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CONVINCING OTHERS TO WATCH JOSS WHEDON SHOWS
#yep
#fangirly
#joss whedon
#that moment when
#fandom
#angsty
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"(about female superheroes) Toymakers will tell you they won’t sell enough, and movie people will point to the two terrible superheroine movies that were made and say, You see? It can’t be done. It’s stupid, and I’m hoping The Hunger Games will lead to a paradigm shift. It’s frustrating to me that I don’t see anybody developing one of these movies. It actually pisses me off. My daughter watched The Avengers and was like, ‘My favorite characters were the Black Widow and Maria Hill,’ and I thought, Yeah, of course they were. I read a beautiful thing Junot Diaz wrote: ‘If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.’ (on whats next for him) And back to the female-hero thing, I’m not going to let nobody do it. It doesn’t have to be me, but it could be."
Joss Whedon on female superheroes, and what pisses him off about the industry via The Daily Beast (via albinwonderland)
(Source: brain-food, via emilianadarling)
#joss whedon
#women
#superheroes
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"All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn’t your pet — it’s your kid. It grows up and talks back to you."
Joss Whedon (via i-m-an-angel-you-ass)
(Source: thefbismostunwanted, via griever0823)
#joss whedon
#speaks the truth
#fandom
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Be All Your Selves – Joss Whedon’s fantastic 2013 Wesleyan Commencement Address on embracing our inner contradictions.
#joss whedon
#words of wisdom
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(Source: actionjacksonlovesbbq, via griever0823)
#joss whedon
#Twitter
#accurate
#rofl
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Reporter: So, why do you write these strong female characters?
Joss Whedon: Because you’re still asking me that question.The question should be “Why do you write seemingly strong women and then punish them for that strength?” I see a lot of characters in this set who got shit on by Joss not to mention at least one actress he fired for the crime of getting pregnant.
A friend of mine likes to challenge “Joss Whedon, Feminist” acolytes to name a female character on Buffy who doesn’t die or go crazy.
I feel like this game could be expanded to find lead female characters who don’t die, go crazy, or lose a loved one in a gruesome way as part of their suffering. Bonus points if they get to the end without anyone threatening to rape them or trying to rape them. There has to be at least one right?
If we include those, we may as well be playing bingo. Joss Whedon’s female characters’ punishments: collect them all!
Who gets mind wiped? Who gets beaten? Who watches everything she ever loved burn? It’s a game for all ages! Bonus points for the ones who die without ever having gotten to live!
I might have feelings about Kendra. A lot of them.
Goddamit, and now I feel compelled to do an actual tally of his original female characters, albeit offhand and from memory. So:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy - two deaths, one rape threat, one attempted rape, two sexual assaults, one dead parent.
Willow - one rape threat, two breaks with sanity, one dead girlfriend.
Cordelia - damselled about a billion times, one attempted forced marriage.
Anya - one rape threat, dead.
Tara - dead.
Kendra - dead.
Faith - multiple breaks with sanity.
Ms Calender - dead.
Joyce - dead.
Dawn - one attempted forced marriage, one dead parent.
Darla - dead.
Drusilla - multiple breaks with sanity.
[I don’t know enough about angel, I cut this part]Firefly
Kaylee - one rape threat.
River - multiple breaks with sanity.
Zoe - one dead husband.
Inara - one threat of sexual assault.
[I don’t know enough about doll house, I cut this part]I should probably leave this hornet’s nest alone. But I’m pissed off right now, because today I learned people think Joss Whedon is sexist for putting his female characters through the wringer.
As if a fundamental part of the hero’s journey isn’t suffering, having loved ones die, or dying themselves. As if he doesn’t do that to EVERYONE he writes. Here are some of his male characters’ trials, in the same form as above (and this is just the stuff I remember off the top of my head):
Giles - one dead lover/dear friend, brutally tortured at least once
Xander - one threat of sexual assault, implied childhood abuse, at least one break with reality (that made him leave Anya at the altar), one dead lover, loses an eye
Spike - sexually assaulted by his mother, attempted forced marriage (the same spell that got Buffy), brutally tortured, at least one break with sanity, one death
Riley - turned into a meat puppet by
FrankensoldierAdamAngel - tortured in hell, at least one death, lots of other stuff I don’t remember because Angel bores me
Wash - brutally tortured, dead
Mal - brutally tortured
Book - dead
And what do I see when I look at the female characters listed above?
Buffy - survives the series with a hopeful heart, comes up with a plan to break an explicitly patriarchal tradition, saves the world a lot, allowed to be flawed and messy and still strong
Willow - survives the series, finds love again after the death of her soulmate, grows from an awkward high school girl to a junkie to the most powerful witch in history
Dawn - survives the series, grows from an annoying little sister to a competent young woman
Faith - survives the series, seemingly a “bad girl” stereotype who actually has depth and a compelling misled-by-evil-(and-love) —> redemption arc
Cordelia - seemingly a “shallow girl” stereotype who actually has depth and comes through when her friends need her despite being out of her element
Anya - a former monster who switches sides, finds and loses love but consciously steps away from deadly coping mechanisms, can run a store better than Giles, illuminates humanity in compelling ways
Tara - shy and unassuming, wise and compassionate and forgiving. She can’t beat up monsters, but that’s okay, she’s still part of the team.
For fuck’s sake. It’s supernatural genre television, not tiptoeing through fields of daisies. People will die. People will be threatened. Sometimes it will happen as a plot device. If you write a lot of female characters (I saw something earlier like the percentage of women in primetime shows is like 17%, which Whedon obviously blows out of the water), a lot of them are going to have horrible things happen to them.
But what Whedon does that’s so different from most is he writes female characters as people. He doesn’t portray stereotypical femininity and strength as mutually exclusive. He shows that physical strength isn’t the only “real” strength they can have. He gives them diverse personalities and shows how they’re all powerful and weak in their own way. He lets them grow and evolve organically. He lets them be compelling villains. He lets them be sympathetic victims. He lets them be fearless warriors for good. Sometimes all three. He lets them make horrible mistakes and successfully atone for them. He shows them suffering for plot-related reasons, doesn’t shy away from the after-effects (versus, say, Deanna Troi in TNG - so much of the stuff that happened to her was gratuitous) and shows them getting back up.
Also, don’t you dare pretend Joyce’s death can be reduced to part of some anti-feminist pattern (for three separate characters, no less. And the fact that Buffy even had a parent in the first place is unusual for the hero archetype). That kind of thing actually happens in the real world, it was handled with incredible sensitivity and realism, and watching Buffy and Dawn go through the grieving process is something many people relate to intensely. It’s fantastic writing. It’s good conflict. It’s good television.
If anyone is writing off Joss’ female characters, it’s you. It’s the people who act like these characters are little more than a list of tragic and biased casualties, and fuck everything else they accomplish.
^*slow claps it out*
Oh my God.
Thank you. I have been told a million times that Joss is anti-feminist and every time I’ve tried to argue against that but I haven’t been able to do it this magnificently.
oh my GOD.
I was SO HOPING when I saw this pop up on my dash AGAIN that someone had finally added the eloquently-worded rebuttal to it that I feel I am incapable of writing because the only Jossverse show I know backwards/forwards/inside and out is Firefly, lol. (I mean, I have watched a significant portion of his other stuff too, just not in the I-can-write-eloquent-meta-about-this-source-material way.)
“Bad shit happens to this character” is not the same as “the writers are mistreating this character in a fundamentally problematic way,” particularly when the character lives in a universe where bad shit happens all the time. I love that fandom means consuming entertainment mindfully instead of mindlessly, but I feel like sometimes certain subsets of fandom have a tendency to make the evidence fit their desired conclusion instead of the other way around.
Ultimately, no one is perfect, including Joss Whedon. There are issues he could have handled with more sensitivity, there are maybe some jokes he shouldn’t have written. But that’s because he’s a human being and human beings make mistakes. His mistakes don’t invalidate all the great stuff he has also done, however, or negate the positive effect he has had and continues to have on women in media.
(Source: hxcfairy, via fuckyeahsuperheroines)
#joss whedon
#women
#characters
#representation
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(Source: chaotic-neutral, via yourstatdecisrejected)
#for real
#true story
#joss whedon
#sadface
#nathan fillion
#speaks the truth
#know your shit
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"The idea of the Little Guy is something that I am very fierce about, and there has never been a better Little Guy than Clark Gregg. That intrigued me, this world around the superhero community. It’s the people whose shop windows get blown up when the Destroyer shows up. It’s the more intimate stories that belong on television that we can really tap into the visual style and ethos, and even some of the mythology, of the Marvel movies. I think we’ve put together another really great ensemble headed by Clark."
- Joss Whedon on bringing back Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson for his S.H.I.E.L.D. series.
The Coulson character is great fun and it’s nice that there will be some new characters of color as part of the ensemble for S.H.I.E.L.D, but it’s tiresome to see Marvel constantly fronting white male leads. All ten of the released or planned movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe center around a white male lead, and here it is again—another ensemble with a white dude at the head. (And he’s supposed to represent the “little guy” in our society.)
There is such a diversity in gender and race that Marvel and Whedon could tap into when creating this series based on Marvel’s legacy alone. A S.H.I.E.L.D. character like Maria Hill, Jimmy Woo, Gabe Jones, Daisy Johnson, Marcus Johnson, Jessica Drew, or Abigail Brand could have headed the ensemble with Coulson in a “Nick Fury”-esque role.
Also, since it’s from a huge existing property that will get viewers no matter what, this would have been a great time to try an ensemble lead who was not another white dude.
(via racebending)
(Source: bleedingcool.com, via racebending)
#joss whedon
#shield
#tv
#characters
#representation
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Much Ado About Nothing Theatrical Trailer
(Source: distelhawk, via catolynwrites)
#!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#Much Ado About Nothing
#movie
#joss whedon
#excitement
#fangirly
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For all its snappy one-liners and rousing chases through deep space, Firefly is most beautiful—and most effective—in its simplicity. The show envisions the depths of outer space and humankind’s very future into the classic setting of for any Western, and does it so with the utmost elegance. Firefly’s space is the space of an untamed frontier, shattered by outlaws, vigilantes and lawmen. It’s a rough and tumble place, a future made primitive, where the progress of mankind means trudging through plenty of cow flops, and making victims out of whole societies of innocent people. It’s the American Old West writ large, and there’s perhaps no surprise in the fact that every planet that the motley crew of the Serenity touches down upon looks like it could have been pulled from Monument Valley or the scrub plains of Oklahoma. - Ian Chant
(via yourstatdecisrejected)
#firefly
#joss whedon
#brilliant
#fact
#favourite
#fangirly
