Tag: whedonverse

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Critic’s Notebook: Whedon, Pynchon, and the Flexible Canon

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In the next few days, I’ll be posting another Dollhouse Riff.  Riff #3 will focus on the unaired episode “epitaph one” and how it relates to the Dollhouse Canon.  I will also write a Critical Appraisal of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland.  For years, Vineland has been relegated to second banana status in the Pynchon Canon.  With the publication of Inherent Vice, the Pynchon Canon requires that we re-examine the works and their critical status. Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Whedon, Pynchon, and the Flexible Canon

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The Best TV Shows You’re Not Watching

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“I missed the season finale to Dancing with the Stars!  Damn you, crystal bucket!” One of the benefits of the Internet and blogging is an opportunity to write for other ventures.  If you don’t know already, I am also a regular contributor to Blogcritics.org. I recently had another opportunity present itself with the website The Best TV Shows You’re Not Watching. On the Driftless Area Review, I’ve written “Dollhouse Riffs,” essays discussing the more controversial thematic elements of Joss Whedon’s new series, Dollhouse. With the renewal of Dollhouse, I’ll write more thematic essays for Season 2. Continue reading The Best TV Shows You’re Not Watching

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Dollhouse Riffs: Riff #2: Bodies, Souls, and the Big Bad

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“When you will have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom.” Antonin Artaud, “To Have Done with the Judgment of God” (1947) “The Earth is a body without organs. This body without organs is permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all directions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory particles” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (1987) Malcolm Reynolds, Angel, Buffy, Joss, and River In the Whedonverse, there are the Big Damn Heroes and the Big … Continue reading Dollhouse Riffs: Riff #2: Bodies, Souls, and the Big Bad

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Dollhouse Riffs: Riff #1: Dollhouse, the Dollhouse, and “freedom”

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How free are those that control Dollhouse, compared to the dolls? Topher and Sierra’s “play date” occurred under the nose of Adele.  Adele, smartly, lets it pass.  Without it, Topher would be driven nuts.  Or is this “play date” used as an opiate, a distraction for Topher.  Is Topher also a doll?  (A theory forwarded by my girlfriend.  I think there is some merit to it.) The play date creates a carnival atmosphere, a great leveling that occurs between the powerful genius and the pliant doll. A similar leveling occurs when Victor is programmed to help Miss Lonelyhearts, in this … Continue reading Dollhouse Riffs: Riff #1: Dollhouse, the Dollhouse, and “freedom”

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