Has Joss Whedon ever been challenged over his feminism with regard to 'Angel' (the series)?

[Bite-me]

Excellent point which has been brought up before. I think the disease/pregnancy metaphor is less troubling and more appropriate for body horror because the pain and fear of pregnancy is real and both are indeed experienced as invasion. Tthe demonic pregnancy body horror trope portrays pregnancy as inherently monstrous and thus women and the feminine as the same.

Joss said he worried about betraying Buffy, Angel as a show about a man-hero was always gonna be regressive in comparison because the ethos of Buffy is in stark contrast to that, it is true.

As a gothic detective noir show they did Angel saves the damsel guest star many times over, luckily Joss Whedon steered the writing and story plot lines to a similar caliber as Buffy. The show never leaned into regressivism, Whedon's politics are liberal, the show indeed never felt conservative except the no getting around traditional premise.

Now Joss Whedon could have decided he was going to make sure Angel the series made a point of being politically progressive and feminist but he didn't because that was never his mission statement to begin with when he created Buffy.

Still there are drawbacks, Angel's presumptuous white knighting of Cordelia, the women with the visions, who shouldn't lay her delicate eyes on the crime scene photos really gets to me. The clumsy over use of body horror for the female characters, the fact the ensemble when they were not fighting over the female leads (Wes/Gun, Angel/Connor) saved them much more the vice versa. Turning Cordelia into a literal succbus. The fact every female lead was abused and dead by the finale.

In no way am I saying men have no role in being heroes. I know how protective people get over Angel but it came to a head for me in feeling like a betrayal of Buffy in the character of Nina. Saying Angel would even be attracted to this person in the first place could be construed as offensive, I mean, we know, it has been established, that Angel has a type, right? well, apparently strong interesting women have squat to do with it. He likes blondes.

I liked the characters Bethany, with telekinesis from "Untouched" and Rebecca the actress Angel is hired to protect in "Eternity." I thought what Angel summarized about Rebecca's character was so spot on and correct and I liked how each episode ended. Both had something difficult and interesting about them. Rebecca had the ability to look into the dark without flinching or turning away. Bethany had massive vulnerability but not the simple, easy and lovable damsel in distress kind, the kind that made her a danger to herself and others. I would have been happy if Angel's last minute girlfriend had been complex like them because they prove it is possible to do quickly.

The way Angel had to teach Nina the alphabet, before he could begin to spell things out for her and the way she did not just need help but appeared genuinely helpless was a turn off for me.

The romantic tension with rescued guest stars worked great season one, by now it is procedural & hackney, not about gothic noir vampirism but traditional hero masculinity.

The man standing over the half naked shivering women, going "Here let me protect you? way are you all the over there? come a little closer, how am I suppose to protect you all the way there?" you see in Hollywood all the time is very irksome. And exactly like it goes in real life too, right? right? wrong.

The damsel in distress lie, the antithesis of the revolutionary spirit of Buffy. Not because men can not be heroic but because men are what women need protecting from, that men would be the answer to our problems is ridiculous. Men are just as likely to cower in fear or explicitly gain to benefit from the weak position of women in society as often as men like Angel would be our alies they are just as likely to fail then to be our knights in shining armor. It is women who created and create the feminist movement, who organize and championing and protect themselves. Sometimes the conventionality of Angel reminds you of this fact.

 

[Taake]

Why do you all blame only Joss ? I mean, yes he is the creator of the series, but by the time Angel was aired he wasn't on the set all the time, he had other shows, so personnally I don't blame only him for whathever I dislike on the show !

Because Joss gets the main credit for the good, why should he be spared from blame for the bad? 😉

 

[Antho]

Because Joss gets the main credit for the good, why should he be spared from blame for the bad? 😉

That's fair. It's logic, just not my logic ! I prefer think it's a team work.

 

[EarthLogic]

I don't see how Fred's death and subsequent resurrection of Ilyria is a "gross violation of their bodily autonomy." Fred dies. Her soul is gone. She no longer exists. Her dead body is now used a the shell for the demon. I don't see this as any different than when Angel's soul is removed (a death equivalent) and Angelus takes over and controls his body (instead of the human soul controlling the body).

I agree with @RachM on there being a crucial difference between the two, which lies in the pregnancy metaphor. You could compare the mechanism Fred's death with a person dying from a bacterial or viral infection in real life, but it goes way beyond that because as with Cordelia her body is actually taken over and used as a vessel for another sentient being. With vampirism, I think the analogy of disease infection is much better suited since apart from the Angel/Angelus divide, vampires are shown to have more or less a psychological continuity between their soulless and souled selves. They're bodies are invaded by a demon essence which compels them to behave in ways that they might not as a souled human and so raises questions of moral agency, but the fact that they retain core personalities and desires complicates the picture. There's never the impression that two entirely whole, separate consciousnesses/entities are existing in the same body (despite how some people may interpret Angelus).

I also love Illyria and the plotline in itself was a very interesting one, but what is problematic about it is the cumulative effect of seeing the trope played out again and again over the series. It's the fact that we see it with Darla and Cordelia and Fred. Cordy's feelings on her ordeal are at least brought up in 'Your Welcome' even though it's not really enough, but Fred's death ends up just serving Wesley's manpain. Darla's is the only one I really like because it completes her redemption arc beautifully and with great pathos but even so there is a valid criticism to be made for the use of the 'sacrificial mother' archetype for her.

Joss (and by extension Greenwalt) didn't set out with an agenda to write a feminist show when he went to write Angel. He set out to write a show about a man-hero type. They start out s1 with tooooooons of females damseled and saved by Angel. So when they miss the mark terribly on the show regarding progressive feminist treatment of female characters I'm not nearly as shocked (whereas with BtVS I am because that is or was the aim of the show).

I'm not too bothered by the traditional S1 damsel saving because in order to examine a trope, you first have to engage with it. It's clear in the beginning that Whedon and Greenwalt are playing with the traditional conventions of male hero in order to subvert it and I see it as similar to how in 'Welcome to the Hellmouth' Darla is presented as the the cliched unwitting blonde girl victim before turning out to be the aggressor. I guess that I was just hoping for something a bit more progressive with AtS, something that would not only critique traditional masculinity but provide alternatives that would include women - like a kind of mirror image to what we see on BtVS where representations of toxic masculinity are either defeated or broken down and reintegrated into being allies for the female empowerment narrative. If Buffy asks where men stand in relation to female empowerment. I wanted AtS to ask where women/femininity stood as it examined 'how hard it is to be a man' (Greenwalt). I'd say the series, especially in its first half (S1-3) was quite good at subverting images of conventional heroic masculinities and gesturing towards alternatives through homosexual undercurrents, queer characters like Lorne (even if it doesn't really explore them in much depth) and the constant examination of Angel's body, sexuality and self-image. In S3 I also really liked seeing Angel being a single father playing both protective and nurturing roles. I loved the Darla arc over S2-3. She is such a complex character and the ever-shifting power dynamics in her relationship with Angel means that it never felt like her story was only there to further Angel's angst; their stories were inextricably bound up with each other's and had the writers just stuck with that one pregnancy on the show it would have been fine. Unfortunately the series is really let down from S4 onwards by Jasdelia and although the inclusion of Faith and even Willow are welcome counterpoints to that, they don't make up for it entirely since they leave and Lilah, the one truly badass woman left, is killed too. Then in S5 although we continue with deconstructions of masculinity, male relationships (via Spike and Angel) and manpain, we also end up with Fred killed off in a similar manner to Cordy and Darla by the end, *sigh*.

Obviously the series was never going to be as feminist as Buffy since the latter is about women first and foremost but I think it had the potential to go further than it did. The key would have been to maintain Angel's platonic and familial relationships with women like Cordelia (pre-glowy Sainthood) and Faith, where they functioned not as standard supportive love interests or plot devices to further male character development (although there would inevitably have to be a bit of this since this is a male character's story) but rather as critical foils and challenges to toxic or destructive behaviours and as partners in the mission. However I think Joss failed, or at least lacked the motivation, to think that far with AtS.

But isn’t it sexist to not write a good story just to keep a female character alive just because she is a female?... This next comment might get tomatoes thrown at me, but men and women ARE different. Men can’t get pregnant or give birth. Only women can. So if a good story involves a pregnancy of some kind , then oh well, it’s gonna involve a female. Plenty of horrible things happen to men on his shows too. No one on Btvs or AtS is safe.

I'm just as aginst token representation and absolutely wouldn't want the female characters to be spared simply because they're female. The problem isn't the fact that bad stuff happens to the female characters - because clearly bad stuff happens to all the characters. Like I said above, it's the fact that this one particular trope is used repeatedly on the show and, with the exception of Darla, without ever adequately addressing the female perspective on it.

As a gothic detective noir show they did Angel saves the damsel guest star many times over, luckily Joss Whedon steered the writing and story plot lines to a similar caliber as Buffy. The show never leaned into regressivism, Whedon's politics are liberal, the show indeed never felt conservative except the no getting around traditional premise.

Now Joss Whedon could have decided he was going to make sure Angel the series made a point of being politically progressive and feminist but he didn't because that was never his mission statement to begin with when he created Buffy.

I agree that it never leaned into regressivism or conservatism, but as I say above I did hope that Joss would go further than he ultimately did and evolve his mission statement to make sure that included women in a positive way rather than omitting them completely by the end of the series.

Still there are drawbacks, Angel's presumptuous white knighting of Cordelia, the women with the visions, who shouldn't lay her delicate eyes on the crime scene photos really gets to me. The clumsy over use of body horror for the female characters, the fact the ensemble when they were not fighting over the female leads (Wes/Gun, Angel/Connor) saved them much more the vice versa. Turning Cordelia into a literal succbus. The fact every female lead was abused and dead by the finale.

With 'Billy' I just put it down to Tim Minear going a bit overboard in trying to portray male overprotectiveness. It came across as clumsy and OOC because Angel has never before tried to protect Cordy from gruesome sights so it's obvious it was just done in that episode to try and make a point. I'm with you on everything else, though.

feeling like a betrayal of Buffy in the character of Nina.

I don't know if I see it as 'betrayal' of Buffy's character, since Nina was never presented as a serious love interest; it was very casual and more about Angel just learning to allow himself a bit of a connection rather than fearing it all the time. But Nina's damseling and hero worship did annoy me quite a bit. They didn't have to make her that passive.

 

[thrasherpix]

Reading some of the above, I thought I'd share this woman's commentary on damsels in distress with the good, the bad, and the ugly:

She gets into describing the different kinds (and that male characters can also be "damselled"), and more than one kind was seen in Joss's works.

 

[EarthLogic]

(and that male characters can also be "damselled"),

I love the male damselling that Buffy does.

 

[Mrs Gordo]

I love the male damselling that Buffy does.

As a young girl, this was one of my favorite trope subversions. That Angel was this tall bulky man and yet this little blonde girl was actually stronger than him and saving his butt.

I mean look at when Angel is knocked out and Buffy comes in to kick the vamp's butt in early s2:

source: slaygal

And Angel never really gave a crap that Buffy was stronger than him or kept rescuing him. He never pulled the whole "don't fight my fights" or made a big stink about her being stronger than him. So as a younger woman, I had never really seen a dynamic like this. It was unique and it was what drew me to the show and to that relationship.

 

[thrasherpix]

As a young girl, this was one of my favorite trope subversions. That Angel was this tall bulky man and yet this little blonde girl was actually stronger than him and saving his butt.

I mean look at when Angel is knocked out and Buffy comes in to kick the vamp's butt in early s2:

source: slaygal

And Angel never really gave a crap that Buffy was stronger than him or kept rescuing him. He never pulled the whole "don't fight my fights" or made a big stink about her being stronger than him. So as a younger woman, I had never really seen a dynamic like this. It was unique and it was what drew me to the show and to that relationship.

Yeah, I think one of the reasons Buffy appealed to me so much when I first gave it a try was that I was trying to be feminine for my then stud girlfriend. I found it difficult and came to realize that I had subconsciously come to equate femininity with weakness and victimhood, which is to say while I was confident in of myself, I had a subconscious feeling of doom and of losing my agency if I became more feminine. Even people who identified as feminist or otherwise said women weren't weak contributed to my subconsciously taking this view. It's possible that had I not chose to watch Buffy right then that I would not have gotten sucked in as I did, because it was exactly what I needed at the time. So I actually feel a bit of gratitude for the show in addition to enjoying it.

But since this is only something I realize in retrospect (and now glad I'd worked through my "female is victimhood" delusion before seeing the later seasons as it could've ruined the show for me completely) it's hard to say how seeing Angel would've affected me. I started watching Buffy about 15 years ago, but Angel about 5 years ago, and I've changed a lot as a person in between getting into Buffy and then getting into Angel.

 

[MarieVampSlayer]

The violation to Fred's body is the infection of Illyria. Similarly to both Darla and Cordy, Fred is infected/impregnated without her consent and forced to carry and "birth" the infection. Her body is literally hollowed out in order for Illyria to be "born", her organs liquified, her skin hardened, dying a slow and painful death from a foreign being which is taking over her body, all without her consent. It's definitely a gross violation and, in light of what happened to Cordy and Darla, it's even grosser. All three women die from unwanted "pregnancies" which they cannot rid themselves of and never asked for. It's pretty horrifying.

And why should pregnancy be gross? It's so sad that there was not any positive pregnancy on the show. Women do get pregnant on purpose and are happy about it!

 

[Antho]

And why should pregnancy be gross?

It's mystical pregancy, not human pregnancy 😉

 

[DeepBlueJoy]

That's fair. It's logic, just not my logic ! I prefer think it's a team work.

Then, Joss and the team goofed. The mostly MALE team. Love guys, but sometimes, it is easy to step in the same steps that others have, to follow the same old worn out mindsets... Unless you have someone in there (who is in a position of enough authority to freely confront you) who has a different mindset. A different perspective.

My honest feeling about AtS, is that it is still better storytelling than most TV, but it had some huge holes in terms of its feminism or even just basic respect of females and their agency as humans.

Women became tools for the male experiences and actions and pain, not characters, as they were on Buffy... Even though Buffy has issues too, the women were always agents as much as the men. They did things, they chose things, they saved the world. They had moral and actual power. Maybe it was Spike that killed off the vampires, but Buffy was the reason he got to be alive and there to do it. From (especially) season two on, of Angel the series, women lost more and more of their agency, and became more and more 'accessories and decoration' for the guys. They did it to Cordelia, Fred, Wes' girlfriend (Virginia? Bryce (the redhead)), Lilah (murdered!) Dead hot women litter TV. Women designed as victims and/or whores litter TV. Angel the series could have been so different.

The one chance Fred had to be a moral agent (bad choice, maybe, but hers), it was taken from her by the writers, in order to steal her relationship with Gunn (a black man - gasp!) (apparently, she needed protecting from that choice too??). In order to do this breaking of the cutie, they turned Gunn into the PATRIARCHAL 'rescuer of the little Fred' -- that SAME Fred who survived FIVE YEARS in hell with things much scarier than her...

This means:

A) She escaped and stayed free. (she helped Angel and co in Pylea)
B) She probably killed, and definitely outsmarted those things!
AND
C) she earned the right to her choice to deal with the evil professor, someone who could never be stopped by man's laws.

In one of my stories, I explore a little bit of who Fred really is after Pylea. Basically? A soldier... and her reaction that summer after she came back? PTSD, not a sign she's a weakling.

I always thought her fight with the vampires, where she used the spring loaded stakes, was a very telling picture of who Fred really was... She and Gunn fought side by side that summer without Angel, Cordy or Wes. Gunn was a bad ass. He knew she could handle herself, and have his back in the field. Until the idiot writers decided to emasculate her in supersymmetry. (I really hate that there isn't a better word).

And if you doubt how strong she was? Ask why the professor tried to send her away in the first place? She was a woman in a man's world, and she punched way above her weight in every way... mind, body, spirit.. soul. She was the one happy, healthy person (in spite of all of her experiences) in the entire two series, who laughed and had loving family who backed her up totally...

Until the writers stripped her of ALL of that.

 

[MarieVampSlayer]

So for me I think the problem with the females of the AI team is not really their ending which is problematic but like a lot of you said it was about story telling and feud with actors.

For me, the problem is in the inconsistency in the female character's strenght and how they are used compared to the male characters.

Cordelia: Has been on the hell mouth since forever, has fought with the scoobies and can slay vampires like we saw at the end of Graduation. Now in LA she can't really fight and is usually the usual damsell in distress until S3 when Angel finally shows her how to fight so that Cangel can happen. What I don't get is why hasn't she not learn how to fight before? Couldn't Angel, Gunn or Wes show her? Did she need to be always in danger even when it did not make any sense? Cordy is tought, she is the Original Bad bitch, she might not have any powers but will a lot of training she would definitely kick some serious ass!

Episodes where Cordy is a victim City of, Rm w/a Vu, To Shanshu in LA, Expecting (1st creepy pregnancy), Parting gifts , Epiphany (2nd creepy pregnancy), Dead ends, Over the rainbow, throught the looking glass, That vision thing, Offspring, Birthday, Waiting in the wings, Tomorrow and all of S4.


Fred: So in Fredless, Fred builts an amazing machine that saves the day and that was awesome. She survived Pylea , she must be able to survive anything on her own right? But then they make her the damsell in distress in replacement of Cordy for like a whole season. Ok I get that Fred is more a brain than a brawn but couldn't she be a little bit of both like Wes? Could she not find a way to be stronger or create a weapons that could help her fight with the stronger characters?

Episodes where Fred is a victim: Throught the looking glass, Billy, Provider , The Price, Supersymmetry, Soulless, Calvary, Shiny Happy people, A whole in the world, Lineage

For me the real feminist of the Angel serie is Lilah! She is a strong as any other man on the show!

 

[EarthLogic]

She was the one happy, healthy person (in spite of all of her experiences) in the entire two series, who laughed and had loving family who backed her up totally...

I loved Fred's parents! They were good, caring people and her mum was kind of a secret badass - she killed a giant bug demon with a BUS!! 😀

The one chance Fred had to be a moral agent (bad choice, maybe, but hers), it was taken from her by the writers, in order to steal her relationship with Gunn (a black man - gasp!) (apparently, she needed protecting from that choice too??). In order to do this breaking of the cutie, they turned Gunn into the PATRIARCHAL 'rescuer of the little Fred' -- that SAME Fred who survived FIVE YEARS in hell with things much scarier than her...

Whilst I agree that the Supersymmetry situation was the wrong writing call and Fred should have been allowed to make that decision herself, I disagree that she is robbed of all moral agency from this point on. After all, she is the one who figures out how to end Jasmine's thrall over people and she does this all on her own after finding herself in another Pylea-like situation where everyone is out to get her. She's also the only one who works tirelessly to recorporealise Spike because she believes that he is worth saving. It's during the Illyria arc that it really goes downhill.

 

[DeepBlueJoy]

And yet, Lilah is just... exterminated... so that Wes can be sad and doubt Angel.
 
I would have liked to see Wesley become Illyria...

 

[EarthLogic]

DeepBlueJoy: Great point! She shows herself smart and a survivor again, yet we are rapidly made to forget it.

She also makes that spring-loaded axe weapon thingy that may or may not also make toast. I wanted to see that used more often! 😛
 

I heard somebody planned to, but they didn't know from which end to start, so they gave up.

Was this at a convention or something? I have to say I am quite surprised (though I suppose I shouldn't really be considering how strong his feminist public image has been.) It's been talked about so much amongst fans that I hoped someone would have brought it up even if it was in a casual, non-challenging way.

 

[slayer730]

And yet, Lilah is just... exterminated... so that Wes can be sad and doubt Angel.
 
I would have liked to see Wesley become Illyria...

That would have been an interesting subversion and I like that idea from a story perspective, but I'm torn because I think Illyria was something that really gave Amy Acker a chance to show her range. I think overall Illyria leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths because by that point we had seen Cordelia go through whats she went through and die. It wouldnt have been as bad if

1) Cordelia was handled way differently in season 4

2) They said Fred's soul was gone forever only to then take that back and establish a loophole to where they could get it back.

and

3) have a costume that wasn't this weird leather thing.

 

[DagonSphere]

I think this is an interesting topic and there have been fair points made. That being sad, I don't think that the female characters were treated so poorly that it would challenge anything that was accomplished in Buffy. For me it boils down to the following:

1.) Angel was a traditional male superhero show, as such there were bound to be more damsels in distress and since we don't always have a connection to the weekly guest stars, it only makes sense that the regular female characters would need some saving too, so that the audience would feel something or be engaged. Additionally, male characters in the show needed some saving too. Wesley and Gunn had to be saved on several occasions as well. Furthermore, a lot of horrific things happened to all of the characters in Angel. Wesley had his throat cut and was later stabbed to death, Lindsey had his hand cut off and was shot, Doyle was burned alive, Lorne got brainsucked by Wolfram and Hart. I think if you only look at how the female characters ended up dead, you look at it only from one side and that's kind of a limited view.

2.) Neither Cordelia nor Fred started out with superpowers or as fighters. However, as the show progressed, both of them were shown to adapt and got more involved in the action, not always needing to be saved. For Fred, the whole Magic Bullet arc would be an example of how much she has grown throughout the series and how she could rely on herself and didn't need to be saved by a man all the time, even though she started out as the "girl who was saved from the monsters by a handsome guy" in Pylea. Furthermore, aside from how they might end up at the end, throughout the run of the show they both keep keep their agency and actually call out the men when they are condescending or when they treat them badly. I am thinking of Lineage, in which Wesley tells Fred after she got shot that she shouldn't have been with him when they were dealing with those gangsters and Fred basically goes off on him on how he dares to make such a decision for her. She does the same when she is dieing in A Hole In The World.

3.) There are other strong female characters that recurred, who didn't end up dead. Admittedly, Gwen and Kate weren't such a big part of the show, but they lived and with Gwen in particular, you could also say that her entire short arc was about taking control of her body. Same with Bethany in season two.

4.) I think when it comes to Fred, fridging doesn't really apply. For me personally, fridging has a lot to do with taking away screen time of a female character to further a man's story and that is not the case here. She doesn't die to further a man's story, even though it has a huge impact on Wesley's story in the last few episodes. She dies to give Amy Acker the opportunity to play a different character. Amy's character doesn't die to give a man a showcase storyline, she dies, because Amy Acker the actress gets a showcase and her screen time doesn't really change and the whole "A Hole In The World" / "Shells" storyline features her heavily. That being said, Lilah was fridged for sure

5.) I see how it is problematic that the two female series regulars on the show both end up having their bodies taken over by some hostile force. At the same time I think both made for good storylines and in both storylines it is portrayed as a huge blow that these women lose control over their bodies. It actually has apocalyptic consequences. I feel like some people who analyze a TV show or a movie through a feminist lense sometimes forget that oppression and violation are in fact even parts of feminist stories, because they're a reality and it's important to show how people overcome systems like that or how both men and women deal with them or learn something. A story in which women just easily overcome every obstacle is not a feminist story.

(I don't count Darla to this, because Darla did actually gain a new kind of agency through her pregnancy and I also refuse to see her pregnancy as something that violates her body, even if it's an unwanted pregnancy).


However, the whole way in which Charisma Carpenter was forced to exit the show should have maybe been questioned much earlier, that was just such a messy affair that stood against how Joss advertised himself, so it was sort of surprising that it was mostly ignored. I think that's what Joss maybe should have been challenged on earlier in his career.

 

[DeepBlueJoy]

That would have been an interesting subversion and I like that idea from a story perspective, but I'm torn because I think Illyria was something that really gave Amy Acker a chance to show her range. I think overall Illyria leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths because by that point we had seen Cordelia go through whats she went through and die. It wouldnt have been as bad if

1) Cordelia was handled way differently in season 4

2) They said Fred's soul was gone forever only to then take that back and establish a loophole to where they could get it back.

and

3) have a costume that wasn't this weird leather thing.

Had Illyria been an isolated incident and not a pattern of messing women up for entertainment, and yes, if Illyria hadn't been dressed like a cross between a scarab beetle and a dominatrix, it would have been a really great thing for Amy. It WAS an interesting idea.