängerland" -- except that that would put her birth c. 880. Someone needs a calculator.) But the hilarious thing -- the one which helped me figure this out in the first place -- was that Aud was known as Auðr or Unnr djúpúðga (I think -- someone who actually knows Old Norse may feel free to correct me). This can be translated either as "deeply wealthy" or as "deep-minded." Now, given Anya's well-known capitalist streak in S5 and S6, along with the phrase Anya used to describe herself in "Into The Woods" -- "strangely literal"... let's just say that I'm well and truly amused.
This week Buffy's on rerun. I have high hopes of getting to watch Firefly for a change.
* -- Any of my readers interested in YA fiction can also find Aud featured in Rosemary Sutcliffe's Sword Song and Naomi Mitchison's The Land The Ravens Found. And I believe she's mentioned in some popular books on "strong women of the middle ages," or some such. You can do the Amazon searches as well as I can. ;)
There is a story -- there is always a story; this one is from The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, a third century (or so) C.E. text -- anyway, there is a story about Hillel and Shammai, the two greatest teachers of the generation just before or around about the presumed birth of Jesus. Once a man came before Shammai and told him that he was willing to accept the written Torah, but not the oral one, and Shammai dismissed him in a huff. Then the man went to Hillel and told him the same thing. Hillel told him to sit down -- Hillel specialized in dealing with annoying questions -- and they had a chat. (Bear in mind that 'aleph, bet, and gimmel are the first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet.)
[Hillel] wrote out the alphabet for him (and pointing to one of the letters) asked him: "What is this?"
"It is 'aleph," the man replied.
Said Hillel: "This is not 'aleph but bet. What is that?" he continued.
The man answered: "It is bet."
"This is not bet," Hillel said, "but gimmel."
(In the end) Hillel said to him: "How dost thou know that this is 'aleph and this bet and this gimmel? Only because so our ancestors of old handed it down to us that this is 'aleph and this bet and this gimmel. Even as thou hast taken this in good faith, so take the other in good faith."*
Now, I could say that this story is about tradition, because it is, but a backing chorus from Fiddler on the Roof would promptly start up in my readers' subconscious, and I don't want to go there right now. I could also say that it's about the semiotics of culture, because it is, but then the backing chorus would involve Bakhtin, Bourdieu, and de Certeau doing high kicks, and that's a really scary mental image. I could even say that this story is about the importance of teaching, because it is, but it's Friday and I'm ready to take a few days off from that. So, instead, I'm going to tell you that this story is about what I want out of a synagogue.
As Jews go, I am doctrinally liberal: barely interested in the Messiah, extremely dubious about the resurrection of the dead, frankly baffled about anyone who thinks my ovaries should keep me from reading or studying Torah, as supportive of intermarriage (and, come to think of it, same-sex marriage) as any other kind of marriage, and really, really fed up with hearing about the state of Israel. But I'm far too religious to be a secular Jew -- even in the Protestant rather than the Jewish sense of "religious." That is, I believe in (one) God and occasionally have shouting matches with Her, plus I have no problem with angels or miracles unless they appear on treacly TV shows. I am, I suppose, a practicing (if not "observant") Jew. I know my 'aleph from my bet. My views on rabbinic authority are practically off the scale on the left (i.e., I don't think they have much), but that means that I take ultimate responsibility for making all my own halakhic decisions, which can lead to all sorts of amusing dilemmas. And I take the oral Torah in good faith, even though my understanding of "oral Torah" differs just a smidge from the received Orthodox interpretation.
All of this would fit in reasonably well with the Reform movement in Judaism -- well, not my relative lack of Zionism, but there's plenty of wiggle room -- except for one little problem: Reform services remind me of Hillel's interlocutor. You see, Hillel's point was that this guy didn't believe only in the written Torah (a useful lesson for fundamentalists everywhere). He believed in whoever taught him that the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet is 'aleph, and whoever taught him that there's a concept called "Torah," and so on and so forth. He thought it was smart of him not to believe in the oral Torah, but instead he took far more fundamental concepts "in good faith." We all have traditions "in good faith"; some of us simply don't want -- or don't know enough -- to acknowledge them. I find that sort of attitude reprehensible from either a pedagogical or a theological standpoint, and I'm not half as patient as Hillel. You see, I grew up attending the only synagogue in town -- a Reform temple. It took heading for college and listening to other people perform the services they all knew to realize that I'd missed out on a lot of nifty prayers.
Since then, I've gotten more and more enthusiastic about figuring out all the traditional elements which the Reform service omits. Some of them it omits for good reasons (I don't really care to wish divine vengeance on non-Jews, however much some of them might deserve it) and others for lousy reasons (this is a ritual, not a freakin' business meeting; redundancy has its place, and so does intricacy). But I don't see why we shouldn't have all the "traditional" prayers in the prayerbook, and skip over some or do others only occasionally. It'd allow people to learn more about why certain snippets are in certain places, and it'd certainly beat including seven different partially and/or inanely translated versions of the same abridged prayer. (I sort of object to translations on principle, especially bowdlerized ones, but there are aesthetic grounds for disliking these, too. Many of the elements of the traditional Jewish liturgies involve really lovely poetry or prose. Few of the translators have the same level of talent.**) I've also been to a lot more services, and found that there's no liturgical uniformity in the Reform movement. The only Reform synagogue near me in Boondoggle -- in fact, the only synagogue really convenient to me in Boondoggle, as most of them are way out in the suburbs -- is made up of lovely people and takes social positions with which I agree wholeheartedly, but it's off the liberal end on the one point where I'm conservative, i.e., liturgy.
It's not that I have any "denominational" attachment -- very few Jews do -- but I know what I want, and none of the major U.S. Jewish movements quite meets it.*** I actually rather like the Reconstructionist liturgy (their prayerbook has great footnotes), but the phrase "cultural Judaism" makes me irrationally cranky, and I have the whole belief-in-God thing going, so that's out. I'm okay with the Conservative liturgy, but not with their views on intermarriage, and I can't cope with someone else telling me which laws I should be obeying and which ones I should be ignoring. (After the Bar Mitzvah this fall during which someone scolded me for snapping a photo outside the synagogue while the congregants were blasting electric musical instruments inside preparatory to getting into their cars... well, let's just say that it's not actually possible to strain a muscle rolling one's eyes, because I tried.) I'm about as Orthodox as deviled ham, and I will only attend a service with divided seating if invited for someone else's special occasion, because, really, what's the point if I don't even count toward a minyan?****
I've been attending different synagogues since I moved to Boondoggle over the summer, and since I'm interested in moving farther into the city once I buy a house, it's pretty clear that Temple Boondoggle -- as I shall call the Reform congregation near my place of work -- is by far my best option geographically, politically, and demographically (there are, y'know, a few congregants around my age, and kids running around during the services, which I enjoy). The people are very welcoming. Their building is lovely. Their membership fees are reasonable. Their library leaves a great deal to be desired (what, you thought I wouldn't check?), but I could probably fix that, with a little time and tact and a lot of someone else's money. However. The services are sometimes lovely in their spontaneity and informality, but they leave my appetite for tradition and history fundamentally unsatisfied. And on the bad days, well, I feel as if I've been propped in a chair with my eyelids taped open and forced to watch a Jewish version of Oprah. During one Friday-evening service a few weeks ago, we got the story of the recent death of a student of the woman who got up to light the Shabbat candles, the story of how the engaged couple being blessed before the Torah reading met, the life stories of all three members of that year's conversion class, and the story of the rabbi's daughter's ongoing blood tests. But they skipped the Aleinu.
It's usually not that irritating, though. And I think I've figured out a solution, albeit a fairly complicated one. Three Saturdays a month (when I'm not out of town), I attend services at Temple Boondoggle. The remaining Saturday, I attend a little bitty egalitarian traditional minyan just getting started next door. They're mostly Orthodox, and the service lasts for three or four hours, and they read every bit of the Torah portion and throw in all the prayers about meal offerings in the Temple, but... it's surprisingly fun. The "egalitarian" part means that women are treated the same as men, which is a requirement for me; the rest is a little too far into liturgical traditionalism for my tastes in some respects, but it balances out the Temple Boondoggle experience pretty nicely. They only meet once a month, so I have a lot of flexibility, and they're small enough that any Jewish adult is welcomed (remember, you have to get ten Jews in the room before you can do most of the service). So I'm going three-quarters liberal Reform and one-quarter liberal Orthodox.
It's sort of complicated, but all the best things are. I think this might work. And I'm taking it all in good faith.
* -- This is from chp. 15 of the Avot d'Rabbi Natan, as translated by Judah Goldin in The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan (New Haven, 1955), p. 80. It's a commentary on an earlier version of Pirke Avot, and extremely interesting in toto. I don't know why Goldin uses random archaicisms in his translation.
** -- If we must have capital punishment, the least we can do is have it include the folks who make piyyut translations rhyme. *twitch*
*** -- For the not-so-Jewishly-literate among my readers, I suggest scrolling down this page until you hit "Movements in the United States Today," at which point the following paragraph will make much better sense to you.
**** -- The quorum of ten Jewish adults (in Orthodox Judaism, ten Jewish adult males) required to perform many of the major prayers and read the Torah at a given service. Also used to describe a group which meets primarily for prayer services (as opposed to a "congregation," which usually includes all sorts of other social and educational elements).
Remember the meme (yep, that's the original post) from a few weeks back, in which people compared fandoms to various types of relationships? I didn't join in that one -- I'm not sure that my idea of "fandom" really matches anyone else's, and, besides, I've never actually had a relationship in which someone drank up all my liquor. That said, my interaction with Angel reminds me that there is pretty much no circumstance under which sleeping with one's ex is a good idea. And Angel occasionally makes me feel as if I'm doing just that.
(Spoilers for Angel S4 through "The House Always Wins" follow.)
You see, there are many good things about Angel S4 (as, indeed, is the case for most of my ex-boyfriends). "Deep Down" won my heart, at least temporarily, by having Lilah finally take control of the Office of Special Projects (and who among us doesn't wish we knew her office-equipment supplier?) and by having Wesley turn out to be... good. He cared about finding Angel and about finding Cordy, which is perfectly character-consistent in view of their close relationship for several seasons now. He's continued to battle demons, and is supervising a crew of fighters doing so. In short, he's become almost completely heroic, but in that frighteningly ends-justify-the-means way which his character has previously been shown to be capable of. It's brilliant, I tell you, brilliant. And, by the way, he and Lilah are still engaging in a relationship which -- on a purely psychological level -- makes my past romantic disasters look positively therapeutic, but also makes emotional and dramatic sense.* The first two episodes also featured valiant efforts to transform Fred into a more compelling and likeable character (I'd give them a B+ for effort and a C for effectiveness, but I'm an easy grader), good acting from most of the cast (and I'm not sure Charisma Carpenter can be blamed for phoning in her ten-second sequences), a few decent plot twists, some nifty new characters and concepts, and lots of good lines. Given that the show's suckiness had approached black-hole dimensions at the end of the preceding season, I was pleasantly surprised.
Unfortunately, the longer I watch, the less happy I become. I remember the reasons why I broke up with this show in the first place. Reason Number One is Angel himself -- and I probably can't count on his disappearing from an eponymous show.** Angel is, not to put too fine a point on it, a schmuck. In a world where evil and suffering are even more pronounced than in ours, he thinks the universe revolves around him and his "needs" (more on those later). This wouldn't be such a problem -- in fact, it might be dramatically interesting -- were it not for the fact that the show's writers have been agreeing with him since mid-S2. Insult and alienate your friends and colleagues while ignoring your semi-sacred duty and acting as an accessory to murder? Throw a few punches, buy Cordy some clothes, and we'll let bygones be bygones. Sleep with your vampire ex-girlfriend, endangering the world, then let her go free out of some misplaced sense of chivalry? Wow, you get a (mostly) human child for reasons yet to be explained, and as a bonus, your ex-girlfriend's out of the picture forever. Kill off a vampire hunter's family? He'll come back to hunt you and successfully, uh, kidnap your child for two episodes while managing not to kill you or your crew. Perform some black magic to solidify a highly dangerous demon? Your enemies will temporarily help you contain the demon, and the only negative repercussions from the black magic will be tidied up via previously unknown plot devices; as a bonus, you'll somehow get your son back. Fail to connect with that son? He'll imprison you underwater for a period of time which is, conveniently, over the summer; you will suffer no lasting effects whatsoever. Try to kill a friend and colleague who was attempting to save both your son and you? He'll repay you by pouring time, money, effort, and blood into finding you underwater. He'll also conveniently hand you all the research he's done on issues which matter to you.
As this entry's title may suggest to those of you with good quote recall, I think Lilah was right in "Ground State": the notion that Angel would claim any moral high ground whatsoever with regard to his son is ludicrous. At least Connor, unlike his father, (a) tried to imprison rather than kill the creature he believed responsible for the loss of a loved one and (b) lacked key pieces of information when he jumped to that conclusion. In fact, Connor's actions in putting Angel underwater are more closely parallel to Wesley's in making off with Connor in the first place. On the other hand, Connor's lack of apology is very much like his father's. Is Angel ever going to catch on that he might somehow be responsible for all the estrangement that's going 'round the show? Gosh, no. Angel hasn't been responsible for his actions since mid-S2. Why would you think that he's ever done anything wrong? He's a "champion." (If I never hear that word again, it will be too soon. By the end of S3, I'd started flinching at Wheaties boxes.) The minor detail that he hasn't helped anyone except his co-workers since mid-S3 (and he only did that to earn money for his son -- "Provider," a serious contender for Worst Episode Ever) apparently has no bearing on his championship status. I am not generally given to character hatred; I think it's a little silly and a lot pointless. But I can hate the writers for what they've done to the character, can't I?
As if Angel himself weren't bad enough, there's the way nobody on the show -- except Lilah and possibly Wesley -- has noticed his moral hypocrisy or called him on his patent abandonment of any "mission." Fred and Gunn are already lacking in decent characterization or interest, not played by the strongest actors in the ensemble, and their relationship is no substitute for character development (or much of anything else). Adding "massive stupidity" to their list of traits doesn't help matters much. I'm also a little dubious about Lorne, whose powers of Plot Devicedom are only rivaled by Connor's. And speaking of plot devices, Cordelia... well, I've been trying to write about the changes in what used to be a favorite character for awhile now, and I keep veering off into a lament. Now she's just, well, dull, and I'm not talking about those awful hairstyles. During S3, she lost all character traits except those of self-centeredness, semi-reluctant dedication to fighting evil, and devotion to Angel; these were magnified out of all proportion. Meanwhile, she somehow became a babysitter, confidante, advisor, "part demon" spiritual healer, lover of Angel, ignorer of Wesley (and everyone else, but given that she'd known Wesley for three years, it seems a bit odd that she never even tried to check up on him), and finally -- heaven help us, and that's not just an expression -- "Higher Being." Now she's gone from being a whiny, self-centered Higher Being to an amnesiac damsel in distress. Ah, yes, because [sarcasm] we all so much missed the Cordelia-as-damsel-in-distress plots[/sarcasm].***
I miss the characters I used to like. And I miss the mission -- no, not Lorne's mission, so please shut up, Fred! -- that used to animate them, that of "helping the helpless." Remember that? I liked that. So far, this season has been pretty good with flashes of very good, but I don't know whether or not I can trust the Angel writing team not to screw up massively again. I mean, there are spoilers coming down the wire with what sounds like a clear tie-in to one of my favorite S1 episodes, and I'm wondering whether they'll remember the references made in that episode. That's not a good fandom relationship to continue. On the other hand, I have fun watching, uh, all the scenes without Angel in them. And I enjoy keeping up with the fandom discussion. So I guess I'll continue taping and fast-forwarding when I get bored.
I just suck at breakups.
* -- On a physical level, it looks like fun, provided that Justine is nowhere in the mix (because, ew). I do wish Mutant Enemy would stop trying to make us think that mild to moderate sexual kinkiness equates with moral ambiguity, though. Witness the Buffy/Spike silliness -- okay, they play around with handcuffs. Uh, whatever. I mean, jeez, I currently live a life which is in fact duller than the average nun's (yes, I know several), but that phone sex scene from "The House Always Wins" pretty much caused me to go "hmmm" or "awwww," not "aieeee! The horror, the horror!" Relationships entirely structured around power imbalances give me the creeps -- which explains why I never want Xander and Anya back together on Buffy -- but relationships which involve the occasional power game are, last I checked, fairly normal.
** -- Yes, Angelus could return, but not indefinitely, and Angel wouldn't really pay for anything he did as Angelus, even though the rest of the Buffyverse has pretty well scuffed out the thin, thin line between human and demon.
*** -- I'm providing sarcasm tags because when fans started calling Cordelia "Saint Cordy" in the middle of last season, the Angel writing team apparently failed to realize that it was not a plot suggestion.
No, I'm not dead. I've just been grading midterms. Sixty-eight of them. And twenty-five papers. "Fall Break" is a cruel, cruel misnomer. And I think I'm coming down with a cold; I definitely have a cough, which makes teaching... interesting. ("Today I'll just let each of you speak for two minutes about whatever you like, and I'll nod and smile." No, wait, that's too obvious. "Today we're going to do small-group work.")
By the way, how do most academics get through their first year of teaching without going bonkers? The heck with mentoring -- what I need is an on-call crisis counselor. Fortunately, I have my father, who will answer questions like "How do I grade a reasonably good student paper which makes no reference whatsoever to any of the course readings?" at any hour of the day or night when the World Series is not on. Also, he can always out-do my worst student stories. Sign #43 That I Am Officially A Grown-Up, Despite My Best Efforts: uttering the phrase "you know, back when I was in college...." more than once a week on average.
Let me see... by all calculations, I need to post about (a) Angel, (b) my synagogue compromise, (c) women and literacy in the Talmud (this is more entertaining than it sounds), (d) Jewish Culture: Not Just For Yogurt Anymore, and (e) Buffy. Also, I need to update to MT 2.5 and finally get around to setting up RSS syndication and TrackBack. And I'm two book reviews behind, and I still have to do some paper critiques before I hand them back tomorrow.
So, comics. Uh, well, one comic -- Tom Tomorrow's take on subversive academics. (Is that too subversive to post on my office door? Oh, the dilemma.) And Monday's Doonesbury, which perfectly illustrates this blog post. Oh, and while I'm posting random hilarity, why didn't anyone tell me about the Five-Word Bible project? My favorite summary is for Acts: "Don't try this at home." (And do they realize that "Dude, where's my caravan?" -- that's the Book of Joshua, FYI -- is only four words?)
There will be a real post here, very... oh, heck, this weekend at the latest. Probably two. Or three. Meanwhile, I will leave you all with the enticing thought that certain flashbacks from this week's Buffy episode, "Selfless," were lifted from assorted Icelandic sagas and that fact was not even telegraphed to the audience.
Omigosh -- I just had a student come in! During my office hours! Excuse me while I wait for the opening of the seventh seal....
Here at Boondoggle U., we're having Midterm Week. Midterm Week is even worse than Finals Week, because one can't really cancel classes all week, so I get stuck trying to teach material to students who aren't doing any reading because they have five or six tests in three days. My Intro Class has a midterm on Friday, so I just spent Monday tying up loose ends from previous discussions and today reviewing for the midterm. But the Other Class had a paper due Tuesday -- I threw in a gratuitous PowerPoint slideshow that day in an effort to compensate for the general lack of preparedness which resulted -- and goodness knows what we'll get done tomorrow. At this point, we could be reading Penthouse Letters for all they'll notice; class is still going to be the Small-Group Discussion of the Living Dead. You may have noticed that Midterm Week has a nasty side-effect of encouraging whining, and not just among the student body.
I have twenty-five papers sitting on my desk waiting to be graded right now. Naturally, I am looking for new and entertaining online offerings with which to procrastinate. It's kind of depressing, though, because I'm not finding much. I don't want to read most of the so-called "warbloggers," not because current events hold no interest for me, but because too much of the commentary on these issues has a self-satisfied, polarized, uncivil, us-vs.-them quality with which I'm uncomfortable. I know this kind of rhetoric is nothing new -- in fact, I've yet to see any contemporary political invective that can hold a candle to the early fourteenth century -- but I also know that there exists at least an ideal of more responsible commentary, because that's what I keep wishing for. Too many commentators in all forms of media, print as well as electronic, take quotes out of context, insist that their position is the only obvious one, insult their opponents personally (I've always found it much more devastating to express one's deepest regard for someone just before dissecting his or her opinions), ignore potential counterarguments, demonstrate a profound lack of historical awareness, and fail miserably to define their terms.* At least online commentators can't interrupt one another constantly the way the talking heads do on the news programs I also avoid.
I have added a few new blogs dealing with academic-type issues to my sidebar recently, and I think I've achieved a reasonable degree of parity between left- and right-leaning coverage there. But the same rhetorical flaws sometimes emerge; I will confess to a spot of academic chauvinism here, since I expect better from people trained to carry on a certain type and level of discussion. Regardless of training, though, I wish everyone would stop and think about their categories -- I've been careful to qualify most (heh) of mine in this post. "Academics" do not all behave or believe a certain way. Neither do "liberals" or "conservatives" (if you can find people willing to answer to either of those labels). Neither, if it comes to that, do "the media," "Americans," "Arabs," "Muslims," "Hindus," etc., etc. "Democrats" and "Republicans" are at least defined by a couple of regularly-updated party platforms, but not all elected officials -- much less registered voters -- belonging to a given party support every item of that party's platform. And there are relatively few positions out there which lack entirely in truth, authority, common sense, or whatever else you respect. (Again, a qualification: I'm not saying there are no such positions.) In academia, last I checked, the inability to understand someone else's view -- however strongly you disagree with it -- is an intellectual and possibly a moral flaw, not a virtue. (And I guess we all know I'm a liberal now, right? ;)
Another of my persistent blogging interests has to do with religion, and especially my own Judaism. When I count up, there are a handful of people on my blogroll who've made reference to themselves as Jews, but few of them make a point of discussing Judaism in their blogs. There are lists of "Jewish blogs" I've seen around, but they seem mostly devoted to incessant coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- and, again, in terms that make me uncomfortable because they leave so little room for discussion or disagreement. But here I'm also offended on a theological and historical level: Judaism cannot and should not be reduced to Zionism, and there's nothing necessarily "Jewish" about supporting the state of Israel -- look at the reasons some evangelical Christians do it! Still... doesn't anyone want to talk about the Talmud with me? Maybe a little riff on the contemporary Passover seder? How about a discussion of Jewish-Christian intermarriage that doesn't make it sound like the eleventh plague? Anyone want to get in on or respond to my rant-in-development, "Judaism Is Not Either A Culture, So Why The Heck Do Most Of The Introductory Judaism Textbooks Say It Is?" There's something fundamentally Jewish -- Talmudic, in fact, but non-Jews are welcome to it as well -- about the deliberate inclusion of minority opinions and the acknowledgment of a lack of resolution on so many issues. And, hey, I'd be interested in reading more non-Jewish blogs that address religious questions, too. Christians have a decent variety, although they seem to lean towards the conservative.** The Muslims blogs I've read have been centered on contemporary political issues, which is, again, not what I'm looking for. I've yet to find a good example of a blog interacting seriously with another world religious tradition, but they must exist -- I'm open to suggestions.
On the plus side, all of this makes fandom flamewars look pretty good by comparison.
* -- One point that's irking me a lot lately: "terrorism" is a relative term, even if one's feelings about it involve moral absolutes (mine certainly do). Yes, most of us could craft an absolute definition of "terrorism" in a pinch -- albeit one that depended on a clear distinction between combatants and noncombatants -- but as it's being used across the world right now, it's relative. The "terrorists" are, among other things, Not The People We Like. Everyone from Americans to Zimbabweans (no, really!) have been described as "terrorists" by some other group in the past year. Using the word "terrorist" without explaining what you mean by it isn't a sign that you Despise Terrorists; it's a sign that you're either a sloppy thinker or a propagandist.
** -- This may simply be a reflection of the blog circles I've stumbled across; in my experience, conservative Catholic and Reformed voices outnumber others by a generous margin.
Now that I've been blogging for more than a year, I've started to realize that my favorite topics fluctuate seasonally. During the summer, I visit my family and I do a lot of leisure reading and writing about books; in late summer and early fall, there's a new Jewish holiday every time I turn around and all sorts of other semi-numinous beginnings and endings; once it gets to be October, there are TV shows starting up and running uninterruptedly through November sweeps, and I'm trying to keep my head above water as my classes approach midterm week. In another month or so, I imagine, I'll be home for another set of holidays (secular this time; Hanukkah is probably the most trivial Jewish holiday on the books) and writing about or around my family, with Major Professional Conferences bookending the holiday season. To avoid making this blog overwhelmingly fannish, then, I think I'm going to wait to write about Angel until the second episode's aired. I won't have long to wait.
Despite what the sidebar says, however, I did some leisure reading yesterday. There was no avoiding it. I was dutifully clearing off my desk, having decided that whenever students do show up to my office hours (they generally prefer email) it would create a better impression if I could see them over the piles of papers and books which accumulate on flat surfaces around my office. So I went downstairs to drop off some interoffice mail, and the omnipresent table of Free Books -- which usually features ten-year-old writers' handbooks and forlorn volumes of Western Civ -- had been recently replenished by someone with apparent interests in fantasy and fin de siècle poetry. I pounced on a parallel French/English volume of Verlaine, Housman's A Shropshire Lad, Diana Wynne Jones's Charmed Life (which creeped me out but good), and -- the prize of the lot -- Lin Carter's The Young Magicians. First printing, October 1969.
I am certain that some of my readers, who know the history of speculative fiction far better than I, could have told me the precise details of Carter's career off the top of their heads. I was vaguely aware that he co-wrote some Conan books, and I own a thin, colorful non-fiction volume about Tolkien which he also wrote. When I looked up his bibliography online -- curiously, that list does not include the book I have in front of me -- it turned out to consist mostly of titles which sound old-fashioned in that unfortunate Fantasy For Boys kind of way. (Fantasy For Boys -- you know, any novel in which the adjective "mighty-thewed" is used to describe the male protagonist and the adjective "nubile" is used to describe the lead female character, while their costumes on the front cover demonstrate the accuracy of both descriptions. The Lost World of Conan of Gor. You get the idea.) However -- and I remembered someone telling me about this fairly recently, perhaps in connection with Lud-in-the-Mist -- Lin Carter also edited something called the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, and The Young Magicians is a part of that. It was apparently a companion volume to Dragons, Elves, and Heroes, which anthologized Herodotus and a half-dozen myth cycles in an effort to get at the roots of modern fantasy. The Young Magicians chronicles the beginnings of modern fantasy, starting -- as is right and proper -- with William Morris and going through previously unpublished selections from (among others) Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison, James Branch Cabell, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Here's a picture and full table of contents.
Naturally, my desk-cleaning didn't stand a chance. I waded through some remarkably turgid prose as well as poetry (Morris could write it; Tolkien occasionally could; C.S. Lewis, bless his heart, could not) and enjoyed myself tremendously. I have, I think, done Dunsany a disservice in claiming that he is unreadable; it's been a long time since I tried to tackle him. Eddison, on the other hand, is only readable if I pretend that I am tremendously interested in modern retellings of Norse mythology, but the sad fact is that I am not -- and if I were, I'd be more likely to look into Norse-themed neo-paganism. Lovecraft will, as I had already begun to suspect, require a second look someday when I have free time. Possibly Cabell, too. Carter's own contribution to this volume was, unfortunately, an excerpt from an unfinished work; I am dubious about the merits of the work in question, but am quite certain that the excerpt should not have been made to stand on its own next to perfectly formed short stories and novellas. Carter also provides biographical sketches of all contributors, which leads me to wonder idly how so many professed atheists wound up writing about gods -- although Sprague de Camp's "Ka the Appalling" may well answer a part of that question.
But returning to the issue of Fantasy For Boys: the collection features the usual complement of female automata, damsels in distress, victims, fickle yet beautiful noblewomen, untouchable goddesses (with male gods doing most of if not all of the action), slave-girls, and innocent daughters of degenerates. (Sadly, Jirel of Joiry makes no appearance.) But what amused me, once I thought it over, was that the most appealing woman of the lot comes from Tolkien's "The Dragon's Visit." This poem is, perhaps significantly, not at all fantastic apart from the presence of a dragon, and its single female character... well, she provides fuel for my belief that independent, strong female characters have always had the potential to change Fantasy For Boys in very interesting ways. In the preface -- one of the prefaces, anyway -- to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien advises his readers not to confuse applicability and allegory. So I shan't. But since I can't find "The Dragon's Visit" anywhere online or even figure out where else it might have been printed, I am going to provide a good chunk of the poem for educational purposes, for reasons of applicability, and for the enjoyment of certain parts of my readership.
On the cherry-trees the dragon lay
a-simmering and a-dreaming.
The blossom was white in the early day,
but green his scales were gleaming.
Over the seas he had flown by night,
for his land was dragon-haunted,
Stuffed with gold and jewels bright,
but food and sport he wanted.
"Excuse me, Mr. Higgins, please!
Have you seen what's in your garden?
There's a dragon on your cherry-trees!"
"A what? I beg your pardon!"
Mr. Higgins fetched the garden-hose,
and the dragon woke from dreaming.
He blinked and snorted in his nose
when he felt the water streaming.
"How cool!" he said. "So good for scales!
I did not expect a fountain!
I'll sit and sing here, till daylight fails,
and the full moon's mounting."
But Higgins runs, on the doors he knocks
of Miss Biggins and old Tupper.
"Come help me quick! Come, Mr. Box,
or he'll eat us all for supper!"
Miss Biggins sent for the Fire Brigade
with a long red ladder,
And a brave show their helmets made;
but the dragon's heart grew sadder;
"It reminds me of the wicked ways
of warriors unfeeling,
Hunting us in the bad old days
and our bright gold stealing."
[The Fire Brigade, led by the aptly named Captain George, challenges the dragon, jabs him with poles, and succeeds in getting him off Mr. Higgins's cherry-trees; unfortunately, he promptly smashes the town and sets about eating the townspeople.]
The Higgins was tough, and as for Box:
just like his name he tasted;
The dragon threw Tupper on the rocks,
and said, "This munching's wasted."
So he buried the hatchet and Captain George,
and he sang a dirge for Higgins
On a cliff above the long white shores--
and he did not miss Miss Biggins.
Sadly he sang till the moon went down,
with the surf below sighing
On the grey rocks, and in Bimbletown
the red blaze dying.
He saw the peaks far over the sea
round his own land ranging;
And he mused on Men, and how strange they be,
and the old order changing.
"None of them now have the wit to admire
a dragon's song or colour,
Nor the nerve with steel to meet his fire--
the world is getting duller!"
He spread his wide wings to depart;
but just as he was rising
Miss Biggins stabbed him to the heart,
and that he found surprising.
"I regret this very much," she said.
"You're a very splendid creature,
And your voice is quite remarkable
for one who has had no teacher;
But wanton damage I will not have,
I really had to end it."
The dragon sighed before he died:
"At least she called me splendid."
God, I love the Internet. Just when I think I've seen everything worth seeing, I discover that, as the fellow in Captains Courageous said, "I wuz mistook." And how.
For instance, when I said months ago that LOTR fans should take advantage of their copious canonical resources before crossing over into other fandoms (yes, that'd be the vampire hobbit post), I didn't even know that a page already existed documenting What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex (via cswirl). Huh. I never realized that elven sexual practices were so... Catholic. Really. Take a look if you don't believe me; the page is PG-13 at worst. Now the people who want to write about elven sexual practices of whatever sort have no excuse not to pay attention to canon. So, um, there.
Also, I am enjoying the online Nahuatl-French dictionary (via Coups de Langue) a little too much. Parallel Nahuatl-English resources available online aren't quite as good, IMO, but here's a list of English, French, and Spanish (duh!) links if you're curious.
And then there's The Literary Gothic (which I got from, uh, somewhere -- you see why I seldom do link posts?), self-described as "the premier webguide to Gothic and horror lit written before 1950." I'm not wild about the front page design -- too much Flash, and grey on black is not easy to read if you're in, y'know, daylight -- but the content is good. A much better interface is Cthuugle, which is, of course, an H.P. Lovecraft-centric search engine. (Everyone's already seen Tales of the Plush Cthulhu, right? Internet-based Lovecraft fandom seems to have a certain... panache. It took me, like, five minutes to be absolutely sure that this Miskatonic University site wasn't some kind of new-fangled for-profit educational institution.)
Speaking of search engines, by the way, I should direct you all to the Google Poetry Generator. Hey, Google does everything else these days.... While I'm thinking about forms of creative writing, I know this was recommended on Boing Boing awhile back, but I'm really enjoying myself when I check in on the latest short-shorts in the ongoing Periodic Table of Science Fiction. Nifty concept, consistently good execution.
And, finally, another Boing Boing entry and a Lego Link: the Lego Harpsichord. Yes, it works (although the sound quality leaves something to be desired). Yes, I want a harpsichord of my very own, but the wood kind, please. Yes, I find the idea of a Lego harpsichord at least as scary as the chthonic Old Ones.
We do not have a faculty meeting this week. This is exciting, because for the past seven weeks we've had meetings every week -- a spot of curricular reform, some mission-y stuff, a few searches to get underway, all things that needed doing. I, of course, got accustomed to the weekly meetings because I'd never known anything else. But this week we are meeting-free, and -- in further proof that all's well with the academic world -- I just got an invitation to review a book that I was planning to buy anyway. Anyway, I have free time and a general feeling of goodwill towards humanity (not to be confused with a sugar high), so I thought I'd, uh, write about fandom and critical theory. (I will write about Angel later this week; that's a whole different post.)
I've been thinking about fandom and critical theory in conjunction because there are a select few on my blogroll who alternate between one and the other. Somewhere midway through responding to a perfectly reasonable LJ post of Jenny-O's about getting fed up with Bourdieu -- I can certainly sympathize -- I realized that my reaction to critical theory is very much like my reaction to fandom. They both involve playing around with texts, finding new (and sometimes exceedingly unlikely) interpretations, learning new terms in which to express my thoughts to the community ("discourse" and "AU" have both been rendered meaningless from overuse), pushing the boundaries of understanding and of language, and... for lack of a more technical term, having fun. Both are all too easily rendered "dated," but I find that sort of built-in historicity entertaining. Both are commentary traditions, and I have a well-established fondness for various sorts of commentary, especially the scriptural (or do I mean Scriptural) variety.*** Also, I have a fairly high (but not infinite) tolerance for the pure forms of either -- that is, pure theory and pure metafandom. This in no way explains the many wonderful fan-types who loathe critical theory, but I prefer to think that they haven't read the right critical theory for them. I, myself, don't get much out of Smallville or Baudelaire. Your mileage may vary.
So what about applying critical theory to fandom? Well, I have no objection to it; in fact, it should be good in the sense that chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream or peanut-butter cups are good. Plus, it'd be a commentary on a commentary, which is a venerable tradition in virtually every corner of the humanities. (Going in the opposite direction, there are certainly activities related to the study of critical theory which closely resemble fandom, and Julia Kristeva's novel The Samurai would probably be my first pick for fanfic -- excuse me, roman à clef.) But the actual applications of critical theory to fandom which I've read seem, by and large, to be pretty formulaic. Insert the fandom material into the slot, crank up the chosen theory machine, exhibit the resulting fandom material stamped into a perfect theory-shaped block. That's not commentary; it's a theoretical PWP with fandom material providing the character names. Also, as Jen was pointing out, the upper echelons of fandom tend to invest a little more of their effort in writing clearly enough to be comprehensible to the occasional outsider, novice, or person who can't be bothered to wade through godawful sentence structure. Many contemporary theorists, unfortunately, are still suffering from the Judith-Butler-championed belief that incomprehensibility equals wisdom. (Note to any "experimental" fic writers: think hard about this one, okay? I'm not saying stop; I'm saying think about it.)
Unfortunately, my standards for such an endeavor are a bit higher than merely "not sucking." I finally got around to ordering and reading Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture recently. Although it's (inevitably) sort of dated, it doesn't suffer from incomprehensibility or an advanced case of theoretical PWP syndrome. What it does suffer from is not taking either fandom or theory quite seriously enough. Of course, I enjoyed reading about old fandoms -- there's a handy-dandy appendix at the back with plot summaries for loads of '70s shows I'd only vaguely heard of -- and I found Jenkins's analysis at least somewhat convincing for most of the works he was looking at.** Without going into too much detail, though, it seems to me that his overall description of media fans as textual poachers -- a concept borrowed wholesale from Michel de Certeau's essay on "Reading as Poaching"* -- describes only a small segment of what I've encountered in media fandom. To take one example, Jenkins leaves out what seems to me to be a key dimension of the fanfic experience, namely, the erotic. (This is especially noticeable in his chapter on slash.) From a theoretical perspective, this is also a lack; Jenkins critiques de Certeau's idea that modern reading practices constitute a "withdrawal of the body," but fails to either (a) read de Certeau carefully enough to note that, nevertheless, de Certeau is advocating "rediscovering the movements of this reading within the body itself" or (b) run with his initial criticism and, well, rediscover the movements of the reading within the body itself.
In case you wondered, I think fanfic is very much a tactic in the sense de Certeau uses that term, but "Reading as Poaching" is the wrong part of de Certeau's work through which to start looking at media fandom. Sticking with The Practice of Everyday Life, I'm putting in a vote for the chapter entitled "Popular Cultures: Ordinary Language." Allow me to offer a quick passage:
The actual order of things is precisely what "popular" tactics turn to their own ends, without any illusion that it will change any time soon. Though elsewhere it is exploited by a dominant power or simply denied by an ideological discourse, here order is tricked by an art. Into the institution to be served are thus insinuated styles of social exchange, technical invention, and moral resistance, that is, an economy of the "gift" (generosities for which one expects a return), an esthetics of "tricks" (artists' operations) and an ethics of tenacity (countless ways of refusing to accord the established order the status of a law, a meaning, or a fatality). "Popular" culture is precisely that: it is not a corpus considered as foreign, fragmented in order to be displayed, studied and "quoted" by a system which does to objects what it does to living beings. The progressive partitioning of times and places, the disjunctive logic of specialization through and for work, no longer has an adequate counterpart in the conjunctive rituals of mass communications (p. 26).
Any relationship this might have to my oft-repeated rant about not putting fandom into an intellectual ghetto is, uh, purely coincidental. But I think it nails any number of regular fandom debates very nicely. And it makes me think that perhaps I should give those experimental ficcers the temporary benefit of the doubt.
Judith Butler, however, still needs a writing coach.
* -- A chapter in The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, Berkeley, 1984, pp. 165-76. Please note that I've provided the citation in English, and it's not that long of an article, so even those with theory allergy should be able to get through it if they're curious.
** -- I don't have enough free time to go back and try to read some of Jenkins's source material -- you just know some of it's still floating around the Web -- or I'd probably be able to produce a less qualified judgment. Suffice it to say that I have my doubts that most ST:TOS fic can be adequately represented by one novel-length alternate-universe story in which most of the Enterprise crew joins forces with a merry band of anarchists.
*** -- The simple fact that we don't have a word in English that works on as many levels as écriture does in French has really set us back when it comes to poststructuralist puns. ;)
In all the years I've been watching Buffy and Angel -- that'd be three now; I caught up on Buffy via tapes and reruns -- I've never looked forward to Buffy more than to Angel. This year remains to be sorted out; the Angel season premiere won't air until tonight, and there are no wildfeed reports up yet, so I might actually have to watch that sucker and be surprised. But I'm really enjoying Buffy so far, mostly because it happens to be playing to my well-established weaknesses for prophecy subplots (yes, dreams count, although they're not as exciting as the source-critical problems over on Angel) and blatant religious symbolism. Thus, some spoilery commentary on "Beneath You":
As I said the other day, Buffy has switched from Foucault to Nietzsche. You know, church, madman, total lack of God, desperate search for meaning, lots of death imagery -- well, I for one thought Nietzsche. Spike's just the right era for it, too.* Of course, I spent most of that church sequence being greatly amused, because of all the episodes I thought Mutant Enemy would choose to evoke, I never expected "Shadow." You know, the one with the giant fake-looking snake demon gliding through the church and under the impotent crucifix en route to being garroted by the Slayer. Here, we had the fake-looking snake -- well, technically worm -- demon (much more convincing as an underground serpent than as an above-ground one), and we had the church, and we had the total absence of any higher power in the church. So what else is new?
Although there were forty-three churches in Sunnydale as of "What's My Line" -- the title of this entry is Giles's response to that statistic -- one doesn't see churches often on Buffy. Not counting Season One, when the Master was trapped underground in a church and doing full-on liturgical readings from the Book of Aurelius, the only church appearances I can think of offhand are in "What's My Line" -- poor Spike really doesn't handle churches well, does he? -- and "Who Are You?" In neither case did the church structure fare especially well. I find Christian interpretations of Buffy peculiar, because it's so obvious that the Slayer and her vampiric opponents are the only higher powers in those churches, and, uh, that ain't conspicuously Christian.
One misstep: even though I'll argue that churches on Buffy are all about desecration, the "service the girl" part of Spike's dialogue was just plain weird, unless there's some flashback sequence they're not showing us in which William earned his living as a male prostitute. "Service," as a verb, does have some odd connotations -- I wince every time I hear one of my utility companies ask "How may we service you?" over the phone -- but I don't recall its being used in Buffy and Spike's relationship last year. Otherwise, I have to join the ranks of those who think Spike's going to die a heroic death -- martyred for Buffy and for loooooove, probably jumping into the Hellmouth to seal it or something -- this season. He doesn't have anywhere else to go. The only sane narrative alternative, as far as I can tell, is for him to become all the way human and try to forge a completely new relationship with Buffy, but that wouldn't interest me half as much as what's going on now, so... yeah, I'm fine with this.**
In other news, I'm sort of excited about this season's overarching plot line so far. As good ol' Friedrich put it, "all our hopes stretch out longingly toward the perception that beneath this restlessly palpitating cultural life and convulsion there is concealed a glorious, intrinsically healthy, primordial power that, to be sure, stirs vigorously only at intervals in stupendous moments, and then continues to dream of a future awakening."*** Or, less bombastically: something's coming, and I'm hoping not in the "something's going to lurk around Sunnydale yet inexplicably fail to make a move until episode 20" sense. I still fail to understand the earth's being alive and the Hellmouth's having teeth (is it just me, or are they begging for bad vagina dentata jokes?). Also, I will be irritated if the show tries to argue that there's only ever been one Hellmouth; one active Hellmouth I might grant them, but there are Hellmouths all over Asia Minor during the Hellenistic period, and St. Patrick's Purgatory, and... you'd all rather I didn't keep going, right? Still, those introductory sequences are piquing my interest. We'll see if the show can keep up this feeling of menace without descending into unadulterated melodrama.
A few observations totally unrelated to religious symbolism: shouldn't Giles be a tiny bit concerned about the Hellmouth's opening? (A throwaway line about how he was going straight to London to consult with the Council would've done wonders for my peace of mind.) And I'm really puzzled as to what they want us to think of Anya. She was left at the altar by Xander, which was not at all her fault. She went back to being a vengeance demon again afterwards, which was only marginally her fault, given the extenuating circumstances. She chose not to zap Xander with wish-power last season, which was good (and remarkably forbearing, all things considered). She helped save the world at the end of last season, entirely on her own initiative. And now, after being warned to deal more vengeance or else, she turns a psycho ex-boyfriend into a giant worm demon? Well, it's not exactly on the short list of approved couples-therapy techniques, but I'm not sure I really felt sorry for him. Also, I appreciated that someone regretted the Yorkie's death, and Anya's hair is better, and who wouldn't appreciate her laying the smackdown on Spike? (This is not sound moral reasoning, but it supports my point that the show is sending us mixed signals.) So are we supposed to like her, vengeance and all, or are we supposed to listen to what Buffy and Xander are saying and conclude that she's an awful, awful being? Because, at the moment, they're not convincing me that Anya's really evil; they're convincing me that they -- and especially Xander -- are idiots.
Logically, if the show is trying to convince us that Anya's currently a dangerous demon, Buffy should be killing her, or at least grabbing her necklace and destroying it, not asking Xander to have a chat with her. On the other hand, if they're trying to convince us that she's currently a self-indulgent wallower, having the man who left her at the altar tell her to get over said event was probably not the best narrative choice. Buffy, Dawn, Giles, maybe even Willow could've told her that and we'd have all nodded sympathetically. Xander? I'm sorry, but even saving the world does not give him a free pass on having left Anya at the altar, especially after having insulted and/or failed to defend her for the best part of two seasons. Let him go have a nice self-congratulatory relationship with dog-hating Nancy. If Anya gets back together with him, I will be thoroughly disgusted.
So... who thinks Spike and Xander are, respectively, embodiments of active and passive nihilism? No? Okay, who thinks there will be dozens of new fanfics about their star-crossed lust thanks to that one Significant Look at the Bronze? Contrary to appearances, I do occasionally work with what I'm given. ;)
* -- Unfortunately, Angel has already established that vampires don't suffer from syphilis, or I'd be totally up for an explanation of Spike's insanity in those terms, just to puncture all the "Victorian gentleman" fanon about William (who, for those of my readers not involved in Buffy, was Spike's name before he became a vampire). And speaking of William, thank goodness Spike's hair is bleached and gelled again. That three-scene span where I found him attractive was downright unsettling.
** -- In either case, Spike's fate will reflect poorly on Angel. And speaking of prophecy subplots....
*** -- In fairness to my readers, I must warn you that I am taking this passage from The Birth of Tragedy wildly out of context, since the following sentence has very limited application to the Buffyverse: "It is from this abyss that the German Reformation came forth; and in its chorales the future tune of German music resounded for the first time."
