beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2006-02-07 11:36 am
beccaelizabeth) wrote2006-02-07 11:36 am
Entry tags:
Follow the Money - Buffy
Okay, so the Media section of the cultural studies book started out with talking on the 'production, distribution, exhibition and sale of media products'.
Its a follow the money thing, see who pays for what where, and who controls what.
Media messages are shaped by the means and conditions of all that up there.
Like, Buffy is the 4 acts structure it is because commercials go in the breaks and the end of act 'eep!' is there to make people still be there the other side of the break.
(What I found when I started trying to write fic to that structure is it also keeps the story bouncing along with great momentum, instead of stalling out and meandering so much. Which is handy. But not the *why* of it on TV.)
So I woke up wondering where the money goes with Buffy, and how that changed what we saw.
(There's also the decoding part, how messages are received. Which is (a) complicated and (b) today's reading, so that isn't what I'm thinking on yet.)
Buffy started to be written by Joss Whedon. But then there were money people, and other writers so enough Buffy could be made to deadline, and possibly for reasons to do with writers guild rules or similar, I don't know about that. And we know that sometimes the network didn't like things - there was big fighting about the Willow/Tara kiss in season 5, yesno? That would be... the WB network? And later UPN?
I need to find out if someone else has done a follow the money, because I don't precisely know how.
Production is Fox, yesno? Distribution/exhibition in the USA is WB and later UPN. In the UK it was Sky and BBC2. And there we get more layers of interesting - I know BBC2 put it in a different timeslot than the USA, and therefore hacked it all to bitses to make it suit their standards for a younger audience. There was an essay about it. I was outraged about what they did to the whole Katrina bit.
I could probably get a whole essay out of the difference in perceptions of Andrew between people who had only or firstly seen the BBC2 version and people who saw the US/DVD version. Because they would be significant. The BBC didn't call Andrew a rapist. Yet Andrew is as guilty of attempted rape as Spike ever was, and the original text made that explicit. Take out the word rape and you can conceivably get a reading among people not thinking on the details that just misses the non-con creepiness completely. The way comics used to use mindwipe to protect secret identities and it was all 'lalala, we're the hero', but only lately it went to seeing fallout from that kind of behaviour.
So, anyway, the BBC and how they chose to show Buffy produced a significantly different meaning in some episodes. Unfortunately I can only comment on the ones someone else has commented on already, on account of I didn't watch the BBC any time I had comparison available.
Now Channel 5 has reruns, yesno? I think I saw it fuzzily on 5 once. With extra cuts.
USA has various rerun schedules. iirc I've heard people complain that there have been cuts, and its understood that those cuts are there primarily to fit in more advertising time.
Production, distribution and exhibition, and sale - Buffy is for sale on DVD and VHS. Originally on VHS with no extras, yes? But the expectation of extras made the DVDs a completely different package. You get behind the scenes, missing scenes, writer commentaries, director commentaries. In an officially packaged product you get a whole lot of voices adding their interpretation, yes? Potentially changing the meaning/message. Or allowing a different, maybe more direct, look at the intended meaning.
With Highlander DVDs they were made by two companies to two different standards and there were extra super special versions made for Best Buy. With, again, more footage - extra special features. Buying from the Highlander store got you different packaging. And how things are packaged and labelled does actually have an impact on how they are perceived, though how much of one is again beyond what I'm looking at right now.
Buffy products - are the packaged differently in different markets? Probably. I know older ones are packed different than ones available now, with the nifty fold out cross shaped Buffy season 1 saying it was a special edition.
Advertising - different in different venues. And different in the US and UK. Did BBC2 run adverts for Buffy? How about Sky? WB, UPN? Ads for the DVDs or VHS? See advertising is an area I'm almost totally blind to, because I have so many adblockers on this computer I manage to miss most of them, and anything not on the computer I *very* rarely am around to see. I mean I don't think I've watched regular TV on purpose since the new year. I just haven't got around to it. And I'm not much missing it either. Plus, I'm in the UK, so if ads were different here than in the US I wouldn't know it.
That up there is in the vertical integration section. Horizontal integration is the same product across different media. So we have Buffy TV, DVD, VHS, and also magazines, comics, books, computer games... do we have audio? I know some of the actors have done unrelated audio but thats beyond the scope of this. There's also clothing, jewelry, patches, badges, sometimes weaponry, often props being sold on ebay... what am I missing?
And all of that modifies the presentation, the message, what Buffy *is*.
Now, once we get to the audience, we here in fandom end up in arguments about canon. Episodes are canon, comics aren't (unless written by Joss, and then it gets a bit argumentative). Books really really aren't. *But* from the point of view of media studies, all of those are part of the message being put out there with the Buffy name on it.
I kind of really want to grab a book and analyse it in comparison to the Buffy tv series, and see if the feminist message and gender roles carry over into the other media. I mean Buffy still kicks ass... usually... but how about the subtleties?
And also on the subject of canon - episodes are. But are they in the form first broadcast, the form on DVD, the form the BBC broadcast...? Because those are often significantly different. Which can be part of where the arguments come in, of course.
Was there a scene with Spike and preparing a 'romantic' evening for Buffy? Is that one that vanished or reappeared or something?
And then there are the scenes we only get on the internet, like downloads of naked Spike. That isn't an official part of the message but it is part of what gets received.
And how about subtitles? We analyse the subtleties of language in the Jossverse (and get a lot out of it), but for some readers that text is quite a bit different, since without the sound the words aren't always the same. I don't know how big the differences are in the Buffyverse, I haven't done that part of my comparison yet (am going to, for Halloween and The Dark Age. Unless I get distracted by something shinier :eyeroll:). But online transcripts write down the things that were spoken onscreen, and usually arguments about canon are from speech, not subtitle. Do they modify meaning? For those of us that watch both?
Then there's translated versions, but that goes off the edge of what I could possibly be coherent about.
Okay, that's all I've got right now. I think I could do with some help from the colletive brain. What have I forgotten, where should I start looking, what opinions have y'all got about it all?
Its a follow the money thing, see who pays for what where, and who controls what.
Media messages are shaped by the means and conditions of all that up there.
Like, Buffy is the 4 acts structure it is because commercials go in the breaks and the end of act 'eep!' is there to make people still be there the other side of the break.
(What I found when I started trying to write fic to that structure is it also keeps the story bouncing along with great momentum, instead of stalling out and meandering so much. Which is handy. But not the *why* of it on TV.)
So I woke up wondering where the money goes with Buffy, and how that changed what we saw.
(There's also the decoding part, how messages are received. Which is (a) complicated and (b) today's reading, so that isn't what I'm thinking on yet.)
Buffy started to be written by Joss Whedon. But then there were money people, and other writers so enough Buffy could be made to deadline, and possibly for reasons to do with writers guild rules or similar, I don't know about that. And we know that sometimes the network didn't like things - there was big fighting about the Willow/Tara kiss in season 5, yesno? That would be... the WB network? And later UPN?
I need to find out if someone else has done a follow the money, because I don't precisely know how.
Production is Fox, yesno? Distribution/exhibition in the USA is WB and later UPN. In the UK it was Sky and BBC2. And there we get more layers of interesting - I know BBC2 put it in a different timeslot than the USA, and therefore hacked it all to bitses to make it suit their standards for a younger audience. There was an essay about it. I was outraged about what they did to the whole Katrina bit.
I could probably get a whole essay out of the difference in perceptions of Andrew between people who had only or firstly seen the BBC2 version and people who saw the US/DVD version. Because they would be significant. The BBC didn't call Andrew a rapist. Yet Andrew is as guilty of attempted rape as Spike ever was, and the original text made that explicit. Take out the word rape and you can conceivably get a reading among people not thinking on the details that just misses the non-con creepiness completely. The way comics used to use mindwipe to protect secret identities and it was all 'lalala, we're the hero', but only lately it went to seeing fallout from that kind of behaviour.
So, anyway, the BBC and how they chose to show Buffy produced a significantly different meaning in some episodes. Unfortunately I can only comment on the ones someone else has commented on already, on account of I didn't watch the BBC any time I had comparison available.
Now Channel 5 has reruns, yesno? I think I saw it fuzzily on 5 once. With extra cuts.
USA has various rerun schedules. iirc I've heard people complain that there have been cuts, and its understood that those cuts are there primarily to fit in more advertising time.
Production, distribution and exhibition, and sale - Buffy is for sale on DVD and VHS. Originally on VHS with no extras, yes? But the expectation of extras made the DVDs a completely different package. You get behind the scenes, missing scenes, writer commentaries, director commentaries. In an officially packaged product you get a whole lot of voices adding their interpretation, yes? Potentially changing the meaning/message. Or allowing a different, maybe more direct, look at the intended meaning.
With Highlander DVDs they were made by two companies to two different standards and there were extra super special versions made for Best Buy. With, again, more footage - extra special features. Buying from the Highlander store got you different packaging. And how things are packaged and labelled does actually have an impact on how they are perceived, though how much of one is again beyond what I'm looking at right now.
Buffy products - are the packaged differently in different markets? Probably. I know older ones are packed different than ones available now, with the nifty fold out cross shaped Buffy season 1 saying it was a special edition.
Advertising - different in different venues. And different in the US and UK. Did BBC2 run adverts for Buffy? How about Sky? WB, UPN? Ads for the DVDs or VHS? See advertising is an area I'm almost totally blind to, because I have so many adblockers on this computer I manage to miss most of them, and anything not on the computer I *very* rarely am around to see. I mean I don't think I've watched regular TV on purpose since the new year. I just haven't got around to it. And I'm not much missing it either. Plus, I'm in the UK, so if ads were different here than in the US I wouldn't know it.
That up there is in the vertical integration section. Horizontal integration is the same product across different media. So we have Buffy TV, DVD, VHS, and also magazines, comics, books, computer games... do we have audio? I know some of the actors have done unrelated audio but thats beyond the scope of this. There's also clothing, jewelry, patches, badges, sometimes weaponry, often props being sold on ebay... what am I missing?
And all of that modifies the presentation, the message, what Buffy *is*.
Now, once we get to the audience, we here in fandom end up in arguments about canon. Episodes are canon, comics aren't (unless written by Joss, and then it gets a bit argumentative). Books really really aren't. *But* from the point of view of media studies, all of those are part of the message being put out there with the Buffy name on it.
I kind of really want to grab a book and analyse it in comparison to the Buffy tv series, and see if the feminist message and gender roles carry over into the other media. I mean Buffy still kicks ass... usually... but how about the subtleties?
And also on the subject of canon - episodes are. But are they in the form first broadcast, the form on DVD, the form the BBC broadcast...? Because those are often significantly different. Which can be part of where the arguments come in, of course.
Was there a scene with Spike and preparing a 'romantic' evening for Buffy? Is that one that vanished or reappeared or something?
And then there are the scenes we only get on the internet, like downloads of naked Spike. That isn't an official part of the message but it is part of what gets received.
And how about subtitles? We analyse the subtleties of language in the Jossverse (and get a lot out of it), but for some readers that text is quite a bit different, since without the sound the words aren't always the same. I don't know how big the differences are in the Buffyverse, I haven't done that part of my comparison yet (am going to, for Halloween and The Dark Age. Unless I get distracted by something shinier :eyeroll:). But online transcripts write down the things that were spoken onscreen, and usually arguments about canon are from speech, not subtitle. Do they modify meaning? For those of us that watch both?
Then there's translated versions, but that goes off the edge of what I could possibly be coherent about.
Okay, that's all I've got right now. I think I could do with some help from the colletive brain. What have I forgotten, where should I start looking, what opinions have y'all got about it all?