This article was amazing. The interviewer is clearly sympathetic, but Whedon just keeps giving him more and more rope. He says he’s terrified of saying the wrong thing, and then says the wrong thing over and over. The article is an unintentional character study of a horrible asshole.
It's worse than you think lol, def worth the read
"I’m not actually joking,” he said. He had been surrounded by beautiful young women — the sort of women who had ignored him when he was younger — and he feared if he didn’t have sex with them, he would “always regret it.”
As someone who was also ignored by attractive women when i was younger I can totally get why someone would feel this way. But a) don't use a position of power to have sex with much younger women to make yourself feel better, b) don't do it while you're married and c) definitely don't tell on yourself about it lol
:so-true: he's getting revenge on those hot girls by having sex with them! Just like I'm gonna do once I'm rich off NFTs! :melon-musk:
Oh my god. I can't imagine that level of entitlement. I've never been in any real position of power, but never once did I feel like a voice in my head pushed me to have sex with someone lest I regret it.
Lavery and two other professors would go on to establish the Whedon Studies Association, an organization devoted to expanding the field of Buffy scholarship.
wtf.
Should I have been nicer?” He considered the question. Perhaps he could have been calmer, more direct. But would that not have compromised the work? Maybe the problem was he’d been too nice, he said. He’d wanted people to love him, which meant when he was direct, people thought he was harsh. In any case, he’d decided he was done worrying about all that. People had been using “every weaponizable word of the modern era to make it seem like I was an abusive monster,” he said. “I think I’m one of the nicer showrunners that’s ever been.”
wow.
On a scale from Harvey Weinstein to Roman Polanski... Wait, uh, on a scale from Bill Cosby to Woody Allen... Wait, on a scale from Jeffrey Jones to Fatty Arbuckle... Er...
No love here for Gal Gadot, but holy shit. Just saying, "English isn't her first language," is incredible deflection.
QUIP ME AGAIN! QUIP. ME. AGAIN. I DARE YOU I DOUBLE DARE YOU MOTHERFUCKER QUIP ME ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME! :hst-gun:
"Wow, you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
:stalin-gun-1: :stalin-gun-2:
And of course hard-drive already picked it up:
the only thing Joss Whedon being a 'former feminist' indicates is the absolutely desolate state of 90s and noughts popular culture.
i dont have the intellectual tools to really defend this but i sincerely feel that the late 90s to like 2010 were close to the darkest we've ever gotten on equality in every way. fall of the Soviet Union and all that
While we're on this subject, I'd like to bring up a concern I have. Wtf kind of name is "Joss"?
His parents must've hated him, what a bizarre thing to name your child. It'd be much more understandable if that last 's' were actually an 'h'. Josh is kind of a cliched name at this point, but god at least it's an actual name.
I can respect a person named Josh, but I can't find it in me to respect a "Joss". Shit pisses me off. After the revolution this guy should be forced to change his dumbass name.
Edit: Even the spell check is agreeing with me! It's marking "Joss" as misspelled! Can't believe this guy has the gall to force his shitty name on all of us, really wish somebody would put him out of my misery
His name was Josh. He decided to change his name to Joss when he was in college because he thought it would help him get pussy.
He had arrived at Wesleyan University, where he discovered his artsy, angsty personality could actually be attractive to women. He got a girlfriend, traded his basic name for a more interesting one, and found a mentor, the eminent film scholar Jeanine Basinger.
According to him, yes.
The dude makes me think of reddit brain before reddit existed.
I mean his style of written dialogue is in every other comment.
Empty and easily quotable.
If the line between scholarship and fandom was vanishingly thin, so was the line between fandom and worship. On the first morning of the conference, David Lavery, a professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, stood at the podium and declared the show’s creator, Joss Whedon, the “avatar” of a new religion, the “founder of a new faith.” Lavery and two other professors would go on to establish the Whedon Studies Association, an organization devoted to expanding the field of Buffy scholarship. As Lavery would write in the introduction to a book he co-authored on the series, Whedon had not simply composed a narrative about a struggle against the “forces of darkness — vampires, demons, monsters of all varieties”; he had taken a stand against a panoply of oppressive “social forces,” most obviously the “forces of gender stereotyping.” According to the prevailing rules of Hollywood horror at the time, Whedon’s protagonist, a hot blonde with a dumb name, should have died within the opening scenes, but Whedon had flipped the genre on its head, endowing her with superhuman powers and a hero’s journey.
This entire paragraph will be evidence in my trial when I am being held for Khmer Rouge style war crimes against academics.
Also I don't believe Whedon is 'undone.' I mean he could be, if he gives up. But if he doesn't, if the suits are still on his side, he'll be back. Maybe he'll have a few fallow years here, maybe he won't get another Marvel property, but best (worst) case scenario is that in a few years he quietly unveils some 'challenging' indie movie that he's director or producer or writer on, and he does some big public apology and promise to do better, and all is forgiven. If the film industry still has a place for someone like Polanski then Whedon should make out fine no matter what he says or does. Unless he turns the suits against him, of course, and he gets hung out to dry.
Polanski.
Jesus.
What Samantha Jane Gailey, Polanski's rape victim, looked like at 13.
More than 100 industry leaders and prominent authors -- including directors Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Mike Nichols, Woody Allen and Neil Jordan -- have signed a petition asking that Polanski be released from Swiss custody. "Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision," the petition says. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/01/entertainment/et-polanski1
What about Victor Salva, the guy who did Jeepers Creepers? The one positive thing I will say about Roman Polanski was that he knew how to direct a solid psychological thriller, but Victor Salva is a total hack and he's still managed to have a successful career in Hollywood after being convicted of assaulting a 12 year old boy. He even wrote a scene in Jeepers Creepers 3 where this girl is telling some guy about how her stepfather had touched her as a kid, and the guy's reaction is "Can you blame him? The heart wants what it wants."
I'm pretty sure his directorial debut after his extremely brief stint in prison was a Disney Channel original movie.
It's so fucked up. Makes me feel like I'm going crazy. I used to be a big fan of Ewan McGregor until I found out that he did a movie with Polanski in 2010, The Ghost Writer, which by the way was met with critical acclaim.
Also I'm glad I never liked the films of Luc Besson, because that guy is peak :france-cool:
Also I’m glad I never liked the films of Luc Besson, because that guy is peak
I always had a feeling that guy was a sex pest, for years. Some of his scenes in some of his movies (and not his most well-known ones) always reeked of enjoying exploiting women; like usually it'd be the bad guy doing it but something felt off, like the filmmaker truly got his socks off filming that shit, with the scene being shocking. Also, a very large amount of his movies are basically "manly dude has <big car>, woman with creepily childish behaviour needs to be saved, dude kicks asses and save her, they bang".
So, thoroughly unsurprised when the SA allegations (from nine different women no less) came out. And sadly unsurprised when his trial for r*pe was eventually dismissed (with the judge never even bothering to meet with the plaintiff) - that dude has been close to the political sphere for years; his movies get a shit-ton of public money from the French gov. It was a common sight to see him in the visitors' gallery at the national assembly every times laws about enforcing IP were voted on, waving to his congressman friends (with some of them even referencing his presence in their speech).
I actually admit to having defended Joss Whedon a little bit when the news of the affairs first came out just because I did not (and still do not think) basic infidelity is enough to completely discard someone. Of course since that time there's been so so many more details that have come out and oh dear god man...reading this interview...he just keeps digging the hole even deeper. Feel free to shit on the quips comrades but I can't deny the man produced some of the more formative works in my life...and I am sad to see what a POS he turned out to be.
Sidenote regarding Buffy: one of the more interesting parts of the shows legacy to me is that while the show overall has aged very poorly in so many respects and is difficult to get into now....its interesting that the season generally regarded (at the time) as its worst was season 6 when he virtually stepped out of the picture entirely to go do Firefly. I say interesting: because not only has Season 6 aged the best of all the seasons by far to the point I would say its the crowning achievement of the series: I would dare to call it prophetic and vastly ahead of its time. Was there any other show in 2001 that was casting a light and doing warning sirens on toxic masculinity in nerd culture at the time? I sure can't think of it...and yet in hindsight the joke season arch villains nobody took seriously in hindsight are obvious proto-redpillers and have come around to being arguably the most horrifying villains of the series. Likewise the way it deals with themes of addiction and the millenial struggle of being technically an adult but perpetually stifled and never quite making it. It really had its finger on the pulse in a way that most of us were genuinely not quite ready for.
To me it says a lot that the shows best season is far and away the one Joss had the least involvment with, and that his return to the franchise in the comics with Buffy season 8 where he was basically unfiltered was received with mixed opinions at best.
Feel free to shit on the quips comrades but I can’t deny the man produced some of the more formative works in my life…and I am sad to see what a POS he turned out to be.
Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, and The Ninth Gate were excellent movies. Roman Polanski still sucks.
It really had its finger on the pulse in a way that most of us were genuinely not quite ready for.
Whedon was a manchild and you can't help but pick up those themes in his work in retrospect. I think the whole Resurrecting Buffy plotline hampered the show upfront, but turned the season into a very about-the-characters arc in the end. And Buffy is a good show, more than anything, because of the character-studies and the relationship drama.
With Whedon gone, you got a lot more meta-commentary and self-critique. Once the show had time to age a little, I think it gave the season more of a kick. You can watch it without feeling jerked around by the ending of season 5 deviating so heavily from the ending to season 6.
