Sugarshock, by Joss Whedon & Fabio Moon

Dandelion

Is the answer if you have found yourself wondering what Joss Whedon (aka Monsieur Creative Genius Extraordinaire) has been up to since cutting off from the intriguing but possibly doomed Wonder Woman project. This latest work of pure Jossiness has been spotted on our Whedar and does not fail to please for all its randomness and the lovable Dandelion.

This new post-fem rocker girl heads a thrash band named Sugarshock (also the comics' title), loves her mates, is slightly delusional, and festers some mysterious childhood angst against Vikings. And she saves planet Earth while signing with an interstellar music label.

It might be fair to say that this is the coolest thing since, well, the last thing Joss did.

"One, two, three, four...!"


Free Sugarshock comics from Dark Horse @ MySpace:
Part one
Part two
Part three

Serenity Tops 'Best Sci-Fi' List

It comes as no real surprise (to me) that Joss Whedon's Serenity ousts Star Wars for the 'Best of Sci-Fi' as listed by SFX Magazine. In fact, I’m going to be pretentious enough to briefly tell you why I think the folks at SFX got it right.

Both films present a technologically varied universe that remains politically and socially stratified by oppressive governments (cynicism is an essential Sci-Fi trope). These films also apply many of the standard conventions of the Science Fiction genre as well as obvious characteristics from the Western.

Star Wars: A New Hope idealizes the ‘American Dream’ as the rural everyman aspires to something bigger and better – heroic adventure, romanticism, stickin’ it to The Man, and (aside from ignorant incestuousness) getting the Girl. This is cool. This is fun. This is Greek Tragedy minus the Tragedy. This is opera. It appeals to our ‘everyday’ commonalities and fulfills our most ridiculous fantasies (swinging across a treacherous chasm in the arms of a lovely maiden? Oh yeah). It doesn’t insult us (except, sometimes, for the Girl – which is nothing new, so apparently it’s OK).

Serenity, on the other hand, challenges, alienates, disillusions, blames, and questions. There are evil monsters out there but we made them. They are us. Reflections of who we are and can become. Not bent on being set in an escapist ‘galaxy far, far away’, Serenity adds it’s bleak slant on realism by referring to ‘Earth that was’, suggesting humanity’s responsibility for the past tense title. The crux of science fiction has always been the controversy of humankind’s ability to negotiate the morals of natural law – a contest that we nearly always fail. Whedon’s film confronts this in true Sci-fi fashion by making it political as we discover that the government (who effectively suppressed the rebellion) is decidedly monstrous. And the Girl? River's single-handed slaughter of a room full of Reavers firmly splatters mysogeny with such post-fem swank that it makes Mal's bloody eye seem like a limp-wristed plea for sympathy. (although the eye thing was pretty cool, wasn't it?)

In a political climate where the critical teeth of Sci-fi should find the biggest appetite, we can applaud films that challenge, stir, and reflect. This is what the great science fiction writers (Wells, Verne, Bradbury, Dick, Huxley, Orwell, et al.) have all done. And, as dreary and low as our world often gets, we can rest assured that Serenity rises to the top.


Top List from SFX Magazine.

More on Serenity [Link]

Tagged under:
Film

Buffy Season 8... er, Comics

There is much to be disappointed about in the world (especially with regards to arts & entertainment), like the fact that Joss Whedon is no longer writing and directing the big screen adaptation of Wonder Woman. However, there is still reason to have hope. A comic version of what is being referred to as, Buffy Season 8 is to be released next month. This is good news. What is even better? The Reviews: "It's Great."

[Link]



Tagged under:
Buffy, News, Comics

Slayage Conference Report - pt. II

What people consider sin, I consider human characterstics - Joss Whedon

[In Serenity] a world without sin is a world of death - Rhonda Wilcox

Another great panel that I attended was by the convenor of the conference, Rhonda Wilcox. The title of her paper was, '"I Do Not Hold to That": Joss Whedon and Original Sin' and I'll briefly outline some of the points she made.

In Serenity, the character of River and the Operative are basically weapons (of mass destruction, as others have noted) and are both products of the Alliance's manipulation. The connection between the Operative/River and the Alliance's meddling is first illustrated in the opening flahsback-within-recording where the frame is paused while showing Simon rescuing his sister River from the Alliance. While focusing on the frozen picture of River and the Operative passes through the holographic image, his face replaces hers.



Wilcox made the point of how the film suggests that knowledge and consciousness can be seen as forms of original sin. The Operative asks each of his victims, 'Do you know what your sin is?', and according to his philosophy, the punishment for sin is death. This suggests an encouragement of choice and agency (which he himself hasn't even been allowed), but is undercut by how he physically disables them so that they make the sacrifice/restitution by falling to their death on a sword (his, not their own). It is also worth noting that the name of the Captain of the starship Serenity is Malcom ('Mal') Reynolds, and that the word 'mal' in Spanish means sin, bad, hurt, injury.

The Operative: Do you know what your sin is?

Capt. Malcom Reynolds: Aw, Hell, I'm a fan of all seven... but right now, I'm gonna have to go with Wrath.

The scene where River first goes berserk after viewing the video screen has allusions to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, and 'Rosebud'. The close-up shot of River whispering 'Miranda' and the lips of Charles Foster Kane uttering 'Rosebud' both suggest a loss of innocence and downward spiral toward destruction - as is certainly seen when the Serenity crew discover the nature and origins of Miranda and associations with the Reavers. These two terms are also used as the focus of a mystery that drives the plot and challenges the viewer to decipher. The manipulation of the people on Miranda by the Alliance also suggests that compelling people toward Paradise only results in apathy and loss of humanity. By deconstructing Paradise, ala John Milton, Whedon's film is resistant to the notion of an 'ideal' society, favoring instead one that is governed by choice, but includes the inevitable flaws and mistakes resulting from personal agency. From this perspective it also seems to oppose the colonial visions of manifest destiny that is so often supported in science fiction.


**Note: This is an extremely truncated account of Wilcox's excellent talk. I'll keep my eyes out for an online version of it to link to in the future.

[Link to an abstract of Rhonda Wilcox's talk]


Tagged under:
TV, Film, Entertainment

Slayage Conference Report - pt. I

Last weekend I attended the Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses at Gordon College in Barnesville, Georgia. I must say that it was an incredible experience for me, although I felt way out of my league presenting among such a prestigious scholarly crowd. The lectures focused on the works of writer, director, creator, Joss Whedon such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Serenity, as well as the comics The Astonishing X-Men and Fray. Since there were over 100 presentations and I attended probably around 25, there is loads to cover here. So, for the sake of time and attention span, I'll mainly cover the lectures that I really enjoyed and have a ton of notes from. Reductive much? Totally.

Day 1 opened with Dr. Michael Adams, a philologist and author of (among several others) Slayer Slang, presented 'The Matrix of Motives in Slayer Style.' He discussed the language in the Buffyverse and the use of 'clipped' versus 'full phrasal' idioms, such as 'wig' versus 'wig out'. He proposed that the determining factors for why a character would use one rather than the other were mainly dependent on familiarity and social distinction as opposed to just being jargony hipsters. He also suggested that this use of dialog could also be seen as a form of socio-linguistic competition as shown clearly in the scene where Faith is prodding Buffy about her past with Angel,

Buffy: What do you know about Angel?
Faith: (faces her, copping an attitude) Just what your friends tell me: big love, big loss. You oughta deal and move on, but you're not.
Buffy: (steps closer) I got an idea: how about from now on, we don't hear from you on Angel or anything else in my life. Which, by the way, is my life.
Faith: What are you getting so strung out for, B?

Faith challenges Buffy by using the clipped phrase, 'you oughta deal' (rather than a full phrasal line like 'you oughta deal with it'), which raises Buffy's hackles since they are not on familiar terms with this subject and Faith is getting pushy. Buffy then starts to get in her face about it and Faith feigns submission by backing off a bit and then calling her 'B' rather than Buffy.



Another point that Adams touched on was the fact that theory is basically a shortened or condensed form of the artistic knowledge and information. Theory becomes problematic and redundant when it approaches the extent of the art in that it is no longer shorter than the piece it is explaining. (It's like reading a synopsis that is longer than the actual piece allegedly being summarized) He also argued that 'Good Art' tends to resist theory because to theorize it properly, you would tend to exceed the length of the source.
And Buffy the Vampire Slayer is like this of course.

More to come!

[Link to Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk's blog post on this presentation]



Tagged under:
Buffy, Criticism, Television

SC2: The Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses

My contributions to Boast may take on a Buffy-esque theme for the next while as I will be presenting a paper at SC2: The Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses at Gordon College, Barnesville Georgia this week. The title of my paper is, "Do I Have Mom Hair?": Progressive Parenting in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I will be discussing how Buffy Summers represents a successful figure of parenting that borrows from an expansive tradition of maternal and paternal roles to ultimately embody a hybridized version of parenting. It may sound a bit intense, but let me reassure you, it's not. Just a bunch of academics getting together to talk about the cool stuff Joss Whedon creates.

I'll try and post summaries from the lectures I attend.

[Note: It's an academic conference, not a fan club gathering. So there won't be any special appearances by James Marsters, and no one will be dressing up like the straight-jacket monkeys from 'Hush'... although I wanted to]




Link to the Slayage web site


Tagged under:
Television, Entertainment, Pop Culture