Bildungsroman Blitz: February 2021
The February media log is all about the internet. Mom, you've been warned.
Since the pandemic began, is there anybody out there who has actually spent less time online? It would probably be a healthy choice for many of us, depending on what we’re doing online. But as much as we could all use a break from Twitter, there are still pockets of the internet where I am able to capture something that’s been elusive for most of quarantine: a brand-new experience.
To my mom, dad, and other members of my family who have been kind enough to subscribe: I apologize if most of what I’m about to talk about reads like gibberish to you. Call me any time and we can talk about a movie or a tv show. In fact, I do have two recommendations that probably would have been featured in this month’s newsletter if I had watched them sooner. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (film, 2019) is streaming on Kanopy and Amazon Prime and is the best film I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a story about displacement, gentrification, family legacy, and most of all, friendship. Top Class: The Life and Times of the Sierra Canyon Trailblazers (docuseries, 2021) is streaming on Amazon Prime and has all the essential ingredients of a compelling sports story: competing for a championship, injuries to come back from, and family cheering for you in the bleachers.
Role-playing on Twitch (livestreaming, 2011-present)
I was not super familiar with the livestreaming platform Twitch prior to the pandemic. I knew it was associated with streaming video games, which was not the kind of thing I found particularly interesting. My boyfriend was also not very engaged with Twitch prior to March 2020, but he is the one who made a lot of Twitch streamer discoveries during quarantine. Soon these streams—like Los Pollos TV’s reality tv show watch-a-longs (90-Day Fiancé, I Love a Momma’s Boy) with his extremely New Jersey dad and Hasan Piker’s 2020 election coverage—became a regular fixture in our household.
At a time when all other entertainment was suddenly on hold (theaters shut down, libraries closed, live sports suspended and tv show seasons abruptly cut short), Twitch streamers could create content instantly and respond to our new reality in an organic way. And then there is the parasocial aspect, which exists in other spaces like YouTube, but is heightened on Twitch, where the streamer regularly interacts with the audience via a chat function. At a time where we couldn’t see or talk with our close friends on a regular basis, it was a weird relief to feel like we were having a conversation with another person.
It was through Piker that my boyfriend made a discovery that revealed Twitch’s true storytelling potential. While I am currently in exile from the nonprofit theatre industrial complex, I am still thinking a lot about how we make live theatre in a digital age and a COVID-19 world. So, my interest was piqued one day when my boyfriend told me, “I think this is the new theatre right now.”
To give you some idea of what’s going on in the above clip, here’s the TL;DR. Rust is a multiplayer survival video game, where players roam an open world environment trying to amass supplies and weapons to survive against other players, as well as in-game threats like wild animals. Groups of players can join specific servers and essentially create their own chaotic worlds with original characters and form alliances and rivalries. In December 2020, several popular Twitch streamers were collaborating in a Rust server, and in January 2021 the action split into two servers, with one focused more on player versus player (PVP) combat and one focused more on role-playing. The above clip comes from the role-playing server.
Role-playing, whether it’s in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign or a workforce training exercise, is a form of dramatic improv. If you’re someone who’s missing dramatic, narrative-based improvisational theater right now, these roleplaying servers just might be for you. To quote someone in the comments sections in this Kotaku article about the Rust role-playing server:
“The Mayoral debate yesterday between the Right Wing gun-runner, the Populist Businessman and a Priest of the Blood God that ended with a helicopter attack, multiple assassinations and a last minute betrayal was some of the best non scripted entertainment I’ve seen in years.”
In February, the Twitch role-playing crowd moved over to a Grand Theft Auto V server run by NoPixel. The greatest thing about NoPixel is that they have a massively comprehensive wiki for all the original characters on the server. This means if you’re just joining the GTA Twitch streams now, you can find out everything that’s happened with a certain character or organization if you need to catch up.
I recommend following the exploits of two characters in particular. James Marco St. Marco is a German hairstylist/filmmaker played by Will Neff, who I would describe as a more competent Tommy Wiseau. Spencer Smith is an unsettling Mormon missionary played by Carter, who loves helping people, even if it means committing unspeakable acts of violence.
Link Roundup
“Twitch's Rust Boom Is The Streamer Crossover Event Of The Century”, Nathan Grayson writing for Kotaku
“Grand Theft Auto Role-Playing Is Big On Twitch Again, Starring, Uh, Johnny Silverhand From Cyberpunk”, Nathan Grayson writing again for Kotaku
THE Vampire Diaries Video (video essay, 2021)
Jenny Nicholson is a YouTube video essayist who is probably best known for her Star Wars and Disney theme park content. But for my money, Jenny excels at doing deep dives into more niche and specific subject matter. There’s Nobody on the planet remembers Beastly, which takes us beat by beat through an entirely forgotten film while analyzing why it was greenlit in the first place; The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy, which is a primer on both My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the Brony fan culture that sprung up around it; and There’s something wrong with Hallmark’s youtube channel, which is a surprisingly thorough investigation into the production values (or lack thereof) and hostile workplace dynamics of a YouTube channel nobody watches.
I think the Bronycon video is still her magnum opus, but her recent video about The Vampire Diaries, a supernatural teen drama that ran for eight seasons on The CW, is among her best. Please don’t be alarmed that it is 2 hours and 30 minutes long—there’s a lot of ground to cover.
I binged the first four seasons of The Vampire Diaries with my sister several years ago, and it was a thrilling ride. Jenny’s video perfectly captures the energy of what it is like to binge the show: vacillating between what’s actually good and endearing about it, and its absolute hot mess tendencies. I don’t think you need to know anything about The Vampire Diaries to enjoy the video, because it is really a video that tells the story of Jenny’s experience with the show. This is exemplified by the fact that the video’s top-tier running gag—a commercial for the DVD release of China Beach—has nothing to do with The Vampire Diaries and has everything to do with Jenny’s sublime comic timing.
Jenny drops a piping hot take near the end of the video in perfectly tossed-off fashion: The Vampire Diaries is better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While I cannot bring myself to agree, you could make the case that the legacy of The Vampire Diaries will hold up better than the legacy of Buffy. Which brings me to a new segment of the newsletter I am calling You Can’t Go Home Again…
You Can’t Go Home Again: Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer more than Joss Whedon?
They say you can’t go home again. In this segment, we’ll be looking back at storytelling media that means something different to me now than it did when it first came into my life.
This newsletter is called Bildungsroman Blitz for a reason. Coming of age stories, especially the ones I read/watched when I too was coming of age, left an indelible mark on me. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of those stories. I loved the characters, I loved the lore, and most of all I loved the idea of a found family united for a higher purpose to save the world. The Slayer is the Chosen One and Chosen One narratives aren’t usually my cup of tea, but Buffy Summers is a very compelling Chosen One. She doesn’t resist the call, but she does question the system. She’s a hero and she wants to do the right thing, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t struggle. She’s flawed, but not in an edgy anti-hero way. She is Buffy Summers, Class Protector.
That’s why it’s been so painful for me to reckon with the fact that Joss Whedon, the show’s creator and executive producer, was an abusive and vindictive boss whose behavior on sets from Buffy all the way up to Justice League in 2017 have done irreparable harm to untold numbers of cast and crew members. It can be hard to watch characters you love and find comfort in when you know that the actor was suffering.
Rumors of Whedon’s hostile relationship with Charisma Carpenter, the actress who played Cordelia Chase for three seasons on Buffy and four seasons on the spin-off series Angel, have been well-known in the fandom for years. Without knowing anything going on behind the scenes, it was painfully obvious that the way Cordelia was turned into a villain, written out of the show, and unceremoniously killed off-screen, was not the result of a well-crafted narrative arc. The “official” story was that when Carpenter got pregnant between seasons, it necessitated a complete re-write of the season storyline to incorporate her pregnancy into the character. Carpenter recently spoke up out about what really went down, largely to back up the claims of actor Ray Fisher, who played Cyborg in Justice League and alleged that Whedon had created a hostile work environment on that set through abusive behavior.
The biggest surprise to me was that multiple cast members from Buffy and Angel responded to Carpenter’s statement not just in support of her but adding their own testimony about Whedon and the toxic atmosphere on set. While it is unacceptable to bully and isolate just one member of your cast, the fact that it clearly happened to multiple people in one workplace, and continued happening during Whedon’s career, is infuriating.
By now we’re all familiar with the “separate the art from the artist” conundrum. I think that argument is especially hard when it comes to something like a television show, which really is a collective achievement of so many people. And that’s the reason why I, personally, can’t wash my hands of Buffy. I value the incredible work Sarah Michelle Gellar did in that role. I value some of my favorite episodes of television ever: “I Only Have Eyes For You” (written by Marti Noxon), “Something Blue” (written by Tracey Forbes), and “Tabula Rasa” (written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner). Most of all, I value how Buffy made me feel: seen.
It’s important to note here that Buffy did not make all people feel seen. It’s not just an egregiously White show, its characters of color were often caricatures and fodder. The feminism that exists in the show (and indeed, the feminism that Joss Whedon likes to evangelize) is the kind of feminism that still punishes female characters for enjoying sex. There’s a lot that doesn’t hold up, and I think it’s okay to love the show if you can acknowledge that.
If you think the concept of Buffy sounds cool, but the show itself sounds a little too stuck in 1990s feminism and politics for you, BOOM! Studios has been publishing a reboot/reimagining of Buffy that implicitly addresses some long-standing criticism of the franchise. Kendra Young, the Jamaican Slayer who was only created as a short-lived foil to Buffy Summers (and is most remembered for her actress’ terrible accent), is now a main character with fleshed out family and romantic relationships. Xander Harris, the Nice Guy friend of Buffy who is not so subtly Joss Whedon’s stand in, has his problematic behavior shown as harmful in the narrative and in ways that align him with the villains. It’s worth checking out.
Link Roundup (spoilers for the BOOM! Studios comics)
“‘Buffy’ stars weigh in on Charisma Carpenter’s Joss Whedon allegations”, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw writing for The Daily Dot
“Inside Joss Whedon’s ‘Cutting’ and ‘Toxic’ World of ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’”, Adam B. Vary and Elizabeth Wagmeister writing for Variety
“The rebooted Buffy comic is trying to redeem Xander”, Alex Spencer writing for Polygon