(no subject)

[quarter_to_five]

I see - and sympathize - with all complaining that no one is writing fic for your favourite rare pairing or obscure old fandom, but I will raise you all the sublime frustration that no one is writing serious meta for your critically unregarded comedy loves.

WHY can I not find a good analysis of the political subtext of Brooklyn Nine Nine? WHERE is the critical deconstruction of the narrative tools in How I Met Your Mother? HOW is no one jumping around on a barricade about class issues in Community? Why dost thou betray me and leave out to dry and with no one to talk to, oh fandom?

I'm going to sit here and stare at the wall, y'all.

Well, at the books, because I'm in a library.

Ooh, that one looks interesting.

Apropos, do you know how incredibly boring, obvious and unimaginative most serious books about tv are? All that "Philosophy of Mad Men" (we have no less than 3 books about Mad Men, and the series isn't even done!) or Women on TV: from Lucy to Friends type stuff. I sort through them a lot because that section tends to be a perennial mess, and SO OBVIOUS.

Comments

[franzi1981]

Heh, I guess at least in my case - well, aside from the fact that I'm not very good at meta anyway - I watch comedy shows for really shallow entertainment. I don't want them to be deep *G*. So I... basically don't think about it.

Except that I only now discovered Community and my VOD service in Germany only has the first two seasons up :( It's shown on some regular tv channel as well, but not undubbed.

[quarter_to_five]

Honestly, for the most part, I do too, but I still find analyzing it really interesting, and actually more interesting than analyzing really good, serious stuff. I mean that in there proper sense of the word 'meta' - stuff that is about the show as a show, not about analyzing the inner world of it. Mad Men or Breaking Bad or TSCC or something know exactly what they're doing. There's a deliberateness and a precision there that doesn't leave nearly as much room for messing about with the - possibly unconscious - ways those shows communicate and what they communicate.

It's like how a while back I was really into romance novels, for example, the trashier the better - I didn't like them in the slightest, but someone did, and I was desperate to figure out why and how. (Though I do actually like comedy.) Why does the billionaire have to be Italian? Why isn't he French? Why is the Sheikh never from a real country? Why Highlanders, Cowboys and Tycoons, but not, say, Ninjas and Astronauts? What is the symbolism and imagery that those books are drawing on, how are they conveying them, what kind of worldview are they assuming and recreating, how are their readers reacting to them? Etc, etc.

Those questions are fascinating to me in a way "what does the color of Don Draper's tie represent in episode 3" just doesn't. There's a deal of interesting academic writing on romances though, (which got me through that) but I've yet to find anything good on contemporary sitcoms.

In short, I'm just sulking. :-) I feel for you on Community though. It is one of the funniest, cheeriest things ever when it's on it's game, which it mostly is through seasons 2 and 3.

[franzi1981]

I love reading meta about any show I watch. Or maybe even join in the discussion. I just... Never come up with these questions/topics on my own.

Also, are Troy and Abed meant to be slashy? They sort of feel like the equivalent of Raj and Howard to me... Or is that just me?

[quarter_to_five]

There's definitely a healthy Troy/Abed contingent out there. It's never explicit, or a running gag, the way Raj and Howard are (Community is far too dignified and politically self-aware to frame its protagonists in that kind of crude, slightly degrading humor, I think) but it's a thing.

One of the interesting things about them is that i've heard people actually shy away from slashing them, even though they're so eminently slashable - because they've got such a vibrant, healthy, honest, interesting friendship and that's kind of rare to see between two men on tv in itself.

[thisbluespirit]

:lol: At least you're in a library. That's something. (Unless it's a bad thing, of course, I suppose that could be possible.)

What can I say? At least you don't usually have to explain what the TV shows are before you can even start talking about them, so I don't accept that your case is worse than mine. ;-p

And your thoughts sound interesting. You ought to be the one to write the meta. I can't believe nobody would be interested. There's such a lot of interesting social culture and history that sometimes gets caught up in comedy, in the things that nobody's trying to do anything Significant or "deep" with. I find it hard to believe there aren't things like that, but they're probably hidden, and in people's media studies essays and things.

[quarter_to_five]

Lol, well, I was at work. Well, I was supposed to be at work, in practice I had quietly clocked out and was trying to finish a paper. Which, er, I am still trying to finish.

Yeah, you definitely win on the obscurity and lack-of-discussion front. No arguments there :-).

There is great writing about relatively non-serious stuff, it just needs to hit a certain canonicity, I guess. Any amount of incredible fannish meta to be found on Harry Potter or Friends or Seinfeld, but much less on the current crop. Maybe it just needs more time, and my sense is also that, say Big Bang and How I Met Your Mother and other multicam sitcoms are kind of looked down at now as being just...uninteresting. Meaningless throwbacks who's popularity and longevity is completely random (SO WRONG), in a way even Friends wasn't well before the end of its run. (Community is a bit of critical darling, I think, (at least online) but it has a pandering edge that makes that unsurprising, imo. And a great behind-the-scenes narrative too.)

I really have gone hunting through academic archives, and just turned up very little that's interesting. Academic writing tends to just...summarize, like they're enlightening their audience about a strange phenomenon which needs merely to be catalogued for it's significance to be understood.

I did actually, um, write a couple of essays in defense of Big Bang over on io9, and I got some comments and some arguing (some really, really cranky arguing. Man, that show bugs people. Man, the fact that that show bugs people fascinates me so much,) and it was fun, but there was a flash in the pan quality to it. It doesn't compare to that satisfaction of having an active, critical fandom running along with the show, where you know you can always dip into intelligent, engaged commentary and conversation and there will always be more of it with every episode.

[thisbluespirit]

Yeah, you definitely win on the obscurity and lack-of-discussion front. No arguments there

Although I suppose someone could argue that watching 1960s/1970s non-genre UK shows and then complaining at the lack of a fandom is probably cheating, if wilful obscurity is a competition. (I regret nothing, except maybe attempting to watch Gerry Anderson's UFO. But on the other hand they all wore eyeliner and drove purple cars and it was in 60s technicolor and they killed David Collings again, so after all, I regret nothing.)

And that's true - time probably will make a difference. And I can see that it's frustrating - it's always frustrating when you can't have a conversation about the random things that are burning in your head, whatever they may be. And, yes, fandom can be so good at providing that outlet, and even though logic comprehends why x is not a fannish thing, the heart and bits of the brain don't at all and want people to join in just the same.

Academic writing tends to just...summarize, like they're enlightening their audience about a strange phenomenon which needs merely to be catalogued for it's significance to be understood.

:lol: I can imagine that all too easily. I wanted to write about series fiction for children when I was at uni, but there was absolutely no literature and I ended up writing about Enid Blyton. And when I was at a library conference and found a book about series fiction, it was about stuff like Arthur Ransome, and not Rainbow Magic and Goosebumps - I wanted some writing about how that kind of new-but-familiar encourages literary and how children read and, blah.

So, anyway, I am not much use because I don't watch any of those shows, but I'll sympathise with the frustration. I know the feeling, even if in my case, it's because I went off the edge of the map on purpose and deserve everything I get.

[quarter_to_five]

Lol, yeah. I'm thinking of taking a class on Arthurian literature, and I just came back from the first lecture, and he did show a bunch of movie clips and things and talked about how the Arthurian myth has evolved and how much presence it has in the modern world and I was totally onboard - yay, lets compare Monty Python and Marion Zimmer Bradley and BBC Merlin...and then the reading list was firmly 12th-19th centuries. Up to Tennyson is worthy of critical discussion - and no further.

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, so true. I suppose there's a certain amount of sense in waiting to see which things actually have staying power and long-term influence, but it can be so very limited sometimes!

Actually, with Arthurian things, I once read a book series once by Fay Sampson (I think it was a quartet, but it may possibly have been five) retelling Morgan Le Fay's story from various points of view, but the interesting thing was the last book, Herself, which was from Morgan's POV. But it didn't just retell this version yet again, it interspersed that with chapters that were Morgan's commentary on her legend and how it's changed through the ages and through different people making points. It was published too many years ago for Merlin, and I don't think it covered Monty Python, but it did go from early Welsh writings right up to The Sword in the Stone, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Stephen Lawhead, and I found that by far the most fascinating aspect of it. I can't really remember much about the rest of it, but you might like Herself if you can get hold of it anywhere via library magics.