Slayage5 Day One

The day started with an opening address by an elder of the Musqueam nation, welcoming us to their land, giving us a little info on the first people here. Then the admin of the law school welcomed us. He's a Buffy fan too, so that was cool.


Then  we got a terrific talk on puppets in Angel. Break Out the Champagne, Pinocchio: Angel and the Puppet Paradox. I really never noticed how very many references there are to puppets in Angel (and Buffy) aside from Smile Time and the Puppet Show. So many references to pulling someone's strings and being a real boy, etc. Cynthea Masson gave us a lot of information on puppet theory and how it relates to questions of the undead, inner demons, and souls, puppets and puppeteers and free will and much more. It was really great. I'm now seeing Smile Time in a whole new light, and it seems an extremely important thematic episode instead of/as well as just a fun romp.


To my mind, part of what she was saying is that since Angel as a puppet was able to take control of his own strings, that led to him no longer being Wolfram & Hart's puppet or the PTB, which led to the end of the season's attack on Black Thorn and signing away of the Shanshu. And there was much more to it that I'm not recalling right now. Will be looking for that paper.


The first session I went to after that was the panel on Law and Language. Erma Petrova analyzed Buffy's use of state of emergency justification of the suspending of the usual democratic processes in season 7 and how that was not validated as a good solution to the war with the First. (I'm Declaring an Emergency: Leadership and the State of Exception in BtVS.) Sharon Sutherland and Sarah Swan spoke on issues of law in the Whedonverse (Vampires, Reavers, and Lawyers: Joss Whedon's Lens on Law.) They spoke of doing more work on the presentation of legal questions and methodologies in non-law shows regarding morality vs. justice, the inadequacy of legal institutions, and the development of new systems of law. And they played clips from Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse.


Rhonda Wilcox, pretty much the reason I chose this panel, spoke on A Soliloquy by Any Other Name: Speech-Making in the Whedonverses. She highlighted a few of the memorable speeches given by characters in the four shows and also spoke of the history of the soliloquy/monologue, as well as its definition. That's another one where I'll need to read the paper to fully process everything she was saying, but it was really enjoyable. She asked people to speak to her about instances in other TV of affective speech-making, how common or rare it is, and of course she defined that, but I'll have to wait for the paper to remember the details.


Then was lunch. Went downstairs of the student union and got a sushi roll. Agonized with Natalie over what session to see next.


I finally chose Music in the Whedonverses over the Dollhouse panel. Sadness. But the musical info was great. Neil Lerner spoke on Spike's Musical Motif in Season Seven. He identified its starting point in Beneath You when he handed Buffy the flashlight and she flashed back to the attempted rape and he said he understood why she was skittish around him. He made a great point about Spike calling it a torch. Hold the torch, he told Buffy, when he had sung about holding a torch for her that was scorching him. Later in the episode as he talked about the spark he now had inside, the music gained fuller expression. Then of course, he died in fire from the amulet interacting with his soul, with the music again. Great word motif to go with the music. His question was whether it was a love theme since it only appeared when he was with Buffy. There was no consensus on that, but some good discussion.


Steven Halfyard then spoke about the theme song to Dollhouse and the significance of there being no lyrics. It was really interesting, and again I want the paper so I can understand the intricacies of the argument. Basically the lyrics are Caroline's and become Echo's but then also still signify Caroline. The loss of words at the end representing the loss of memory leading to childishness. So the fact the lyrics are excised from the theme song due to their being to specific about what the show is perhaps, means that Caroline is absent from the text too. Generally. Like I said, need to see the paper to understand it fuller, but looking forward to it.


The next panel I chose was The Grotesque Across the Whedonverse. Cynthia Burkhead and her students were presenting on fairy tales in Buffy, carnival masks in Firefly, and cute grotesque in Angel & Dollhouse. There was interesting stuff here, but my lack of sleep caught up with me at this point and I had trouble paying attention. Cute grotesque definition and discussion related to manga and kawaii, twee and moe, and other things Japanese, which was tied to Angel puppet and certain Echo Active costumes. Hush, Killed By Death and Gingerbread were analyzed for signs of the grotesque in their fairy tales, and the masks/personas that Mal puts on throughout Firefly were also discussed. The students pretty much just read their papers, which was fine but with my lack of sleep problem, really hard to stay on focus. I did hear about a show scheduled for 2013 called Happy Time Murders that would be a puppet noir kind of deal. A world of puppets and humans interacting. Will have to check that out.


Last panel of the day was brilliant. I got caffeinated just in time to hear Matthew Pateman speak on the importance of TV directors to the art of TV and the discipline of television studies and K. Dale Koontz on the similarities between Cowboy Bebop and Firefly, and the history of the space western and its ghettoization by some schools of science fiction. Very interesting, both of them. Almost asked a question or tried to participate in the discussion, but felt pretty sure I'd be nervous enough to sound like a trembling ninny, so didn't. Plus, plenty of discussion was had by all anyway. I was very sad Jes Battis was ill and couldn't be there. I really enjoy his work and was looking forward to hearing him talk about River.


I was also sad to miss the Comics panel. I really wanted to hear Elizabeth Rambo talk about Sugarshock!, but I guess I'll have to wait for the paper to appear somewhere. A day of tough decisions.


So I really need to watch Cowboy Bebop. Aside from seeing the theme here and hearing about the story, it also came up several times in Ready Player One as I was listening to the audiobook on the way here. Universe is definitely telling me to see it.


The evening ended with a banquet, presentation of Mr. Pointy awards, and a speech by Nancy Holder. Dinner was good, I met some more new people at my table, and the speech was interesting about the world of tie-in novel writers and what Joss meant to her in her career. But coffee had worn off and it was stuffy and hot in there, so started losing the gist again and just wanted the evening to be done. I left before the sing-along. So good day.