the oscars

Yay for Ellen. Her little skits were hilarious.
Yay for Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin. She and Jayden Smith were the cutest thing ever.
Yay for Al Gore.
Boo for stupid The Departed. Soooo not interested.
Boo for Nicole Kidman's huge red bow.
Boo for Clint Eastwood. Will he not die yet?
Yay for Melissa Ethridge making sure to mention Tammy as her wife.
Yay for Robert Downey Jr. making fun of himself.

Bai Ling

okay, how goes the role of exotic Asian?
first she shows up on Angel as a demon fighting to free the women from her world. they have these cords on their neck that literally glow red when they are sexually aroused and the men from their dimension cut it out/lobotomize them.
anyway, nows she's on Lost as Jack's playmate, mysterious and dangerous and exotic.
and im just like, anyone offended much? even notice?

Identity TV

In response to my previous post and the comments, I want to try and pick at the idea of pleasure and academics. The "guilt" aspect of watching certain shows always seems to coincide with a personal sense of fandom- an almost illogical sense that this show, this representation and set of images, somehow connects with you in your gut and therefore you have to justify the link to your head. So not everyone is going to like Buffy or Veronica Mars- and they don't have to and they probably shouldn't. I might never like 24, or have more than a passing acquaintance with the X-files or Starwars or the Matrix. But what is important about these shows is how they create counter(is that the right word?) cultures or subcultures maybe. Narrowcasting makes sure one audience or another is addressed and that audience feels compelled to undestand why these shows are aimed at them and how they work- how do you identify a niche, sell it and compel it. As the media side of Film and Media grows, more and more people will come into conflict with the cannon of film and the postmodern chaos of television. b/c TV is so fast, so fleeting, it often captures the identity of a moment in a way films cannot.

So this is a Flow article on VM and discusses how identity and the self are captured by these narrowcast shows like Battlestar Galactica, etc. :

http://jot.communication.utexas.edu/flow/?jot=view&id=2074

and for true convergence check out this fan remix of VM and Battlestar explaining the origin of the word "Frak.":

Frakking frakkingfrak! Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=j7NlRxY4OoM&mode=related&search=

Buffy lives

One of the podcasts this week was about the website Flow and about how one of the posters said she couldn't teach an episode of Buffy b/c it made her weep. Peters makes three points "1. These people enjoy Buffy a lot. 2. They may like Buffy too much and 3. Its a shame most contemporary media scholars don't practice some self indulgence and simply forget McLuhan and move on to Buffy in their actual classes. It
would be much more interesting."

Now, here's what I think (thanks for asking):
*Before anyone gets in a huff, if anyone even reads this, I am playing devil's advocate to Johnathon's devil's advocate. plus i just like to talk about Buffy.

Point one assumes that first and foremost, its wrong to enjoy Buffy. This could be because Buffy is gendered female due to its lead character being a woman, the soap/melodrama/emotional elements or because it is classified as teen age drama and therefore not serious enough or because it was on the WB, a more marginal network. All of these reasons endanger Buffy's status as "quality" television and therefore make it wrong to like the show.

Point two assumes that such liking is bordering on a scary kind of teen girl screaming fandom that has lost rationality. Buffy becomes an excess, something liked "too much." Heaven forbid an academic critique a show that is pleasurable and blatant about its lack of pretension- or a show that embraces cheesy sci fi effects and fights are always accompanied by snappy one-liners.

point three assumes that one cannot actually link mcluhan (the stand in for Academia with a capital A, although Mcluhuan's Wake may disprove that point) and Buffy, that to do so would be an allowance, another indulgence- you are doing it b/c the students like it rather than its relevance in one authorized cannon or the other. the contrast again marginalizes Buffy as a show that girls/teens/fans watch and therefore it cant be taken seriously.

Well, Buffy is taken seriously and should be. and so should Veronica Mars. I've read books and books (and more coming out) by academics on Buffy. These two shows are rare shows that engage with academic, film and feminists texts/theories. but more than that, there is something to their pleasure- pleasure can be academic, it can be productive, and it is NECESSARY for work. i am so tired of people automatically dismissing television in the old tired thread of the "vast wasteland"; of defending soaps because they are taking over tv (aren't soaps just the purest form of television, always have been, and everything else is diluted?); or people who dismiss "girly" shows as unimportant fluff. this is most definitely a rant, and perhaps not all that logical, but there you go.

my point is you can't just throw around the B-word or an angry feminist will go after you. if that isn't unpc, i dont know what is.

Oh no they didn't

The Simpsons just aired a show where Nelson and Bart become best friends and then their friendhsip ends. Bart goes home, opens his closet and hugs to his chest the vest Nelson gave him. The Brokeback music plays in the back and Nelson rides past the window shouting

"Ha Ha! I touched your heart."

Wow.

Angel

"It was a seminal show owned by an idiot network. And then they canceled it. I was going to picket them but I didn't have any comfortable shoes"- Cordy

oh self reflixivity

podcast

I tried to post a link to my podcast on Jenkin's Spoling Survivor but i dont think it worked. still trying to figure out technology

Why?

Why has Britney gone crazy? Why did she shave her head?
Why does Charlie have to die?
Why was there no Sawyer in this week's episode?
Why was Desmond naked in the jungle?
WHY WHY WHY

VM

Logan says Amy's is the best ice cream place in Neptune. Yay Austin refs!

The ENTIRE Veronica Mars paper

Women are from Mars: Veronica Detects Gender

In a postfeminist culture, where feminism is “so yesterday,” a cultural text like Veronica Mars (CW, Rob Thomas) that deals explicitly with the “F” word is a rarity. The broadest definition of postfeminism is that feminism has accomplished its goals, is over, and that a new sort of feminism must be created to address what it means to be a woman in the ever changing now. The dichotomy is past/feminism and present/postfeminism needs to be expanded to address 1) “F”eminism’s association with the white middle class protesting academic, thus lacking diversity and the concepts of plural feminism(s) and 2) an exploration of cultural femininity, including media images; consumer culture; chic, chick and grrl feminisms. Even this extended definition is a simplified version of a contested category, which necessitates a definition of feminism that resists a homogenous label and has room within itself for multiple shades and identities.

Veronica Mars approaches feminism from a specific generic and historical background: the breakout of the little blonde girl from detective fiction to the Hell Mouth of high school. Veronica’s movement between hero and victim interacts with discourses of feminism, the body and crime noir. Veronica’s body becomes the site of discursive and representational tensions as she struggles against the threat of physical attack in the pursuit of truth. Veronica channels the ghosts of Nancy Drew, Buffy and Scully and foreshadows Claire Bennet’s appearance as the invulnerable blonde cheerleader in Heroes (NBC, Tim Kring). Although it condemns feminism for its excessiveness, Veronica Mars doesn’t embrace the defeatism of postfeminism either. Instead, like a shopper at mall, the show selects aspects of each complicated wave of feminism. It embraces the cultural history of ass kicking blondes, the idea of image as weapon, and the basic bond of feminine identity.

In the third season of the CW cult hit, Veronica finds herself embroiled in messy college politics. A rapist is on the loose at Hearst College and everyone is too busy pointing fingers to search for the truth, so Veronica takes the case to heart. As a private investigator, Veronica pieces together the truth and negotiates her way through antagonistic groups: the Feminists (Lilith House), the Frat boys, the Sorority girls, the Dean, and Veronica’s own group friends. Veronica herself is outside, lower class, disenfranchised, against the status quo and the social/government structure. Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Warner Brothers, Joss Whedon) and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (ABC, Hartbreak Films) privileged normalcy through white mid-upper class worlds that were invaded by “others.” The “girl” aspect of postfeminism, the eternal girl on the verge of womanhood, deals with power relations and female identity in a world after second and third wave feminism. Veronica’s wild, playful yet still kicking “grrrl” postfeminism derives from a problematic legacy of “white chick backlash that denies class, avoids race, ignores (older ) age, and ‘straight’-jackets sexuality” (Holmlund 9). Despite Veronica’s own outsider status, diversity in the fictional California town of Neptune consists of stereotypes: Wallace (aka Watson to Veronica’s Sherlock), the black basketball player; Jackie, the spoiled black girl, also a teen mother and the daughter of a famous basketball player; and Eli, the Latino gang leader/criminal/janitor. In high school, Veronica was outside the “haves” and associated with the “have-nots.” In college she is situated between gender extremes: the angry feminists and the sexist frat boys, neither of which can see the shades of gray that build Veronica’s world.

The members of Lilith House, the feminist student group, continue the trend of stereotyped diversity, but this time the feminists threaten Veronica’s gender status instead of her class status. The Lilith House girls are stereotypical versions of second wave feminists, marked as alternative and militant through multiple piercings, short masculine haircuts, different (read non-white) ethnicities, and abrasive political activities (spray painting "male chauvinist pig!"; throwing eggs). In one interesting conversation, Veronica begins to spout feminist ideology much to Logan’s disgust. “Oh boy, nudity,” Logan says when he sees the campus paper with a picture of the protesting Lilith girls. “If you have words written on yourself, it's not nudity, it's political speech. Taking control of one's body to turn the objectifying male gaze back on itself,” Veronica responds, only to have Logan interrupt: “Okay, no more college for you” (3.3, “Wichita Linebacker”). Logan clearly implies that Veronica’s political stance is not appealing, but they both agree to mock the pretentious academic talk. A clear feminist association is dangerous for Veronica, who has already assumed traditional roles of masculine power. After all, she is a private dick. Veronica’s heroic mission has caused tension with Logan before because of his inability to save, rescue and protect her- or Veronica’s failure to be a proper victim. One afternoon he even quips: “I really shouldn't have pushed for the Clint Eastwood marathon. Now I've ruined you. I didn't think it was possible to make you more butch. Stupid, stupid Logan” (3.1 “Welcome Wagon”).

When Veronica assumed the male role of the private investigator, it was an act of self-defense in the face of a corrupt world. The police are obviously biased, if not incompetent as well. Movie stars, politicians, police, sports stars, business men- all the rich white privileged men- abuse the system biased in their favor for sexual and financial gain. Veronica is sucked into case after case because of Neptune’s dishonest institutional system cannot address the personal injuries to her loved ones. Veronica’s life is constantly interrupted by violence, starting with the death of her best friend Lily in season one. The show contains nostalgic flashbacks to that period before Lily’s death, for the long blonde hair, the wide eyed innocence, the cheerleading uniform, and the football playing boyfriend. Veronica and her friends are denied access and are forced to seek their own resolution. Thus, Veronica helps people who are disenfranchised (cannot go to the police because they are gay, Hispanic, etc) or have a personal problem (a cheating spouse, a missing dog) that is deemed unworthy of the police. As an all too human and vulnerable vigilante, Veronica is compelled to expose corruption and injustices in a dark, unfair, noir world.

Crime noir uses the private investigator theme as a way to piece together clues about how a woman relates to society, what her sexuality means, how a girl becomes a woman, how a man fits into a woman’s life- as a vampire to be fought, a criminal to be caught, or a lover. Bobbie Ann Mason argues that for female detectives like Nancy Drew, “mysteries are a substitute for sex, since sex is the greatest mystery of all for adolescents” (84). Veronica sneaks into Mac’s dark room to get some tickets knowing that Mac’s roommate, Parker, is with a guy. Veronica leaves, interpreting the scene she just interrupted as consensual sex, but later realizes Parker was being raped at that very moment. What constitutes sex? In the context of the show, rape happens while women are unconscious. Sex becomes amnesia and passivity is horrifyingly re-invoked. After all, Veronica was drugged the night she lost her virginity and the “truth” of that night has been under question before. “You want to know how I lost my virginity?” asks Veronica, “So do I” (1.1 Pilot).

Veronica’s quest is to understand her own agency in the world, what she can and cannot change, the tension between her role as victim and hero. As a private dick, she lives in a world of violence; as an adolescent, she is a girl struggling to grow into womanhood. “The crime film is a genre in which violence is the central trope of relationships between the sexes and in which the transgressive woman, as femme fatale or female dick, has long served as a register for anxieties about female sexuality and power. It is the genre most likely to expose both the limitations of the postfeminist heroine and the nasty sex and gender issues that her presence supposedly precludes” (Mizejewski 15). The rapes at Hearst College are an obvious rupture in the postfeminist text that assumes gender equality has been achieved. But which role will win out as Veronica hunts the rapist: victim or hero? Veronica can help others, yet she can’t escape being the victim of a sex crime. Every man becomes a possible rapist (including boyfriends) and she must be rescued in the end by a boyfriend and the surrender (suicide) of her rapist, also a victim of sexual abuse (by the empowered white male, the common enemy). Veronica investigates the nuances of gender relations: “Always tenuous and often deadly, the quest of classical noir is twofold: to solve the mystery of the villain and of the woman” (Hibbs 51).

Veronica’s power as a feminist hero resides in her ability to maneuver within male dominated systems of power. In Kicking Ass is Comfort Food, Patricia Pender links the spectacle of female violence with a feminist agenda. She concentrates on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguing that “if one of the primary goals of third wave feminism is to question our inherited models of feminist agency and political efficacy, without acceding to the defeatism implicit in the notion of ‘postfeminism,’ then Buffy provides us with modes of oppositional praxis, of resistant femininity…” (164). Veronica Mars too resists defeatism and empowers Veronica as an independent and successful character. However, Veronica and Buffy as heroes present two different ideas. Buffy has an unapologetic feminist appeal: “for the feminist viewer, the spectacle of Buffy kicking ass is similarly comforting; equally, exhilarating and empowering, Buffy provides the compound pleasures of both the hot chick and her super powers” (Pender 167). Veronica, too, has “super powers”- her uncanny intelligence, endless bravery, and chameleon appearance. In a sense, being a “hot chick” is one of Veronica’s powers and thus makes it okay for her to be an object of desire because she is consciously manipulating the gaze. The viewer is waiting for this masquerade, to watch Veronica fool the gullible suspect, all the while knowing that the brilliant PI is hiding underneath the cheerleader getup. Veronica combines third wave resistance with a postfeminist emphasis on image as another tool in the feminist arsenal.

The feminine sneak manages to combine adventure and domesticity, masculinity and femininity. Veronica gets to be the daring, courageous sleuth (the masculine) because she is tiny blonde and dainty (the feminine). She can mock the Sorority Girl image at the same time that she is compelled by that inclusive, feminine realm. “Tasteful floral dresses?,” she reads off the rush invitation. “All my florals are trampy. Seriously, I don't have a thing with a flower that's not in the tube top or hot pant family” (3.2 “My Big Fat Greek Rush Week”). Veronica gains entrance to the sorority house by manipulating her blonde, beautiful, idealized body for the sake of “truth.”

Veronica plays with her ability to be the object, to attract and use the gaze for her own profit. Within the text of the show, posing as different personalities allows Veronica to gain information. Kristen Bell, the actress that plays Veronica, also makes a personal profit for her image, such as the lingerie shoot for Maxim. The contradictory combination of “female agency” and sex appeal is made into a profitable commodity, acknowledging the male voyeur/viewer. This is the double talk of postfeminism, where the male gaze is attracted and manipulated at the same time. But Veronica Mars consciously addresses a female audience and caters to their taste, which is reflected in Veronica’s clothing and appearance. After all, most female fans would acknowledge that “Buffy’s hair is part of the point…Buffy offers female bodies as spectacle, but their primacy and activity means that they are not simply passive objects” (Jowett 23) The play with image is as enticing as the play with power- image is power. The body can be an active tool, which is why the threat of rape is so potent. Rape forces passivity, it takes away agency, it nullifies the power of women to use their own bodies to evoke the kind of desire they want.

Veronica’s voice over frames a female and heterosexual point of view, allowing the female fan to identify with Veronica’s desire and denaturalize the male gaze as the viewer comes to see through Veronica’s eyes. Veronica is at liberty to desire a male body. In one episode, Veronica travels to a film set to interview a suspect who also happens to be an action star. Upon seeing him without his shirt, she drools, “I don't know if Connor's smile cost a million, but his six-pack abs are worth at least double that. Damn. I repeat, damn” (1.10, “An Echolls Family Christmas”). Veronica is aligned with the camera’s point of view. Her financial evaluation and admiring gaze are a shameless appreciation of assertive desire. The female fans are certainly not shy about what they want either. The websites are full of LoVe (Logan plus Veronica) supporters. Veronica Mars reflected their desire by banishing Duncan, Logan’s competition, to Mexico.

But Veronica lacks one obvious heroic ability: she cannot kick any ass. Cristina Stasia divides the hero into two categories: the private and the public. The private action hero, the crime noir investigator, takes on a subterranean role to gather knowledge and images- the watching eye, the huge camera, the ability to capture images from a distance.

Only when the body is threatened is direct involvement justified. The private hero responds to personal attacks from the outside world: “the private female action hero is a victim-hero. She is spurred into action because of personal harm and thus acts defensively” (Stasia 179). Borrowing from the 1970s rape-revenge plot, private action heroes act because violence has invaded their world and they have no choice- an inherent vulnerability demands a move for protection. This can be seen in Veronica’s remarkable anti-Buffy need for rescue. At the climax of every plot point, once her investigation has finally revealed the villain, Veronica becomes a cowering little girl in need of rescue. Her father jumps through fire to rescue her from Aaron Echols; Logan holds her in his arms as Cassidy first aims to kill and then commits suicide. The private female hero doesn’t attack. She searches for balance: her quest is to expose the truth, not to blame anyone. To protect her vulnerable body, Veronica must investigate, capture images, and re-pattern memories to include the “truth.”

Veronica's status as a victim constantly changes as her body, “the body of the investigator," becomes "not just the site of conflict and controversy but the topos where the narrative plays out” (Mizejewski 15). Veronica has to fight various bad guys because their public influence invades her private spheres. This "invasion" occurs on the most elemental level: the threat of rape. In the first season, Veronica is drugged and wakes up without her underwear. After a long investigation her, first love, Duncan, reveals that they had sex that night but it was consensual. In the second season, Veronica contracts syphilis and realizes that she was raped that fateful night. Her attacker was Cassidy, a troubled youth who had been molested as a child and commits suicide after holding Veronica hostage on the roof.

Veronica Mars privileges the individual private investigator over the public community and distances Veronica’s mission from a feminist agenda. The generic structure for a crime fiction requires an isolated hero learning to look through magnified eyes and see what others ignore. The “chosen one” complex prioritizes individual action over community, the organized base of feminist activism: “the emergence of a postfeminist culture has both depended on and contributed to the privatized, individualized frame of reference that has played a part in dismantling our sense of a shared academic/activist feminist community” (Tasker and Negra 3). Veronica Mars contrasts the effective postfeminist individual against the outdated, academic, and activist feminist community to solve a crime of female subjecthood: the status of the rape victim. But Veronica Mars doesn’t simply pick a side. Instead it tangles itself in a history of feminism in an attempt to work out Veronica’s place in the world.

In the third season, Veronica's individual investigation of the rapes is more accurate and effective than the feminists. Despite the feminist’s activist protests and marches, they continue to accuse (the frat boys) and defend (the girl who cried rape) the wrong people. Lilith House aims their criticism at the Dean's office, demanding the removal of the frats and threatening a law suit. Veronica is opposed to their methods and wishes only to find the truth. Thus, “self-defense does nothing to affect the institutional structures that maintain violence against women. As such, the private female action hero advocates individual battles instead of public action, self-defense instead of political agitation” (Stasia 181). Veronica helps her friends and family by working around the corrupt institutional systems rather than attempting any reform. Although she urges her father to run for sheriff, Keith refuses to fight dirty. The Mars sense of honor keeps them out of institutional power. The PI code details a distance, a surveillance, rather than participation. A million times Veronica responds by gathering leverage and power over the other person, settling through private means (the lecherous male teacher(s) are simply fired, not prosecuted).

The Lilith House attachment to feminism obscures their ability to see the truth. In fact, they go as far as faking rapes so that they can sue the school. This "fake" implies that women/feminists are not the victims they claim to be and that their political stance is inauthentic. The “fake rape” story line involves Veronica Mars in controversial debate about rape and feminism. In the book The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism, Katie Roiphe “used the rape debate to posit a critique of feminism that she claimed celebrated women as victims” (Ullman 30). Roiphe argued that “campus feminists produce endless images of women as victims- women offended by a professor’s dirty joke, women pressured into sex by peers, women trying to say no but not managing to get it across” (quoted in Ullman 30). By faking rape, the Hearst feminists produce an image of women as deceptive victims, a dangerous metaphor linked to the old traitor Eve.

Veronica Mars contains within it the double consciousness that women are both victims and heroes at the same time. They can save others but there is always still someone else who needs saving Veronica’s personal vendetta is to solve the continuing sex crimes against women as a targeted group. By linking community, body and identity, Veronica Mars participates in a complicated “subgenre of popular feminism, the abuse survival narrative” which reflects the “four key tenets of liberal second wave feminism: (1) recognition of women as an oppressed group; (2) commitment to social and political change; (3) emphasis on sexual/body politics; and (4) a woman centered perspective” (Badley 66). Veronica Mars picks and chooses tools from among different feminisms. The show recognizes women as an oppressed group and emphasizes sexual/body politics, but contains a problematic female perspective and skims around commitment to social and political change. The campus rapes have to be solved through “grrrl” femininity, not political marching, activism, or capital F feminism. They are about looking, about bodies, about identity. The rapist attacks the female image as well: he shaves off his victim’s hair, fetishizing their femininity.

Veronica is compelled to protect the innocence of other girls, like herself, who face the ultimate abuse of femininity. She is called in to protect and serve: “romantic ruin evokes nostalgia for a past order and it whips up the tidying impulse. A girl sleuth is a kind of gardener for tragic victims” (Mason 80). Veronica both attempts to untangle and experiences “romantic ruin” herself. The rapist at Hearst leaves a whole slew of “tragic victims” in his wake and threatens to reduce Veronica to a victim yet again. However, the feminists on campus refuse to take on this status. In their opposition to victimhood, the feminist groups is loud and aggressive, and the sin of sins to Veronica, untruthful. The “fake” rape violates all detective codes- and it also creates a mess.

In the last episode of the fall season, “Spit and Eggs” (3.9), the rapist is finally revealed. Veronica hides in a room until the rapist, Mercer, arrives. Veronica attacks him with a plastic unicorn, plunging it into his thigh. This classic symbol of girlhood, the feminine fantasy, becomes a puncturing weapon reenacting the act of rape. However, in the end Veronica needs to be rescued. The long sequence of VM her running through dark alleys brings to mind the much repeated Joss Whedon quote where he describes his vision for Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “I would love to see a movie in which a blond wanders into a dark alley, takes care of herself and deploys her powers” (Jowett, 20). Veronica is somewhere between that stupid blonde (she did decide to corner a violent serial rapist by herself without telling anyone) and ass kicking Buffy. Buffy’s female fans enjoy the pleasurable spectacle of the little blonde girl “kicking ass” and dissolving evil with the plunge of the wooden stake (which Veronica mimics with the unicorn horn). Veronica’s power is not as clear: the show plays with the tension of her status as a hero or a victim, never quite coming down on one side or the other. This confusion is reflexively acknowledged when Fern, a member of the Lilith House group, asks: “What do you want, Buffy...Tiffany...whatever your name is?” (3.8, “Lord of the Pi’s”). A feminist representative questions Veronica’s identity as a hero (Buffy) or a victim (Tiffany, a typical “fluff” name). The ambiguous horror scene reinstates the blond girl running in horror motif that Buffy reacted against but also focuses on a “real” threat to girls (i.e. rape instead of the undead vampire, although it could be argued that sex/rape was always the underlying source of fear on Buffy) and proposes a real solution- an activation of the female network of other victims, a sort of sisterhood/agency as a last, desperate resort when male guardianship fails.

Veronica is the smart blonde who followed the clues to find the correct villain, but once she’s found him, she is not equipped to deal with the physicality of male violence. Such a confrontation has to be delayed and experienced vicariously through Veronica’s aggressive male counterpart, Logan. The police failed to respond to Veronica’s bomb alert from the dorm, her attempt to get the police to come and rescue her. So Logan takes a baseball bat, a big phallic symbol, and hits another symbol of masculinity: the police car. Through this violence, Logan works out the masculine inability to “rescue” the victimized women, who had to rescue each other. Logan deliberately puts himself in jail so that he can attack Mercer and Moe. His vigilante solution exposes the crisis of masculinity when the men in charge are the ones committing crimes. In the CW chat room, Danny 73 writes: “I've always loved Logan, but now I love him even more. Sweet! Come hell or high water, he'll find some way of taking care of Veronica. Now that's definitely what I'd call love. I want my own Logan! LOL.” This quote reveals a female viewer’s desire for an onscreen character but it also points to a troubling desire for a more traditional gender relationship between LoVe. Bugaboo 2 echoes the same uneasiness with Veronica’s domination of the narrative and her insistence on independence: “Tonight Logan made everyone understand why we love him so fraking much! He was amazing at the end! What a hero. Gosh he loves Veronica. NO matter what she thinks he is always there for her.” Even the fans are unsure whether Veronica should be the victim or the hero.

After running through the alley, Veronica makes it to Wallace’s dorm only to be invited into the accomplice’s room- Moe, the Resident Assistant who offers women soothing mugs of drug-laced tea. Once drugged, Veronica desperately tries to get help but no one answers her calls. As a last resort, she blows a rape whistle. The Lilith House group gave them out earlier in the day and although Veronica scorned their usefulness, she tucked one into her pocket. Parker, the girl who Veronica failed to rescue while she was being raped, is the one who hears the whistle and screams a warning. With the whistle, Veronica activates the victim network that she was so disdainful of, admitting her need for the female community. Mercer talks his way out of trouble but Parker’s scream (her voice, her primal shout, her agency) keeps him from victimizing Veronica.

In this scenario, the essence of feminism is recuperated as a valuable community of women offering support to each other. Veronica was still a victim in need of rescue, but this time a fellow victim came to her side. In the end, women discovered and defeated the men trying to make them vulnerable. The stories of girlhood focus on the struggle to interpret gendered body through genres focused on discovering “truth” and fighting “evil.” In Veronica Mars, the gendered body articulates the complications of postfeminism for the postmodern girl. In the dark world of film noir, where the battle between the sexes leaves a path of victims, gender equality is once again in danger. Veronica’s gonna have to save the day.

A lot of my old posts

Prime time soap - edithistorydelete
Created on Wednesday, 02/14/2007 8:58 PM by Willa Kramer
Updated on Thursday, 02/15/2007 7:19 PM by Willa Kramer

In "Soap Opera Survival Tactics" Seiter and Wilson explore the way soaps are perceived and incorporated by viewers and networks. They talk about how soap opera tactics have been used by other television genres such as reality and prime time. In class we came to the conclusion that a more useful way to think about this was through melodrama. Soap are an explicit and transparent form of melodrama- other genres mask/restrain melodrama through claims to “quality,” differing production values, auteur claims, or prime time association. Melodrama- or drama, “ the hour long episodic series, organized around a set of recurring characters who interact with one another and with occasional new characters in a recognizable, bounded social setting” (Anderson 78) - is inherent to the established patterns of network television, but there are levels of excess and restraint. Soap opera is often dismissed and associated with “trash” or low quality viewing because of its excess. One of its survival tactics is to acknowledge such excess in camp parodies like Passions.

The prime time teen soap is another survival tactic. Despite its young male protagonists, The OC is centered on emotional relationships and moral legibility- basic characteristics of melodrama. So, is VM a prime time soap? Well, it’s a melodrama drawing on the generic formats of crime noir and soap opera. It’s the juxtaposition of the two that makes the show interesting- the intense prolonged emotional conflicts interwoven with CSI like crime solving. And both VM and OC are self reflexive about the worlds they have created- their excesses are remarked upon and acknowledged through inside comments that reward faithful viewers (time for an OC moment- Seth walking into the pool house in a white wife beater trying his best to brood like Ryan). Its all about hybridism and convergence- a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I remember seeing some magazine in the grocery store with a Grisom (CSI Las Vegas) on the cover and the title was “Grisom and Sarah grow closer” or something like that. And I couldn’t help thinking, that was the exact same tension of the first season…and they are still working it for all its worth.

Comments (2)

I have no doubt that The OC will come back to haunt everyone on SoapNet. If Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place have already made it to the cable network, then it seems the natural way to go to attract younger audiences.

Thursday, 02/15/2007 12:14 AM by Brandeise Monk-Payton

As long as somewhere along the line The Hills dies. no one should ever know it existed

Thursday, 02/15/2007 7:18 PM by Willa Kramer

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now I have a screen name - edithistorydelete
Created on Tuesday, 02/13/2007 1:22 AM by Willa Kramer
Updated on Tuesday, 02/13/2007 1:23 AM by Willa Kramer

which I am too embarrassed to share in public. Yeah so I took the final leap and created a CW account. I made my first post on the VM chat page on the topic "100 reasons why the CW should renew Veronica Mars." I stepped over the line into active fandom. I also signed the petition-

To: To The CW Executives and Producers

This petition relates to the great show "Veronica Mars" and it's known-to-be progressive future. "Veronica Mars" is a cult-hit that only gets good ratings and reviews, and a show whose audience is increasing with each episode. We, The Undersigned, would like to see "Veronica Mars" with a full 22-episode season and more seasons to follow, for that matter. CW Execs, I hope these signatures show the undying and proactive love many people have for "Veronica Mars"!

If you have any love for VM at all, you should sign too (wow that was a quick move from first time fan to VM pimp. also notice that its around 1 am).
http://www.petitiononline.com/vm4fulls/

This was an interesting comment: "Please don't cancel this.It's one of the most intelligent shows right now...I just wish it was marketed like LOST or Desperate Housewives." But isnt part of being a cult show fan that knowledge that only a select group know about it? The fans also talk about making an alliance with another show to boost ratings. One suggests Gilmore Girls or Supernatural but they seem to popular- they need a show that also needs better ratings.

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It is inherently contradictory, but I find that with any type of media where people want something to do well but also not to lose its cult exclusive following. I guess as long as VM isn't mainstreamed content-wise but advertised appropriately like a more widely popular show, this is seen as legitimate. I remember back when Angel was still up in the air about whether it would continue for another season, diehard fans made www.saveangel.org. It was this huge group of people that basically lobbied the network in a really grassroots activist manner and it gained a lot of attention. Too bad it didn't work.

Tuesday, 02/13/2007 12:12 PM by Brandeise Monk-Payton

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Greys and Girls - edithistorydelete
Created on Sunday, 02/11/2007 10:15 PM by Willa Kramer

I work in the game room on Thursday nights. Usually its pretty calm, not a lot of people. But last thursday, about 15 people came to watch Grey's Anatomy. They had been kicked out of Parrish parlours by two guys who wanted to watch a hockey game. Think about this- 15 (mostly girls) against 2, and the 2 guys won- because for some strange reason sports events trump all regularly scheduled programs or girls wont argue about television space with dedicated guys. Melodrama apparently didn't rate on their scale. So this huge group of people came to the grame room and we all watched Grey's together. And when Meredith fell over the dock and into the water, there were fifteen simulatenous gasps of disbeleif at the hutspa of the show to never cease its over dramatic machinations (plus I think some of us hoped Meredith would be okay).But about gender, genre and space...

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Thoughts on the Beeb - edithistorydelete
Created on Thursday, 02/08/2007 2:54 PM by Willa Kramer
Updated on Sunday, 02/11/2007 10:04 PM by Willa Kramer

Yay the BBC. So I started thinking about my experience working there and how the infrastructure of the television industry works with flow. During the Spring of 2006, the BBC had two hit shows- Dr. Who and the Catherine Tate Show.

First, watch this hilarious clip of "Bovvered" skit. Catherine Tate is the new Tracy Ullman. She does a skit show all about British culture. So this one is about school age kids who use elaborate slang language.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZyF-DsVCJOE

Dr. Who is also very culturally specific. Much of it takes place in London and involves revisiting the UK's past and imagining its future (ie spaceships hiding in Big Ben's clocktower). FYI, David Tennant is an awesome Dr. Who. Christopher Eccleston was okay, but I enjoy him more on Heroes as the crazy invisible man. Talk about transcontinental flow. The show also starts Billie Piper, a former British one hit wonder pop singer turned actress, which seems to me like a smart marketing move in a culture that loves their D-celebrities and makes Big Brother the number one show in the nation (the US market could definitely take this hint and kick up US Big Bro). Dr. Who also has a historical generic flow- the 1960s show was very successful and also generated a large fan base that can still be tapped into today.

The BBC constantly has big conferences and lectures on how to improve its services. One time they had a huge lecture series on how to make more BBC shows like Dr. WHo and Catherine Tate, both of which pull in large, dedicated, and multigenerational audiences. You could either 1) go to the live lecture at one of the BBC buildings 2) watch the live broadcast of the lectures on TVs in the BBC office or 3) stream the lectures online. So even within the BBC there was a convergence of information about television, and a flow of information that staff were supposed to absorb throughout the day one way or another.

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Flow - edithistorydelete
Created on Sunday, 02/04/2007 1:45 PM by Willa Kramer

Raymond Williams proposes the metaphor of “flow” to describe television as a sequence or set of images: “the replacement of a programme series of timed sequential units by a flow of differently related units in which the timing, though real, is undeclared, and in which the real internal organization is something other than the declared organization” (235). Television is organized around these flowing sequences that seek to balance commercialism and entertainment, to somehow maintain the viewer even between the interruptions and breaks of advertising and competition. There are two aspects of flow I want to explore: generic flow, or “content,” and convergence flow, or “form.” Although I’m already channeling McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” and expect to trace some of the connections.

What interests me is thinking about how flow is maintained once a viewer migrates to the internet. Because I don’t have access to a television during Veronica Mars (VM) I always watch the newest episode online. To do this I have to navigate the CW website, which directs me through a sequence of pages to the full episodes, where I can pick from a range of CW shows. Before I do that, Tyra Banks pops up and dances around, telling me “Welcome to the jungle, ladies.” Which has interesting connotations- does the WB assume everyone is a female fan? Is television a jungle? CW has seven select shows that offer their latest episodes. I don’t know what you do if your show isn’t one of those select. It also offers director’s cuts, sneak peaks, interviews, tests/quizzes and chat lounges- basically anything to keep you on the website once you have come. So I pick VM and start watching- and magically, there are no commercials and no blaring CW ads! It’s a miracle. I guess the website is banking on fans being sucked into the flow of the internet offerings just like a TV watcher would have a hard time turning the tube off. Okay, so maybe I did check out the director’s cut of VM, and maybe I did end up watching Beauty and the Geek. But oh well. I’m a sucker for flow.

My experience with flow supports Uricchio’s revised definition of flow “as a means of sketching out a series of fundamental shifts in the interface between viewer and television” (165). Uricchio’s concept of flow includes the idea of mediation by metadata programmers and filtering technology (search engines and adaptive interfaces). The internet as a filtering technology presents the viewer with a map of prescribed options meant to direct the user to other aspects of the website and to encourage an active (and controlled) fandom.

Now, on to genre. VM is situated in a historical progression of what I like to call “blonde chick saves the world.” You can trace it back to snotty Nancy Drew, who solved mysteries without messing up her hair, to Buffy, who kicked ass (in both film and television), and past VM to Claire from Heroes who inspired the “save the cheerleader save the world” catch phrase. So “blonde chick saves the world” has migrated through print, film and television. In a sense it has become a image-genre, a compelling iconic symbol that is filtered through various delivery systems, similar to how we positioned race as a genre/content in class on Thursday.

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Big Broadcasting - edithistorydelete
Created on Tuesday, 01/30/2007 1:15 PM by Willa Kramer

Gripsrud’s article in TATV was quite interesting. I did notice that he fell into the “black box fallacy” outlined by Jenkins. Despite Gripsrud’s belief that one day he would sit in awe before the box that does it all (anyone seen Batman Forever, ie the Riddler’s brain sucking TV?) both scholars share an interest in social/political “protocols”- perhaps software over hardware. Convergence is more about the viewer/consumer/producer relationship and the ways people access and interact with all forms of media.

Anyway, Gripsrud goes on to de-bug the “end of all media” argument that basically says convergence and digitalization will destroy the broadcast power centers, the consumer will get more power, and anarchy and chaos will reign forever and ever. I agree with his assessment that broadcast networks have a social role to connect and organize communities- and that hundredsof other channels cannot wean people away from the main staples they are used to. He sites three reasons why the big broadcasting networks shouldn’t panic: television has “simultaneity, liveness and ritualization of everyday life” (p 216). For an example, he talks about how the BBC (the beeb) moved Dr. Who to another night and was not well received. After living in London for the semester and working the BBC, I like to talk about them a lot, so bear with me. The new Dr. Who was just starting its second season when I was there. It was on a weekend afternoon and you HAD to watch it. It was just a cultural imperative. I think in part this was due to the Brits loyalty to BBC. They want their big channel to succeed but they also want quality programming that is up to date and not antiquated, so when the BBC offers them something good they are eager to snap it up. Dr. Who was a live event watched simultaneously by a large population in a ritual of Britishness going back decades that would also affect the rhythm of life the next day at the office.

The water cooler effect is not to be underestimated. In some ways I think that is the defining genius of Lost. Lost wooed viewers back to network television because it was high quality and it was completely baffling (questions about plot created even more fan involvement). It generated a fan subculture that didn’t have to be a subculture- because everyone could and did watch the show. New broadcast channels are also vitally important to keeping said broadcast networks in power. FOX did its part to woo the elusive young male viewer- as Family Guy and 24 attest. And when UPN and the WB merged to form the CW, they made a broadcast network out of niche interests such as teen drama. I know Veronica Mars fans were in a flurry of activity to guarantee that the show got picked up in one of the few slots the CW was offering. As long as minority/niche programming is included in some way in the broadcast networks, cable channels become less necessary and vital. Gripsrud’s article does suffer from his rather shallow analysis of American media trends. I think pay-for-channels such as HBO and to a lesser extent Showtime have also emerged as a must for many viewers. The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under and The L-Word all have reputations for being quality and boundary pushing television luring broadcast viewers away from the pitiful comedy line up on Thursday nights.

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Me & Media - edithistorydelete
Created on Monday, 01/29/2007 8:49 AM by Willa Kramer

I am a dedicated and distracted media consumer. By that I mean I go through large amounts of media- from television, movies, music, websites, magazines, blogs, radio, etc- every week but my interaction with most of it is on a cursory, browsing and distracted level. For instance, while I am writing this I am also watching American Idol and simultaneously enjoying it and feeling disgusted at its lack of sophistication. Why are Simon’s bored insults still entertaining? I think it must be the appeal of the American dream that one’s inflated sense of potential stardom will be reinforced- and for all those whose dreams have been crushed, it is satisfying to watch Simon crush others.

On the other hand there are a handful of television shows that I watch with the dedicated enthusiasm of a true fantastic and examine through a lens of television theory. Right now Lost and Veronica Mars top the list. You can’t distract me while I watch these shows- you can’t even talk. And I cannot start watching in the middle of the episode or stand to hear any spoilers. Can I just say that Veronica Mars is perhaps the best television show EVER. It has all these little references that are aimed at the academic circles and tv buffs and rewards the fans on a regular basis. And Veronica kicks some serious booty. I’m still riding high from the paper I wrote last semester on VM’s complicated interaction with ideas of feminism and the representation of femininity. Lost is just crazy. Every time I watch I wonder if the writers know what they are doing, if they can possibly contain and control their spiraling tale. But I don’t know how many more times I can watch tears well up in Matthew Fox’s eyes.

My sources of media are my television and my computer. Yes, I have a physical television and yes I watch it, although not a great deal. But I like to turn it on for background noise or a momentary distraction. My computer is by the far the greatest source of media. Especially now that the major networks are putting episodes up on their sites for afterwards, you don’t have to be chained to a certain date and time. But for some shows like Lost, I prefer a large screen and other people to digest the show afterwards. Part of being a film and media major is both defending your choice as academic and enjoying the excuse to watch a lot of TV. But television especially- because of its proliferation, the serial nature, the instant appeal, the domestic placement- reflects so many problems and issues of American society. What is at stake in the dominating and successful narratives? Why is Heroes so appealing in a time of war? How has Grey’s Anatomy revitalized the hospital/soap genre? It’s like linking into the image/consciousness of society- the images that are selling.