“Buffy vs. Edward” with commentary track

Well, the next best thing: Jonathan McIntosh, the clever person who created the video mashup which imagines Edward Cullen of Twilight in Buffy’s Sunnydale explains it all. If you follow the link, vid is included, in case you missed it the first time.

Five months in the making, Buffy vs Edward is essentially an answer to the question “What Would Buffy Do?” My re-imagined story was specifically constructed as a response to Edward, and what his behavior represents in our larger social context for both men and women. More than just a showdown between The Slayer and the Sparkly Vampire, it’s also a humorous visualization of the metaphorical battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century.

I know many people who love the Twilight books and movie. They should note McIntosh’s closing comment:

[Some responses to the video] express concern that my mash-up is a condemnation of the fans of Twilight or of the actor Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward. I would like to say that the video is not intended as a stab at the fans. Rather, it’s an argument against the specific way in which romance and gender roles are constructed in the Twilight series.

Worth reading, worth thinking about—for fans of the Twilight-verse and/or the Buffyverse.

William Blake: I don’t understand him either

…but I still like his poetry. I’m pleased to be teaching the “Romantics to 20th c.” survey this summer, and am starting, conventionally, with Blake. I even like his pompous prophetic stuff—some of it, anyway—the parts that I can make some kind of sense of. I’m bold enough to say that I don’t think Blake understood Milton nearly as well as he thought he did (famous quote: “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” [The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]), and also that most people—including me—don’t understand Blake nearly as well as they think they do. Most of us have grasped the inspired bits that shine clearly, or pieces that seem clear, but perhaps have been taken out of context. And with Blake, there’s always more context.

When I teach this survey, we do tackle the Songs of Innocence and Experience and pick through The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (because “Without Contraries is no progression…”), but don’t even try to talk about his elaborate mystic symbolic systems, and so on. To a great extent, I see Blake’s writings as an experience in poetic sensation. That’s probably wrong, too.

Nevertheless, for example, consider how the poem which is now known as “Jerusalem” has become totally embedded in English cultural consciousness, apparently on the force of the imagery in the first and last two verses, and having been set to a stirring Elgar tune, even though it asks rhetorical questions to which the factual answer is (repeatedly) “No,” and otherwise is fairly empty of orthodox theological content. Nevertheless, it gets you every time (I like the way this particular vid connects the lyric with a variety of English people and settings without making it overly “romantic” or pastoral):

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among those dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor Shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.

Poetry.

Language and thinking

Research seems to be demonstrating that “people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world.”

Intriguing article! I’ve often said, as this writer does, that language is an essential element of our humanity, and I tell students yearly that  gaining mastery over one’s own language (and at least one other) is vital for thinking and living effectively in the larger human community. Boroditsky’s research and other experiments are showing, for example:

How do we know that it is language itself that creates these differences in thought and not some other aspect of their respective cultures?

One way to answer this question is to teach people new ways of talking and see if that changes the way they think. In our lab, we’ve taught English speakers different ways of talking about time. In one such study, English speakers were taught to use size metaphors (as in Greek) to describe duration (e.g., a movie is larger than a sneeze), or vertical metaphors (as in Mandarin) to describe event order. Once the English speakers had learned to talk about time in these new ways, their cognitive performance began to resemble that of Greek or Mandarin speakers. This suggests that patterns in a language can indeed play a causal role in constructing how we think.6 In practical terms, it means that when you’re learning a new language, you’re not simply learning a new way of talking, you are also inadvertently learning a new way of thinking.

… Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.
(6 Ibid., “How Deep Are Effects of Language on Thought? Time Estimation in Speakers of English and Greek” (in review); L. Boroditsky, “Does Language Shape Thought? English and Mandarin Speakers’ Conceptions of Time.” Cognitive Psychology 43, no. 1(2001): 1–22.)

And these ideas about the pervasive effects of language and perspective also apply to reading poetry and any literature. If one can possibly encounter a literary text in its original language, that is best. An English translation of a Japanese haiku is not actually equivalent. Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf is not really Beowulf, though it’s a rattling good read. Buffy in French isn’t quite Buffy.

Academic Buffyness now and future

David Lavery posted the program of the first (as far as I know) French conference on Buffy Tueuse de Vampires, set for this Friday. BtVS DVDs include dubbed French & Spanish soundtracks, so can be useful for language study. I note one paper title refers to “Mort et tuerie…”—would that be translated back as “Death and slayage”? One of the most difficult things about dubbing/translating Buffy must be getting Joss Whedon’s unique linguistic style. Perhaps they generally don’t even try?

And a belated announcement that dates have been announced for next year’s Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses: June 3-6, 2010. Location still TBD. I hope some of the French Buffyologists will be there (at least two are from Johns Hopkins, so why not?) Plenty of time to work up papers on the “Season 8″ and “Angel: After the Fall” continuation comic series, as well as Dollhouse and things still to be said about Buffy, Angel, and Firefly/Serenity.

BtVS vs. Twilight

Buffy wins:

We have the t-shirt to prove it!

My favorite sister

…OK, yes, my only sister, but I could not have asked for a better one. And look at this, her guest editorial celebrating the town that has become home (again) following her family’s relocation after Hurricane Katrina:

Scary? You bet! A high school senior son, a freshman daughter, their dad serving in Iraq, and each one of us trying to figure it all out and make a plan. Now, looking back, I’d like to share how it has turned out…

One thing she doesn’t mention (only because of limited space, I’m sure) is that it has also been a gift to me to have her and her family within easy driving distance. New Orleans is a great place to visit (still), but travel is expensive and/or time-consuming and I only managed the journey twice while they lived there—totally worth it, of course! Now we can meet for holidays, or milestone events like my niece’s high school graduation, or something trivial but fun like dinner and a movie.

My sister writes about the many members of the community who helped her family over the past four years. I have to point out that she has never stopped helping others herself—volunteering with MCEC an organization that supports “quality educational opportunities for all military children affected by mobility, family separation, and transition,” with the USNA parents’ group, and her church. She’s also been a great encouragment to me when I’ve gone through trying times. Best sister ever.

Books you can actually read

…if you haven’t already: 12 favorite 20th century fantasy novels/series from Allan Yeh, along with some musings on the origins of fantasy literature. Some of these books are also on my list, such as the Narnia Chronicles, The Lord of the Rings, and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series—at least the first two books. I had to wait so long for the next two that I literally “lost the plot” and haven’t had time to re-read, but I’m sure they’ll all be worthwhile when I do!

Yeh includes Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series as his “favorite,” and that’s his prerogative, of course. In my opinion, any series that “bogs down” for five—five—books (vols. 7-11) is out of control. Many friends recommended WoT to me, but I got bored after book two. Nevertheless, these books have their appeal, obviously, or there would not be so many.

As a medievalist, I’m required to note that in his comments on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Yeh says:

Tolkien wanted to write the first British mythology. Some may object that King Arthur should rightfully fill that spot, but actually the Camelot legend began with Sir Thomas Malory, a Frenchman, who wrote Le Morte d’Arthur.

A couple of errors here: The Camelot legend did not begin with Malory (late 15th c.), but long before him in Britain (before the Anglo-Saxons), Wales (5th-10th c.), and France (12th c.). Also, though we don’t know much about Sir Thomas Malory, most scholars are pretty sure he was English, born in Warwickshire (Le Morte Darthur, Norton Critical ed., Stephen H.A. Shepherd). Like many an upper-class person of his day, he seems to have been able to read/speak French well enough to use several French versions of Arthurian legends as sources for his compilation.

If you can, read Malory before reading T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. If not, White will probably influence the your reading of Malory, which may not be a bad thing.

Summer non-reading

A few days ago I posted a link to a “summer reading” list of the longest books in English. For those who would prefer not to read at all, The Believer’s brief “reviews” of “imaginary beach reads for summer,” including enticing non-nonfiction such as:

Rhode Island in the ’70s
by Jason Okes
Some historians paint in swaths on a huge canvas; others work in miniature. Count Okes—an assistant professor at SUNY Stonington—lies among the latter. In this probing work, he argues that a distinct culture, based around the Newport Creamery, an “I-95 aesthetic,” and a transformed Providence, contributed to the emergence of a new, unrestrained Rhode Island that made itself felt musically, socially, politically, and sexually.

And intriguing non-existent novels such as:

Maple Street
by Karen Deerwit
Deerwit has won a small, fanatical following by virtue of sentences like this one, which opens her book: “For my father, fishing was joyless, as all activities are for a master who has attained his highest level of accomplishment and still found himself unsatisfied.” If that doesn’t hook you, keep moving; if it does, you’ll join the cadre clamoring for more recognition of this undiscovered chronicler of the strange and minute.

And if you don’t want to not-read those, write your own! Or do I mean, don’t write your own?

Do we really need this?

Last year, if I recall correctly, the SciFi channel treated the world to a twisted update/revision/parody of The Wizard of Oz called Tin Man, with Zooey Deschanel as “D.G.” (Dorothy Gale–get it?):

It had its moments, but surely a great part of its success (including the advertising angle in the trailer above) depended on audience awareness of the “original” version—that is, the 1939 Judy Garland movie. Not nearly as many people have read the book(s).

Now it seems SciFi is giving the same “re-imagining” treatment to Alice in Wonderland, according to Maureen Ryan, with Kathy Bates as the Queen of Hearts

Tim Curry will play Dodo, Colm Meaney (“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”) will play the King of Hearts and Alessandro Juliani (Felix Gaeta on “Battlestar Galactica”) will be the 9 of Clubs….

Among the other actors in the cast are Philip Winchester (“Crusoe”) as Jack of Hearts, Matt Frewer (“Watchmen”) as the White Knight and Andrew Lee Potts (“Primeval”) as “Hatter.”

Some nice casting, but here’s the thing: have enough science-fiction/fantasy fans (people who usually watch this kind of TV) read Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass to appreciate what’s being done here? Assuming it’s done with even as much imagination and wit as Tin Man? Every year I poll students in first-year comp classes and/or British Lit. surveys–how many have read Alice? Usually the maximum number is three or four. A few others will say they have seen the animated movie. Alice is already a classic of fantastic imagination…how much wackier can you make it? Or will they try to sort of “un-wack” it by making everyone metaphorical? Arg.

Will the new version include “Jabberwocky“? I hope so!

Summer reading

Now that school is out–or about to be out–you finally have time to read at least one of the ten longest novels in English—don’t you?

Frankly, I was happy enough to read a summaries of most of them, but I have definitely read some long novels, and some long novel series in my day (particularly the works of Dorothy Dunnett), so it’s really a matter of what catches and holds your attention. As long as you’re reading.