She actually slays vampires...

I wanted to dedicate a blog post to the illustrious vampire slayer Buffy Summers. Before I started to watch Buffy obsessively, I was talking to a friend about it. I told her that the couple of episodes were really good, so it might be a show to watch. She then informed me that every fan of BtVS she's ever encountered has been a fanatic. I just laughed and said the only show I'll ever be obsessed with is Friends. Oh how wrong was I.

In my communications class (which I'm sure I talk about constantly in my blogs) I've chosen the show as the topic for my literature review. Basically what a literature review is is a summary of all the research done on your topic. Since I was urged by my teacher to choose a topic I wouldn't easily get bored of, I went with my favorite television show.

Instead of getting into all the gory details of the literature review, I want to talk about why I chose Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I would like to say I'm an expert on the show, but I think other than just an avid watcher I'm as average as the next fan when it comes to the technical aspects of Buffy. Researching this will be fun because while I know about every drama aspect of the show, I will become informed on the small little quirks that are very important to the story line. Like why they dress her in the girliest clothes possible to go a-slaying and the way that they talk (very funny quips and sarcastic remarks) and how they show has affected the real world we live in.

I fell in love with the show after I saw the fifth season premiere, "Buffy Vs. Dracula." The character Xander is enthralled by Dracula and has become his slave and in this "trance" comes the funniest lines of the episode. The gang is brainstorming ways to defeat Dracula when Xander shouts from his corner, "No one can defeat the dark master!!! ....bater." They didn't know he was Dracula's bitch so he covered it up with one funny form of the word masturbation.

So based on my love for watching this television show I want to research the parts that make it so great. Maybe my whole senior thesis won't be as boring and tedious as I thought. Buffy expert in the making.

Hey Jude

I just watched Across the Universe. Yes, I felt like a complete poser for watching it. I was one of those people who was like, it's an indie film, therefore I will be cool when I watch it.

It turned out to be amazing. But it also made me so angry that I cannot sing. I.wish.I.could.sing. And I also want to fall in love with a guy who can sing. But that is a different story for a different blog.

So in my Communications class we've talked about social construction. Socially constructing your world whether you want to or not (an interesting way to think about it). I really love the idea of social construction, that you can make your world the way you want it to be. In my house, our pets are people. They are part of our family because they talk to us (okay, it's actually just us talking for them) but I think that we have socially constructed the animals, our pets, to be a part of the family.

So with that example out of the way, in the movie itself, these people made their world theirs through their passion. Instead of taking the route that most do/have done and go to college, get a job, get married and settle down with the proverbial 2.5 kids, they made the world their own. But in a more literal sense with social construction is how the people MADE the movie. This world they created with the psychedelic colors and peace love sing a longs (I do understand it was a manifestation of all the drugs they were doing during the 60's) was such a magical place to step into. To float around while Jim Sturgess croons about how love is all you need, it was just the highlight of my night.

I find it hard to express my love for this movie in the form of Communications notes, but I think the characters in the movie constructed their world through, like I said before, their passion. Lucy (Rachel Evan Wood) decided that war was not an option for her, that she wasn't going to lose another person she loved to it, so she sought out someone to protest with. She participated in that peace movement against the Vietnam War, and they constructed it to be a way of life.

The movie was such a beautiful thing that it left me feeling like I was floating away on a cloud of mushrooms myself...not that I would know what that was like... :)

Good movies always make me happy. *Sigh*