Meme day 10: Spoilers and steamboats
Content notes: The TV cut contains spoilers for the end of season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
[A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The WB/UPN, 1997-2003]
It seems very odd to me now that it took so long for me to watch and like Buffy. I guess that while it was first on the air, I thought it was kind of a silly idea for a show because I had seen the movie at a slumber party when I was maybe 11 or 12 and not liked it very much. (I did eventually see the movie again and liked it more the second time around.) I even remember that peloria would sometimes make fun of the show when we were in college and it was still on the air, probably because a person we didn't like very much was obsessed with it and would always try to talk us into watching it even though we weren't interested.
However, by the time I was a senior in college, the show had just ended and I had met ziabandito555 who was even more enthusiastic about Buffy than my previous acquaintance had been. He begged and pleaded for me to take his DVDs and just give them a try, and since I was at the height of my college slackitude, I finally relented in return for him taking Trigun from me (which I don't know if he ever actually even watched, oh well). I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and I soon drew peloria and tankmancr in to watch it along with me. None of us had seen the show before, and we were pretty much completely unspoiled for all of the plot twists that were already old hat to the people who had seen it in its first run, so a lot of the fun was being absolutely floored by unexpected developments (like Angel turning evil and Buffy needing to kill him) that we never saw coming. I also appreciated the fact that there were multiple awesome female characters in the show, who got to be awesome in all sorts of different awesome ways - no "token chick" on this show. When I think of my senior year of college, marathoning Buffy (and Angel) until all hours of the night because we absolutely had to find out what happened next is one of the first things that comes to mind. It was the perfect diversion and shared experience for that time in my life.
Lately it seems to have become a fairly common thing in fandom to dislike Joss Whedon and consider him to be a bad showrunner, a bad feminist, and so forth. I don't fall into that camp, though I certainly do recognize the shortcomings of his various works. Instead, I will always appreciate Buffy for what it was - a remarkably immersive piece of entertainment with awesome characters and plots that kept me laughing, guessing, and on the edge of my seat during a time in my life when I really needed something like that. I'll also always remember it as something fun and memorable that I was able to share with two people who mean a lot to me. I'm glad I gave it a chance.
[Favorite classic movie: The African Queen, dir. John Huston, 1951]
I've encountered a lot of people from my generation who seem to regard classic movies as boring, but I've never held that particular belief. My difference of opinion is probably thanks to my mother, who showed me all sorts of classic movies when I was growing up - mostly musicals, since those were the ones she most favored. However, The African Queen is the one I remember most fondly. Based on a novel by C.S. Forester, it is a romantic adventure through Africa as it appeared only in movies of the 1950s and before. It's got basically everything that you could ever ask for in a classic movie: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, action, evil Germans, snappy dialogue, crocodiles, steamboats, river rapids, daring escapes, a great "opposites attract" love story, and all manner of wonderful peril. And it scared me when I was a kid, but in a good way, if that makes any sense.
I also have a really odd and funny memory related to this movie. As a kid, Muppet Babies was one of my favorite cartoons, and I recall there being an episode which was a pretty straightforward parody of The African Queen. I remember how exciting it was to get it - hey, this is just like that one movie I saw! And it's funny because the characters from this show are doing things from that movie! It was the first time I ever understood that kind of humor, and all of a sudden things that were previously incomprehensible were funny to me. Of course, given the vagaries of childhood memory, it's entirely possible that I completely imagined this episode of Muppet Babies, but we'll just pretend right now that it actually exists so that this paragraph makes sense.
You may be wondering why I haven't gone into greater detail about my admiration for this film, as I have with the others I previously discussed. That's because although it was the first movie that sprung to mind for this prompt, I actually haven't seen it in at least ten years and I'm a little bit afraid that it might actually suck. In order to assuage my fears, I just got myself a copy from Netflix and I intend to watch it tonight. I'll report back later and let you know if my fondness for this movie is misplaced, as it has been with so many other things I liked as a kid.
This entry was originally posted at http://gamerchick.dreamwidth.org/560858.html. You can comment on either journal. Number of comments on Dreamwidth:
[A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The WB/UPN, 1997-2003]
It seems very odd to me now that it took so long for me to watch and like Buffy. I guess that while it was first on the air, I thought it was kind of a silly idea for a show because I had seen the movie at a slumber party when I was maybe 11 or 12 and not liked it very much. (I did eventually see the movie again and liked it more the second time around.) I even remember that peloria would sometimes make fun of the show when we were in college and it was still on the air, probably because a person we didn't like very much was obsessed with it and would always try to talk us into watching it even though we weren't interested.
However, by the time I was a senior in college, the show had just ended and I had met ziabandito555 who was even more enthusiastic about Buffy than my previous acquaintance had been. He begged and pleaded for me to take his DVDs and just give them a try, and since I was at the height of my college slackitude, I finally relented in return for him taking Trigun from me (which I don't know if he ever actually even watched, oh well). I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and I soon drew peloria and tankmancr in to watch it along with me. None of us had seen the show before, and we were pretty much completely unspoiled for all of the plot twists that were already old hat to the people who had seen it in its first run, so a lot of the fun was being absolutely floored by unexpected developments (like Angel turning evil and Buffy needing to kill him) that we never saw coming. I also appreciated the fact that there were multiple awesome female characters in the show, who got to be awesome in all sorts of different awesome ways - no "token chick" on this show. When I think of my senior year of college, marathoning Buffy (and Angel) until all hours of the night because we absolutely had to find out what happened next is one of the first things that comes to mind. It was the perfect diversion and shared experience for that time in my life.
Lately it seems to have become a fairly common thing in fandom to dislike Joss Whedon and consider him to be a bad showrunner, a bad feminist, and so forth. I don't fall into that camp, though I certainly do recognize the shortcomings of his various works. Instead, I will always appreciate Buffy for what it was - a remarkably immersive piece of entertainment with awesome characters and plots that kept me laughing, guessing, and on the edge of my seat during a time in my life when I really needed something like that. I'll also always remember it as something fun and memorable that I was able to share with two people who mean a lot to me. I'm glad I gave it a chance.
[Favorite classic movie: The African Queen, dir. John Huston, 1951]
I've encountered a lot of people from my generation who seem to regard classic movies as boring, but I've never held that particular belief. My difference of opinion is probably thanks to my mother, who showed me all sorts of classic movies when I was growing up - mostly musicals, since those were the ones she most favored. However, The African Queen is the one I remember most fondly. Based on a novel by C.S. Forester, it is a romantic adventure through Africa as it appeared only in movies of the 1950s and before. It's got basically everything that you could ever ask for in a classic movie: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, action, evil Germans, snappy dialogue, crocodiles, steamboats, river rapids, daring escapes, a great "opposites attract" love story, and all manner of wonderful peril. And it scared me when I was a kid, but in a good way, if that makes any sense.
I also have a really odd and funny memory related to this movie. As a kid, Muppet Babies was one of my favorite cartoons, and I recall there being an episode which was a pretty straightforward parody of The African Queen. I remember how exciting it was to get it - hey, this is just like that one movie I saw! And it's funny because the characters from this show are doing things from that movie! It was the first time I ever understood that kind of humor, and all of a sudden things that were previously incomprehensible were funny to me. Of course, given the vagaries of childhood memory, it's entirely possible that I completely imagined this episode of Muppet Babies, but we'll just pretend right now that it actually exists so that this paragraph makes sense.
You may be wondering why I haven't gone into greater detail about my admiration for this film, as I have with the others I previously discussed. That's because although it was the first movie that sprung to mind for this prompt, I actually haven't seen it in at least ten years and I'm a little bit afraid that it might actually suck. In order to assuage my fears, I just got myself a copy from Netflix and I intend to watch it tonight. I'll report back later and let you know if my fondness for this movie is misplaced, as it has been with so many other things I liked as a kid.
This entry was originally posted at http://gamerchick.dreamwidth.org/560858.html. You can comment on either journal. Number of comments on Dreamwidth: