The Worlds of Joss Whedon - Foundational Texts

From 4:45-5:45 pm on Saturday July 28, 2007 I know where I was.

For that hour, I sat in Ballroom 20 at the San Diego Convention Center. I had been in there for several hours at that point, having sat through panels for Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, and a panel for Futurama. After each panel I’d moved forward a few rows and by 4:45 I’d gotten a good seat maybe ten rows back. One of the benefits of flying solo at San Diego Comic-Con meant I could easily move forward as people cleared out from the panels they’d been waiting for.

The panel during the hour in question? Dark Horse Presents - Joss Whedon. While Dark Horse sponsored the panel to promote their launch of Buffy Season 8 (continuing the story where the TV show left off), the actual selling point of the panel was Whedon on stage for one hour. Unfiltered.

By 2007, Whedon had been off television for several years. Angel had come to an end in 2004 and Serenity had come out in 2005. Aside from his comics work (low profile) he was working on a long-gestating project called Goners and had recently parted ways with a Wonder Woman movie he was set to write and direct. Within the next 12 months he’d be working on a new TV series Dollhouse and have just finished premiering Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. But back then, the future was a big question mark. At this panel he announced he’d written Cabin in the Woods (the first public announcement of it), but the rest of the panel was 45 minutes of him answering questions from his fans, preaching to his faithful, making his signature little jokes, and holding the spotlight.

To me, this was the equivalent of going to church. Sitting and listening to Whedon talk for an hour became an annual tradition I looked forward to for years afterwards. To say that Joss Whedon was a major force in my life is an understatement. From the second I became aware of who he was and what he’d done, it fundamentally changed my life in ways few humans have. I couldn’t get enough of him. If he wrote something, I read it. If he spoke somewhere, I tracked it down. There was an essay he wrote in 2008 about feminism that I printed out and kept in my wallet to read anytime I needed some inspiration. He made me laugh. He made me cry. He was everything to me. There’s never been another writer (that I’ve experienced, anyway) who’s more perfectly dialed into my interests and who so directly wired himself directly into my brain.

More than anyone else, Joss Whedon is the man who inspired me to be everything that I creatively am. Unfortunately, with numerous allegations over the past half-decade or so, he’s been someone extremely hard to grapple with.

So… let’s grapple.

Under Your Spell

The first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I watched was “Doppelgangland”, a season three episode in which a parallel-universe, vampire version of Buffy’s best friend Willow crosses over to the main Buffy universe. It’s a silly episode, but one Whedon wrote and directed. From there, I started watching Buffy live (season 6 was airing, just around the time of the musical) and caught up as the network FX started showing Buffy from the beginning. I caught up as fast as I could, watching reruns as they dropped every day (man remember the days before DVD seasons were ubiquitous?) and also picked up Angel (where it was currently in season three).

Buffy fundamentally rewired my brain. It had everything: action, comedy, and even a little horror (which I was so not into at the time, but god was it a gateway drug). It changed the way I thought about television. I wasn’t expecting Willow or Xander or Giles or any of the extended cast. It was a show with side characters who lived full, rich lives and could carry their own episodes. They played specific roles in the narrative and real things happened with very real and lasting consequences. It was a far cry from other shows I’d been watching like Star Trek: Voyager, where episodes didn’t tell ongoing stories and very little mattered week to week. All this to say nothing of the larger metaphors Whedon was playing with.

It was literary and smart. While undoubtedly written by a man with a male gaze, I’m not above admitting that it appealed to me. In my defense, it also had a massive base of female fans. It wasn’t exploitative (though it flirted with that given how sexy it could be) and didn’t have the hotheaded testosterone present in so many other action pieces of the time.

Perhaps more importantly, Buffy was also the first time I remember building small community around a show like that. I remember my 8th Grade social studies class, where I would talk to my teacher the day after new episodes aired in the show’s final season. We would share theories about what was happening and she would point out things I hadn’t noticed1.

When Buffy ended, I stuck with Angel through its incredible ending. But… when those shows ended, I didn’t classify myself as a Joss Whedon fan. I knew the name, but it didn’t matter to me. Yet.

Something to Sing About

If Buffy was an awakening, Firefly was the shot of espresso in the morning that jolted me awake. The first episode I watched was post cancellation, catching a rerun on the Sci-Fi channel. After hearing enough people rant and rave about it, I tuned into the next rerun I found: “Jaynestown”. It’s a firmly mid-tier episode, but one that captured my imagination in new and surprising ways. I kept up with the show as Sci-Fi cycled through the few episodes that existed. Again, my brain rewired itself as I watched each new episode.

I’ll have more to say about Firefly and its movie sequel Serenity in forthcoming posts, but it was seeing that show, what it was, how it was that changed the way I looked at creatives and the role that they played. When Firefly was airing during Buffy’s final season, I remember hearing people talk about it, but I recall not watching it specifically because creators didn’t matter to me. Just because I liked Buffy didn’t mean Firefly was some sure bet. Ha ha. How wrong I was.

Because Firefly was so different from Buffy it forced a reconsideration. The same guy made both of these shows? The connections were tonally there, but subject-wise they felt so different. But it was that tone, that indefinable but unmistakable voice that shone brightest of all. I loved Firefly, scratching as it did the spaceships/science fiction itch that comes from a childhood watching Star Trek. More than any other piece of media, it’s Firefly that I credit for birthing my understanding of art (especially collaborative art like film & television) as a byproduct of creators.

More than that, it’s Firefly that I remember devouring on DVD. I needed to know more. Eventually I watched the commentaries that featured Whedon (several of those commentaries I watched multiple times), his voice and perspectives always fresh and engaging, explaining stories from a writer’s standpoint. He was self-effacing and a feminist. He was smart and engaged and funny. He was literate and juvenile. This rippled into Buffy and Angel, where I devoured those commentaries as well, starting that aforementioned obsession with everything he had to say. By 2005, my fascination with Whedon had transcended the narratives he made and started to become a love of the man himself.

That was new.

Bunnies

Joss Whedon as writer/director of The Avengers just made sense. Marvel’s bringing him in to make their premier super team’s first big screen outing is still one of the smartest moves they’ve ever made. He was a lifelong comic book fan, but it was Firefly and his other TV work that best suited him for the job. He’s a master of large ensembles and building a signature moment for every character under his purview. He can work under tight schedules and deadlines and use storytelling to compress dense narratives into economic, pacey popcorn blockbusters.

When I walked out of the theater after seeing it for the first time, it left me so depressed. Why?

While Whedon had come to Los Angeles to be a screenwriter and a director, television is a medium he stumbled into after the WB expressed interest in developing his screenplay of Buffy the Vampire Slayer into a show for their new network. Whedon took over the job and found tremendous success in the medium. It allowed him to explore longer stories and also to learn how to be a great director. But television works differently than film. There’s a massive order of episodes that have to come out every year. Film is a longer process, with an average (at best) output of one every two years. There is no medium better suited to delivering a steady, heavy flow of narrative writing to an audience.

Selfishly, I wanted more Whedon. My prevailing sense in the aftermath of The Avengers was a sense of wasted time. It was a good movie, but I wanted television. It was a good time. But… after years of waiting that 141 minute movie was it? Years of life and that’s all we had to show for it?

I’ve come around on it of course, but I’ll never escape the sense that something original like Cabin in the Woods was preferable to an Avengers movie, however original it was.

Rest In Peace

There was always something about Angel that never made sense. For all that I’m a fan of season four (a lone island on that one), there was always something weird with Charisma Carpenter and her departure from the show. It was never something Whedon went into, and Carpenter was pretty vague about it except to say that there was resentment about Whedon being upset about her pregnancy. He incorporated it into the story, but making Cordelia into a villain felt like a tremendous disservice to the character and unceremoniously “killing her off” at the end of the season felt like an ignoble end to one of the Buffyverse’s strongest characters.

This never made sense to me, and showed a darker side of Whedon that I didn’t want to acknowledge. It didn’t comport with my vision of him as empathetic, humanistic, and kind. It was easy to compartmentalize it as some private beef between the two.

The full picture only started to coalesce as the slow drip of Whedon’s behavior started with his ex-wife Kai Cole’s writing an open letter to his fans. She decried him as a fake feminist and exposed his many affairs during their marriage. After that came Ray Fisher’s 2020 allegations about Whedon’s unprofessionalism on the set of Justice League reshoots. Shortly thereafter came Gal Gadot’s corroboration by discussing horrific things Whedon said to her. And then Carpenter got extremely specific about what had happened to her on Angel, followed by Sarah Michelle Gellar supporting her and announcing that she was happy to have Buffy as her legacy but didn’t want her association with Whedon to define her. The capper was vague yet disturbing allegations from Michelle Trachtenberg. Yeesh.

Lila Shapiro’s Vulture piece from Jan 2022 served as the last word on the matter, featuring an in-depth interview with Whedon and a consolidation of all the various allegations etc. Whedon hasn’t really appeared or spoken publicly since.

It was beyond devastating. To be honest, I’m still not over it. I’d been reckoning with the slow drip for several years2, but the level of delusion and brokenness in the man was staggering. Reading it again three and a half years later, it’s not as bad as I remember it (though it is still awful). It’s possible the extensive profile on Neil Gaiman’s absolutely wretched misconduct has dulled the pain of this (as have others). Despite this, Whedon undeniably abused his power via psychological torment and behaved unethically with regards to the dozens, perhaps hundreds of women, weaponizing his power and status to sleep with them. The man has a lot of demons to work through. Reading Shapiro’s piece, it’s clear that all of this has so thoroughly broken him, though how much of that is genuine regret with his actions versus lamenting what those actions cost him is a lingering question.

And… good. It should. The hurt he feels is a good and necessary part of any healing process. His actions were monstrous and it feels like (as of that writing) he’d only begun to start whatever rebuilding he needs to do. To his credit he has stayed almost entirely out of the limelight since then. There are many other powerful men who have done far worse and yet returned well before enough time has passed.

Most glaringly, though, the Vulture piece is shockingly devoid of contrition. There’s very little apology or even a sense to correct the record and submit an apology to any of the people who have spoken out about the harm he’s caused. Perhaps he thought the article was an unfair hit piece (when really it’s just providing Whedon with enough rope to hang himself) and that there was nothing he could tell of his side of the story. It’s possible he wasn’t there and still isn’t. But it’s also possible this man with this raging narcissism, bloated ego, and who his fandom fully idolized as a god (their words, many times) simply cannot check those qualities enough to admit fault, instead flaggelating himself to some stoic, monastic existence.

What a waste.

Going Through the Motions

The thing that hurts most in all of this is Whedon’s monstrosity in the face of his contributions to art and culture. As he was coming up, he sought to bring a variety of conflicting tones to an industry that likes to cordon off tones and genres into regimented silos. Whedon is one of the major power players who proved that a show like Buffy could exist. His was a show that was action-packed and wickedly funny and intensely emotional. It was Buffy that coined the term “Big Bad” for a season-long foe and also made finales that culminate in grand explosions of plot and narrative climax. The Avengers became the template for how all MCU movies work, defining the comedy and rhythms that make up the films that have come out as recently as this year.

So much of modern culture (especially genre narratives) owes a lot to Whedon and what he did to move the ball forward to mature, rich storytelling for a populist, broad audience.

Here’s the thing that really wrecks my head, though. For all that Whedon fought and battled with networks, studios, and who knows who else, the dude won. He worked in the world of stories he loved and remade them in his image. There’s a glut of series and films out in the world now that can trace their lineage back to Buffy.

It is so disappointing that with all of this success and undeniable influence, the dude can’t find it in himself to really reconcile with those to whom he caused pain. There is no public effort to try to get out there and add to the world. And maybe if he did make something it wouldn’t be good. Maybe his actions have truly shattered whatever image we might be able to rebuild. But the truth is that his work is such that the world is richer for its existence. It is entirely possible that a Whedon who can atone for his past can shed those awful aspects of himself and prove to be a better person. Maybe even one who could make great art again.

While this prison of his befits a person who’s done what others have alleged, for this to be his legacy is sad. It’s tragic. And if this pariah status is how he’s content to exist… that’s a real sadness.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Since 2020 I haven’t really watched much of Whedon’s work at all. I finished my Buffy and Angel rewatch shortly after Cole’s letter. I didn’t go near Firefly. I rewatched his two Avengers movies during the pandemic, 18 months before the Vulture piece. I’ve stayed away from Cabin in the Woods and Dollhouse. I haven’t gone back to Dr. Horrible. The most I’ve done is listened to “Once More With Feeling” and the odd song when it comes up on a random playlist3.

With news of Hulu’s Buffy reboot picking up steam, it’s past the point where Whedon’s work get the re-evaluation it needs, one that truly reconciles with the man who made art rather than the god who manifested it. We can’t wipe his work off the face of the map.

What I refuse is for the hard work of so many people (Whedon included) to lay fallow and tainted as it has. I think about what Gellar said about her legacy being Buffy and the joy that it caused. The truth is that that show was truly one of the great series. Even when making a show as problematic as Dollhouse, the dude made insanely entertaining and well-made television4. To bury the blood, sweat, and tears of so many fine people is to let Whedon’s actions eclipse what those people put together and let it dictate the narrative. This is true for all projects from those whom society has cancelled.

Once a piece of art goes out into the world, it belongs to all of us. Buffy, Firefly, The Avengers, Cabin in the Woods… they’re not his anymore. Nor are the works of any other problematic individuals who have paraded through the arts, camouflaged under the guise of “genius.” Sure, there’s areas where this is less true. Harry Potter is unreadable now because of J.K. Rowling’s malicious and utterly repugnant actions against the trans community. To bring up Harry Potter outside of this context is to whitewash a woman who has made her existence about only two things: the world of a teen boy wizard, and the eradication of trans folk from public life. She holds such a tight grip on the Wizarding World that any money that goes into that universe passes through to directly fund and amplify her atrocious anti-trans fatwa.

So too, the quality of the work matters when mapping it against the odiousness of the creator. Annie Hall is and always will be an incredible movie, but it’s not worth rehabilitating Woody Allen. This is especially true because that film (as with all his films) are so wholly his worldview and voice on screen. The Pygmalion of it all reflects poorly on a man who acknowledges having groomed other women in his life and whom his adopted daughter has credibly accused of child sexual abuse. Sure, Annie can’t stand Allen’s character in the end. You’re still watching Woody Allen with the knowledge of everything that came after.

The thing is… Whedon’s work has the capacity to transcend his unsavoriness. The famous Buffy arc where losing her virginity to Angel results in a grand metaphor of boyfriend who becomes a monster plays differently in a world where we know Whedon’s many indiscretions. But knowing about Whedon’s imperfections only enhances a compelling story that was already worth telling. Age of Ultron has a tasteless emotional beat about Black Widow’s comparing her sterilization in name of being a perfect assassin as some monstrosity, but the movie also has discussions about artificial intelligence, robotics, and the military industrial complex. Whedon’s gender politics have always been retro and the world has evolved greatly since the 60s and 70s. His particular brand of feminism will always have caveats and come with a disclaimer about how white men will not save feminism.

Part of this is self-serving. Yes. I’ve loved almost all of Whedon’s work and no I will not excuse any of the harm he’s caused. But I would love to have all this knowledge inform his work rather than bleach it. At a certain point, it is possible for work to transcend its creator, especially once enough time has passed. But it has to be possible to hold the conflicting ideas of “this problematic person made this incredible art” alongside “his behavior is inexcusable and it would be great if he apologized at any point”. How else are we going to recognize that the act of geniusing is no excuse for the mistreatment of others?

It helps that I’m not going out and buying more of his work (because I have almost everything in physical form), but I also want to know if it’s possible to let his imperfections inform the work without ever excusing them. They might color it poorly and even at times make for something unwatchable. But it’s possible that knowing what we know now might allow for a fuller, more rewarding picture of the work that he did. His work wasn’t perfect. I’ve no doubt it was deeply flawed in ways that were often rather invisible to most. Acknowledging it might make strong art even stronger once we know where the pitfalls are. I seek to rehabilitate the art, not the artist5.

So……… I rewatched Firefly. So that’s what I’ll be writing about Friday.