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TV Retrospective - Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Pangs" and the Real Meaning of Thanksgiving
November 20, 2023
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I admit, some of my personal Thanksgiving traditions are a little odd. Sure I like to do the normal things, like watch the Macy’s Parade in the morning and the original Miracle on 34th Street in the evening (look closer, it’s a Thanksgiving movie). I like eating turkey, potatoes, and whatever pie I can get my hands on. If I can, I even like looking at the newspaper ads for all the upcoming sales.

But I also like kimchi with my turkey. No cranberry sauce required.

Along with my Korean sauerkraut, I have another odd tradition. Every Thanksgiving I watch the eighth episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s fourth season, “Pangs.” Most die-hard Buffy fans don’t like the season when Buffy goes to college, and while the main arc isn’t its strongest there are some solid episodes. Perhaps none better than the Thanksgiving story.

Move over, Charlie Brown.

It’s Buffy’s first holiday on her own and, despite Willow’s woke worrying, she wants to host a traditional dinner with friends. All Willow can think about is how the Native Americans subsequently had their land stolen, as many today still do. For her, it's an empty holiday. “It’s a sham,” Buffy agrees, “but it’s a sham with yams. It’s a yam sham.” Willy remains unconvinced, and she's not the only one still upset about it.

There’s a spirit of vengeance on the loose.

While setting the foundation for a new building on the college campus earlier that day, Xander and the construction crew discovered an old mission. And by “discovered,” I mean Xander fell into it. As is wont to happen when you live on a Hellmouth, a Native spirit is unleashed to cause death and suffering on the current residents of Sunnydale. Now Xander has all the smallpox and syphilis the white people shared, and something is killing and taking the ears of the college admins.

Uh-oh.

Meanwhile, Spike has escaped the local black ops site with a chip in his neck that prevents a vampire from feeding. So it is that everyone gathers at Giles’ house, where Buffy is still trying to make the perfect dinner. She’s totally there because he’s their patriarch and should host and she's certainly not trying to stick him with all the cleanup. Yeah, he’s not buying it either. But they have bigger problems since the vengeance demon is raising an army of the undead to reclaim their land. Buffy says she personally would be ready to apologize if that would end this.

And that’s where things get interesting.

“I just can't take all this namby-pamby boo-hooing about the bloody Indians,” Spike says. “You won. All right? You came in and you killed them, and you took their land. That's what conquering nations do. It's what Caesar did, and he's not goin' around saying, ‘I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.’ The history of the world is not people making friends. You had better weapons, and you massacred them. End of story.”

Can you imagine this on TV today? It’s unthinkable.

Spike goes on. “You exterminated his race. What could you possibly say that would make him feel better? It's kill or be killed here. Take your bloody pick.” He’s not wrong, and even the Scooby gang has to admit it. While he doesn’t get into the deeper history, that the Native tribes were constantly at war and stealing land from each other, which we know it’s true even if it’s not discussed in our schools. It’s just the sad way of the world.

Ultimately, they have to defend themselves.

Buffy: Wasn't exactly a perfect Thanksgiving.

Xander: I don't know. Seemed kinda right to me. A bunch of anticipation, a big fight, and now we're all sleepy.

Obviously, I don’t watch this episode because I want to dwell on the bloodsoaked history of humanity. I watch it for the jokes, action, and clever turns of phrase. But I also appreciate the way Spike rejects the premise of the argument that we should feel guilty for the blessings we enjoy at this time of year. We should be thankful for peace in our time, even if it’s only temporary.

Willow: But, at least we all worked together and it was like old times.

Xander: Well, maybe we started a new tradition this year...

[Buffy looks at her]

Xander: Maybe not. But at least we all worked together.It was like old times.

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Update!

I cover it in the the video, but I've got some new professional writing opportunities coming up and I'm trying to finish my next novel, all while navigating a change in schedule. So look for more pictures and videos, and new articles here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 2

Leo and Brittany have arrived on Saturn, but not in the way they'd hoped. Captured by a pagan cult, they don't have time to stop the unthinkable from happening. But they'll try anyway.

Content warning: language and sexual situations.

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Star Wars is dead and the more apathy you show the faster it will be allowed to rest in peace.

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If you'd like to buy the story and read ahead, it's available in the Fall 2020 issue of Cirsova, available here: https://amzn.to/3yRRywY

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Big Changes Ahead

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Is Ladyballers Doomed from the Start?

The most honest analysis I've seen.

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F1 is Modern Western

As a nation, the United States is unique. We don’t share a genetic heritage, but a creed. Americans and our ideas come from all over the world. But we’re at our best when take those outside ideas and make them our own. Everything we have came from another culture, but there was a time when we could take things and collectively make them better.

Democracy? Check. Rock’n’roll? Check. Heck! Chinese food? Yes, we did.

Don’t hate. You know I’m right.

One of the greatest art forms we’ve given the world is the western genre. While rooted in courtly romances of King Arthur, we took the idea of the man on horseback who makes things right on his quest for something spiritual and made it distinctly American. Most of the time, these stories aren’t historically accurate, but that’s not the point. They’re soaked in the American ethos. For better or for worse, the western has become the American myth, even more so than 1776.

And the cool thing about myths is that you can take them and tell other stories. 

Star Trek (and later Firefly) took the western to space. 

A few weeks ago I was able to see F1: The Movie on IMAX, and I had high hopes. Director Joseph Krasinski had proved himself with Top Gun: Maverick, which is about as American as a modern movie can get. But mostly, I just wanted to see if he could do with racecars what he’d done with fighter jets. In that regard, I was everything I’d hoped it would be. The idea of Americanism didn’t even cross my mind, since F1 is primarily a European sport.

Boy, was I surprised.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes with all the careless cool of Paul Newman in his prime and a Steve McQueen swagger. While Pitt has never played a cowboy and isn’t a racecar driver in real life, Newman and McQueen played both, and did both. Hayes has been keeping himself busy with no-name races since an F1 crash nearly killed him some 30 years before. But when Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), an old friend and rival, needs some wins to save the team, he tracks down Sonny.

And the old dog knows a few tricks.

Naturally, his tactics put him at odds with his teammate, Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), and his cocky attitude is a big red flag to the team’s engineer, Kate McKenna (Kerry Conden). So the movie all the tropes of a sports film, and I don’t think I need to summarize further. But it’s not a sports film. Or rather, it’s not just a sports a film. Surprise, surprise, it’s the western myth transposed into a racing a story.

It’s spelled out in the trailer, but it didn’t strike me until the very end.

Kate calls Sonny Hayes an “old school rough and tumble cowboy” in a line used in the marketing. When he arrives in the garage, only Ruben knows him. Sonny is the stranger in town. Like James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff, his method of restoring order and winning is unorthodox and effective. Like Shane, in that Alan Ladd classic, he’s guarded about his past. And like John Wayne in The Searchers and so many other westerns, Sonny Hayes is the outsider who must leave civilization once he’s made it civilized for those who belong there.

But he doesn’t.


Perhaps the hardboiled crime story, another uniquely American genre, is also an outgrowth of the western. Philip Marlow is the man who must walk down mean streets, who is not himself mean. As Raymond Chandler said, “He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.” Basically, the man he’s describing is dangerous, but not cruel. Dispassionate in taking revenge, and restrained by a code of honor.

But destined to be lonely, nonetheless.

Why we’ve made that an essential part of the American is a topic for another time. But there it is. And it’s the story of Sonny Hayes. At the end of the movie [SPOILER], he rides off into the sunset as the credits roll. The western isn’t dead. It’s still there, in essence, speaking to our hearts in different ways.

Nothing more American than that. 

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Girl-Power Isn't the Problem: Stop Treating Movies Like TV Pilots

Last weekend I was able to sneak off the theater for a screening of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Did I feel silly, telling the high school girl at the ticket counter, “One for Ballerina, and a small drink”? Well, not in the moment. 

I probably drank a liter of cherry vanilla Coke Zero, and that didn’t feel so great.

Plenty of box office analysts and Hollywood types are wracking their brains, trying to figure out why movies like Furiosa and Ballerina aren’t drawing huge crowds. Mad Max and John Wick are popular franchises, but apparently telling the stories of the women in those worlds isn’t working. Even if the movies are pretty good.

I’ve seen both, and they’re pretty good.

Some are arguing that no one will go near a movie that looks like it’s feminist girl-bossing. Others counter that movies like Alien and Kill Bill are female-led action films that were successful. Now, I’m not going to say that Ballerina is on par with those modern day classics. But I will say that, as a man watching the movie, it didn’t offend me. The movie never challenged me to confront any internalized misogyny. The small girl doesn’t take down John Wick in hand-to-hand combat.

Honestly, if you like franchise, whether you’re male or female, you should watch Ballerina.

In short, from a purely cinematic experience perspective, neither Furiosa nor Ballerina would be any better or worse with a male lead. Maybe that’s a hot take. But that’s mine, for whatever it’s worth. Well, okay, I wouldn’t watch a movie called Ballerina if it stared a dude. Nevertheless, I think you get my point. Petite women warriors aside, the plots and action are exactly as expected.

So what’s the deal?

Well, what no one seems to have noticed is that Ripley and The Bride weren’t replacing anyone. As we were watching their movies for the first time, we weren’t thinking about other characters for whom we already had a preference. Movies are more like TV than TV right now, and replacement characters have always been a hard sell, regardless of gender. We all remember Sam and Diane. Who still talks about Sam and Rebecca (even though Kirstie Alley won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the part)? I had to look up her name. 

No, they aren’t technically replacing them. It’s a spin-off, set in the same world.

Spin-offs tend to succeed when the characters are already well established (eg: Frasier). Furiosa and Ballerina are more like backdoor pilots, where new characters are dropped in for a single episode to sell us on the idea of a new show. This technique is very hit and miss on TV, and I can’t think of a single example of this working in a movie franchise. Film and television are very different mediums, and should be treated as such.

Still, if it doesn’t work on TV, it’s probably not gonna work at the movies. Not where new characters and spin-offs are concerned. 

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Going Back to 1995

Maybe I’m just getting old, but it doesn’t feel like we had the thriving and distinct pop culture of past generations. Has there been a look or stye, or feeling, that defines this moment? Everything seems to have stagnated for the last twenty years. And it’s not as if I don’t pay attention. 

It’s making me nostalgic. 

Consequently, for the rest of the year, I’m prioritizing movies from 1995, the year I was twelve. At that time, my family didn’t really go to the theater, and when we did rent VHS tapes, more often than it is was older Disney movies or entirely forgettable Christian titles. Now that I’ve grown tired of trying to keep up with new releases, not there’s much worth watching anyway, it feels like a good time to catch up on those 30 year old movies that have become ingrained in what’s left of our pop culture.

So over on Criticless, I made a list.

Some of these are movies I’ve seen before, but not in a long time. Others will be first time watches for me. There’s really no rhyme or reason to what I put on my list. It’s just movies that either interest me, or are currently in my collection, sadly unwatched. As things become available on streaming, I may add to the list. And if I don’t get to everything before the end of the year, no big deal.

Hopefully, they aren’t going anywhere. 

I’ll be posting some reviews and analysis as I go, so be sure to follow me here. 

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