Thor: Grade "C", but the Destroyer is "A+"

Last weekend, while Mock’ was having a girls’ night, I called up my friend All-But-Dissertation (ABD), and we headed out to the movies to see Thor. Now, I’ve been a Thor fan for many years, particularly of the Walter Simonson years, and may actually have squealed a little back in 2007 when Marvel asked J. Michael Straczynski to head up their Thor reboot. Over the next two years, Straczynski would put the God back in the God of Thunder in a big way and thus make my Geek Guy fan-love for him eternal. (I’m kidding. He had me at “I was there, at the dawn of the Third Age of mankind…”) Furthermore, my interest in the Thor comics grew out of an even earlier interest in Norse mythology, so I walked into the theater last Saturday already primed to dislike the film, as both mythology and the comic’s narrative history would undoubtedly be “Hollywoodized.”

Nor was I wrong. In the end I gave the film a “C.” ABD, on the other hand, who is not familiar with either the comic or Norse mythology, gave it a “B” to “B-.” Judging from the box office numbers, his reaction is closer to the norm, and my letter-grade difference can no doubt be mostly chalked up to everything I brought into the theater with me. Mostly. I was both delighted and a bit appalled to see Straczynski get writing credit on the film. Delighted because it’s always great to see such a good writer getting some big-bucks, big-film exposure, and appalled, because this Thor was so NOT Straczynski’s Thor. Turns out Straczynski was involved in the writing in a very early stage, breaking and outlining the story, and only sought screen credit at the behest of the other writers on the film. This reassures me somewhat, and it was nice to see him get a bit of a cameo in the film too!

However, I have some real problems with Thor. First and foremost, there seemed to be an almost desperate haste to reassure the audience that the Asgardians were most definitely not gods, and never thought of themselves that way, but instead were just some type of humanoid, Viking-esque, technomagically advanced alien race, who had only associated with humanity in order to fight off the evil frost giants who, for reasons left unexplained (lebensraum?) were intent on turning the Earth into Hoth. So don’t worry, Jesus, they’re not Gods, just aliens, and everyone knows those don’t exist. (Please come to see the film! It’s inoffensive! We promise! Please?)

Okay, so Hollywood is running scared of declining box-office numbers and thus becomes a complete wuss when it comes to summer “blockbusters” in order to maximize audience numbers by trying to offend no one. I get that. It’s idiocy, but I get it. What I don’t get is why Natalie Portman has apparently decided to stop playing strong female characters altogether. Portman plays Jane Foster, who in this version has gone from nurse to brilliant theoretical astrophysicist, and who comes completely unglued with one look into Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) blue eyes and proceeds to fulfill every trope and clichéd stereotype of the Hero’s Love Interest and Hapless Female up to and including being a woman who can’t drive well! Seriously, Foster as Woman Driver is a recurring gag throughout the film. Portman’s character is about as two dimensional as you can get, and was obviously written to be that way, with the glaring exception of a pair of false eyelashes that seem to leap off of the screen, even in the 2D version we were watching. Of course, the magically scientific Asgardians are no better. At the end of the film, when Thor has destroyed Bifrost, the magic wormhole generator that connects Asgard with Earth, the Asgardians, Odin included, have apparently thrown away the blueprints and forgotten how they built the damn thing in the first place, so they are left waiting for Foster to figure out how to recreate their connection with Earth, which she is striving to do out of her boundless love of Thor. Apparently, with tall, blonde, and blue-eyed off the planet, Foster is able to revert from dewy-eyed ingénue to dedicated genius physicist. But only to get her sweetie back, and then, I’m sure, he can take charge again.

The Marvel movies have not done well by their women characters thus far, and the trend is continuing. Which is odd since Straczynski did a phenomenal job in making both Spiderman’s Mary Jane (and a kick ass Aunt May) and Thor’s Jane Foster into strong, independent, three-dimensional characters during his run on the comics. I guess comic book readers are better able to handle strong women than move-goers in America.

In spite of all of this, Thor has some good stuff. Asgard is beautifully rendered as the ultimate science-fantasy city, the power of Thor is well done, and the story of a vain, powerful, o’erweeningly prideful prince learning humility and responsibility (Henry IV Parts One and Two and Henry V anyone? Now you know why Branagh.) is well done, if somewhat predictable, and the Destroyer is absolutely perfect. In fact, the Destroyer is the best part of the film, and was the one point that got my heart beating in sheer joy at seeing a piece of my childhood really come to life on the big screen. I mean that thing was AWSOME!!! Even the sound effects of its blasts were exactly right, a sense-blotting KRAK! that obliterated every other sound in the scene. This was by far the best job of bringing a Marvel bad-guy to the screen that I've yet seen.

Perhaps because the Destroyer device/creature steps onto the screen straight off the comic-page without adulteration, updating, or re-imagining. Hummm...

There’s a lesson in that Hollywood. Pay attention.

Old Seed, New Breed

I am a feminist. This means that I recognize the fact that women are 100% complete, real-live human beings in and of themselves, and need no type of male validation, permission, etc to enable them to achieve this status. Furthermore, this means that any and all social, cultural, religious, political, economic, and military structures which fail to recognize this simple fact, and continue to treat women as inferior based solely upon their gender, are deeply flawed and must be reexamined and reformed for the betterment of human society as a whole.

Recently, I’ve been following the debate surrounding a form of feminist activism called a SlutWalk. My purpose here isn’t to join in this debate directly (the best overview of which can be found here), but to address the core issue involved, which is violence against women, and particularly sexual violence against women. Currently it is estimated that 1 in 4 women in the U.S. will be sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, and that 80% of those assaults will be committed by someone the women knows. I browsed about the interwebs checking this statistic, and found it to be accepted by multiple sources. (For a quick, well documented breakdown of this and other stats, check out this PDF from the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence). This, Readers Mine, is unacceptable. Note that these statistics apply to the United States alone, not the world, and not an undeveloped, violence-wracked nation teetering on anarchy, and the numbers become an abomination.

The people committing these crimes are overwhelmingly men, so it follows that the problem must be addressed in the way men are raised and educated in our culture. Radical feminists often argue for the total abolition of patriarchal social structures, but I believe that a few very specific elements of that socialization are worth retaining. For the case in point, the traditional injunction to males from earliest childhood on that a man must never hit a woman and that such an act is unconscionable by any decent male. (I will insert a caveat here that any woman who is intent on causing grievous bodily harm to another person leaves herself open to preventative and defensive violence as defined under the social and legal codes of self-defense and defense of others, as does any other human being.) This injunction against violence towards women is deeply rooted in the patriarchal system, and in ideas of women as the lesser, weaker sex. However, it seems to me that it can be divorced from these roots and retained as a valuable tool of socialization.

This code of non-violence towards women was a part of my upbringing and was given to me largely by my father, the core being that good men, decent men, don’t hit women, and furthermore, they do not sit idly by while bad, indecent men do so. Indeed, a good man is almost always obligated to intervene in such cases. I’m not saying that women can’t take care of themselves in a physical conflict. I know better. What I am saying is that it is up to men to create a culture in which violence against women is taboo, and punished by severe sanctions, particularly cultural, extra-legal sanctions administered by the larger male culture itself. The instillation of non-violence towards women can begin at an extremely early age, and I believe, lays the groundwork for a later enlargement of the principle as the adolescent male develops sexually which defines unwanted sexual acts against women as violent and therefore taboo as well.

Note that there are two vital elements in this process: instilling the belief that physical violence directed against women is wrong, and that unwanted sexual acts of any type towards women are a form of physical violence, and therefore just as wrong.

Will teaching male children not to hit girls/women eliminate sexual violence against women? Sadly, no. In addition, there are other, non-physical forms of violence used by men against women, which can be equally as devastating as physical/sexual violence, and which are beyond the reach of this particular process of socialization. Nonetheless, will it help? Hell yes. Our social and cultural ethics are created early on. We must begin to teach male children that violence against women in all forms is just plain wrong, wholly unacceptable, and is only practiced by degenerates who may be male but will never be men. Further, we must teach them that it is the duty of all good men to stop and punish the perpetrators of violence against women and so begin to create a new masculine culture in which such violence is properly viewed as the abomination that it is.

“Remember Johnny, you must never hit a girl. Ever. Good boys never hit girls.” Small seeds, big frellin' trees.

PCAS/San Antonio Wrap Up

Okay, Readers Mine, with exams knocked out it’s time to finish up my San Antonio Tales. Saturday, our final full day, was not so much about the conference as it was about getting out and playing tourist in San Antonio. To which end we linked up with a couple of friends who’d driven out from Huston and set out to do the town, starting in the logical place:

The Alamo. Which is right downtown among a lovely series of public spaces and parks, where San Antonio was hosting a celebration of Turkish food and culture all day, complete with kebabs, dancers, music, and fezzes. Unfortunately we just didn’t have time to dive into that, but it was an interesting admixture to the day. For months before the trip every time I would say that we were going to San Antonio, I’d be asked if we were going to see the Alamo, and when I replied in the affirmative I’d get some variation on “Well, don’t be disappointed. It’s really small.” Actually, it’s not. First there’s this huge neo-socialist realistic monument in the middle of the street across from the mission that is anything but small. The surviving building, the mission church itself, is no Notre Dame de Paris, but it’s not exactly an outhouse either. Near this are the surviving Long Barracks were the Texians and their fellows made their last, hand to hand, stand, and between is a beautiful, cool, and shady park dominated by an ancient live oak that spreads its twisting limbs over something like half a city block. Now, maybe people are referring to the fact that the structures which have survived since 1836 comprise only a small portion of the original structures within the Alamo’s walls, but I have to say that overall the Alamo is one of the most beautiful, well maintained, pleasantly informative historic sites I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. Plus, you get a deep cut from Phil Collins, who turns out to be the world’s #1 collector of Alamo relics and a long time supporter of the historic site (pictured above in his Geneva home with some of his Alamo memorabilia). He even narrates the voice-over for the diorama re-enactment in the History Store which sits atop the active archaeological dig, and provides visitors with a look at the actual dig and the artifacts found there. One note I will make is that, when you go buy the audio guide for the mission church and gardens, but don’t bother with it once you get into the Long Barracks, the historians and Daughters of the Republic of Texas who have overseen the site since the early 1900s, have provided comprehensive historical displays and readings that far outstrip the audio-tour’s narration (NOT done by Phil Collins), and you get to the point where you can read faster than the guy on the audio tour talks. All in all it was a really fun day for a total of $11/person.

The Original Mexican Restaurant was next on the agenda, since walking about the Alamo for several hours can bring on an appetite. The Original Mexican Restaurant solved this dilemma with some fantastic Tex-Mex cuisine. I recommend the Chiles Rellenos, and if you don’t try the fresh guacamole, particularly on a hot San Antonio day, you have made a grave error, and missed something special. The restaurant is right on the river-walk, and for those looking for a bit of a break from the heat is nicely air-conditioned inside.

The Mercado. After being revived with great food, we hopped one of San Antonio’s trolleys and headed out to the Market Square, or Mercado, a several block square collection of shops and restaurants, where is stocked a truly astounding quantity of Mexican imports, up to and including Mexican Wrestling masks! Much fun was had tracking down souvenir gifts to take back to family, friends, and dog sitters, while Mock’ managed to find one or two things for us as well.

Clash of the Titans (1981). Finally, after returning to the hotel for a nap we rejoined our friends and set out for the PCAS/ACA Science Fiction Area’s annual Saturday night movie and raffle, where Mock and I sat in the back and snarked through the film a la MST3K, much to the delight of our seat-mates, fortunately. Still, how can you resist poking fun of a film that includes Laurence Oliver as Zeus, Burgess Meredith as the plucky theater owner, and Harry frakkin’ Hamlin as the hero Perseus? Release the Kraken!!!

Afterwards we bid our friends goodbye all prepared to return to their various homes and schools across the country and in Canada, and, truth to tell, I think everyone was ready. The conference was a huge success, and massive fun, but it takes a little out of you, for sure. Still, I’d go again in a heartbeat, and I can unreservedly recommend San Antonio to anyone as an absolutely lovely, fun city to play around in.

Reading Day

Today, Reader’s Mine, is Reading Day, the day before exam week begins where there are no classes and students have the opportunity to catch up on sleep and study for the upcoming final sprint. I celebrated Reading Day by sleeping very late, lingering over a couple of cups of good dark-roast coffee, and getting my head straight for the tasks ahead. There are two relatively minor essays to be written today and then I’ll be hitting the notes from Russian History until 1900, and beginning my review for my Latin exam Monday. It’s been a good semester; though with unexpected surgery to replace my ICD and the PCA/ACA conference, I’ve managed in some areas to miss fully two weeks of class here in the second half. Fortunately, my profs have all been very understanding and completely willing to cooperate (and it doesn’t hurt that I’m a pretty good student, if I do say so myself). Nonetheless, that’s made the last few weeks something of a crunch, and I have e-mails of notes from very kind friends and professors which I haven’t even looked at yet for being up to my eyeballs in various papers.

All of which is to say that, for today, I’m taking a break from the review of PCA/ACA, and hitting the books. Look for the conference wrap-up in the next day or so, and probably a rambling screed on H. Beam Piper after that, and then… well, who the hell knows? Stick around and find out!

PCA/ACA Conference Day 3

Well Readers Mine, today is the day when my guest post goes up on The Great Buffy Rewatch over at Nik at Nite, so hopefully some of you reading this are new to Solomon Mao’s. If so, welcome. Basically, this is the place where I post at least semi-regular notes on books, movies, TV, popular culture, politics, academia, conferences, higher education, and occasionally other URS*. I also tend to shill for the various blogs you see under Solomon’s Blogs to the lower left, and for friends and authors doing good work across the media spectrum. There’s also a bit of construction going on around here, so please excuse any sudden format changes, I’ll try and quit messing with things shortly. So, come often, read a bit, visit some of the other writers linked, and feel free to drop a comment or two if you get the urge.

We now return to our blog-in-progress covering recent adventures at the Popular Culture/American Culture Association national conference in San Antonio, Texas:

Friday was a short day for me, conference-wise. As usual, I was up and ready to face the world by 11:30 with the Life and Works of Jack London panel. Here George Adams took us into the deep end immediately with a look at what London concealed and revealed in his John Barleycorn. I have to admit to being a bit snowed under by specialized vocabulary with this one, but the gist I got from Adams was really good. He posits that London practiced the fine art of avoidance in his “Alcoholic Memoir,” rather than simple deception or denial. Thus in reading this and similar autobiographical works, the reader must pay close attention to what is mentioned in order to note what is carefully being not mentioned. Next up was Michael Martin, who gave a thoroughly enlightening and enjoyable paper on Jack London as the premiere, and usually uncredited, American road novelist, drawing on The Cruise of the Snark and The Road to demonstrate London’s mastery of this perhaps quintessentially American form, and even giving us Ernest Darling as a kind of early 20^th century Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady. Great work there, and a lot of fun. The next presenter, and Jack London Area Chair Jay Williams, examined London’s young adult fiction published in the magazine Youth’s Companion from June of 1899 to February of 1903. The magazine was chartered as a vehicle to encourage and help instill “industry, thrift, and upright Christian living and family,” and Williams posits that London’s sea stories unintentionally subverted the magazine’s mission statement by extolling travel, adventure, and a life apart from the traditional family structure. He also points out that the youth market was important for allowing London to experiment generically during this early part of his career, giving him the opportunity to stretch as a writer. I really loved this panel. It was somehow exciting and comforting to be among a group of scholars who are so passionate about London and his works. He is an author too often ignored, to our detriment.

I skipped the 1:15 panels in order to grab some lunch and take care of another important piece of conference business: buying books. Various academic publishers always show up at conferences, setting up tables of their books and usually offering pretty generous discounts, which is great because even the cross-over presses (i.e. presses which sell to a wider market than just schools and libraries, i.e. most of them these days) do limited runs, making a trade-paperback size book run anywhere from $25 - $40, and the hard covers even more. So I always try and pick up a pile of books when I’m at a conference. Okay, so this is a lie. I’m a bibliophile, so I always try to pick up a pile of books. Period. End of statement. True to form I found some great titles, and had a thoroughly good time doing so and chatting with the various reps from the publishers. I don’t have the books here in front of me however, having sent them back to the house with Mockingbird after we got home so as not to be distracted during this last week of school and exams. But fear not, Readers Mine, you’ll be seeing them in one or another o my regular my regular reading posts here as I crack them one by one.

Refreshed and gloating over my new acquisitions, I headed to the 3:00 panel on H. P. Lovecraft: New Perspectives. Great panel. The session began with a look at arctic places as liminal spaces by Jasie Stokes, who traced the use of such places through Mary Shelly, Edgar Allen Poe, and of course, Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. Stokes theorizes that each author’s treatment of the arctic and Antarctic reflects how they and their society viewed science. For Shelly, science would undoubtedly take us in new directions and change the world, but how and to what ends? Hers was a largely pro-scientific view, but also advocated for restraining scientific investigation and exploration to safe areas. Poe, on the other hand encourages bolder exploration of unknown spaces, in spite of – or perhaps because of – the fear such unknown places evokes in us. Finally Lovecraft, though a life-long admirer and proponent of science and scientific endeavor, has the most profoundly anti-science stance of them all, the horrors of the Antarctic mountains being so terrible as to drive his protagonist, an explorer extraordinaire, to devote himself to putting an absolute end to all further exploration of the continent. There was a lot in this paper and Stokes got the audience churning with all of the possibilities in her approach. Next Connie Lippert took a deep dive into intertextuality in Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, a fictional tome containing forbidden knowledge that even reading it is an invitation to madness. Lovecraft encouraged the sharing of his work and his worlds, and the phenomena of the Necronomicon has continued to grow not merely in works of fiction (think the Evil Dead trilogy, among others), but to manifest itself in several versions and editions purporting to be the true lost grimoire, at least one of which is actually used as a book of spells and rituals by groups practicing “chaos magic” in the real world. (Or at least in the physical world. How real these folks’ worlds are remains open to debate.) Brilliant paper that is almost infinitely expandable. Lovecraft is intertextuality writ large, crossing from horror to fantasy to science fiction to mystery to film to television, and back and forth from all of them again. Finally, Carl Sederholm called for a wider scholarship on Lovecraft, beyond biography and examinations of single works, to an approach to Lovecraft’s body of work as a whole, and used an examination of Lovecraft’s views on sex to demonstrate. See, Lovecraft doesn’t do sex, except in the most negative way (“pulsing, dripping monstrosities”). He seems to have had a philosophical objection to it as something bestial, and beneath the notice of true human beings. Sederholm just gave a brief glimpse of the possibilities inherent in this subject, and I hope that others will follow and take up his call for a wider scholarship.

After this panel broke, up it was time for a late lunch/early dinner with a whole passel of friends, when some 25 of us descended en masse upon a nearby Italian restaurant and gave the staff something to do during the afternoon lull. The meal was good, and the company better as Mockingbird and I met and got acquainted with a couple of new friends, Dominick Grace and Lisa Macklem who had presented on Steven King and Supernatural, respectively. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see either presentation, but after meeting them, I certainly wish I had, and will certainly be looking out for future opportunities to hear them both. A good time and lots of carbs were had by all. Then Readers Mine, I was forced to retreat to the hotel room where I spent the next four hours grudgingly working away on an historiographical essay for my Russian history class. It was the biggest assignment for that class this semester, and with the conference falling at the end of the term, I knew I’d have to buckle down and bust it out eventually, which I did, pouting all the while because I was missing the showing and sing-along of Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I was cruelly separated from my people by the tyrannical demands of higher education!!! Woe! WOE, I SAY!!

Oh well. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” after all.

*Utterly Random Shit.

PCA/ACA Day Two

I’ve fallen a couple of days behind in my conference posting, Readers Mine, but once you read the next couple of posts, you’ll understand how a fella could get a bit distracted.


Day two of the PCA/ACA national conference began at the crack of 9:30, so we could make it to an 11:30 panel called Civil War and Reconstruction: Images of the War: Photography, Iconography, and Cultural Tradition. This was a big one on my list, having just spent a semester delving into the craft of using photographs as historical evidence and writing a term-paper on a series of photos taken by Timothy O’Sullivan during the war. I was not disappointed. Jennifer Lynn Gross started things off with “Confederate Widows: Icons of the South,” in which she examined the strange cultural phenomenon after the war where the widows of Confederate general-officers became something like professional widows, and saw themselves as owners of their husband’s stories. These remarkable women were responsible for writing their husbands memoirs, founding the Daughters of the Confederacy, and taking an active role in what would become known as the Lost Cause presentation o Southern history. Next James Lundberg took a different look at the times surrounding the war with “Picturing Manhood, Picturing War: Photography and Facial Hair in the American Civil War.” Lundberg became fascinated with the truly incredible facial hair sported by American men in this period, and proposes that the reason may not stem from years of camp life and missed opportunities to shave during the war, but may well have been at least partially the result of photography itself. The primitive technology tended to wash out a clean-shaven face, the bright light required for photography often erasing subtle facial structures. Structures which were enhanced and given more shape and shadow by, you guessed it, moustaches, beards, goatees, sideburns, and soul-patches of every possible description. A really well researched, fun paper. Finally, Pamela Venz wound the panel up with “Survivors in Silver: Photography’s Relationship with American Civil War Medicine.” Venz focused on the attempt by photographers, newspapers, and the Army to show the modern, clean, and up to date medical care the troops were receiving both at the front and in hospitals back home. Of course, such photographs were all highly composed and carefully staged, but their very existence reveals the concern with the availability of medical care for the Union soldiers.

From the Civil War we proceeded to fan studies for the panel entitled “Fan Culture and Theory: Reimagining Convergence.” this turned out to be a really interesting panel. First, Lincoln Geraghty spoke about the strange transformation of collectables, from action-figures to autographed photos of favorite series actors, into objects of memory in the hands of their possessors, showing how a collectible figure purchased at, say, Comic Con, becomes not merely evidence of one’s pleasure in the show or comic or whatever represented by the figure, but also a key to memory of Comic Con itself, and moving from the commercial to the purely personal. Then the incomparable Tanya Cochran delivered a stunning presentation, “’Past the Brink of Tacit Support’: Fan Activism in the Whedonverses.” Suffice it to say that Joss Whedon and his fans provide a really fascinating example of a fan base that practices activism well beyond the realm of “save our favorite show,” and into the realms of real-world political, social, and cultural activism. There’s a story to how this activism began, but Mockingbird’s Nest has it better than I could put it, so follow the link. Cochran is working on a book focusing on this fan activism, and from her presentation, it’s going to be a must read. To wrap things up, Stephen Andon talked about a different, but equally dedicated type of fan activism. With “Sports Apparel DIYers: Circumventing Corporate Authority and Subverting Hypermasculinity in Sports Fandom,” Andon presented the audience with a look at a group of dedicated fans, particularly baseball and American football fans, who spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and effort to hand-make their own jerseys. In these hyper-regulated sports where the NFL will land on you like a ton of bricks if you try and sell merchandise and aren’t Nike or Adidas/Reebok, individual fans are making unique, high-quality gear for their personal use and thus avoiding the corporations that “own” the teams, merchandising rights, etc. We’re talking about very manly-men taking the time to learn to sew like professional tailors, and whose attention to detail is incredible. These men take great pride in their work, and may be using it as a way to claim their own “ownership” of the teams they love so much. Good stuff.

At 3:00, I ate, rested, and reviewed my paper, “’No Half Measures’: Violentization and Emotional Realism in Breaking Bad” which I presented in the 4:45 session.


My co-presenter (our third didn’t make it) was Carlen Lavigne, who’s “Two Men and a Moustache: Masculinity, Nostalgia, and Bromance in The Good Guys” gave us a look at a show that had an all too brief run and which I had honestly never heard of. Lavigne delved into how the show played with nostalgia for 1980’s cop-shows, riffed off of modern conceptions of the “sensitive man” and connected with the long history of buddy films and television shows in the US. Excellent paper that made me want to watch the show. My presentation went well too. I was using Lonnie Athens’ theory of violentization to illuminate the characters of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad and how such a realistic portrayal of violence creates a level of emotional realism that draws the viewer into the show and evokes a feeling of emotional complicity in the violence portrayed. I was very pleased with the Q&A session afterward, where the questions were excited, probing, intelligent, and let me know that the audience were definitely wanting to hear more. I left floating about 6 inches off the floor. Good day!

Finally, we took in the 6: 30 session The Works of Joss Whedon: teaching, Translating, and Tracing Symbol in Whedon’s Buffy. Jeffrey Bussolini led things off with a funny and intriguing look at how Buffy is dubbed into French and Italian. It turns out that the Italians do a better job with all the various “Buffy-isms,” colloquialisms, and oddities than do the French, though both seem in desperate need of Oreo cookies, as the cookies popular in Europe have chocolate on the inside and vanilla or something on the outside, and thus mangle one of Willow’s better jokes. Next Nikki Fuller gave a Campbellian reading of Buffy with her “Death and Sacrifice: Season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” examining in particular the episodes “The Body” and “The Gift” and the gang’s forced confrontation with the facts of death and life, sacrifice and loss. It was a brilliant, poignant presentation, and a nice look at Buffy’s particular hero’s journey. Finally, Erin Waggoner approached Buffy in the classroom directly, looking at visual rhetoric in “Hush,” where the town is struck silent by the uber-creepy Gentlemen, and everyone must figure out non-verbal ways to communicate, and where the audience and cast/crew of the show much communicate non-verbally as well. It is a reminder of how we really do speak to one another, even when using all of those troublesome words.

After that, Mock’ and I decided that it was time for some TexMex, and so strolled down San Antonio’s beautiful riverwalk until we found the Lone Star Café, where we snarfed down huge plates of enchiladas smothered in cheese, gravy and with sides of real, fresh, refried beans. To top it off we retreated to an upper-level ice cream parlor and sat on the balcony watching the people and river go by as we cooled down with some cold sweets. Which was (and is) pretty much a perfect ending to a fine Texas day!

PCA/ACA National Conference, Day 1

Day one of the PCA/ACA national conference dawned groggily, or maybe that was just me. I tend to forget how travel, nowadays stripped completely of any remaining glamour it once had, can just wear you out. Fortunately, the conference didn’t get rolling until 11:30, and I didn’t get rolling until 3:00 well after a big-ass omelet smothered in salsa and a nap.

The first panel for me was Critical Approaches to Mystery Science Theater 3000 I, a subject both Mockingbird and I are highly interested in, as we own every MST3K box set save three, and most of the stand-alone DVDs. Diving into the deep end, we were treated to examinations of MST3K as metafilm by Nathan Shank, as postmodern meditation on technophobia and technophilia by Kevin Donnelly, and as cinematic palimpsest a la Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia by Ben Wetherbee. All three of these scholars are young and if these presentations are any indicator, you can probably expect to hear more from them.

Net up it was homecoming with the Whedonites for Fans, Time, and History in Whedon. Alyson Buckman led off by examining the characters and Serenity herself through the lens of Bakhtin’s chronotope, where time, place, and genre interact to create the narrative flow, and especially the idea that we make our place and out place makes us. (I have a feeling I need to read Bakhtin.) Next up Susan Fanetti gave us a looking inside the Whedon community on the interwebs, via an examination of the community’s reaction’s to bloggers taking on either rewatches or first time viewings of Buffy and/or Angel, and the conversation between fans and the blogger(s). To finish up the panel, K. Dale Koontz went intertextual and showed how The X-Men inspired Whedon and eventually, through Kitty Pryde, helped give birth to Buffy Summers, and how Whedon, in turn paid homage to his past and the work of Chris Claremont in his run later on Astonishing X-Men. The audience, myself included, was completely enthralled (and I’m not just saying that because I’m lucky enough to be married to the woman. She had ‘em all hooked good.)

Finally (and to be honest, my notes for this panel are sketchy because Solomon was beginning to fade by this point), we took in another Whedon panel, this one on Power and Whedon where first, Mae Mendoza asked whether Firefly and Serenity actually portray a society in which the U. S. and China have merged politically and culturally, or is just a mash-up of Asian techno-culture as constructed by the West. Whedon doesn’t come out so good in this one. For all the random Mandarin phrases dropped into conversation, there just aren’t really any Asians in the ‘verse. Next, the incomparable Sherry Ginn took a look at aggression and violence in Firefly. Sherry always seems to be digging into the most interesting psychological spaces and this presentation was no different. Then came a truly exciting look at Whedon’s Dollhouse by Samira Nadkarni, who used the golem myth and its evolutions (think Frankenstein) to interpret Whedon’s “actives” who come to life only after being infused with the personality (spirit) needed for their current job. Wonderful!

After that, my brain being full of new ideas, and my body weary, it was time for a long, conversation and laughter filled dinner with Mock’ and old friends, and then to bed, so we can get back to it today.