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fullshark

Yeah until you pay $10k+ to have your kid learn about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and you go back to dismissing it.

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Shakespeare was considered in his time to be bawdy, throwaway pop culture.

Source?

Queen Elizabeth took his work seriously enough:

https://broadlytextual.com/2017/12/15/i-am-richard-ii-know-y...

And if people are still discussing Buffy and Madonna 400 years from now, that might be relevant.

Most likely they won’t be discussing either 20 years from now.

It's been over 20 years since the last episode of Buffy aired. Madonna's most relevant period was in the 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, which was 30 years ago. Both are still considered influential and pivotal.

I'm pretty sure "they" will be discussing both 20 years from now even if you haven't been discussing either in the past decades, especially if you don't have any interest in Media Studies.

Even if you think Buffy had no cultural impact beyond its own fandom, it's an interesting piece for analysis if you are interested in how media changes over time. For example it represents a great specimen for the change from episodic to serialized formats (with the first season following a more typical 90s "monster of the week" format to the final season mostly forgoing episodic plots in favor of the season-long story arc). And no matter how tiring it may sound the umpteenth time: it disrupted the traditional gender roles in media at the time, an oft-cited example being the very first episode opening with a young romantic couple where the girl is revealed to be the vampire rather than the victim (an inversion of a well-established horror movie trope at the time) and unlike other media this wasn't a throwaway gag but instead part of a general attitude to gender roles throughout the show.

Joss Whedon has rightfully fallen out of grace but Buffy was a collective effort of numerous show writers, cast and crew. The point never was to revel in its flawlessness (which would be absurd: even fans will spend hours explaining to you what problems the show had) but to use it as a specimen for understanding shifts in cultural attitude and genre.

If you're not interested in media beyond mere consumption (which is fine, mind you) none of this likely means anything to you. You can listen to and enjoy music without having to understand the nuances of musical theory and what individual artists influenced each other's style or whatever. But if everyone was only ever interested in anything at a surface level... well, you wouldn't be here, right? It's kinda in the name.

Buffy ran from 1997 -> 2003. So it's been 20 years since the end of BTVS, and here we are still talking about Buffy. :). So it has at least a 20yr lifespan, maybe 40? We shall see.

It would be interesting to see what shows are considered to be important in the development of culture in a hundred years time. Buffy is definitely a candidate, but my money is on The Shield. The storytelling hasn’t dated at all (although the outfits definirely have).

There’s also an interesting conversation to be had about how shows like The Shield and The Wire pushed narratives about policing that are bluntly, extremely right-wing.

You missed the point that it's about the money spent. Unless you think paying $10k to study Shakespeare is also a good use of money.

Dunno what David Tennant paid to study Shakespeare at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland but it landed him work at the Royal Shakespeare Company and a pretty lucrative stage and film career.

Being Scotland and not the US there was likely some of that socialised education helping out, so I guess that might have taken the edge off cost a bit.

Still, it seems pretty worthwhile.

Bringing up any celebrity to prove a point that something is worth spending absurd amounts of money to study seems silly. Is that the lie we sell now? Get into debt to become a movie star?

Y'know, it's kinda funny that despite the commecialization and streamlining of the German university system following the EU reforms in the mid-2000s, German universities will still insist that the value of higher education is the refinement of the mind, scientific literacy and all that Humboldtian jazz whereas in US-influenced social spaces it's now apparently heretical to suggest that academic study of anything that does not directly translate to a workplace education or pay rise is not a scam.

Maybe, just maybe, the problem is not that someone might think attending lectures on a TV show you don't like is a waste of time and effort but that they will have to decide between that or having an income and the only way for them to do it is "spending absurd amounts of money".

Maybe, just maybe, literally no degree is worth "spending absurd amounts of money" and the primary function of degrees in the economy is literal virtue signaling (i.e. demonstrating endurance) and networking (or compensating for a lack of social capital if your family doesn't already provide you access to the right networks).

Maybe education shouldn't be so heavily privatized and so absurdly expensive to begin with. Maybe privatization results in more economically useful degrees but reduces the overall quality of education as an intellectual endeavour and entices vast amounts of people to go into crippling debt to do academic busywork to get the meaningless trinket necessary to make it past job application filters.

Less is more. If you want to make a point just make it instead of wrapping it in the bs.

And if your point is that people should embrace learning outside of the confines of the education system, yes I agree. You shouldn't spend any amount of money to be taught Shakespeare. Just read Shakespeare. If you are not motivated to learn it, don't.

> Maybe education shouldn't be so heavily privatized

Education is not privatized. The majority of education is public and / or not for profit. The problem with education is not profits. Non profit institutions are raising the cost of education to absurd heights and it's on track to be $1 million for a 4 year degree.

You can't blame capitalism for the rising cost of education as much as you'd like to. Blame the left wing administrative class.

Ditto Terence Tao - celebrity mathematical genius.

Clearly Shakespeare and Mathematics are of value to some.

Also, screw Hollywood - stage is where the challenge is, for many big movie stardom was never the goal.

I doubt Tennant paid tuition at RCS as many/most British subjects do not pay. As an American, my kid does pay. It’s also 50-75% less than the comparable American collegiate programs. Going into debt to do what you love is probably the best reason.

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