(Note: this was originally written as a comment for
a post
on the excellent
Action Flick Chick blog by
Katrina Hill, but was eaten by the WordPress.org instance there, so
I decided to publish it here, after a lot of editing and enhancements.)
Excellent feature! I greatly enjoyed it (just note that I'm a guy) - thanks for
sharing and I hope the panel was nice. I hope to see and welcome many talented
and resourceful female writers and authors of sci-fi and action, who will
collaborate to create part of the next generation of female heroines who are
intelligent, resourceful, competent, and talented, yet still sexy, and
feminine. Naturally, as a male writer (see the stories and screenplays section of
my homepage), I am not going to stand idle and let my peers, whether male or
female, surpass me easily, but I suppose that there's always a place for more
people competing for that.
Buffy Summers was an awesome character, and I was totally into her and Sarah
Michelle Gellar, who was the superb actress and martial artist, who played her,
back in the wild wild
Web 1.0 days and the first
seasons of Buffy (before Buffy graduated from high school and when
Faith
was still around). That was
shortly after I graduated from high school, had lots of raging hormones, and
worked in several workplaces as a programmer, and was about to start my college
degree. I think Buffy was the “perfection achieved” (or epitome or whatever it is
called) version of the fighting lady, whom girls could relate to, look up to
as a role model, and found it easy to feel empathy for, and that not only
were guys not intimidated by her, but found her extremely attractive.
Anyway, Buffy and other shows I watched in this period such as Friends and Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine, provided a lot of inspiration and fodder for my stories and
screenplays, and I have also created a world titled the
Selinaverse that crosses many such influences (what can I say - bipolar disorder /
manic-depresssive disorder can be fun sometimes… ;-)) along with other
things. Even my most normal story yet - The Human Hacking
Field Guide, which tells the story of several high school teenagers in
2005 Los Angeles, who deal extensively in working on open source software (and
to a lesser extent free/open “content”), drew inspiration from the characters
of Buffy and Faith for the protagonist (Jennifer Raymond) and the antagonist
(Eve “Erisa” Siegel) respectively.
I think part of the problem with the realisation of female heroines and even
female authors, was the traditional Judeo-Christian
Ethics value system which limited the amount of activities women were able
to do to exclude philosophy, most important artworks, writing, poetry and being
a scholar, the performing arts, and naturally - fighting. Furthermore, the
names of most of the most important action heroines in the Bible were
deemed inauspicious in the
Jewish tradition (the Halakhah), only to become popular among Jews after
the Zionist revolution. An action hero or a “hacker” (see the essay titled
The Word “Hacker” by
Paul Graham) is someone who bends the rules, makes up his or her own
rules, takes decisive actions, and controls his or her own destiny, even if
they are completely not violent. See what I have
written about
the
David who fought Goliath. This is while a tragic hero accepts his
own fate, is bound by many invisible rules, and does not take decisive action -
the exact opposite of an action hero. (That put aside, I feel that in art,
action heroes and heroines often also initially have
hubris (= excessive human
pride) and undergo a sort of
Catharsis (= a humbling
process), although it is a more subtle than the one experienced by tragic
heroes in tragedies.)
In any case, I think there's some bitter justice in the fact that
there have been several important Jewesses who championed the break from the
Judeo-Christian ethical system:
-
Sarah Michelle Gellar.
-
Alisa Rosenbaum → Ayn Rand,
who despite her many faults in personality and in her philosophical work,
and the fact that she often fell victim to the falsehoods and moral fashions
of her time, greatly helped lay the ground for the move away from the
traditional Judeo-Christian ethics (and not just the sexual/romantic ones).
I was told that Ayn Rand’s philosophy was criticised for being not very
“original”, but this kind of “originality” in copyright, having original ideas,
patents, and even trade secrets (and what open source/open content/etc.
like to call being
“proprietary”), was a 20th century fad, and Rand still deserves credit
for having a retro, but right-in-the-spotlight philosophy. I am well aware
that Rand kinda professed to have supported this
“originality/anti-open” philosophy in her works, but in her deeds, she was
almost always
“if you do not
publish - you perish”, in the sense of making her opinions and thoughts
known and given to the public consumption, even if she was criticised for them.
-
Marta Kauffman,
who co-created the Television show Friends, which despite superficial
appearances to the contrary, took a large part in championing an
Aristotelian society, a positive sense-of-life, resourcefulness,
passion for life, gender equality, and critical thought - including of many
modernist and post-modern scientific beliefs.
P.S: you should watch the three episodes of the Parody: A Love Story
(Twilight, Harry Potter, Karate Kid, and Buffy parody)
video on YouTube, which sports a
chubby girl, who seems unattractive at first, but ends up learning and doing
some mean Karate in a typical Buffy-like hotness.
Anyway, thanks for the excellent write up and sorry for getting carried away.
Best regards,
— Mr. Shlomi Fish (a.k.a
“Rindolf”)
of Tel Aviv, Israel.
Meta
I had a great meta section, but it was too infinite in length to fit inside this limited length text area. Or more seriously - I have plenty to write about in it, but I'm too anxious to get this post out of the door. Publish early - publish often. Cheers anyway, and I'm mostly fine.
