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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:17:35 GMT -5
Diane, I'd enjoy hearing your take on cute ethnic leprechauns (sp?). Rant away, if you wish!
Nan
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:18:13 GMT -5
How about "His Girl Friday" or "Bringing Up Baby"? Are the female protagonists in control of the situation, or are they reinforcing traditional gender roles. Is there a difference in playing weak and mild to seduce a man, and actually being weak and mild to seduce him. Can the former be viewed as a capablity of an empowered women to do what she wants and be the agressor in inter-gender relationships, or is playing into the stereotype neccesarily reinforcing it.
Whichever you say, I am sure a debate over gender roles in those two films (and which reading is more supported by the text) could easily segue into a discussion concerning BtVS and whether it's as female empowering as we all would like to believe. Keener minds than mine, please weigh in.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:18:42 GMT -5
Thanks for the paragraphs Robert. You have such good things to say and they really help in not missing anything.Read your 7th Chapter. Can't wait to see what's going to happen.
Joshua, just read your 2nd Chap. Write more! Write more!
I just finished a huge project for work that was taking all my valuable time away from writing something I enjoy. More on Gorath soon.
PS Hope I'm the 4,000 poster to Misc.!
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:19:19 GMT -5
Yes!!! Ahem. (Recomposes herself.) Do I get a cookie?
Rusty Goode
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:20:05 GMT -5
Louis Jordan did a really cool Dracula. (Made for TV, I think). Perhaps if we imagine that he and Maurice were vampires in Gigi.......?
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:21:38 GMT -5
I can see Diane's take on the film "Gigi" but I don't see the story that way at all. The demimonde was a thriving business in an era when women could not make a really good living for themselves in any other way, except possibly marriage.
Those women who were successful entrepreneurs of their bodies were not really different than the marriage mart misses who were given (sold) to the richest or most aristocratic male to offer for them. They just didn't get a wedding ring, but in trade they had control over their own money. In those days women, even heiresses, who married, lost the right to their own money - it went into the hands of their husbands.
I don't think anyone would like the idea of Gigi being forced into the role of courtesan/mistress for Gaston (Jourdan). But her relatives did NOT force her. They acquiesced in her decision to turn Gaston down. She, herself, changed her mind because she loved him.
Her family consisted of courtesans who knew nothing much else and who were already 'branded' as that strata of society. Gaston was a member of his strata and influenced by his uncle and all those around him into behavior as a dilettante.
But I didn't think any of the demimonde seen in the movie looked like they were barely in their teens. The movie said more than once that Gigi was backwards. I think they were trying to say she was younger in spirit than her real age.
I,as usual, see things very simply. Gigi was the one real thing in his boring, artificial life. He fell in love, she fell in love, he tried to make her into what he was used to, he saw immediately that was not right, and he went against his 'world' and married her.
Marriage in those days was usually an older (26+) man and an eighteen year old. The girls were presented at seventeen or eighteen, had a 'season' and were expected to pull in at least one offer of marriage. Gigi's future was just as Gaston said, marriage to a plumber and a poor life because she had no money to attract anyone who could support her well.
And for the record, Louis Jourdan was 36 when he made that film; I don't believe the character was supposed to be viewed as 40 something, but more in his early thirties, a common combination for those times.
A lot of what went on in past times wouldn't sit well with our era. I guess I just accepted the past with all its warts, and enjoyed the Cinderella story for itself.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:22:30 GMT -5
Joshua said,"...could easily segue into a discussion concerning BtVS and whether it's as female empowering as we all would like to believe."
From my (kinda black and white) viewpoint, I equate female empowerment in BtVS with Buffy's physical ability to emerge victorious from fights with villainous males, be they vamps, demons, or humans. If she were not presented as having the supernatural strength she has, her "female empowerment" quotient would be miniscule. Ditto for Willow and her power as a witch. Both women have abilities that allow them to make things the way they want them. I admit, they sometimes use their power inappropriately, but that is part of any empowerment, which to me is only 'giving power to be equal'. Equally bad or equally good.
I also like how Buffy is smart in using things around her to help her win in situations where she doesn't require or can't use her power, like in her Watchers' Council test where she is pitted against a superstrong insane vampire (Helpless).
In a lot of episodes she looks around her to find something to give her an advantage in a fight. Her intelligence is very appealing, but in the media more and more, women are allowed to mentally outsmart villains, rather than cowering in a corner helplessly. So I like the physical equality (actually physical big advantage) that Buffy has.
David and Goliath is always a favorite story. But I think back in ancient times, if David had been female, the collective reaction by the locals would have been eewwww! Okay, you saved us, but eewww!
Buffy is our modern-day David, a hero, and she is accepted now. Would Buffy have been a hit even in the fifties? Pretty hard to fight in petticoats and an apron.
Alexandra K.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:23:42 GMT -5
Thanks for the enthusiasm, and congrats on being post 4000 on the Misc. Board. You would think ScoopMe! would have cookies available for just such an occasion.
I imagine a Sunday afternoon with nothing planned on it is fertile ground for more fiction writing. Or maybe I'll write something up for that poetry contest: from what S3 people have been saying about it, GOTR sounds just angsty enough for my tastes. Unless, of course, saying it's hard to listen to Marsters sing about break ups is a nice way to say it's hard to listen to him sing at all.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:25:00 GMT -5
had a thought apropos the folowing
"Like Mammy in Gone with the Wind or Fagin in Oliver Twist--a genuinely horrible man who keeps, and teaches, a stable of young street thieves--Gigi is almost impossible not to like, in the story's own terms. I think we have to at least acknowledge the "different times, different moral standards" implicit in the film even if we can't utterly ignore how repulsive it is to present perspectives"
It is also possible to like certain moives by reading them subtextually-
Back when Gone With the Wind Came out- segregation prevented my mother from seeing the film first run- she saw it later-
(She was 16 and her companion was a 5 year old whem she swept up in her arms after reading the poster which read "children in arms-free"
She did not think the 5 year old was following the story until the pint nin the film came when Scarlett informed by Prissy that she does not "know nuthin bout birthin babies" overwhelmed raises her hand and slaps the girl.
The 5 year old wh up til now had seemed somnaulent climbed up on her seat and yelled at the screen "don't you slap her".
People chose their own heros regardless of what is "presented" on the screen.
Gigi-both in the story and the film is presented as a victim of circumstance who breaks the mold and convention.
She dares to hold a man and romance to higher standards than the "Gallic" sophisticated view of love as barter and marriage as finacial stability and glue for Empire.
Therefore the movie supports both a conventional reading as a rather off center romance and a horrifying depiction of woman as chattel no matter the circumstance.
We sometimes hug our chains and sometimes shrug them off. The narrative can make either compelling.
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:26:29 GMT -5
I believe Wonder Woman, and many other female super heroines emerged in the fifties or shortly there after, on the printed page. Even with four different huge blockbuster movies coming out this year based on comics, however, I doubt they would qualify as the mainstream. Which makes me wonder how mainstream BtVS is. If I mention it to any non-Buffy fan (ie. everyone I know in real life) there typical reaction is "Huh? Oh, that show. Is that still on?" or "Yeah, man, SMG is hot."
So assuming they have even watched the show before, what they mostly get away from it is that SMG is hot. And that's a good starting point for this: there is arguably nothing prominent in the show that challenges traditional gender roles. A viewer can tune in and not have one preconcieved close minded notion of women challenged. Even the title heroine is what would be expected of a female: beautiful. It's as if beauty and heroism were some how interlinked. You could say that casting an model-type female lead is a neccesary evil of the Hollywood system, and you'd be right, but Buffy certainly isn't trying to break that idea. Gender roles are about more than just the actual gender. Some would argue that if the only way in which a heroine is accepted is by taking on traditional male characteristics, and abondoning female ones, then it's really not saying anything new about gender. Buffy's strenght comes not from her feminimity but from her willingness to "be" a man. The idea, and this is where I was starting to have issue with some of the themes of this season, seems to be that traditional brute strentgh, traditionally male power, is truly the most valuable thing there is. Time and time again Buffy shuts herself down emotionally, starts dominating her friends, grabs a sword (or stake) and trys to save the world herself, as the typical lone male hero. Even when a conflict is shown between Buffy Summers (feminine) and the Slayer (masculine) the show still aligns the juxtaposed ideas with being just a normal girl, Buffy, female on one side and Slayerdom, masculine assertion, and being a Hero on the other.
Buffy sleeps with a man, and tragedy occurs. Willow is a lesbian, so of course she is going to go crazy try to kill everyone. Hello, lesbian. Faith is the character most open with her sexuality, and she is also totally evil. A basket case. And somehow, Willow is justified calling her a "cleavagy slut-bomb," although when she said that, Faith has only been seen to sleep with one guy, one time, and that was Xander. It would not be remotely hard to support the arguement that BtVS stands firmly against any sort of open sexuality and encourages monogamous heterosexual relationships inside of marriage, anything else leads only to pain and suffering.
*The views expressed herein, besides being poorly articulated, are not neccesarily those of the author (although semester after semester of Film Semiotics and Structuralism have eroded my ability to know what thoughts are actually my own). I merely play devil's advocate. I would say, however, that BtVS is much better at breaking down gender stereotypes using Spike than it has with any other character.*
Joshua Adams
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:27:31 GMT -5
MMMM, Joshua . . . I don't think the message in BtVS is "you have to be in a heterosexual marriage to be happy" or any such thing.
It's not the fact that Willow's relationship is homosexual, or that Buffy & Spike (or Anya & Xander) weren't married, that caused the problems.
I disagree with the idea the BtVS is preaching at us, or taking a moral stand on premarital or homosexual sex as "wrong."
When it comes to sex, here's what I think the general message is: Sex is an intense affair, not to be taken lightly. Trying to trivialize sex (ala Faith) won't turn out well for you. Sex is a very intimate act that results in strong attachments - yes, it's a good time, but it's more than that as well. It has consequences - good and bad.
Sex affects the two people involved. If one or both parties is in some way seriously emotionally fragile, the relationship won't be easy. The more mature and confident and strong you and your partner are, the better you know how to love each other, the better it will work.
The characters on BtVS seem to be working toward becoming people who can handle the emotional rigors of a sexual relationship without falling apart (ala Willow), or shutting down their hearts (ala Buffy), or defining themselves entirely through their loved one (ala Spike & Anya), or holding back from fear of hurting or being hurt (ala Xander).
GOOD NEWS: I have my UPN back! Kinda. It came back last night, then went out for awhile again today, then came back on. Here's hoping it stabilizes by Tues night!!
Spring Summers
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:28:01 GMT -5
Ellie, I agree with your assessment. I would add that the further a given story is removed from the present in time and/or social milieu, the more one has to try to ascertain and absorb its base intrinsic attitudes, then try to judge its values in its own terms before judging it by contemporary attitudes, whatever they be. That's why we get spirited discussions on whether Shakespeare's rendering of Shylock is anti-Semitic and whether Satan is, in fact if not in intent, the "hero" of Milton's Paradise Lost. It's also why both these works and inumerable others come packed with footnotes to explain the significance of what a contemporary reader is otherwise likely to miss or misinterpret.
You said: "We sometimes hug our chains and sometimes shrug them off. The narrative can make either compelling."
What a splendid, concise line!
Nan
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:28:46 GMT -5
I think Joshua's essay should be posted in a new (?) section of the web page, along with any other developed discussions of the topic centered on BtVS (rather than Gigi, naturally).
Nan Dibble
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:29:39 GMT -5
Also add Spring's comments to web page, yes?
Nan Dibble
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Post by Dalton on Jul 3, 2003 12:30:20 GMT -5
Nan-
Thank you- I take your appreciation very seriously-
Also-
that is a grand idea about adding Joshua's (what a lovely name) essay to the site-
I think it is a wonderful taking off point for so many of the ideas embedded in Buffy. I am still arguing (and agreeing with the points made in the essay) and will definitely weigh in with a response at some point.
Hear Hear... for Joshua's essay!
ellie jason
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