![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatAs an aside, I keep having people I have never heard of friending me on Facebook. Is this common? Why would you friend someone on Facebook, you don't know? LJ is different - that's blogs you read. Unless of course, you think they are someone else? Also why would you want to friend 347 people? How do you keep track of everyone?
Should go to bed, tis late and must get up at 6 am to go to work tomorrow. But my brain is busy thinking deep thoughts again on this bitterly cold night. Not inside, outside. Inside toasty, and a bit on the dry side - even with radiators that hiss and spit in the background.
While thumbing through an entertainment mag as I half-watched the news tonight, I hit upon an article about the new TV show Dollhouse - with a summary statement by the co-creators of the series, Joss Whedon and Eliza Dusku, which said - the series is about identity particulary in this age of information overload, with ipods, media saturation, internet blogs, and so many venues telling us who we are, what we should be, and how we are perceived. Actually that's my summary, this is the exact quote:
Dusku credits a four-hour lunch with Whedon in creating DOLLHOUSE, 'We talked about life and what was in the forefront of our minds in terms of what's going on in the media, the world, politics, the Internet, everything."
"Everybody is questioning their identity, the meaning of who they are,"Whedon says. "Are they a good person? What are they doing with their lives? How can they sum themselves up?"
It hit me reading this bit - that this may be why I've been so fascinated by Whedon's writing, the concept of identity, and how it gets mixed up with how we think we are percieved by others - or another way of putting it, what we see reflected back at us.
But this is not what's been tossing about in my brain tonight and I'm not even sure I can convey it well here in this measley blog. Words aren't after all always interpreted the way we intend, not always through any fault of our own.
I think that sentence above may be the key to what's been nagging at the back of my brain for some time. This tendency to misconstrue or misinterpret what we see or read. To make assumptions and adhere to those assumptions without looking at all the information. It's the flaw, I believe in the analysis, what makes the analysis slippery and questionable.
Example - years ago, I wrote a short story for a creative writing course in college. It was called Just a Bunch of Ants - and was written in the point of view of a young, lonely, frustrated art student yearning for his girlfriend. I based the character and voice on a bunch of letters I'd received from my brother. Where he jokingly tells me that he's so lonely he's writing notes to his trash can. In the story the art student has a shaved head and so does his girlfriend. I don't explain why. The class read the letter and according to the rules, I was not to say a word until they finished discussing the story and what they believed it meant.
The teacher thought it was about a survivor of a holocaust, dying of radiation poisoning. That, my teacher told us explained the bald heads and the notes to the trashcan.
Other's thought the main character had cancer or was just insane.
While a few, about a handful, figured out it was about a lonely, somewhat eccentric, art student yearning for his girlfriend and frustrated with his life.
All caught the abject lonliness, the internal struggle for identity, and the battle against a world that lacks meaning or purpose - but they didn't really understand the story - they were too busy making assumptions.
When I told them what the story was about, what my intent was - I was told that it did not matter by my teacher. Who was a bit ruffled by the fact that he'd gotten it all wrong.
He said if the plot and intent is not clear to the reader or audience, then the writer has failed. A friend of mine who was taking the class with me at the time and obsessed with Samuel Beckett's plays, specifically End-Game, vehmently disagreed - stating just because he didn't get it, did not mean I had failed. Why couldn't it be the simple story of someone who was struggling for meaning? Was it my fault they'd complicated it? Or my fault that the story wasn't the one they wanted or needed it to be?
I guess it depends on how we view stories. Are they a conversation between the reader and the writer? The writer telling us something from their perspective, sharing with us how they see the world, what is bugging them, and who they are? Is the story they are sharing about them or is it about us? I wonder sometimes if we can seperate the two - take ourselves out of the equation. Try to see the story from the writer's perspective, see what they are telling us.
Without superimposing our desires, fantasies, dreams, nightmares upon it?
Another interesting tid-bit about that creative writing class - I wrote over 20 stories for that class. I submitted numerous ones to literary publications at the school. But only one was I told by my instructor to submitt to a contest. A contest that was judged by middle-aged male and female professors. The story I submitted was about a middle-aged man struggling with what to do with his mother who was currently in a nursing home. It was in his point of view and took place on an airplane, about ten-fifteen pages in length if that. In the story an annoying, elderly passenger who resembles his mother, sits next to him, and suffers an attack, getting violently sick - much like his own mother is sick. She's not his mother, but he is struggling with the guilt. Because he's not taking care of her, he is far away, taking care of his own life. I wrote the first draft while suffering an 105 degree fever. OF the stories I wanted published, that was my least favorite and it was the hardest one to share with my family - because I'd based the tale on my own father. My intent was to discuss the complexity of how people feel about their family members, about illness. The complicated emotion. This story was more successful than Just A Bunch of Ants - because it made sense to those judging it. It fit within their framework. They identified with the main character and had experienced or were experiencing that character's anguish. Just A Bunch of Ants did not make sense to them - it was about a 18 year old art student, alone, and frustrated - farther away. Who cursed and used foul language. And was angry at the world. Just A Bunch of Ants pushed my teacher's buttons or it was a story that by itself, without the nuclear holocaust, etc - was uninteresting.
In school, when I was taught how to do literary analysis - you are taught by the way, you don't just wake up one morning and do it - I was told that you should try to figure out authorial intent, as well as what it meant to you. One is subjective and one objective analysis. The second in some respects is far harder and requires greater skill, because you are attempting to get inside someone else's head - someone you don't know. But by understanding the author, the work itself often makes more sense. I'm not sure you can fully understand Faulkner's Sound & The Fury by the way - if you did not know about the loss of his child and his own grief. And Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire takes on a whole new meaning when you find out about the child she lost and obsessed over. Same deal with Joss Whedon - it helps to know when watching Buffy, that Whedon originally wrote the story for his activist mother, who died of Cancer before the TV series aired. OR that he has written in numerous interviews that he is fascinated with the conflict about an individual's identity and society's view of what that identity should be. Also the fact that Whedon himself is a white guy, who went to prep/boarding schools, and is the child of an activist and literary mother and a television writer father. These facts do provide insight to his work. Just as the fact that James Joyce was Irish, poor, and had the majority of his later transcripts typed by French Nuns who couldn't speak English - is critical to understanding his work. He wrote about Dublin. He often wrote in Gallic and English. He had a love for the rhythm of language.
But, I often see in analysis - these items forgotten or overlooked. Critical reviews do this a lot, I think. Until they become or feel if you will excuse the term, like masturbation.
The critic indulging him or herself. Not all. I'm not saying that. Certainly not. Nor am I saying that I think you have to take authorial intent into consideration. But, to a degree, perhaps we should?
It's like having a conversation with someone - in which after a while you realize the other person is misinterpreting every word you say. Putting their own twist or meaning on your words. I've had these types of conversations with both Wales and my brother. As they have had with me. Where, we are reacting to what we think is being said, not listening and thinking about what is being said. I think this is true with stories too - the difference between the emotional reaction - which is vicerial and does not always have anything to do with the author's intent but our own perceptions or moods or what have you, and the thoughtful reaction. Right vs. Left brain if you will, although I don't believe it is nearly that cut and dried.
Anyhow it is late. Must sleep. Just letting this hang out there for whomever may pass it by, for the moment.
Should go to bed, tis late and must get up at 6 am to go to work tomorrow. But my brain is busy thinking deep thoughts again on this bitterly cold night. Not inside, outside. Inside toasty, and a bit on the dry side - even with radiators that hiss and spit in the background.
While thumbing through an entertainment mag as I half-watched the news tonight, I hit upon an article about the new TV show Dollhouse - with a summary statement by the co-creators of the series, Joss Whedon and Eliza Dusku, which said - the series is about identity particulary in this age of information overload, with ipods, media saturation, internet blogs, and so many venues telling us who we are, what we should be, and how we are perceived. Actually that's my summary, this is the exact quote:
Dusku credits a four-hour lunch with Whedon in creating DOLLHOUSE, 'We talked about life and what was in the forefront of our minds in terms of what's going on in the media, the world, politics, the Internet, everything."
"Everybody is questioning their identity, the meaning of who they are,"Whedon says. "Are they a good person? What are they doing with their lives? How can they sum themselves up?"
It hit me reading this bit - that this may be why I've been so fascinated by Whedon's writing, the concept of identity, and how it gets mixed up with how we think we are percieved by others - or another way of putting it, what we see reflected back at us.
But this is not what's been tossing about in my brain tonight and I'm not even sure I can convey it well here in this measley blog. Words aren't after all always interpreted the way we intend, not always through any fault of our own.
I think that sentence above may be the key to what's been nagging at the back of my brain for some time. This tendency to misconstrue or misinterpret what we see or read. To make assumptions and adhere to those assumptions without looking at all the information. It's the flaw, I believe in the analysis, what makes the analysis slippery and questionable.
Example - years ago, I wrote a short story for a creative writing course in college. It was called Just a Bunch of Ants - and was written in the point of view of a young, lonely, frustrated art student yearning for his girlfriend. I based the character and voice on a bunch of letters I'd received from my brother. Where he jokingly tells me that he's so lonely he's writing notes to his trash can. In the story the art student has a shaved head and so does his girlfriend. I don't explain why. The class read the letter and according to the rules, I was not to say a word until they finished discussing the story and what they believed it meant.
The teacher thought it was about a survivor of a holocaust, dying of radiation poisoning. That, my teacher told us explained the bald heads and the notes to the trashcan.
Other's thought the main character had cancer or was just insane.
While a few, about a handful, figured out it was about a lonely, somewhat eccentric, art student yearning for his girlfriend and frustrated with his life.
All caught the abject lonliness, the internal struggle for identity, and the battle against a world that lacks meaning or purpose - but they didn't really understand the story - they were too busy making assumptions.
When I told them what the story was about, what my intent was - I was told that it did not matter by my teacher. Who was a bit ruffled by the fact that he'd gotten it all wrong.
He said if the plot and intent is not clear to the reader or audience, then the writer has failed. A friend of mine who was taking the class with me at the time and obsessed with Samuel Beckett's plays, specifically End-Game, vehmently disagreed - stating just because he didn't get it, did not mean I had failed. Why couldn't it be the simple story of someone who was struggling for meaning? Was it my fault they'd complicated it? Or my fault that the story wasn't the one they wanted or needed it to be?
I guess it depends on how we view stories. Are they a conversation between the reader and the writer? The writer telling us something from their perspective, sharing with us how they see the world, what is bugging them, and who they are? Is the story they are sharing about them or is it about us? I wonder sometimes if we can seperate the two - take ourselves out of the equation. Try to see the story from the writer's perspective, see what they are telling us.
Without superimposing our desires, fantasies, dreams, nightmares upon it?
Another interesting tid-bit about that creative writing class - I wrote over 20 stories for that class. I submitted numerous ones to literary publications at the school. But only one was I told by my instructor to submitt to a contest. A contest that was judged by middle-aged male and female professors. The story I submitted was about a middle-aged man struggling with what to do with his mother who was currently in a nursing home. It was in his point of view and took place on an airplane, about ten-fifteen pages in length if that. In the story an annoying, elderly passenger who resembles his mother, sits next to him, and suffers an attack, getting violently sick - much like his own mother is sick. She's not his mother, but he is struggling with the guilt. Because he's not taking care of her, he is far away, taking care of his own life. I wrote the first draft while suffering an 105 degree fever. OF the stories I wanted published, that was my least favorite and it was the hardest one to share with my family - because I'd based the tale on my own father. My intent was to discuss the complexity of how people feel about their family members, about illness. The complicated emotion. This story was more successful than Just A Bunch of Ants - because it made sense to those judging it. It fit within their framework. They identified with the main character and had experienced or were experiencing that character's anguish. Just A Bunch of Ants did not make sense to them - it was about a 18 year old art student, alone, and frustrated - farther away. Who cursed and used foul language. And was angry at the world. Just A Bunch of Ants pushed my teacher's buttons or it was a story that by itself, without the nuclear holocaust, etc - was uninteresting.
In school, when I was taught how to do literary analysis - you are taught by the way, you don't just wake up one morning and do it - I was told that you should try to figure out authorial intent, as well as what it meant to you. One is subjective and one objective analysis. The second in some respects is far harder and requires greater skill, because you are attempting to get inside someone else's head - someone you don't know. But by understanding the author, the work itself often makes more sense. I'm not sure you can fully understand Faulkner's Sound & The Fury by the way - if you did not know about the loss of his child and his own grief. And Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire takes on a whole new meaning when you find out about the child she lost and obsessed over. Same deal with Joss Whedon - it helps to know when watching Buffy, that Whedon originally wrote the story for his activist mother, who died of Cancer before the TV series aired. OR that he has written in numerous interviews that he is fascinated with the conflict about an individual's identity and society's view of what that identity should be. Also the fact that Whedon himself is a white guy, who went to prep/boarding schools, and is the child of an activist and literary mother and a television writer father. These facts do provide insight to his work. Just as the fact that James Joyce was Irish, poor, and had the majority of his later transcripts typed by French Nuns who couldn't speak English - is critical to understanding his work. He wrote about Dublin. He often wrote in Gallic and English. He had a love for the rhythm of language.
But, I often see in analysis - these items forgotten or overlooked. Critical reviews do this a lot, I think. Until they become or feel if you will excuse the term, like masturbation.
The critic indulging him or herself. Not all. I'm not saying that. Certainly not. Nor am I saying that I think you have to take authorial intent into consideration. But, to a degree, perhaps we should?
It's like having a conversation with someone - in which after a while you realize the other person is misinterpreting every word you say. Putting their own twist or meaning on your words. I've had these types of conversations with both Wales and my brother. As they have had with me. Where, we are reacting to what we think is being said, not listening and thinking about what is being said. I think this is true with stories too - the difference between the emotional reaction - which is vicerial and does not always have anything to do with the author's intent but our own perceptions or moods or what have you, and the thoughtful reaction. Right vs. Left brain if you will, although I don't believe it is nearly that cut and dried.
Anyhow it is late. Must sleep. Just letting this hang out there for whomever may pass it by, for the moment.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 04:57 am (UTC)People who insist the meaning of a work is all relative to whomever is reading it drive me insane. Sure, we all get different things out of a story, that was one of the fascinating aspects of fandom. But in saying, in the final analysis, "what really happened in this scene," I am going to listen to what the writer has to say, not fan x or fan y.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 01:58 pm (UTC)He ignored, of course, the fact that (as you say) some of the students did get it! So who exactly has failed?
People who discuss this seem to take exclusive positions. I think that's wrong; I think a writing "means" both (1) what the author intended and (2) what the reader thinks of in reading it. The one approach I think is not valid is "This is what it would mean if I wrote it, so this is what the author means."
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 02:50 pm (UTC)Yes, if you intend to write a story about the Holocaust and no one realizes it, that's not so good. But generally how each person enjoys something and what they get out of it is their own business, as long as they enjoy it. You tell your stories and as long as people enjoy reading them, the rest is gravy.
Everyone who writes seriously thinks they communicate perfectly. But that's not possible because the reader doesn't have the exact same mind set and experiences as the author. The same is true of teachers. I thought I was a great teacher in the beginning. I taught the first part of my first course in college in such a way that surely everyone would get A's on the first exam. When instead they got a normal spread from A's to D's my pride was hurt. But I did learn that all I could do was my best, and the students would have to do well or not depending on their work not mine.
Clarifications
From:Re: Clarifications
From:no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 04:34 pm (UTC)I don't understand it my own self....
Re: reading & understanding. I've heard people argue that author intent is of no more importance that the intent of an abstract artist; they claim that anything the viewer/reader reads into it is legitimate so long as the viewer/reader can argue their position using only things actually in the original work and not solely from their own pre-conceptions....
Certainly people have gotten advanced degrees by reading all kinds of stuff into Shakespeare & other greats....
Personally as a painter I accept that people will see what they want to see, I can only suggest things to them, but if they are blind to my images then I still don't want to prevent them from looking at my work... Often the person with the most 'baggage' influencing their understanding is the person who needs some artistic uplift the most.
In Eastern philosophy they say that knowledge is structured in consciousness, that is to say that you can only understand what you are ready to understand. A child will only see the world through a child's eyes.... and that is why rereading or rewatching something brilliant can be so rewarding: because the understanding is deeper and clearer. And of course the more layered and complicated, the more rewarding (no artists wants their work to be so childishly simple that everyone 'gets it' immediately, do they?).
But I know you weren't saying that someone CAN'T read without wising to know what the author meant, just that literary criticism should want to get to the intended meaning... and not just be self-indulgent (ie masturbation).
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-02-08 10:36 am (UTC)Are they a conversation between the reader and the writer? The writer telling us something from their perspective, sharing with us how they see the world, what is bugging them, and who they are?
This reminds me of a little rhyme, can't remember who taught it to me. Maybe my dad. Anyway:
"This is the creeda Jacques Derrida
There ain't no writer
And there ain't no reader, eder."
Now, I'm not a big fan of Derrida. But I'm definitely more towards the side of thinking that, once a text is out there, the author's intent doesn't really matter any more. I will read author's commentaries on these things, because it can help give insights. But I wouldn't take it as an authority. What's on the screen/on the page is what counts to me.
So, no, I don't think it's a communication between writer and reader. I don't think a writer's failed if the reader doesn't get what they intended out of the story.
I see stories as like diamonds - hold them up to the light, inspect them, and you can see all kinds of different angles. The diamond doesn't change, but our experience of it can be different.
That does'nt mean you should humpty dumpty your way through a reading of a text, "It means whatever I say it means" - more that analysis is a moveable feast, and if there's enough textual evidence for a reading, it's valid imo. Whatever the author may or may not have intended.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-02-08 09:11 pm (UTC)That process of shifting perception of art you describe, I think I might go so far as to say that that’s one of the main purposes of art for me. I was going to say *the* point but then I thought of about three others :D (including: to make us/me feel something powerful, to offer emblems of ourselves that we can relate to and that mirror or somehow tell us things about our own lives, to teach us something about the world....and then I’m sure there are more).
But, back to shifting perceptions. It’s not a matter of a piece of art (or a story, or whatever) changing its meaning to a radically different meaning. Sometimes it just gains new layers the longer you look at it, though I think I do also completely change my mind about what something means – usually through discussion, though sometimes from reading something the creator’s said, or merely by going back to something after a break.
Even though, to a degree, the artist's background helped me appreciate her painting - I'm not sure what the author tells us in interviews or what we know about their background is necessarily vital to our understanding or appreciation of their work. It may enrich it, it may even confuse it, but vital? I agree with you there.
Yes, I think they’re one weapon in an arsenal of interpretation (not sure why I’m going for the violent metaphor there. Probably too much Buffy.). Discussion’s another. And then there’s going for walks and mulling things over. People don’t give walking enough credit as an analytical tool.
Also often what the writer tells us - is contradictory to what we've read, making us wonder if they even remember it.
I’m particularly put in mind of one season 6 Buffy commentary (I can’t remember which) in which the writers were miserembering details.
And, a separate point perhaps - I imagine, in a TV show, where there are numerous creators, some of them would disagree as to the interpretation of a particular scene, character, storyline etc.
I'm not completely sure most writers know what they are intending when they write a story.
Me either. Some may have a very clear idea of what they’re setting out to do. Some may work more intuitively. But even writers who have a very clear idea of what all the parts of their work should mean, what it should all add up to... well, it won’t always add up to what they intend. Everyone has their own set of associations, their own intellectual world. So something that means X to person A because of association Y might mean Z to person B because of association K. That’s getting too much like maths for comfort.
Do people use K as a letter standing in for an unknown quantity? I feel they should.
Anyway, yes, in short – some writers don’t set out to write with a particular meaning/message in mind. And those who do don’t always put it down on the page in a way that would mean the same to someone else. I think you probably said it already by talking about people having different experiences! But I said it with more words. (Do I get a cookie?)
James Joyce never knew and refused to answer the question.
Clever boy. :D
I remember having a similar argument on a Buffy fan discussion board - the ATPO Board years ago. I think the stance I took at one point was once the content is out there, away from the artist, in the public - it is no longer theirs.
I agree. A lot, in fact – it makes me quite cross when people say that the author gets to decide what something means just because they’re the author. Sure, they own the copyright, but they don’t “own” the meaning in the sense of having any control over it once it’s out there.
TBC
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-02-08 09:18 pm (UTC)Which is why - in some cases, such as the painting I discussed above or BTVS - it helps if you discuss it with people, particularly people who do not agree with you and may see things in a completely different way. It adds texture, provides another perspective.
Discussions with people I disagree with, or at least who have a different perspective, is so valuable. Why I love the internet reason 2928739827398472. Though, that doesn’t work if I disagree with them about something silly and we get caught up in minutiae.
Particularly when it is a collaborative work. And their intentions as is true in most collaborations are at odds.
Ah, I hadn’t read this bit of your post when I was replying above. But yes, agree! And, in a TV show, it’s not just multiple writers, it’s all the other creators (actors, monster-making people, composer) who all add something to the pot.
But through logical textual analysis, and an analysis of the writer's other works - you can figure out what the writer may be trying to do. You may also be able to figure out where the story is going and why it is going in the direction it is. What themes are being expressed and why they are being addressed.
Perhaps authorial intent (stated authorial intent plus inferred authorial intent from getting an idea of “the sort of thing they do”) can be seen as a kind of archaeology. It provides us with possible insights and hints, but we’ll never truly know how to take it, what value to give it. In the archaeology example, we’re separated by time and cultural difference. With authorial intentions, the use/accuracy is limited by the fact that a) texts are polyvalent anyway so there so there is no one interpretation and b) the authors are distanced from their works, they aren’t the works themselves, they’re “outside” just like we are, looking in on the finished product. They know what went into the process, but the process and the product are separate.
I think most writers, the one's who aren't merely trying to entertain, get money and get hugs, are telling their stories to work out issues or questions in their own heads that they don't know the answers to.
Interesting way of putting it – writing as answering an amorphous question, I like it.
Actually, I’m going to go away and think about this, back later. :)
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-02-11 03:23 pm (UTC)It's why I think we communicate - to solve problems to figure out things, because we can't see all the angles of the diamond by ourselves. The issues raised in Buffy - I think are meant to be shared. I think that's why they are being raised by the writer, because I don't think the writer knows the answers and is working them out by writing them. I don't know if that's true - I just know that this is one of many reasons I'm driven to write. And I'm guessing from reading interviews with Whedon and others such as the writer behind BattleStar Galatica - that they also write to work out these issues, to explore them, and understand them.
The idea of Buffy being intended to be a community activity, I like that – not only are the writers sharing ideas with us, there does seem an expectation that we’ll share them with one another (“in the chatty rooms”, as Angel said).
The self-awareness of BtVs and AtS mean they include the viewer in the text from the very beginning – as in, the text speaks to us as viewers by saying, “hey guys, look, you’re watching a TV show.” (EG with the play on genre expectations at the very beginning of Welcome to the Hellmouth, with the blonde girl being the villain, Darla) But also absorbing you in the story. All of which is very fertile ground for discussion, for unpicking things as a community.
And saying them very well.
I can’t remember if I said thanks already but…thanks! Forgive me if I reply to things twice/miss stuff out… I find livejournal comment bits really visually confusing!
Also I love your icon. But then I'm a BSG and Starbuck fan.
I’m so into BSG right now… getting more and more exciting as it rushes to the end. But I don’t want it to be over. But I’m glad they’re seemingly going out with a bang. Can’t wait til next ep.
On the mirror bit - this can at times get in the way of a lot of good analysis. People often will get caught up in the aspects of the text that either mirror their lives or reflect aspects of their experience that they'd rather forget.
Yes, there is an extent to which we try to FORCE art to imitate life, our lives, which distorts art. Though I suppose sometimes relating to a particular element of a story can help bring out various meanings – as in, you relate to one bit, and that draws you to inspect that part of the story closer, and once you’re up close, you might actually see details you would’ve missed otherwise. Can’t actually think of any examples right now but…maybe?
A good friend of mine said recently that going online and discussing Buffy on a fan board or with others - provides more insight. We can't see the whole story by ourselves. We are limited by our own perception of it.
Very much so. Don’t have anything to add but…yes.
I also agree about changing one's mind about things. I've done it many times myself. I am admittedly stubborn and a bit opinionated. But I try to stay open and work hard to read views that I disagree with, sometimes vehemently so.
Once I’m in a corner, I do tend to dig in. But sometimes, in the right kind of argument, I will be coaxed out.
I changed my mind about the Seventh Season of Buffy. On the first two watchings, I found it clunky with huge plot gaps. The third viewing and reading some new takes on the season, changed my mind. That season is now arguably among my favorites. It's ambiguous in places. And deals with some complex and unanswerable questions regarding leadership, power, and friendship, not to mention gender politics.
Interesting. I still don’t like season 7, but…. Do you have any posts dissecting it and why you like it anywhere? I’d be very interested to see what you think makes it good.
TBC
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From: