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18 May 2015 11:24 am
non wednesday reading update
Because I have some free time this morning while a bunch of processes run at work, and because when I feel like posting I should just do it.
I read Mark Field's Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor, and Morality until about halfway through season 4. I paid $1 for the e-reader version because it's hard for me to read long stuff online. I'm too distractable. Some parts of it were super interesting. I especially liked when he talked about the existentialist moral themes in BtVS. I haven't had the patience to actually read existentialist philosophy since high school, and on the whole I find it compelling in some senses and frustratingly individualistic in others. Fields' characterization of existentialism and how it plays out in BtVS (and, implicitly, Angel) clarified a lot of that for me, in the sense that I realized that aspects of the shows' treatment of morality are apparently more coherent in their origins than I thought, even if I disagree with a lot of those origins.
I stopped reading it partly because everytime Field talks about Buffy having sex, it is judgmental and sexist and at times pretty gross. I can't say that he's drawing out themes that don't exist in the show -- they totally do -- but he not only fails to criticize those themes, he embraces them more wholeheartedly than the show itself does. Especially in Season 2, which he has a whole Freudian take on that, like I said, is not un-supported by the show but also kinda makes me blech. Also, I started to get tired of it and realized I really wanted to be reading some fiction. Which leads me to....
I finally started Ancillary Justice. Which I'm now about one quarter of the way through, and, I don't know. I love epic stories, but I'm tired of how often they are from the point of view of military officers and politicians and aristocrats and royalty. I don't need empire from the POV of the imperialists, even if the narrative doesn't condone the imperialism (which this doesn't). There are elements that I like, enough that I'm going to keep reading, and I keep hoping that a twist will come.
I read Mark Field's Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor, and Morality until about halfway through season 4. I paid $1 for the e-reader version because it's hard for me to read long stuff online. I'm too distractable. Some parts of it were super interesting. I especially liked when he talked about the existentialist moral themes in BtVS. I haven't had the patience to actually read existentialist philosophy since high school, and on the whole I find it compelling in some senses and frustratingly individualistic in others. Fields' characterization of existentialism and how it plays out in BtVS (and, implicitly, Angel) clarified a lot of that for me, in the sense that I realized that aspects of the shows' treatment of morality are apparently more coherent in their origins than I thought, even if I disagree with a lot of those origins.
I stopped reading it partly because everytime Field talks about Buffy having sex, it is judgmental and sexist and at times pretty gross. I can't say that he's drawing out themes that don't exist in the show -- they totally do -- but he not only fails to criticize those themes, he embraces them more wholeheartedly than the show itself does. Especially in Season 2, which he has a whole Freudian take on that, like I said, is not un-supported by the show but also kinda makes me blech. Also, I started to get tired of it and realized I really wanted to be reading some fiction. Which leads me to....
I finally started Ancillary Justice. Which I'm now about one quarter of the way through, and, I don't know. I love epic stories, but I'm tired of how often they are from the point of view of military officers and politicians and aristocrats and royalty. I don't need empire from the POV of the imperialists, even if the narrative doesn't condone the imperialism (which this doesn't). There are elements that I like, enough that I'm going to keep reading, and I keep hoping that a twist will come.