Because Fuck Joss Whedon

[digitaldiscipline]

I've previously mentioned, in my "lists of things which many people like, but I do not" Joss Whedon and his body of work. That was years ago and, upon reflection, my attitude towards his ouevre hasn't changed. I've watched a couple episodes of Firefly and found it pointless; I checked out Dr. Horrible and confirmed that, yes, I enjoy the fuck out of NPH and still hate musicals.

I've also learned, in the intervening years, that, for some reason, Mr. Whedon is held up as some kind of shining, cock-bearing light of progressiveness and feminism, and...

http://www.overthinkingit.com/2009/12/23/joss-whedon-feminism/
http://www.themarysue.com/reconsidering-the-feminism-of-joss-whedon/

No, seriously, shut the fuck up. I get that he writes (or attempts to write) complicated, possibly-empowered female characters, and that makes him marginally less pathetic than the vast number of writers and directors who don't. But that's giving the guy a gold star for remembering to wash his hands after taking a leak, not because he's earned employee of the month for delivering superior service.

He isn't. As a matter of fact, the more he's lauded for being a strong voice for women's advocacy, the more he becomes part of the goddamned problem.

http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-394

If people only see and aspire to be as feminist as Joss Whedon, we're fucked. We all need to be better than he is. A lot better.

So, after seeing a link come down the pipe from else-twitter, I called Joss Whedon an asshole after I read this:

http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271

I had a large-to-me portion of the internet land on my head this morning after having a friend with tens of thousands of twitter followers rebroadcast my pithy broadside. Much of the debate among people I know took place on Facebook. Some of it was fairly testy. I don't think any butt was permanently hurt. :-)

I was, rightly or wrongly, called out for mis-reading that essay. I agree with his closing argument - action and advocacy are necessary. But the route he took to get there, and the rhetorical trick he tries to employ, worked so poorly that... yeah, I lit him up before finishing my read-through.

Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.

“I’m sorry.”

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

You know what would have forestalled all of this? A simple pair of <.h3> tags around "What is wrong with women?" Make it clear those aren't HIS words. Make it clear that's not HIS question. Make it the question he's trying to answer, because he's seeing it stated everywhere. But, no.

It comes across as "What is wrong with women?" to my reading of it, and my visceral antipathy towards victim-blaming cuts in and I am going to set the man on fire (with my mind, or with a blowtorch, I don't give a fuck which). "Why don't women leave abusive households/cultures/situations?" "Why do women accept this horrific treatment?"

As soon as you ask those questions, you're not helping to answer them; you're helping to perpetuate them.

And I don't care how many fanboys I have to walk over to stop you.

Comments

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

[cheez-ball.livejournal.com]

He's repeatedly stated that he's not an an example of feminism. Although I'm not sure how his wife feels about this since she co-writes most of what he produces. And others have repeatedly stated that he's not so as well because of his fixation of the super-powered waif and a number of other tropes.

I like his work because he's a great story teller. I don't file him under feminism. I do credit him for getting a few good female roles out there that otherwise would never have made it to the screen. But that alone doesn't make him feminist. It just means that's his own brand of fandom.

Now I'm curious. This is me on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=630837132 If you still can't get to my locked-down profile PM me your IRL name and I'll try to find you.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Thanks. You've been summarily FB'd.

[emzebel.livejournal.com]

"If people only see and aspire to be as feminist as Joss Whedon, we're fucked. We all need to be better than he is. A lot better."

So. Much. This.
Thank you.

[cassandrasimplx.livejournal.com]

As noted, if I hadn't been forewarned, I would have quit reading in disgust at that very point.

If Whedon were trying to present himself as just some guy with ideas about treating women better, it might be forgivable after correction, but Whedon promotes himself as a feminist writer, feminist son of a radical-feminist mother and very much in the public eye, and I find it incredibly difficult to allow him to claim ignorance of victim-blaming language and how easily it is turned against women even when it's used nonliterally in their defense. I fully expect that in six months, some male friend feeling threatened by my lack of sympathy for his latest "girl-doesn't realizes-she-owes-me-a-fuck" story is going, in a fit of unrepentant but staunchly denied misogyny, to throw this at me as "Even Joss Whedon wants to know what the fuck is wrong with women! And that's not misogyny because he's a feminist!" For shame.

But even that is assuming that he intended it nonliterally -- which he only makes mostly-clear two paragraphs later, after he's already given me that sick "Here we go again" feeling and misogynists their pithy quote.

Whedon needs to stop worrying about taking a hamfisted approach to raising awareness for something he has no direct contribution to and start worrying about not using his own podium to teach young women that it's okay to be strong as long as they continue to define their self-worth by their real value as some guy's girlfriend, and that sex outside a loving relationship is wrong and will be punished (unless it's the guy who does it and then a good girl is totally understanding about men's needs and all that). Because, no. Having only 80% of the rampant misogyny of the people around you does not make him feminist. It might make him less of a jerk, if he wasn't trying to cash in on it.

[cheez-ball.livejournal.com]

Yup, the man has managed to cash in big-time on the hot girl kicking ass fantasy. And as much as I'd rather see that narrative than damsel in distress, it's still a trope. And one he uses quite often, along with damsel in distress. And while tropes can make awesome stories, telling a story really, really well doesn't make you a feminist or not. It just makes you a story teller.

[sloot.livejournal.com]

he derailed his thesis. his thesis was "what is wrong with society?" but he asked "what is wrong with women?" when he meant "what problem does society have with women?"

[sloot.livejournal.com]

Also: Has the date been discussed? May 20, 2007

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw this was old news, but it was new to me this morning. I don't make it a point to follow the guy's blog, because I typically don't give a shit what he has to say.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

as CS noted above, and I've repeated (ad nauseam on fb), that's exactly the problem.

he asks the wrong question, the wrong way, at the wrong time, and completely dynamites any argument he might hope to make with people who feel *more* passionately about the issue.

[mimerki.livejournal.com]

I think Whedon's fame has outstripped his talent/skill.

He's done great work, but he's also done drivel, *and* he is terrible at both pacing and pay-off, needing to cram too much into the end because he didn't make room for it earlier and often setting up one ending and then delivering one that doesn't quite fit in order to have the waif save the day. (And in the case of BTVS, to have Buffy save the day whether or not she is the person who makes the most sense.)

And this rant sort of fits that same schema. I don't think that what he is trying to say is wrong: that we as a society seem to think there's something slightly wrong w/ women. But his pacing and pay-off are lacking. He doesn't quite set it up. It doesn't quite come together.

Which on Some Guy I Know On The Internet? I'd probably point out that the question isn't "what's wrong with women?" but "why do we think there's something wrong with women?" or something, but I'd mostly shrug because any guy who realizes there's a problem is more of an asset than not. On the figurehead of feminist media that Whedon has become? Not so much.

[notadoor.livejournal.com]

I can understand exactly why it pissed you off. It's a really unfortunate phrasing.

I also think the next paragraph, and the rest of the essay, makes it clear that the question is not "what is wrong with women, omg, ladies, get your act together and stop letting men kill you" but "society, what the hell is your problem with women? Why are you constantly so shitty to them??" So while I initially had a *blinkblinkWHATdidyoujustsay* moment, I figured it out pretty quickly.

And, from a purely linguistics/semantic standpoint, it's a valid construction.
A: I don't wear shoes.
B: Why not? What's wrong with shoes?

The problem is that we use the exact same construction for victim blaming.

*shrugs*

From my peanut gallery seating, I'd say he's a storyteller first and a feminist second. I'm glad he's at least vaguely aware of some of this stuff; I don't think he's a paragon of .... whatever he's supposed to be a paragon of.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

It was so unfortunate that I stopped reading and fired off the intemperate tweet that landed the internet on my head to point out how wrong I was. *rueful chuckle*

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

I enjoy Whedon's work, but it's quite far from being feminist, I think.