If you're considering clicking through to find out which starlets he sexed, it doesn't say.
Would it be irresponsible not to speculate?
I thought this was an interesting close read of some aspects of Whedon's work.
The next major Joss project was Dollhouse, with evil scientist and Joss lookalike Topher Brink programming, manipulating, and violating various women into playacting roles he'd scripted for them. It was such a blatant story about Joss and his actresses it was difficult to watch. Like, My Feminism Is Just An Excuse To Exploit Hot Actresses, I Am Such A Disgusting Creature!!! Coming soon to the CW! His next project, the webseries I Am So Horrible And My Feminism Is A Sham, featuring NPH as the Joss stand-in, was similarly cringeworthy.
I found the link to it when people were passing around his unused script for Wonder Woman, which was also not really in keeping with his feminist image.
On the one hand I've never been into the popular pastime of obsessing over the personal purity of writers/directors/actors & etc. If someone is outed as a Nazi or a pedophile or something, that's one thing, but garden variety shittyness seems silly to care about when the person in question is a complete stranger.
It's kind of interesting with Whedon, though. People who openly identify as "really into stuff Joss Whedon makes" are, IME, much more likely than average to be into obsessing over the personal purity of whoever makes the pop culture stuff they consume. And Whedon does seem to have deliberately cultivated this group of fans.
I have real trouble taking these kinds of things seriously and sort of want to scream "Nerds" while spraying cheap beer in the faces of anybody who does.
That's probably a failing on my part, but at least I can watch Buffy without wondering if I should feel bad for mostly paying attention to Buffy's butt when she's kicking people.
4: Condemning nerds has traditionally been Halford's job, but I guess you can take over since he's not around.
New today from the Yr Fave Is Problematic Dept.
6: It's just comic book movies have been so unwatchable lately but people keep taking them so very seriously.
I was a big fan of Buffy and Angel back in the day, but Joss Whedon's feminism has always been dumb and clunky. Sure, his shows are often about women saving the day, but the women in question are always tiny, pretty white girls who fight bad guys in tight pants and mascara.
Also, his shows are pretty rapey! I gave up on Dollhouse when it became clear that it was like 90% about rape.
That said, I agree mostly with Nick S. -- disappointing, but not surprising. You'd have to be pretty naive to be shocked that a Hollywood director famous for populating his films with gorgeous women has had a bunch of affairs.
I never got people insisting that Buffy was feminist. (I watched it, as well as Angel, and enjoyed them back in the day, and Firefly, but I never thought I was watching anything feminist.)
Talk about a low bar for expectations.
I never did see Dollhouse. Lately I hardly watch anything that doesn't involve British people murdering each other, mostly in very sedate ways.
I think Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated was feminist. At least the first season. Season two was mostly weird.
11 is an odd way to describe game of thrones.
I'm not going to watch that until all the books are done.
7: I've never watched LCK's show, but I feel oddly protective of Tig Notaro, and seriously pissed off on her behalf.
Like everybody, nerds watch too much TV and contrived "it's feminist" as an excuse long before cable provided "it's a portrait of the decline of marriage in the upper middle class" and "something economic anxiety something" as newer, more mature excuses.
7. That's a bummer, but also, Famous Comedian Is an Asshole is right up there with Successful Director Sleeps With Starlets on the list of least surprising things ever.
I'm watching Buffy right now (my wife has been putting it on in the background while she works), and it's almost ham-handedly feminist. I just watched a scene where Xander said "If it's up to me, Willow wouldn't date a werewolf." And then after a dramatic pause, Buffy said "It's not up to you."
"This one time, at werewolf camp..."
The 90s were an explicit times.
it's almost ham-handedly feminist
There's an amount of that. There's also, later on, rape-as-act-of-a-doomed-love, played straight.
I can see ham-handed as a critique of the writing. I'm not really getting ham-handedly feminist as a critique of the feminism. Like, it'd be politically superior if the phrasing was subtler?
Anyway, Whedon appears to suck personally, and his TV shows are also imperfect. Basically, people as a species are awful.
I'd turn for consolation to my pets, but they're also awful. They got into the kitchen cupboards generally and threw a container of granola all over the floor. It's like I accidentally got monkeys instead of cats.
There's also, later on, rape-as-act-of-a-doomed-love, played straight.
Played strait, but also explicitly treated as appalling and a serious betrayal on the part of a fan-favorite character.
I never got people insisting that Buffy was feminist.
I haven't watched it in a while but the best argument that I was able to come up with is, "Buffy is feminist because the female leads get to make mistakes and still be the hero." That's not perfect, but I think it matters that they don't have to be perfect. One of my favorite episodes was the one where Buffy went to work at the fast food restaurant ("Double-meat Palace") because it so clearly dramatized that (like any adult) Buffy has to make her own choices, good or bad, and nobody can give her the answers (even if the watchers would like to believe that they can).
'Generally', in 22, should be 'yesterday'. I have no idea how that happened.
the best argument that I was able to come up with is, "Buffy is feminist because the female leads get to make mistakes and still be the hero." That's not perfect, but I think it matters that they don't have to be perfect.
I thought it was also the 3-dimensionality of the characters and their sense of agency to the story. And being the hero specifically in a domain usually reserved for men. I can't think of other superhero women pre-Buffy who aren't primarily about being super sexual.
Whether something "is feminist" isn't a binary option, where it's flawlessly woke in all respects or it might as well be a staged reading of an issue of Hustler from 1977.
Buffy was a show that centered female characters in relation to issues that weren't limited solely to romantic relationships, and which (where there was an obvious endorsement of any position on an issue) reliably explicitly endorsed feminism. Thinking of it as feminist on some level, as compared to alternative tv shows, is a pretty obviously reasonable thing to think.
It was also goofy entertainment with a lot of problematic stuff in it, rather than a graduate course in Judith Butler and later thinkers who have interpreted her works. Conventional standards of beauty, exploiting sexual violence as entertainment, and so on. If you want to point out things that suck about it from a feminist point of view, there's lots.
But if you're looking for something that is both conventional entertainment and is also feminist, there's not a whole lot that's significantly more actively feminist or less problematic that Buffy. This isn't to say that Buffy was all that great, just that tv is generally kind of terrible.
I can see ham-handed as a critique of the writing. I'm not really getting ham-handedly feminist as a critique of the feminism. Like, it'd be politically superior if the phrasing was subtler?
My feminism will be ham-handed or it will be bullshit.
I thought it was also the 3-dimensionality of the characters and their sense of agency to the story. And being the hero specifically in a domain usually reserved for men.
Well yes, of course.
I shouldn't take that for granted, but I was actually skipping past that to try to gesture towards what would distinguish Buffy from Alias.
I had the first serious test of my commitment to my relatively recent marriage this year. I "passed," but it sucked so much. There are no good decisions and humans are optimized for emotional pain.
Yeah, but they're still mostly less likely to wreck my cupboards than cats.
Serious tests to the commitments of marriage? Or Buffy?
IIRC, your serious test to the commitment of marriage actually improved your cupboards. Or at least scaled things for shorter people.
Humans. My children have their issues, but they don't bite through bags of chickpeas and scatter them on the counters.
Right, the marriage failed, but the kitchen improved a great deal in the process. I wouldn't go with soapstone countertops again, but if that's the worst divorce-related bad decision I will have made, and at this point it looks as if it may have been, I'll have gotten away easy.
32: But now that I'm momentarily done bitching about my pets, is there a story, or just the implied story that you were tempted to cheat and didn't, but nonetheless the process made you unhappy?
staged reading of an issue of Hustler from 1977
Hott.
Our cats barely count as cats. They're not mean, which is the lowest bar for an acceptable cat, but they are not sufficiently cuddly, and it's pretty annoying. I'm wasting good years here on insufficiently cuddly cats.
40: That kind of thinking is why people cheat.
Mine are super cuddly and affectionate, if you don't mind your affection with a certain amount of biting. Nibbling. They don't break the skin, generally, but there are teeth, and claws.
How much do they know about Judith Butler?
I enjoyed a lot of Whedon shows (though was never really into Firefly), but wasn't really getting why people care so much about whether he's a decent person. But then it occurred to me that I would actually feel kind of bummed if it turned out that Rob Thomas (the TV one) was a horrible human being.
38: nah, the story is boring. Frankly, I was hoping someone else would reply with a better one. I'm not even sure if I came out of it with more or less sympathy for cheaters. In the past I felt both that marriage was kind of terrible and stupid, and that only spineless people cheat and it's contemptible. I think now I feel contempt for cheaters AND contempt for myself. I contained the damage: now I'm a container of damage. You'd hit that, right? Mm-hmm.
So yes, I envy people their my-affair-put-the-spark-back-in-my-marriage stories, a bit (although I don't, strictly speaking, tend to believe them). Maybe the real point is that feminism and marriage are strange bedfellows in a strange bed, even without children. But I'm not an academic with any deep knowledge of feminist theories of desire and libido. Do I have a "feminist marriage"? Well, sure. If I were a better feminist, would I feel less extramarital desire? I don't know. Would that also make me a better person? In what ways?
Have you got the kind of marriage where you could talk about "Hey, there's this thing I almost did, do you want to help me figure out what happened and how to make it less of a problem in future"? That seems like it might be productive.
I mean, I can imagine not having that kind of a marriage. I didn't have that kind of a marriage, apparently (despite having made a number of attempts to have a similar conversation from the perspective of "Hey, there's this thing you appear to be about to be doing or possibly have already done. Can we talk about how to work through it?" Didn't get anywhere with that one.)
We talked about it. I didn't solicit advice or give the impression that I needed any. I admire you for being so forthright with your ex. I am still struggling with the best way to balance autonomy and cooperation in marriage, and I try to err on the side of too much autonomy because that seems safer. Maybe it would be better to take more risks trying to cooperate.
I suspect the only safe way to prevent infidelity is to be super utterly cautious not to get close to that kind of friendships or situations that are tempting. Put a fence around it. Which is perhaps kind of depressing in and of itself. I personally am cold and unfriendly enough that I haven't been tested. Or, there hasn't been a person who I would potentially have frisson with who has also tested my boundaries. I like to think I'd be virtuous!
"I so hot that I totally had the chance to cheat on you but so moral that I restrained myself" is probably a good way to start a conversation.
It was more "I'm so moral that I totally had the chance to get into a spiraling, messy emotional entanglement with a third party, but so hot that if you come to bed with me now I'll take care of the dishes later." Did that ever happen in Buffy? Because it would have been really feminist.
59, 50: Yeah. Or, what's wrong with Mike Pence is that he thinks minimizing the risk of adultery is worth shutting down the rest of your life, not exactly that he's wrong about what would minimize the risk of adultery.
& also worth shutting down the career prospects of people you might be attracted to.
Right, exactly. It's worth actively injuring other people.
Heebie is more right than Mike Pence, unless Pence truly can't resist every woman he comes across. I think avoiding infidelity has more to do with being honest with yourself about what the kinds of circumstances and situations are likely to pose problems for you. Since I've been married, I've platonically shared hotel rooms with past hook-ups in cases where I knew I could manage temptation/recklessness, and it hasn't been an issue. Suffice to say, there are any number of people I would not trust myself to room with, and I won't. I don't think my husband needs or wants to know about the latter cases, but I do check to be sure he's comfortable with the former.
be super utterly cautious not to get close to that kind of friendships or situations that are tempting.
Also, reevaluate the security clearance of all approved friendships and situations every six months, if not every six days.
56: yes, it's (almost) like a weird inverted form of sexual harassment.
A woman willing to work with Pence might be O.K. (maybe she just wants to work in Indiana politics). A woman willing to sleep with Pence might be O.K. (the heart wants what the heart wants). Anybody willing to do both is going to be horrible.
" I can't think of other superhero women pre-Buffy who aren't primarily about being super sexual"
Joan of Arc and Miss Marple.
I don't think either of those are "super".
Joan of Arc
Not if Shakespeare had anything to say about it.
I think you need to read the Harry Potter fanfic before you say that.
Isn't Wonder Woman a goddess of some kind?
I decided I wasn't going to look that up.
Being somewhat of a misanthrope, I have found it extremely easy to avoid the temptation to cheat even though I have what I think is a high libido for a woman. I don't know that I would go so far as to recommend purposefully looking for the worst qualities in everyone you meet as a way to avoid temptation, but boy it sure does work.
That sounds like work. Why not just never hide or mitigate your worst qualities and let other people do the work?
Oh I do that as well, yet seemingly some people are still interested in and attracted to me. It's baffling.
An unfogged commenter, something of a misanthrope? First time for everything, I guess.
68: Demigod, now. She's been promoted.
58: and with prior-non-hookups, as I had to reassure Lee when Selah was apparenbtly rhapsodizing about what fun it is to live in an apartment with J, Robot and how she can't wait to do more of it. Lee (post-breakup, but still) was offended I hadn't told her, except I had because it was just vacation.
61.2 is obviously where ajay's next epic needs to go. I am totally down for some Marpleporn.
71. You can even be nice if you're old and fat. It's no work at all, and the temptations just never materialize.
Further to 77, What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw! is plenty obvious but The Body in the Library? The Moving Finger?? They Do It with Mirrors??? It's not even subtext!
I have "The Mirror Crack'd" on my nightstand but haven't started it yet.
Maybe ask your wife if she's okay with you taking in mature content like that first, Moby.
75: That's a demotion, actually. Sexist and Orwellian.
77: I said "Joan of Arc and Miss Marple" not "Joan of Arc/Miss Marple".
I know the story lines got more complex later, but I gave up on Buffy very early on when they went down the tangled romance between a vampire slayer and a vampire route.
Also, I generally hate shows set in high schools, which is why I'm surprised I liked Veronica Mars. Mostly.
Also, if you want ham-handed feminism that's not really feminist and also has some super sexualization going on, watch the highbrow satire of feminist theory with a classy title: Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.
I want to google that but I'm scared.
I've never cheated on Mrs Salmond. Not even ever really been tempted. I mean, I see/meet very attractive people all the time, and it's nice to look at hot people but the idea of doing something about that never really raises its head. Although CC's 78 basically rings true, I do still sometimes get people flirting with, and it's nice and all, but that's it.
But, we have a new-ish neighbour who is completely smoking hot, which has made me think about it.* Not as in, "I want to have an affair with this neighbour" but more as in, "Oh yeah, I guess I can see how people might be tempted by someone they know in their everyday life."
* her husband is also ridiculously handsome, in a Javier Bardem-ish sort of way.
I saw that movie as a teenager. Any nuances were wasted on me. I remember almost nothing about it except "It was funny".
I don't think it's just because I'm old now, but people making spoof movies are really shit at their jobs these days. There are still funny movies, but nothing like Airplane!.
Not Another Teen Movie was passable.
You can even be nice if you're old and fat. It's no work at all, and the temptations just never materialize.
Being old and fat is easy. Being nice is work.
76: You totally could have run with it. "Oh, I didn't mention my new, young girlfriend, who thinks I'm wonderful? Go figure!"
I always thought the phrase was ham-fisted, but I'll admit it's hard to type or write longhand with a fist.
Anyway, I thought it was "ham-fisted" too. Because you can obviously hold a pencil in such a manner as to write perfectly well with deli-sliced ham in your hands.
93: She actually ran into me once while I was out with Punchy and was so self-absorbed and busy being smug to me she didn't notice the girlfriend.
Maybe you should date flashier women. Is there a lesbian subculture that dresses like 1970s Dolly Parton?
If there were, Lee might be able to find a girlfriend and leave me the hell alone.
(Actually coparenting therapy yesterday led to her agreeing to have all kids with me every weeknight and it was very satisfying not to see those two hours twice a week on our shared calendar when I got up this morning. So that's a step!)
I was approached by an attractive woman at a party earlier this summer; my better half returned from the buffet soon after the innocent conversation began and staked her claim, politely, but the "You've still got it, pal" good feeling lasted for a few days.
Is there a lesbian subculture that dresses like 1970s Dolly Parton?
Get out of my dreams, Moby.
102: Perish the thought! Moby's the letdown, for not completing the concept with "and Crystal Gayle."
Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death
I can remember little about that move except some scenes of Adrienne Barbeau driving a safari jeep with "Department of Women's Studies" printed on the side.
Now, it's hard to find a Women's Studies Department that issues anything bigger than a Prius.
It depends on what's available at the campus Zipcar.
Zipcar doesn't like it when you paint "Department of Women's Studies" on the side.
What makes the Joss Whedon story so compelling is that his "feminism" has always seemed to be as much a sexual fetish as actually caring about women, and this story seems to perfectly confirm that reading. That is he doesn't have ass-kicking witty women who all have the same build because he wants women to have strong role models, it's because he thinks all those things are really hot. And he's very representative of a certain strain of male nerdom in that way, that's all "I think smart kick-ass women are great, so long as they're super hot, and I can masturbate to their awesomeness."
The Louis CK thing makes me sad because his show is so good and genuinely seems insightful and has interesting things to say about women and gender, but it kinda ruins the whole thing now that it's clear he's a creep. In particular his whole "men are so gross and scary and so it's gotta be tough to be a woman dating"-shtick is now really really gross and makes it seem like he's trying to sexually assault the audience.
108: Aha! this has the advantage of folding into what it explains a lot of Firefly, specifically River, most of whose character as I recall is "cipher who kicks".
108: Huh. I feel as if I'm being unduly easy on Whedon here (he's a creep for cheating on his wife, there's lots of problematic stuff in all of his shows), but I've seen a lot of versions of 108 and I don't find it self-evidently discrediting to Whedon as some kind of (completely flawed, like everyone) feminist.
Trying to pick my reaction apart: look, everyone (or almost everyone) finds some type or types of person hot, and popular entertainment is generally going to have an aspect of "Look at the pretty people being hot" as shaped by what the creator thinks is hot about it. That is not, in itself, sharply in conflict with feminism: there's nothing inherently unfeminist about being entertained by a show that lets you admire hot people.
Where you get into feminist issues are questions like "Are the only options for women to be either hot or invisible/garbage?" And I think Whedon does okay on that by popular entertainment standards; there are women in his shows who aren't in his tiny-witty-asskicking mode who are still treated sympathetically and with some depth (Joyce and Tara come to mind on Buffy).
And then there's sort of whether the ideal of hotness that's being put forth is one that's compatible with feminism. And in Whedon's case, it is certainly clear that the strong-female-character (TM) thing is something he gets off on, so he doesn't get credit for being selflessly or abstractly feminist for it, I guess. On the other hand, if I've got someone who's getting off on finding women admirable rather than on denigrating them... on some level, I'll take that as a win.
He's not the feminist messiah, but the fact that he's putting his own sexual tastes into his work doesn't irretrievably contaminate them as necessarily anti-feminist, I guess.
Setting aside the particulars of Whedon, how does having affairs make a man not feminist, as opposed to just being a dick, or just being human? I don't see that betrayal of an individual woman in itself means anything about an individual's attitude to women in general.
115: I think that's something that depends sensitively on the circumstances, in ways that may be hard to figure out without knowing the people. I mean, a man who's cheating on his wife with multiple women in subordinate positions, I'm going to have a strong guess that on some level he thinks of women with contempt as disposable sex objects, which is a problem feminism-wise. In other situations it may be less clear.
I think the secret is to cheap with a woman who has the same age, educational background, and social status as your wife.
113: Thank god, I was worried I was going to have to give up my 20 year crush on Willow.
Also in Whedon's defense BtVS has some storylines that highlight Nice Guyish flaws in otherwise supportive male characters. Xander, for instance. Frequently a jerk, and what feels like a Whedon proxy.
"Are the only options for women to be either hot or invisible/garbage?"
I agree with 113 in general, but Tara and Joyce aren't very good counterexamples -- Whedon was famously resistant to casting Tara as Willow's love interest, explicitly because of her body type; and Joyce, although believably Buffy's mom's age, has every other physical attribute of a typical Whedon starlet (beautiful, very slender, doe-eyed, delicate, etc.). In the Whedonverse, women are either hot or mostly invisible, but as you say, it's pop tv. Unfortunate, but what do you expect.
The nice thing about portrayals of women in Hinterland is that it allows women to be capable professionals but still dress like a kid at recess in the winter of 1978.
114: Yeah, boy, I was wondering when someone was going to say this. It seems very complex to me, and when you throw in the disappointed fantasies of millions of fans who grew up with this guy's work, separating signal from noise is not easy. I am sorry that Cole was apparently separated from her architectural career while all of this was going on; that seems sad and significant.
I don't know how much "feminist man" is conflated with "man you can trust" in people's minds, such that betrayal of trust seems like a betrayal of feminism as well. It's a minefield.
On the cheating subthread, "this will end badly" has always effectively killed any temptation to act on desires. It is apparently the ONE area of life where I can easily envision the future.
On the "Is it feminist?" scale, I'm pretty sure that BtVS beats out Fatal Attraction, even when Whedon's cheating is factored in.
Exactly where Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death falls relative to the other two is anyone's guess.
The Whedon Test: A woman threatens to kill another woman over something besides a man.
Not really having read this thread, I was gonna write something along the lines of 114, and I agree with 115 and 122. I get a bit uncomfortable with "being shitty in a pretty human way" becoming automatically "antifeminist," though I agree that one can cheat in ways that feel unfeminist, like 115 points out.
Cheating is sometimes a place where I do feel like double standards pop up in certain feminist circles (places like jezebel and the now defunct xo jane spring to mind). When a woman cheats, it's because she's finally been empowered to pursue her own desires, but when a man does it he's a sexist dickbag.
Yeah, we should also remember that Whedon is not the sole auteur - he assembled a good team (with a lot of women), and while he of course had what I assume was a good deal of overall control, he's only credited as writer or director in maybe a tenth of the episodes.
119: I think Joyce and Tara still work a little better than you think. It's not that they're not hot -- like you say, it's TV. But leaving the actresses' looks to one side for the moment, neither character is written the witty-badass or enigmatic-badass that seems to be Whedon's fantasy woman. They're present and interesting without having to fit his ideal.
This isn't much, but it's something.
129: That's probably a topic for the family wage thread. I think the reason "sexist dickbag" comes up so often is because it's very common that the woman cheated on will have to choose between financial stability (even to the point of giving up all financial security) or ignoring the cheating.
It's a weakness in Fraser's article that she failed to include "Equality of Dickbaggery" as one of her categories.
132: Yes!! New convergent thread: "The Family Wage After Joss Whedon"
If you want to cheat on your spouse and be feminist, you must support the model of paid care-giving over family care.
Or, I guess, be a woman in a heterosexual relationship.
129: I heard a commenter here has a super-feminist story treatment about two women (let's call them Crystal and Dolly) empowered to pursue their shared desires, laydeez.
Also 127 will be in my head forever.
And of course it's not that Whedon is the worst, or even worse than average. It's just that it's annoying to constantly be surrounded by Whedon fans who think of course you'll like his work, and also think everything about it is great, and also that it's the pinnacle of feminism. So it's a really compelling case of schadenfreude.
137.2: I'm proud of it. I don't think I stole it from anyone.
who are still treated sympathetically and with some depth (Joyce and Tara come to mind on Buffy)
depth s/b death.
Not really having read this thread, I was gonna write something along the lines of 114, and I agree with 115 and 122. I get a bit uncomfortable with "being shitty in a pretty human way" becoming automatically "antifeminist," though I agree that one can cheat in ways that feel unfeminist, like 115 points out.
I don't know how much value there is in pawing through other people's dirty laundry (though I was the one who brought up the topic) but she quotes his own descriptions of events, and they're not pretty.
One thing that I read into it is that the temptations that he was indulging weren't just about sex, they were about power. They say power corrupts, and this seems like a good example. It wasn't just that he had affairs with people who's careers he helped shape, but that he clearly enjoyed being a star, and the privileges that came with that -- which is all too human, but definitely the sort of behavior that feminism critiques.
he hid multiple affairs and a number of inappropriate emotional ones that he had with his actresses, co-workers, fans and friends . . .
Then later, after he confessed everything, he told me, "I let myself love you. I stopped worrying about the contradiction. As a guilty man I knew the only way to hide was to act as though I were righteous. And as a husband, I wanted to be with you like we had been. I lived two lives." When he walked out of our marriage, and was trying to make "things seem less bewildering" to help me understand how he could have lied to me for so long, he said, "In many ways I was the HEIGHT of normal, in this culture. We're taught to be providers and companions and at the same time, to conquer and acquire -- specifically sexually -- and I was pulling off both!"
depth s/b death.
Looking at the cast page to check how many episodes each of them were in, I am struck by just how _very_ white the cast was. It makes the 90s feel like a long time ago, it's hard to imagine a similar show today being that white (and I don't think that's just a reflection on Buffy; standards have changed).
Granting everything above about the problems in Buffy, I have always appreciated Whedon's rejection of the "how ever did you come up with the amazing idea of having a strong female lead" comments by saying, more or less, "don't be stupid."
It's just that it's annoying to constantly be surrounded by Whedon fans who think of course you'll like his work, and also think everything about it is great, and also that it's the pinnacle of feminism.
This really isn't my life at all.
I thought the absolutely weakest character from a feminist PoV was the "companion" in Firefly, whose place in the world was as unrealistic as any superhero's. She looks like a peculiar kind of wish fulfilment to make it all better by a man aware that he has made many things worse.
142: Agents of SHIELD does marginally better. They had 2 black main-ish characters so that when they killed one off there was a spare.
That's good. I think my son watches it. Personally, too much TV is "serious people shouting at computer screens and running places."
Agents of SHIELD does marginally better.
I think the fact that you describe it as "marginally" better is telling about how much things have changed since the 90s, considering that two of the leads are asian (admittedly Chloe (Wang) Bennett looks white).
I enjoyed the first season but stopped watching after that because it just wasn't fun. I wanted something a little more light-hearted, and it felt like it was becoming increasingly dark, which made me a little sad, because Ming-Na Wen and Clark Gregg were both enjoyable.
It definitely has a lot of shouting and running and tons of long boring fights, rendered tolerable by fast forwarding on Netflix, but there's a lot to like about it.
M/tch & I also thought it got tedious, but I came back to it after a long break and really like a lot of the episodes in the later seasons. I can't watch it with M/tch, though, because he has to watch everything from beginning to end, while I skip huge chunks of uninteresting storylines.
I can't totally quit it, because I'm a complete sucker for all things FitzSimmons.
how much things have changed since the 90s
If your frame of reference for a show by a good liberal is M.A.S.H., how far things have changed on feminism seems just huge.
too much TV is "serious people shouting at computer screens and running places."
I sometimes swear at my computer screen, but not loud enough for anyone outside of my office to hear. Also, I don't really run anywhere. I guess that's why my life wouldn't make a very good basis for a TV show.
I can't watch it with M/tch, though, because he has to watch everything from beginning to end
I'm a "watch from beginning to end" person as well -- I'm willing to watch lots of mediocre TV, but my basic requirement is, "do I want to spend time around these people" (so, for example, White Collar was perfectly good TV for my tastes -- absurd, but basically warm and friendly).
In conclusion, young people are over-wrought.
Looking at my last few comments, I used "boring," "tolerable," "tedious," and "uninteresting," but I swear I enjoy it.
151: Not to mention on gay & trans characters.
That's what blacksmith parenting gets you.
Agents of SHIELD is fucking great now.
138 demonstrates that Unfoggedtarian is posting from 2012 at the latest. Everyone dramatically turned on Whedon between then and now, to the point that "Buffy is a feminist show" is a controversial opinion.
I have the opposite reaction to this kind of gigantic swing in opinion from shaudenfreude. I always thought Whedon was overrated, so I find the swing itself disturbing. Whedon is just some dude. People felt personally betrayed by one line of dialogue in Ultron. It was a bad line of dialogue, but Jesus Christ, Whedon is just some dude. He's not our god-king. Basically, I hate fans and fandom, and hatedom is just another form of fandom.
My criteria was "will this TV show keep me awake?" Eventually it became the case that nothing passed this test, so I stopped watching.
Basically, I hate fans and fandom, and hatedom is just another form of fandom.
"Nerds ruin everything" is how this was expressed in a thread elsewhere on the recent Whedon business.
My ex husband cheated on me and he definitely a dickbag. I was supporting him though, so I guess it evens out in the feminism department.
Misogynists: my dick does whatever it wants
Male feminists: it just makes me so sad that my dick does whatever it wants
From Woody Allen to Joey Buttafucco.
Anyway, it does seem that adultery has moved up the hierarchy of bad things since M.A.S.H. was on the air.
Has anyone made a GIF of Joss Whedon with a scarlet A on his jacket? Is that a thing now?
Sarah Jessica Parker is struggling with the software.
I think once we have established that no men can be feminists then the feminist revolution really will happen.
I think we pretty much have established that no man can claim to be a feminist in defense of his behavior. It's the "I'm not a racist but..." of gender relations.
This has probably already been said, but the issue w/r/t feminism seems less that Whedon is a serial adulterer and more that he appears to have been taking advantage of his position in the industry.
"Some of my best friends have been feminists. I've had affairs with all of them."
Oh yeah, I don't doubt that this particular case reveals him to be an unfeminist douchebag. But that seems to be more about sexual relations with obvious subordinates than the affair angle. If a man is single but only sleeps with much younger and powerless women, I'd judge him as being a bit sexist too.
Obviously, cheating makes someone kind of a dick, but I don't think the cheating on one's wife is the particular part of this that's sexist, insofar as you can disentangle them.
Oh yeah, I don't doubt that this particular case reveals him to be an unfeminist douchebag shithead and hypocrite.
I don't think it should have much affect on whether we think his work is feminist (with caveats). As I said to somebody, "I could easily imagine that somebody who felt like they weren't living up to their own ideal would have additional motivation to do better in their work" but I do think there is an element of hypocrisy.
Legal question, only kind of on topic:
Do bar associations still have rules about how lawyers can advertise? I'm asking because the bus shelter by my house is advertising a firm with the web address allinfirm.com.
I mean, I realize people are bored and all, but I'm not really sure why people are willing to wholeheartedly believe and analyze a very short article explicitly written for mass consumption by an aggrieved party to a failed marriage. In terms of sheer volume, we know more about Buffy (in far more nuanced detail) than we do about the specifics of their marriage.
No one ever knows what is happening with a couple behind closed doors and whether it meets their needs except for the couple themselves.
I just went to the address in 172. The first partner is named Ogg.
I stilll BtVS, Angel, and Firefly (though the latter is the most problematic). I couldn't stand Dollhouse which was creepy af though it had some great actors in it (Dichen Lachman and especially Enver Gjokaj). You can definitely consider me a fan. I also have little time for cheaters but I could give a shit about personal morality and art. I adore films by filmmakers I personally despise, it's just not an issue unless it suffuses the work itself in some way (Woody Allen is hit or miss here). Anyway what lk, WS, and LB said above. Whedon as the man-feminist auteur is never what did it for me in my appreciation of his work in the mid-90s to the mid-00s.
I'm not really sure why people are willing to wholeheartedly believe and analyze a very short article explicitly written for mass consumption by an aggrieved party to a failed marriage.
Yeah. I mean, surely no ex-spouse has ever produced anything but an utterly truthful, comprehensive and objective account of the circumstances leading up to their divorce.
I still blame Whedon though because if he had done more Buffy episodes with unreliable narrators then gormless people might actually realise that it was a thing, rather than just going "it must have happened like that because someone said it did".