A Sense of Doubt blog post #2201 - Misogyny and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
It sucks when one's heroes come off the pedestal.It's very sad.
I am still not a hard line cancel culture person in these cases. I still love those shows. I am not going to stop re-watching them or recommending them. My love of them remains.
And I do believe in forgiveness. In all these cases in which well-meaning people make painful confessions in the hopes to see the truth come to light at the very least if not justice be done, I am right there by their side.
https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/quiet-misogyny-buffy-the-vampire-slayer
Bad BloodThe Quiet Misogyny of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”
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| Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Photo credit: 20th Century Fox) |
When accusations that Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, abused his power on multiple sets, few fans of his work seemed surprised. According to actor Charisma Carpenter, who had a recurring lead role as Cordelia Chase on Buffy and starred in its spinoff series Angel, Whedon created a toxic work environment and repeatedly harassed her on set. In a statement posted across the actress’s social media accounts, Carpenter revealed that the traumatizing experience of working with Whedon caused her anxiety and a chronic physical condition that she still struggles with today.
Carpenter’s statement comes directly on the heels of WarnerMedia’s investigation into workplace misconduct allegations levied against Whedon after he was hired as a replacement director on Justice League (2017) following Zack Snyder’s departure. In July 2020, actor Ray Fisher, who played Cyborg and worked with Whedon during post production on the film and its subsequent reshoots, wrote on Twitter, “[Whedon’s] on set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable.” As a show of support for Fisher, Carpenter revealed that she had participated in WarnerMedia’s investigation, stating, “Despite my fear about its impact on my future, I can no longer remain silent. This is overdue and necessary. It is time.” In December 2020, WarnerMedia shared that they had concluded the investigation and claimed they had taken “remedial action.” Prior to the investigation’s conclusion, Whedon voluntarily stepped down from his role as showrunner for the upcoming WarnerMedia-owned HBO series, The Nevers, due to the pandemic, so it remains unclear what so-called remedial action was actually taken against him.
The allegations against the director and former Hollywood sweetheart—or whatever the male nerd equivalent of that is—span nearly the entirety of his onscreen career. While some fans of Whedon may struggle to understand how a man whose work has been lauded for its depiction of Strong Female CharactersTM and themes of empowerment could perpetuate the abuse he outwardly condemned, other fans were less shocked. In addition to accusations by Whedon’s ex-wife Kai Cole, who wrote a scathing essay for the Wrap in 2017 about her ex-husband’s faux feminism and predatory affairs, rumors have swirled for years about Carpenter’s untimely departure from Angel. However, feminists who are familiar with Whedon’s shows, including Buffy, Firefly, and Dollhouse, as well as his first two Avengers films, have long-since recognized the quiet (and not-so-quiet) misogyny directly embedded within his filmography. To understand Whedon’s nerdy repackaging of entitlement toward women and their bodies, one must look no further than the subtext of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the series that initially launched him to success.
During Buffy’s seven-season run from 1997 to 2003, and even still today, comedic sidekick Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) became a frequent target of feminist ire. There are countless think pieces, forums, blog posts, and Reddit threads dedicated to fans’ burning hatred of the character, and the show’s insistence on framing him as morally correct when he’s quite clearly in the wrong. From the very first episode, Xander is positioned as the “nice guy” of the friend group—the wisecracking, lovable nerd who reads X-Men comics and doesn’t get a second glance from most women. As the everyman, Xander caters to an audience of men and boys who might relate to his average looks, inability to entice women, and his literal powerlessness up against the superpowered women he fights alongside. His friends and allies have varying degrees of usefulness in the fight to protect Sunnydale, which sits on a demon hellmouth: Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Xander’s best friend and unrequited love interest, is imbued with vampire slaying abilities, and Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), his other best friend and briefly-requited love interest, has ’90s-esque computer hacking skills and eventually becomes a powerful witch. Additionally, at any given time, he is surrounded by allies that range from friendly vampires and ex-demons to superstrong government soldiers and werewolves.
In any room he’s in, Xander is never the strongest, smartest, bravest, best looking, or even the most charming—he is utterly average in every way. In an early Season 1 episode, Xander sums up his character archetype perfectly when he says, “I laugh in the face of danger. Then I hide until it goes away.” Despite Xander’s mediocrity and inherent powerlessness in comparison to the women he surrounds himself with, one of his key character traits is his sexual entitlement. He regularly makes references to his perpetual horniness and sexualizes almost every beautiful woman he encounters. When he first meets Buffy, he immediately develops a crush on her, and despite her repeated rejections over the course of several seasons, he continues to wait for an opportunity to be with her. Xander pining over his best friend might not necessarily make him bad, but it’s concerning that he also harbors resentment toward every guy Buffy dates or shows interest in, occasionally even lashing out at her for daring to choose other men over him.
Worse, he views himself as a “nice guy” who is entitled to sexual and romantic relationships with the beautiful women he fawns over. Except Xander isn’t really a nice guy at all—his entire self-identification as a nice guy isn’t actually supported by his interpersonal relationships or behavior, and in fact, is often directly contradicted by them. Interestingly, Xander doesn’t simply act as a stand-in for sexually frustrated nerd boys in the audience who want to fuck women like Buffy; he is also, quite literally, Whedon’s self-insert character. Fans of the show had initially speculated about this, and Whedon confirmed it when he was interviewed by NPR in 2000, stating, “Xander is obviously based on me.” This was also reconfirmed during a panel at the 2011 Emerald City Comic Con when actor James Marsters, who played the vampire Spike, said, “[Xander] is Joss. That’s the way he sees himself.” As Buffy fans gain a clearer picture of Whedon’s behavior behind the scenes, it’s ironic that a man with a track record of abusing his power over women and people of color on set would align himself with a character whose primary character trait is powerlessness.
Xander Harris doesn’t simply act as a stand-in for sexually frustrated nerd boys in the audience who want to fuck women like Buffy Summers; he is also, quite literally, Joss Whedon’s self-insert character.
Why does a director and showrunner who weaponizes his power over his cast members to control them—and in the case of Charisma Carpenter, attempt to literally control her body and reproductive choices by pressuring her to get an abortion—get to hide behind a fictional facade of helplessness? Because he likes comics and wasn’t popular with girls in high school? Perhaps the most unlikely indictment of Whedon comes from the series itself, in a Season 6 arc that flips the concept of the harmless nerdy misogynist on its head. In the sixth season of Buffy—which notably featured the least involvement from Whedon, as he stepped down to an executive producing role to focus on other projects—a new group of villains called the Trio is introduced. The Trio features three socially inept, Star Wars-loving and comic book-obsessed boys who attempt to neutralize Buffy and take over Sunnydale. The group of seemingly harmless nerds evolves into a major threat over the course of the season.
After creating a mindless sex robot and being dumped by his girlfriend Katrina (Amelinda Embry), Warren Mears (Adam Busch), the leader and most malicious member of the group, creates a device to render his ex-girlfriend into a state of submission so he can force her to be his sex slave. However, before he is able to rape her, the device malfunctions, and when she tries to escape, Warren hits her over the head with a champagne bottle and kills her. Later in the season, Warren also fatally shoots Tara, a fan favorite and one of the few queer women characters in the series. Despite their inability to adhere to a traditionally idealized version of smooth-talking and muscled masculinity, the Trio’s proximity to nerd culture does not exempt them from causing harm. In fact, their self-identification as geeky underdogs is what provides them cover and their desire to acquire social power is what fuels their violence.
In an oft-cited acceptance speech for the “Men on the Front Lines” award presented by Equality Now, Whedon recalled a common question he received from reporters: “So, why do you write these strong female characters?” In response, he said, “Because you’re still asking me that question.” Though the response offers an empowering sentiment and makes for a highly quotable soundbite, he betrays his real motivations for writing fictional women within the same speech. He says, “When I created Buffy, I wanted to create a female icon, but I also wanted to be very careful to surround her with men who not only had no problem with the idea of a female leader, but, were in fact, engaged and even attracted to the idea.” He then went on to “jokingly” say that he writes characters like Buffy “‘cause they’re hot.” Whedon’s acceptance speech unwittingly reveals the contradictions, and similarities, within both his work and interpersonal relationships. Though he may have spent decades fooling Hollywood and his fanbase with his performative brand of feminist allyship, Whedon’s public persona was always a ruse to disguise the fact that he never actually respected strong women. He simply wanted to fuck them.
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Marina Watanabe is Bitch’s senior social media editor. Previously, she hosted a web series called Feminist Fridays. She’s also been called an “astrological nightmare.” You can find her on Twitter most days.
I'LL BE YOUR HERO - CARLY RAE JEPSEN
https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/joss-whedon-charisma-carpenter-abuse-allegations
Joss Whedon and the Persistence of Prioritizing Male “Creative Genius”
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| The cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Photo credit: 20th Century Fox) |
For years, new stories about creator and director Joss Whedon’s abuse of people he’s worked with, specifically women, have been revealed on a near-constant loop. In 2017, following his divorce from Kai Cole, she wrote an essay for The Wrap in which she accused him of being a “hypocrite preaching feminist ideals.” Cole said she felt Whedon used his relationship with her to protect himself “so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.” Ray Fisher, who played Cyborg in Whedon’s 2017 film Justice League, has alleged several times that Whedon’s behavior on set was abusive. Sophia Crawford and Jeff Pruitt, former Buffy stunt workers, were among the first to speak out after Fisher about previous abuses by Whedon.
Now, that thread continues to unspool. This past week, in corroboration with Fisher, Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia Chase on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then Angel until her abrupt departure—when Whedon essentially fired her for getting pregnant—revealed to the public via social media that she was subject to Whedon’s “hostile and toxic” treatment on set. “For nearly two decades, I have held my tongue and even made excuses for certain events that traumatize me to this day,” she said. “Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working together on the sets of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. The disturbing incidents triggered a chronic physical condition from which I still suffer. It is with a beating, heavy heart that I say I coped in isolation and, at times, destructively.”
In light of the details of Carpenter’s abuse, many who have worked with Whedon have weighed in, including Firefly writer Jose Molina, who tweeted that Whedon was “casually cruel” and found it “especially hysterical” to “mak[e] female writers cry during a notes session.” Women from the set including lead Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amber Benson, Emma Caulfield, Eliza Dushku, and Michelle Trachtenberg publicly praised Carpenter for her powerful and painful reflections on Whedon’s harmful behavior. Buffy writer Marti Noxon also tweeted that she “would like to validate what the women of Buffy are saying and support them in telling their story. They deserve to be heard.” Yet while their solidarity is incredible, it shouldn’t be as necessary as it is. It shouldn’t take so many women standing up for one another for society to listen to and validate one woman’s story of abuse. And it shouldn’t be that she goes public not out of knowledge that she will be believed but because she felt forced to defend other survivors’ stories of abuse.
The latest allegations against Whedon are illustrative of the frequent “revelation” cycle that is typical in the cases of many abusive men in Hollywood and other positions of power in society at large. A chorus of individual callouts condemn the abuser just lightly enough that semi-powerful people get credit for doing something, but in the end, there are no consequences that affect his career or help prevent future violence. Instead, despite the stories that come to light, and the buzz around them, victims and survivors of the abuse seemingly never receive the restorative justice they deserve, at least not publicly, and certainly don’t have their experiences centered instead of—or over—the abuser’s. Since the ’90s, Whedon’s career has increasingly thrived all while he’s harmed people with less power and taken away opportunities from the survivors of his mistreatment. Would the near-constant cycle—of briefly and shallowly examining the harms done by powerful men like Whedon, then moving on weeks later only for the cycle to inevitably repeat—even be necessary if we stopped putting white men in charge of projects by default and stopped assuming them incapable of abusing their power until proven otherwise?
Whedon has long been at the helm of blockbuster projects, including several Marvel movies and iconic sci-fi shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. Many fans of these projects, myself included, grew up with these shows and were told that Whedon was the mastermind behind them. We were told that he was bringing a new era of feminism, queerness, and creative liberty in storytelling to the screen. “If there was [a] male film maker in Hollywood you’d feel confident calling a feminist it would be Joss Whedon” began a 2015 op-ed in The Independent. But despite the fact that Whedon, an accused abuser, has been hailed as a so-called male feminist icon, and despite the fact that he was picked to run these projects, it’s simply not the case that he’s deserving of such credits. In actuality, the extraordinary actors, writers, thinkers, and other workers who have made his media projects so special—mostly marginalized people—are the ones whose creative genius we should be paying attention to and uplifting, even if they aren’t the ones whose names are being confettied across the mainstream media.
But our culture at large has failed to uplift the voices of survivors, vet people more properly for earning leadership in the first place, and implicitly trust those who feel uncomfortable on entertainment projects from the beginning. We must stop insisting on prioritizing cis white male “creative geniuses” like Whedon, Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein, and all the rest—who have abused not only the vulnerable people they’ve worked with but the power they hold that allows them to continue to do so. Despite Whedon’s, and other abusive white men’s, taking up leadership roles and so often garnering praise and recognition, it isn’t Whedon or the like who should have the bulk of the credit anyway. The truth is that the way the industry portrays the creative process—by putting powerful white men, or indeed any one person, at the top of a bill to advertise them as the sole or main creator of a project—is severely flawed.
Could we replace those white male “prodigies” with the prioritization of truth and justice?
These shows and movies wouldn’t exist in the first place without the incredibly talented actors, prop masters, writers and editors, janitors on set, caterers, and all of the other oft-overlooked workers who are treated as irrelevant to the creative genius and success of projects. For example, “The Wish,” an episode in the third season of Buffy written by Noxon, is highly regarded as one of the most brilliant episodes in the entire show. Whedon didn’t touch its directing or writing. In many ways, it’s because of how deeply our society’s violent systems prioritize powerful white men and their intellect that Whedon is still the one who gets credit for bringing more radical topics and storylines to the screen. But like his ex Cole wrote, in reality it has been everyone else who has made these stories possible. Women like Benson, Carpenter, Geller, Alyson Hannigan, and Trachtenberg, and are the brilliant ones who so selflessly put themselves into characters who have touched fans forever and transformed our understandings of ourselves, our passions, our politics. They—not Whedon—deserve the credit for ushering in a new era of creation. The show’s dazzle, its essence, belongs to them.
We need to grapple with the fact that no one’s art, no matter how good or industry-evolving it appears to be, can absolve someone of abuse or poor treatment of others in general. As a former child actor in Hollywood who left sooner rather than later after dealing with only minimal abuses and uncomfortable situations, I still have plenty of close friends who are well-known actors. The abuses I’ve witnessed them endure at the hands of powerful white male “creative geniuses” are horrifying. Now, as an adult, I look on and support them from a distance and am both scared for them and proud to be on this side of the screen as a writer and journalist who can say more than they may ever feel able to.
I and many others have questions for Hollywood about what it would look and feel like if we listened to women and marginalized people about their experiences and believed them over valuing the supposed creative genius of men. Could we replace those white male “prodigies” and their coveted intellect—ultimately an individualist myth that erases the work of the teams behind the projects—with the prioritization of truth and justice? What if we let abusers be abusers without trying to absolve their reputations with acclaim of their art, especially given that there are plenty of geniuses who have not been accused of abuse and deserve a chance in the spotlight? And what if we took away the platforms of abusers the first time we learned about their manipulation of powerful systems against those without power? Imagine if we could instead center and uplift women, survivors of harm, marginalized people, and all of the above: We could build a better world. And I certainly believe we could build an entertainment industry that doesn’t rely on a hierarchy of “genius” men like Joss Whedon remaining at the top and keeping everyone else down.
Elly Belle is a writer and digital media strategist who lives and works in Brooklyn. They’re passionate about advocacy, culture, media, and bringing stories about restorative justice and healing to the spotlight. Their words can be found in Teen Vogue, Thrillist, InStyle, Playboy, Publisher’s Weekly, BUST magazine, and other outlets. Follow them on Twitter @literelly.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2102.26 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2065 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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