Buffy Anne Summers, aka

Posts Tagged ‘western lit’

 

To begin this ending, I’ve recently come across a quote that leads me to believe it was Carl Jung, rather than Friedrich Nietzsche, who said the bit about the artists giving back to their age what it is most lacking.

And so here we go again, and before I forget, let’s briefly skim over what I’ve said elsewhere about the values of friendship, fighting for, and not giving up on, one’s friends — even when they are misbehaving, and let me add to that, Angel’s comment to Buffy about not fighting to win but because some things are worth fighting for. Those are all values and they are certainly part of what Buffy the Vampire Slayer is about.

But if you’re anything like me, you watch Buffy primarily for the fun of it, and rarely, if ever, give much thought to what it all means, or could mean, or how Buffy the Vampire Slayer may fit into your value system. Moreover, I doubt very many of us give a lot of thought to how the show may or may not fit into the Western storytelling tradition. Well I don’t blame you, but I’m gonna, that is, I’m about to, and there’s a lot to say, and I don’t know for sure how to say it all, and I’ll probably be jumping and swerving around considerably, so buckle down for a ride or get gone now, and either way, don’t say you weren’t warned.

So, still here? Ready?

Okay.

At least since the early Middle Ages, if not going all the way back to Socrates, Western literature has been fraught with metaphor, and often interpreted as allegory, whether that was the author’s original intent or not. So it is not too surprising that BtVS, with its rich use of language, subtext and symbolism, has inspired more than its share of interpreters, academic and otherwise.

But before I try to add anything to the growing archives of Buffyology, let’s review just a bit.

We are, as I said at the outset, examining the work of a community of creators, and it is impossible to say with any certainty what the creators’ control or conscious intentions were, but that doesn’t mean that something that resembles a work of art as much as, in my opinion, BtVS does cannot say much that is significant about its times.

And even if it is not the work of artists as I claim, the show’s wide appeal surely says something, again, about our times.

Additionally, as I’ve already mentioned the moral ambiguity sometimes evident in the show and suggested it could be argued that it is Nietzsche-ian in some sense, those familiar with Nietzsche have probably already concluded, or at least suspected, that there was, after all, a reason I chose for this series of posts the title "Buffy Summers & Beyond Good and Evil" — and I believe that that too — the moral ambiguity, along with the intensity with which the good-versus-evil dualism is punctuated — may have contributed to the show’s appeal over the last several years.

So with that brief recap in mind, let’s proceed as to the how and the why.

What does it all mean? What are the values being communicated? Why — beyond the visceral action, wit, and the beauty of the cast — the show’s popular appeal?

While I mentioned that various hierarchies are frequently ignored or quickly dismissed in the world of Buffy Summers, I assume everyone familiar with the series has noticed that it is not nearly as true in the world of Demonic Forces. In truth, it is pointedly not the case at all. The Master has his disciples (nearly worshipers) in season one. Spike and Drusilla have their minions in season two. Mayor Wilkins has his political subordinates as well as his tributes to higher demons in the next season. Maggie Walsh and her creation, Adam, have their obedient ’soldiers’ — human and otherwise. Glorificus, her lackeys, or, again, worshipers; Warren, his feckless sidekicks; and the First, the abject devotion of its Bringers and Caleb.

Not only does respect for some given hierarchy often play a key role in the world of Demonic Forces, the primary hierarchy in effect is frequently religious, or quasi-religious, in nature. Abject devotion, unquestioning obedience, an unwitting and all consuming desire to please, or simply a fear of the consequences of disobedience are all prevalent and characteristic of the relationships between the show’s primary villains and their followers, or servants, or (if I haven’t said it too often already) worshipers.

(And of course the storyline with Caleb in season seven in particular reads like a devastating treatise against the fundamentalist, patriarchal and woman-blaming/hating tendencies of at least some Western religious tradition.)

In addition to the frequently in-your-face religiosity that seems to infuse the world of Demonic Forces, it is also emphasized in various episodes throughout the entirety of the series — all seasons — that the feeling that being on the side of evil grants (after becoming a vampire for example), is the feeling of having become "one with everything," or at least one with some great purpose or power.

What does that remind us of if not religion?

Being one with everything, being one with God, having an overriding sense of purpose, sacrificing the ego or one’s individuality for some greater whole — all of these are notions common in many (or perhaps all?) of the world’s religions. And maybe I’m being influenced here by the knowledge of Joss’s atheism, but I believe part of what is being communicated, consciously or not, is that that kind of experience, that kind of feeling of, for lack of a better term, oneness, is dangerous, dangerous in the sense of being, if not evil, then at least potentially evil.

Evil? Whatever are you getting at, Elijah? In what sense?

Well, you may recall Buffy’s comment in The Initiative to Professor Walsh, when after the professor’s callousness toward Willow’s misery (after Oz has left her and Sunnydale behind), Buffy says, "You’re right. A human being in pain is not part of your job."

What is Buffy really saying there? Isn’t it that Professor Walsh is letting her sense of her professional priorities and obligations overwhelm her humanity? Isn’t this the danger the late mythologist Joseph Campbell was talking about when he discussed the danger of "becoming the uniform?" As I recall, Campbell suggested that most, or at least much, of the evil in the world has been in the name of duty, or in the name of simply following orders or the rules, of becoming the uniform. Or, another way of saying that is being a mindless automaton (and "one with" a greater whole) rather than being an individual with an individual conscience.

That is, after all, one of the great complaints of the skeptic — that religion, which claims to establish a basis for morality, often leads to a mindless authoritarian, follow-the-leader sort of mentality that sometimes (some would say ‘often’) leads to some of the most immoral acts imaginable.

So if that is being communicated, i.e., that being or becoming somewhat less than an individual moral agent is innately evil in some sense, how does the story universe of Buffy, with its emphasis on duality and moral ambiguity, relate to the spirit of our times? — or, I suppose I might say, accurately or not, to the Zeitgeist?

One way to think about it is that it may mirror a psychological tension in the viewer that is nearly absent from much of modern storytelling. I’m not sure about this, but I am thinking that, if some of the world’s predominate religions (which tend in various respects to be story-based) are any indication, most human beings like to have things kept as simple as possible, e.g., folks like us are the good guys, so folks who are too unlike us must necessarily be the bad guys.

And of course such evaluations generally lead to some generalizations as to who is deserving of what.

I seem to recall that some have argued that there may even be some survival or evolutionary advantage to keeping such matters simple. Or another way of putting it might be to say that a simplistic world view makes for a simpler people who are more simply motivated, led, or (dare I say it?) manipulated.

But of course throughout our histories there have always been some who recognized that matters are never so simple, and in modern times especially, many more of us have been confronted by that understanding, i.e., a cognitive dissonance between much of traditional Western religious mythology and our modern experience due to there being so much contact between cultures and individuals that it is no longer reasonable for many of us to view the world in simple black and white (i.e., we’re good, they’re bad) terms.

So the Buffyverse (through its contrast between the emphasized dual nature of its story reality and the sense of moral ambiguity evident in some characters and situations) plays with the psychological tension between the dualism many of us are taught as kids and may still believe in on an emotional level — and still experience, or are frequently asked to experience, in our storytelling traditions — and the more complicated modern reality we now find ourselves in as adults.

Did Joss and his fellow creators intend this? I have no idea. But the recognition of our own dilemma, conscious or not, implicit in the Buffyverse may very well contribute to the show’s popularity. These are situations and moral judgments — as far removed from our reality as they may seem on the surface — that we all, or nearly all, understand from our own experience.

So you see it’s not fantasy after all, is it? It’s metaphor, it’s allegory, it’s myth.

Or is it?

So, just maybe that’s what Buffy the Vampire Slayer has to say about us, and about our times, but now swerving suddenly on, how does Buffy fit into Western literature, or into the Western storytelling tradition? And is it metaphor, or allegory, or myth? Or?

Well, Joss, et al, are in a sense creating a kind of mythic history, a kind of world myth where there was nothing before, a far less patriarchal — and far more feminist — myth of origin than what we in the West have grown accustomed to. Others have done something similar. It is arguable that Homer may have done it in the Odyssey for the Greeks (you knew there was some reason I brought up that sailing metaphor a while back, didn’t you? — even if I did not do a very decent job of extending it); and Virgil certainly did it in the Aeneid for the Romans; and Goethe took a stab at it for the Germans. Even Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings can be seen as an attempt to mythically bridge the gap between established English literature and England’s lost, prehistoric past.

And in all previous cases we are speaking of a mythic history, a history based on psychology, the psychological need to define a new paradigm of identity, rather than, or in addition to, actual events — and I would argue may be even more true of what Joss Whedon has done.

So that begs the question. Is Joss attempting to establish a national identity, or a new way of thinking about the American empire? No. Nothing so simple as that. BtVS is not an attempt at a nationalistic myth, nor an attempt to fulfill the desire an empire may have to justify its dominance, but rather, it is an attempt to create a world myth, a new kind of world myth that is simultaneously Western and non-Western in its sensibility.

But is BtVS truly a world myth? Did Joss, et al, succeed?

I would say no, at least not without more work, for Joss and his co-creators have not yet addressed all aspects of female empowerment, i.e., all aspects of what it means to be a woman.

Buffy is not complete as a world myth because it does not empower women in all aspects of womanhood. If it did, there would be more than one Slayer known to have had children, and many of those children would have been raised to successful adulthood. In fact, Robin Wood’s battle with his emotions over the loss of his mother is a (probably) unintended argument against Slayerhood, i.e., against the warrior woman, as the implication is, it can so easily lead to either no children, or ever more dysfunctional, and abandoned, children.

Nevertheless, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is most definitely in the Western storytelling, myth-making, identity-defining tradition, and however the continuing story, in comic book form or otherwise, may yet develop, at the end of the TV series, like in much of Western myth, our hero comes home again, not literally of course, but psychically home.

Whereas Odysseus traveled broadly to come home again to his wife, Buffy stayed home, or nearly home, throughout, and perhaps the notion of our hero staying home is just another reflection of some of what our society may be missing, as discussed previously, or perhaps it could be argued that the concept of home may be even more characteristic of the feminine journey. But as paradoxical as it may seem on the surface, being home — even after everything she could ever call home has been utterly destroyed — doesn’t prevent Buffy from longing to return home, just as Odysseus did. But it is a psychological home Buffy pines for, an emotional perspective that she finally comes back to, full circle, and that is to not feel so alone or be so special in the world, but simply to be an ordinary girl — or perhaps more accurately, an ordinary person.

While this next statement probably qualifies me as a little bit spacey, personally, I suspect part of the appeal of Buffy the Vampire Slayer — mostly unconscious and aside from all the obvious — is a kind of cosmic longing on the part of Western civilization to go home to the feminine, even while, perhaps, recognizing — albeit sometimes reluctantly — the necessity of the masculine.

There are other, far more sophisticated ways of saying it, but that seems like a kind of conclusion, so I will leave it at that — at least for now.

And so our sailing vessel docks at last! I hope you enjoyed the ride.

Technorati Tags: buffy, culture, patriarchy, pop-culture, series, television, western lit

I know it has been quite a wait for this post, and to the handful of my readers who really have been anxious, I apologize. Just so much to do, so much to learn, and so much pain (sometimes) from which to recover. I know none of that makes for a particularly good excuse, but it’s all I’ve got!

And with that said, I will get on with it:

So after all the discussion that has gone before, the natural questions may be, so what?, why are you making so much of it?, what does it all mean, or what do you, Elijah, believe it all means?

Well, fair enough. I’m most definitely getting to that, beginning with this post (the first part of what I expect to be a two part conclusion) but first, let me get one last semi-observation out of the way:

Although the show’s relative absence of hierarchies has already been discussed in previous posts, it recently has occurred to me that there is usually no tyranny of time either in BtVS, i.e., it is fairly rare that anyone punches a clock. Plot grows organically. It is (usually) driven by characters and events rather than by time constraints. This is not always and completely true, of course. Particular episodes and several of the overall season arcs are subject to some very explicit time pressures, i.e., options running out due to some looming deadline or another, but I believe, on balance, that the characterization is valid.

I bring this up because when characters are subject to the rule of time, it too, can be seen as establishing a type of tyranny, though entirely mechanistic. In fact, in modern life — actually, pretty much beginning with the dawn of the industrial age, the modern constraints of time and time management increasingly have proven to be one of the most impersonal and most demanding tyrannies of all. A lack of respect for another’s time, especially if that other is deemed to have a higher rank, has become the equivalent to many in our culture of showing disrespect for the the entire pantheon of modern hierarchies.

But enough of that, and back on the main topic of my conclusions — what do all my foregoing observations mean? To begin, I’d suggest the confluence of the lack, or essential insignificance, of hierarchies between, and imposed upon, the primary characters, along with the punctuated good-versus-evil duality, places a tremendous importance on the emotional, personal and intimate nature of those relationships.

This emphasis may even explain, at least partially (aside from the youth and physical attractiveness of many of the cast members, of course), why so much of fan fiction has been of an erotic nature.

The advantages to this emphasis on, for lack of a better term, ‘emotionality,’ for Joss and his fellow writers in terms of drama and immediacy, I hope, is rather obvious. For the very talented actors, mostly, who made up the primary cast of BtVS, I suspect there were also advantages (and challenges). But the main thrust of my conclusions is not what was advantageous to the creators of BtVS, but the how and the why — strictly in terms of the foregoing discussion — of the show’s appeal and what that appeal may have to say about our times. (No doubt, you recall my having broached those subjects in a previous post.)

I can no longer be sure where I first heard it, and I won’t take the time to research it just now, but I believe it was Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (and I will correct this at some point if I find out I’m wrong) who once concluded, more or less, that the purpose or merit of an artist can be evaluated by the extent to which he (or she) portrays or is able to give back to his (or her) age what it is most lacking.

Whoever might have said it, and whether or not the above is a fair spin on what Nietzsche actually said, I believe there may be some truth there, and so it naturally occurs to me that the lack of hierarchies and the emotional and intimate connections between the primary characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer very well may be some of what our mainstream society and culture are missing. And perhaps the argument could be extended by suggesting that the relative lack of time constraints in the show’s plotting, as well as the frequently discussed moral ambiguity in the show (also Nietzsche-ian in some sense), may also reflect, respectively, an experience and a perspective that have often been in short supply in recent years in our prevailing culture.

Let’s think about it. How many hierarchies do we find ourselves caught up in on a daily basis? How many of our relationships are essentially superficial? How many people in our daily lives do we feel truly intimate with? Don’t we sometimes feel as if we are emotionally closer to the characters in BtVS than we are with some of our own family members, and co-workers, and friends?

Perhaps I’m the only who has felt this way, but I rather doubt it. Not more than 75 years ago, the overwhelming majority of the peoples of the world, including in the US, lived in extended multi-generational families and among friends and neighbors they would know for decades at least, if not for their entire lifetimes. Needless to say, the opportunities for intimate connections were, essentially, limitless. In recent decades, however, three or more generations living together in the same household is rare (or at least certainly so in the US and most western cultures), and so-called friends complain of having difficulty staying in touch, and those who do manage it stay in touch through artifice, e.g., via letters, phone calls, emails, or social media and so forth — all of which are far less intimate than yesteryear due to the lack of an actual physical presence.

It seems many of us are constantly moving from one place to another, breaking ties and estranging friends and lovers, losing contact even with those with whom we hope to stay in touch due, perhaps, to the pace of our lives and the difficulty of actually taking the time for long-distance "intimacy" — and sometimes it seems, even growing impatient and annoyed by the time it takes to maintain intimacies in the here and now of our lives.

The notion of staying in the same geographical location and being surrounded by the same people for your entire life seems quaint to many of us by today’s reckoning. Even in the statistically unlikely event that you have never found yourself relocating due to a career move, or otherwise, it is overwhelmingly likely some of your friends and family members already have done so, or soon will. Further, given the divorce rate in the US and some other western nations, it is evident not even our marriage bonds hold quite the same sense of permanence they once did.

So how often can truly intimate relationships propagate and flourish in our lives when, while still inchoate, much of the proximal basis for that intimacy is so frequently ripped away from us? Of course it’s just a theory, but maybe, just maybe, part of the appeal of BtVS is that very lack of respect for rank, and for hierarchies, that most of us can seldom get by with anymore, and the resultant and explicit intimacy between the primary characters that is so often scant in our own relationships.

By extension, the lack of time constraints is also an escape from much of our experience, no? (How many of us don’t feel any pressures to get to work, or church, or to business and doctor’s appointments, on time?) And any sense of moral ambiguity, well, that requires recognition of how complex the reality of our world really is — a level of sophistication we haven’t seen all that much of lately in our political leadership, our mainstream media, and perhaps especially, in our popular storytelling.

But before I belabor all these matters to the point of being boring or depressing (if I haven’t already), I’ll move on.

When I set out, my intention was to limit my discussion to the relationships of the primary characters in the world of Buffy Summers, but along the way, I have mentioned a few other matters (the extreme good-vs-evil dualism and the moral ambiguity often evident in the show coming immediately to mind), and have had some other unmentioned thoughts, some related, some not, about what some of the values are that are being communicated in the show, i.e., what Joss and his fellow creators were really up to, consciously or not, and I want to touch on some of that before I conclude.

And I will do so, but  — as this has already run on so long — in part two of this conclusion. Coming soon. I hope.

Technorati Tags: buffy, culture, Joss, media, patriarchy, pop-culture, scifi, series, slayer, television, vampire, western lit, whedon, writing

Well, Uncle Walter is gone now. I know many never saw him in his heyday. I barely did, and I gotta tell you, not too many of today’s TV news people, most of whom are more celebrities than reporters, can hold an unlit candle to the likes of him.

Never again is it likely that one personality will have so much influence over US national opinion, and let’s all hope not, because unlike Walter, if such influence were to arise again, that individual would very likely abuse it. No intention here to be negative, but that just seems an inevitability, given the nature of our times.

Walter was a TV personality and a reporter when it actually meant something. He was an authentic giant. Now we find ourselves surrounded by pretentious Lilliputians.

But we will carry on. What else is there to do?

Technorati Tags: culture, media, television, western lit

I don’t know why, but I seem to be in a sailing mood today, and I think I’ll just go with it, metaphorically.

So . . . as previously stated, I intend to steer out of the doldrums (very soon, I promise) and begin to get into the actual subject today, i.e., the subject of character relationships in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I said "begin to get into" because, as stated in a previous post, to do the subject any justice, I feel I first need to talk about the story universe in which these relationships operate. (Call that a "cop out" or a delaying tactic if you will, but that’s where my head’s at today.)

And before I take to the deep water and high winds, let me take a moment to say that I feel that I may’ve built up some expectations now, and that worries me just a bit. I’m no academic, am largely self-educated, have written virtually nothing before on literary interpretation or art appreciation, and as I haven’t read the vast (and utterly overwhelming) majority of what has been written about BtVS, I have no inkling of whether, or to what extent, any of my observations may be considered tired, trite, or debunked.

In other words, if you are expecting some mind-blowing insight not heretofore touched upon by great or small, I am almost certainly destined to disappoint.

I don’t expect that most of my forays will build such expectations. As I have already said in a previous post, "Buffy has been a dear friend to me, and I have no desire to turn my friend into foe, nor to turn what has been a great pleasure into a great labor." But when you set out to spark a little extra interest, the chance you take is that some will expect too much and inevitably be disappointed. But whether some expectations are now too great or not, perhaps I can offer some turn of phrase, or some thought, here or there to make this at least somewhat entertaining, or otherwise worth your while.

And as I raise our sail and begin to navigate into the depths and swing our boom into the wind, you may recall that I left off last time on what I believe is not so appropriate to conclude about the creators of BtVS due to the collaborative and corporate nature of television. So it is only fitting that I mention this same observation has been cited by those who make the argument that a television show, or series, cannot be considered a bona fide work of art. As the argument goes, or at least as I understand it, if there is not one controlling creator then one of the prevailing practices of the critic — i.e., attempting to get "under the skin" of the creator so as to infer the artist’s deeper motivation and meaning — is not available.

As such arguments go, that seems valid enough, and I’m not quite sure whether a television show can be considered a legitimate work of art or not. What I do know is that, when I am watching Buffy, it often feels like I am witnessing artists at work, and with that in mind, I am going to suggest that a critical analysis of a controlling creator and his or her intent almost certainly should not be considered the only sound approach to art appreciation. Another approach that may be just as valid is to consider how a work of art captures, reflects, filters and influences — dare I say it?, the Zeitgeist of its life and times.

Well, I’m less than certain I’m using that term the way a German philosopher or academic might, but I did say it, and it may be worth keeping in mind as I may come back to that notion somewhere in my conclusion.

So, as a gust of wind catches the sail, let’s begin in earnest with some definitions. As I (hopefully) progress, when you see the phrase "the world of Buffy Summers," I will be referring to the above-ground, "in the sunlight" world in which Buffy attends school, makes friends and deals primarily with natural — as opposed to supernatural — challenges and responsibilities; when you see the phrase "the world of Demonic forces," I will be referring to the below-ground, "in the dark" world to which ‘the Master’ and ‘the First’ — and all the various other creatures in between — most often cling and in which they most readily thrive. When you see the term "Buffyverse," I will be speaking all-inclusively of both these worlds and how they interact with each other. Admittedly, we could use different, no-less-accurate terms, and this is somewhat of an arbitrary distinction no matter what the terminology since the world of Demonic forces overlaps the world of Buffy Summers almost as often as not. But it’s a distinction I believe will serve a purpose in the remainder of this discussion.

Foremost, the world of Buffy Summers and the world of Demonic forces seem readily discernible as conditions of light and shadow, or day and night, or good and evil, or of primarily conscious aspirations, such as — in no particular order — life, love, youth, beauty, family, friendship, community, freedom, compassion, redemption and forgiveness, as well as creative and procreative impulses and primarily unconscious will, such as the drives toward sterile power (power for its own sake), desolation, blame, damnation, ruthlessness, slavery, isolation, manipulation, dysfunction, senescence, ugliness, vengeful hatred and death.

In short, the particulars of the two worlds being characteristic of, nearly synonymous with, descriptive of, or symbolic of, life and death, the combat between them maps approximately to the contest between biological and psychological drives, i.e., approximately what I believe some have termed ‘Eros’ and ‘Thanatos.’

While this dualistic arrangement of drives, or forces, is anything but unique to the Buffyverse and may, at first glance, appear to have nothing to do with the relationships between characters, it is an arrangement that has been given particular emphasis in the Buffyverse, represents a kind of relationship in and of itself (more on that in a moment), and I would argue it is the foundation, or backdrop, in which the character relationships develop, and are thereby made more meaningful.

So what is this argument again? I suppose it is that one of the most explicit — and thereby most immediately accessible and overarching — themes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is this perennial struggle between these most fundamental passions that can be said not only to inform the inter-human experience, but may be said — or rather is said by many — to inform the human psyche’s relationship with itself.

Did I say human? In truth, given the various demons, vampires, werewolves, robots (and of course, Adam, of season four) that populate the series, I suppose I could go further and consider whether or not this discussion warrants inclusion of inter-species, or trans-human, experiences and relationships as well. But there’s no need to be lashed to the ship’s mast so as to avoid being seduced by this Sirens’ song, for I can simply say I have no inclination to do that as I don’t feel particularly qualified.

(Maybe I’ll tackle that question someday when I’m feeling a little bit more full of myself.)

So then back to the aforementioned and seemingly emphasized dualism of the Buffyverse — so what? This is rather obvious. Have I simply set my sailing vessel adrift without realizing it? Maybe. It’s obvious enough when one pauses to think about it, but television and film seem to have a way of making us lazy, sometimes (or maybe I should just say it has a way of making me lazy), and I would contend that the Buffyverse is comprised of one of the more extreme contrasts between forces in television history, and one that we don’t always pause to notice. Or at least I know I don’t.

Many would say this kind of dualistic contrast is characteristic of the fantasy and horror genres, and in the latter case, perhaps especially of the tales-of-the-undead variety, but before some of you drop anchor and start to argue the point, I expect I’ll argue with myself before I’m done, so bear with me.

And lest I immediately dissolve into a schizoid discussion with myself, I’d like to mention that beyond the already-mentioned Eros-versus-Thanatos construction (or however one cares to phrase it) of the Buffyverse, I’ve noticed also that there are patterns of relationships in the world of Demonic forces against which the relationships of the world of Buffy Summers stand in sharp contrast. There are also virtual omissions in both worlds of many of the key factors that usually impact real relationships between real people in the real world that have caught some of my interest.

For example?

Well, let me address the omitted key factors first and get to the patterns later, and perhaps at some point I can even try to conclude something about what the continued cultural phenomenon of BtVS has to say — but perhaps not so much about its creators as about its fans.

However, as Gnarl, from Same Time, Same Place (Season 7, Episode 3) might say — if he had any friends and could sail the seven seas of course — I need make great haste into uncharted waters and go buy a giftie for an ailing friend now, so how about let’s save the next stage of this journey for next time . . . ?

(What do you think? Way past time to abandon ship and drop the sailing metaphor? What did it have to do with anything anyway? Am I hoping shipbuilders, or the merchant marines, or maybe even pirates, will buy adspace on this site? Or maybe recently I’ve been listening to a lecture on Homer’s Odyssey? Y’never know . . .)

Technorati Tags: buffy, Homer, Joss, media, Odyssey, pop-culture, television, western lit, whedon, writing