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babydracoI was and still am, a HUGE Buffyverse fan. I found Firefly enjoyable but not life changing. After that, I pretty much drifted off because Whedon didn't seem to have anything interesting left to say all on his own and his increased anti religion soap boxing obviously bothered me a lot.
I do believe he's a sincere feminist, and I don't see any misogyny in his work except where he's included it to say "hey, this is misogyny and it's a bad thing". People have this tendency to define imperfect feminism as the same thing as misogyny. And that leaves everyone in a position where you can't make a human mistake, because that instantly makes you a monster who hates women. There's no sense of proportion at all. I imagine this makes it hard for male feminists, who simply don't understand certain things because they happen to be men and are therefore more likely to put their feet in their mouths and never be allowed to live it down. Ever. Male artists who openly portray misogyny in their work are often accused of being misogynists themselves, even if "misogyny exists and is a bad thing" is the entire fricking point of the story they're trying to tell. Whedon doesn't really pull any punches when he uses misogyny as a plot device, and that confuses people, because if you don't know he's trying for feminism, it looks from the outside like he personally has a raging hatred for women. Because that's what we're used to seeing in other male writers and directors.
His feminism has always been the one thing I've never felt the need to complain about. Fandom thinks he's been coasting on his reputation as a feminist, but the reality is that we actually still live in a world where someone reviewing Super 8 said "JJ Abrams is one plucky heroine away from being Joss Whedon" and appears to have meant that as an insult. Considering Super 8 had no plucky heroine...
I feel like Whedon's brand of feminism should be the bare minimum standard for tv and movies, not something people automatically get turned into heroes for doing, and I think the fact that it wasn't the minimum standard when Buffy started airing plays a big part in the pedestal people put Whedon on.
Which they never should have done in the first place, it's a long way to fall. I remember, years ago, a fan wrote a review of Firefly accusing it of being misogynist. Fandom came down on her like a ton of bricks for even daring to suggest that Whedon's work was less than perfectly feminist. Oh how the tides have turned.
So, no wonder the realization that he is not, in fact, a god of writing after all, hasn't gone down particularly well. It's what people do, it's what fandom does, they become so obsessed with a person or a story that they dig too deep, find out how the sausages got made, and turn on it with a vengeance. Once that happens, once you've been labeled, there's no going back. You are that thing. And it is just going to intensify, until everything you ever were is boiled down to an over exaggerated caricature of your worst qualities. Everything you do or say after that will be filtered through that rage and disillusionment, to the point where what you meant, versus what a certain portion of your audience thinks you meant, ends up having zero relation to each other, or often, reality, period.
Joss Whedon and C.S Lewis could have such a great conversation about their memetic reputations.
That being said, there's plenty of themes in his work, aside from the feminism, that I started finding boring, annoying and repetitive even back when Angel was still airing. I find the way he writes pretty predictable at this point, so much so that I have a not particularly well publicized side blog where I post screencaps from the MCU with appropriate Buffyverse quotes attached.
He IS out of touch and the world of feminist filmmaking HAS moved on. I can think of plenty of newer stories telling Buffy's story as well or better than Buffy told it.
The MCU moved on too. He needs to start acknowledging that. Age of Ultron plays exactly like he picked up right where he left off in 2012. Natasha even went back to the same hairstyle. Problem is, no one saw how good and how popular, Winter Soldier would end up being and how it was going to change what people expected from the MCU. Winter Soldier was the Prisoner of Azkaban of Marvel movies, the moment when the franchise Grew the Beard. Whedon didn't want to adapt to the audience's new expectations.
But that doesn't mean I'm on board with the ridiculous levels of hate directed at him constantly either. It's gone completely over the top at this point. He gets blamed for stuff he didn't do or that may not have been entirely his idea, accused of saying things he never actually said because someone took a perfectly innocent statement, misinterpreted it in the worst possible way, and then ran with it, and he's never allowed to live down things he said or did years ago. Personal conflicts he had with his employees, things which have not only been resolved years ago but weren't exactly our business anyway, are held up as proof that he's a misogynist monster.
When are people going to get that hate bandwagons do not stop, they just keep getting worse? Once you get that ball rolling, it ends in people who don't have any sense of proportional anger or boundaries.
It's especially an MCU issue because people seem convinced he has more creative power in the MCU than he, or any of the other directors, has ever had. The Avengers movies weren't "his" films like Serenity, Cabin in the Woods or Dr. Horrible, they were projects he was hired to run. The blessing and the curse, of the MCU is that Marvel has very specific plans for it, and they like to micromanage. Jon Favereau complained about Marvel forcing his storytelling hand in order to make the other movies link up.
People are perfectly willing to say "I trust the Russos but they're working within a larger structure that isn't necessarily woman or POC friendly" but they aren't willing to give Whedon that same grace. If something goes wrong in Cap 3, Marvel will be blamed. But everything that went wrong with AoU is entirely Joss Whedon's fault. Despite the fact that he's *also* working for the same people still giving Rick Remender a paycheck. Somehow, he has the magical power to transcend that, I guess. People expect Joss Whedon to be a wizard who can make anything he wants happen, so if it a Whedon story isn't what you hoped it would be, it's because he deliberately made it that way. To screw with you. Because he's a horrible person.
I just saw this article about how The Last Airbender live action version got so screwed up. How an Asian director who wanted to film a sweeping epic about a mostly Asian cast of characters based on a phenomenally successful cartoon ended up making a flop of a film with a mostly white cast in rural Pennsylvania. Short answer? Movies are a business and the people with the money get to tell you how to spend it.
It's always possible Whedon genuinely thought the storytelling mistakes he made in AoU were good choices. But, let me point out, it is also equally possible that they were attempts to pacify some studio exec with more money than understanding of film, storytelling or possibly even Marvel comics.
As for the movie itself, I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. I don't regret the effort I went to in order to see it, but it wasn't a life changing experience. I didn't expect it to be. I feel no need to rage about the stuff I didn't like, because any complaints I do have tend to be about things that don't really effect the way I participate in the fandom anyway.
I mean, are we supposed to be angry there was nothing about Steve and Bucky's relationship? Or relieved because Whedon didn't inevitably ruin it as everyone seemed to believe he would? You wanted more Steve and Bucky but didn't trust Whedon to handle it but you're angry that he didn't even try. Apparently, the idea that Joss Whedon hates Bucky Barnes became practically memetic, despite there being little to no hard evidence of that outside of Tumblr, an echo chamber where everyone already hates Whedon. It seems I Don't Care Quite as Much About That Character as You Do equals I Hate That Character with a Passion, because that's how we're doing things now.
We're approaching a "this food is terrible, where's the rest of it?" scenario here.
Although, I do agree that it seemed obvious in The Avengers that Clint and Natasha were meant to be read as a couple. Everyone I've talked to felt the same way. It's only looking back on it now, that I realize that was never made explicitly canon. You know, that happens all the time though, when the characters are two men or two women, that's the very definition of "slashy", "If this interaction took place between a man and a woman, would you assume it was a romance?" Het shippers are more used to the idea that they're interpreting the interaction correctly and that their pairing will transcend subtext. Slash shippers sigh and know deep down that the het pairing which seems just as strong as the slash one, is the one that is more likely to be canon.
Bruce and Natasha? I don't wike it. It makes no sense in any wider context. However, even if he sincerely thought the pairing was a good idea, Whedon isn't doing any more Avengers movies, and he ended the movie with their relationship in an ambiguous position. I'm fairly certain nothing will come of it in the future.
Partly because they're going to have to deal with the epic Bucky/Nat elephant in the room.
Which makes me wonder, if the romance had been between Bucky and Natasha as it is in comics canon, or Clint and Natasha as people (including, apparently, Scarlett Johansson) assumed it was in the MCU, would we be hearing all this angry shouting about "reducing her to a love interest"? Or is some of this to do with her being given a romantic storyline with a character no one wants her with?
And why do we not like her with Bruce? What, precisely, is actually wrong with it? Is it just that he's not Clint or Bucky (or Sam or Steve or Maria or Pepper?) Hey, I'll admit it, my problem with the pairing is that it came out of nowwhere, not that it's a romance, and it "came out of nowwhere" because it's not something I've ever shipped before and isn't the pairing I wanted for her.
That's my only real reason, to be honest. That and Bruce already had a girlfriend, who has for some reason ceased to exist in the MCU.
Because far from reducing Nat to a love interest, did you happen to notice that Steve is basically the only Avenger not hooked up with someone by this point? Everyone has a love interest, it's just that Natasha is the most important female character, so it's easy to assume SHE is someone else's love interest because people are assuming the script places Bruce Banner as a more important hero. That SHE is HIS accessory, instead of both characters being equally important. If anything, Natasha is written as more important than Bruce, considering how much time the movie devoted to exploring her Black Widow backstory. Mark Ruffalo actually tweeted about how he feels that Bruce was the love interest, not the other way around.
Whedon made sure to give Maria Hill a decent amount of screen time, and added three new female characters, one was a WoC and only one of the new ones functioned as a love interest at all. Natasha isn't the only good female character in the movie, so there's no reason why she shouldn't be allowed to relax and go on a date.
I mean, is that what you want? For MCU Natasha to be doomed to a life of loneliness and abstinence because being the only main female character means she can't be "weakened" by a romance? HOW FUN!
Sometimes, whether you see something as sexist or not depends on how sexist the framework of your thinking already is, or at least, your assumption of how sexist the writer is.
As far as the "rape joke" goes it took me awhile to even figure out it had happened at all because it was that much of a blink and you'll miss it moment.
A character known for his inappropriate sense of humor and zero tact said something inappropriate? Wow, didn't see that coming.
I do believe he's a sincere feminist, and I don't see any misogyny in his work except where he's included it to say "hey, this is misogyny and it's a bad thing". People have this tendency to define imperfect feminism as the same thing as misogyny. And that leaves everyone in a position where you can't make a human mistake, because that instantly makes you a monster who hates women. There's no sense of proportion at all. I imagine this makes it hard for male feminists, who simply don't understand certain things because they happen to be men and are therefore more likely to put their feet in their mouths and never be allowed to live it down. Ever. Male artists who openly portray misogyny in their work are often accused of being misogynists themselves, even if "misogyny exists and is a bad thing" is the entire fricking point of the story they're trying to tell. Whedon doesn't really pull any punches when he uses misogyny as a plot device, and that confuses people, because if you don't know he's trying for feminism, it looks from the outside like he personally has a raging hatred for women. Because that's what we're used to seeing in other male writers and directors.
His feminism has always been the one thing I've never felt the need to complain about. Fandom thinks he's been coasting on his reputation as a feminist, but the reality is that we actually still live in a world where someone reviewing Super 8 said "JJ Abrams is one plucky heroine away from being Joss Whedon" and appears to have meant that as an insult. Considering Super 8 had no plucky heroine...
I feel like Whedon's brand of feminism should be the bare minimum standard for tv and movies, not something people automatically get turned into heroes for doing, and I think the fact that it wasn't the minimum standard when Buffy started airing plays a big part in the pedestal people put Whedon on.
Which they never should have done in the first place, it's a long way to fall. I remember, years ago, a fan wrote a review of Firefly accusing it of being misogynist. Fandom came down on her like a ton of bricks for even daring to suggest that Whedon's work was less than perfectly feminist. Oh how the tides have turned.
So, no wonder the realization that he is not, in fact, a god of writing after all, hasn't gone down particularly well. It's what people do, it's what fandom does, they become so obsessed with a person or a story that they dig too deep, find out how the sausages got made, and turn on it with a vengeance. Once that happens, once you've been labeled, there's no going back. You are that thing. And it is just going to intensify, until everything you ever were is boiled down to an over exaggerated caricature of your worst qualities. Everything you do or say after that will be filtered through that rage and disillusionment, to the point where what you meant, versus what a certain portion of your audience thinks you meant, ends up having zero relation to each other, or often, reality, period.
Joss Whedon and C.S Lewis could have such a great conversation about their memetic reputations.
That being said, there's plenty of themes in his work, aside from the feminism, that I started finding boring, annoying and repetitive even back when Angel was still airing. I find the way he writes pretty predictable at this point, so much so that I have a not particularly well publicized side blog where I post screencaps from the MCU with appropriate Buffyverse quotes attached.
He IS out of touch and the world of feminist filmmaking HAS moved on. I can think of plenty of newer stories telling Buffy's story as well or better than Buffy told it.
The MCU moved on too. He needs to start acknowledging that. Age of Ultron plays exactly like he picked up right where he left off in 2012. Natasha even went back to the same hairstyle. Problem is, no one saw how good and how popular, Winter Soldier would end up being and how it was going to change what people expected from the MCU. Winter Soldier was the Prisoner of Azkaban of Marvel movies, the moment when the franchise Grew the Beard. Whedon didn't want to adapt to the audience's new expectations.
But that doesn't mean I'm on board with the ridiculous levels of hate directed at him constantly either. It's gone completely over the top at this point. He gets blamed for stuff he didn't do or that may not have been entirely his idea, accused of saying things he never actually said because someone took a perfectly innocent statement, misinterpreted it in the worst possible way, and then ran with it, and he's never allowed to live down things he said or did years ago. Personal conflicts he had with his employees, things which have not only been resolved years ago but weren't exactly our business anyway, are held up as proof that he's a misogynist monster.
When are people going to get that hate bandwagons do not stop, they just keep getting worse? Once you get that ball rolling, it ends in people who don't have any sense of proportional anger or boundaries.
It's especially an MCU issue because people seem convinced he has more creative power in the MCU than he, or any of the other directors, has ever had. The Avengers movies weren't "his" films like Serenity, Cabin in the Woods or Dr. Horrible, they were projects he was hired to run. The blessing and the curse, of the MCU is that Marvel has very specific plans for it, and they like to micromanage. Jon Favereau complained about Marvel forcing his storytelling hand in order to make the other movies link up.
People are perfectly willing to say "I trust the Russos but they're working within a larger structure that isn't necessarily woman or POC friendly" but they aren't willing to give Whedon that same grace. If something goes wrong in Cap 3, Marvel will be blamed. But everything that went wrong with AoU is entirely Joss Whedon's fault. Despite the fact that he's *also* working for the same people still giving Rick Remender a paycheck. Somehow, he has the magical power to transcend that, I guess. People expect Joss Whedon to be a wizard who can make anything he wants happen, so if it a Whedon story isn't what you hoped it would be, it's because he deliberately made it that way. To screw with you. Because he's a horrible person.
I just saw this article about how The Last Airbender live action version got so screwed up. How an Asian director who wanted to film a sweeping epic about a mostly Asian cast of characters based on a phenomenally successful cartoon ended up making a flop of a film with a mostly white cast in rural Pennsylvania. Short answer? Movies are a business and the people with the money get to tell you how to spend it.
It's always possible Whedon genuinely thought the storytelling mistakes he made in AoU were good choices. But, let me point out, it is also equally possible that they were attempts to pacify some studio exec with more money than understanding of film, storytelling or possibly even Marvel comics.
As for the movie itself, I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. I don't regret the effort I went to in order to see it, but it wasn't a life changing experience. I didn't expect it to be. I feel no need to rage about the stuff I didn't like, because any complaints I do have tend to be about things that don't really effect the way I participate in the fandom anyway.
I mean, are we supposed to be angry there was nothing about Steve and Bucky's relationship? Or relieved because Whedon didn't inevitably ruin it as everyone seemed to believe he would? You wanted more Steve and Bucky but didn't trust Whedon to handle it but you're angry that he didn't even try. Apparently, the idea that Joss Whedon hates Bucky Barnes became practically memetic, despite there being little to no hard evidence of that outside of Tumblr, an echo chamber where everyone already hates Whedon. It seems I Don't Care Quite as Much About That Character as You Do equals I Hate That Character with a Passion, because that's how we're doing things now.
We're approaching a "this food is terrible, where's the rest of it?" scenario here.
Although, I do agree that it seemed obvious in The Avengers that Clint and Natasha were meant to be read as a couple. Everyone I've talked to felt the same way. It's only looking back on it now, that I realize that was never made explicitly canon. You know, that happens all the time though, when the characters are two men or two women, that's the very definition of "slashy", "If this interaction took place between a man and a woman, would you assume it was a romance?" Het shippers are more used to the idea that they're interpreting the interaction correctly and that their pairing will transcend subtext. Slash shippers sigh and know deep down that the het pairing which seems just as strong as the slash one, is the one that is more likely to be canon.
Bruce and Natasha? I don't wike it. It makes no sense in any wider context. However, even if he sincerely thought the pairing was a good idea, Whedon isn't doing any more Avengers movies, and he ended the movie with their relationship in an ambiguous position. I'm fairly certain nothing will come of it in the future.
Partly because they're going to have to deal with the epic Bucky/Nat elephant in the room.
Which makes me wonder, if the romance had been between Bucky and Natasha as it is in comics canon, or Clint and Natasha as people (including, apparently, Scarlett Johansson) assumed it was in the MCU, would we be hearing all this angry shouting about "reducing her to a love interest"? Or is some of this to do with her being given a romantic storyline with a character no one wants her with?
And why do we not like her with Bruce? What, precisely, is actually wrong with it? Is it just that he's not Clint or Bucky (or Sam or Steve or Maria or Pepper?) Hey, I'll admit it, my problem with the pairing is that it came out of nowwhere, not that it's a romance, and it "came out of nowwhere" because it's not something I've ever shipped before and isn't the pairing I wanted for her.
That's my only real reason, to be honest. That and Bruce already had a girlfriend, who has for some reason ceased to exist in the MCU.
Because far from reducing Nat to a love interest, did you happen to notice that Steve is basically the only Avenger not hooked up with someone by this point? Everyone has a love interest, it's just that Natasha is the most important female character, so it's easy to assume SHE is someone else's love interest because people are assuming the script places Bruce Banner as a more important hero. That SHE is HIS accessory, instead of both characters being equally important. If anything, Natasha is written as more important than Bruce, considering how much time the movie devoted to exploring her Black Widow backstory. Mark Ruffalo actually tweeted about how he feels that Bruce was the love interest, not the other way around.
Whedon made sure to give Maria Hill a decent amount of screen time, and added three new female characters, one was a WoC and only one of the new ones functioned as a love interest at all. Natasha isn't the only good female character in the movie, so there's no reason why she shouldn't be allowed to relax and go on a date.
I mean, is that what you want? For MCU Natasha to be doomed to a life of loneliness and abstinence because being the only main female character means she can't be "weakened" by a romance? HOW FUN!
Sometimes, whether you see something as sexist or not depends on how sexist the framework of your thinking already is, or at least, your assumption of how sexist the writer is.
As far as the "rape joke" goes it took me awhile to even figure out it had happened at all because it was that much of a blink and you'll miss it moment.
A character known for his inappropriate sense of humor and zero tact said something inappropriate? Wow, didn't see that coming.
