[PEN-L:3839] Re: Postmodernist Marxism <v04011707b2fa7e01f5cc@[166.84.250.86]> <3.0.1.32.19990225101017.00d4818c@popserver.panix.com>

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

:)



Louis Proyect wrote:

"I must protest this slanderous attack. I have defended the correct Marxist
position on Buffy as opposed to Rosenberg's rotten Menshevik position. From my
web page:"

Lou, the Buffy issue over on lbo has raised and been raised by a lot
of other issues, including one I missed the beginning of, re "meta-
narrative." But I triggered Paul's recent explosions by raising the
issue of racism.

I did so to begin with simply out of wanting to raise a little steam, and
I explicitly stated as my point of departure that even communists deserve
to have some fun, and that we (communists) did not need to put our
entertainment choices through an ideological seive. BUT, I said, IF
anyone was going to make a big deal about Buffy ideologically (and
without some sort of tongue-in-cheek), THEN I said certain literary
and historical principles were brought into play. That one could not
make a big deal about analyzing Buffy and then draw lines where the
analysis had to stop.

The literary principle was one that I had worked out in reading and
responding to *The Lord of the Rings* and in reading and writing
about Milton's epics and Milton's critics. It was this: All agents in
fiction are *either* pure abstractions (Milton's god, Tolkien's
Balrog) *or* humans, regardless of whether they were called
angels, orcs, elves, devils OR VAMPIRES.

The historical principle is one urged by Toni Morrison (triggering
near apoplexy on the WSJ) -- namely that blacks were *always*
either implicitly or explicitly a major presence in *all* american
literature and art.

My literary principle is probably subject to various attacks, but
Morrison's proposition seems to me utterly irrefutable.

So where are the African Americans in *Buffy*? Answer: the
Vampires.

The show is genocidal ? ? ? ? ?

But for individual marxists who get a kick out of it to stop watching
it for individual pleasure would (a) not make one damn bit of difference
in the political life of the u.s. and (b) violate my principle that even
communists have a right to have some fun.

Carrol