by Natalie Lifson
Joss Whedon is a screenwriter, director, producer, and showrunner for many well known TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Angel, and Dollhouse, among others. Joss Whedon’s most influential pieces in the late 1990s and early 2000s were written as a response to his discontent with certain aspects of American social and political life. Whedon’s works serve as thinly veiled commentaries on issues such as misogyny, homophobia, and corruption.
All of Joss Whedon’s works star strong female characters as a result of his involvement in the feminist movement. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which premiered as a movie in 1992 and as a TV show in 1996, Whedon attempts to disrupt the common trope of the girly blonde girl as the first to die in a dangerous situation. In the DVD Commentary for “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon complains about the trope that the “blonde girl who goes into a dark alley… gets killed in every horror movie” and explains that the initial inspiration was his intention to “subvert that idea … and create someone who was a hero where she had always been a victim”(Murray). Buffy, a bubbly blonde cheerleader and the titular character of Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, would stereotypically be a helpless character and be murdered if she were to come face to face with a vampire. However, in Whedon’s universe this bubbly blonde cheerleader has superhuman strength and manages to take down adversaries significantly more powerful than she is repeatedly. Buffy is both superhuman and incredibly human all at once; while she possesses extraordinary gifts and strength, she deals with modern feminist issues alongside apocalyptic ones. For example, many of the evil vampires Buffy defeats make chauvinistic statements before Buffy slays them (Drewniok). In one episode, Luke, an old, macho vampire, calls Buffy a “little girl” when he attacks her and refuses to acknowledge her as a formidable opponent (Drewniok). At the same time, Luke struggles to hold his own against Buffy; he does not actually believe that she is not a threat, but he attempts to take away her agency by convincing her that she is weak because he fears her. When Buffy stakes him, she has not only proven her strength by triumphing over an evil vampire, but she defeats the voice that tells her she is less capable because of her gender.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer the movie, the precursor to the hit TV show, was released in 1992 at the end of the 2nd wave feminism movement and towards the beginning of the 3rd wave feminism movement(Rampton). By this time, women had achieved many of the goals they had set for themselves in the 2nd wave feminist movement, which included the ability to become leaders and succeed in many fields they had previously ignored them; in fact, organizations designed to protect women had been created and there was a general awareness and support of feminism(Rampton). Only then, when women had gained these freedoms in society, did the third wave feminist movement, which focused more on the subtleties of mistreatment of women, begin; it was then, at the crossroads between the second and third waves, that the focus began to gradually shift from basic human rights to less publicized issues such as female representation in the media(Rampton). Whedon, a self-proclaimed feminist who “took classes in feminism at Wesleyan", attempted to address the misrepresentation of women in the media by fully fleshing out his female characters(Pascale). Because Buffy The Vampire Slayer addresses female stereotypes from conception to completion, Buffy is an inherently feminist television show.
In all of Whedon’s shows, he consistently shows females as strong and capable and places them in positions of power. In Whedon’s works, females are not valued less than males or even exclusively for their femininity, but rather for the qualities and skills they offer as a complete human being(Wilcox). In Firefly, for example, there are four major female characters in an ensemble cast of nine, and all four of them are feminist characters in their own right. Kaylee Frye is the sole mechanic on a spaceship; Kaylee, who is brilliant, is highly respected by males and females alike. River is the most powerful person on the ship, can read minds, is highly skilled at combat, and is able to protect her friends and crew-mates. Zoë is the first mate of the ship and also a veteran. Inara is a sex worker but is greatly revered not in spite of her work, but because of her work in a world in which Companions are highly educated and trained in the arts at special schools. By creating a cast of strong female characters that draw strength from a variety of different places and express their strength in a variety of different ways, Whedon supports the belief that females are no less capable of great things than males and that all females, even sex workers, are deserving of respect(Wilcox).
Another strong female character Whedon wrote is Willow Rosenberg, Buffy’s best friend and sidekick in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Willow, who is a witch, draws strength from both her gender and her sexuality. As Willow gradually discovers that she is a lesbian and becomes more self-confident, her magic parallels her growth as a person and exponentially increases(Ford). Willow is an example of a homosexual character who is not defined or confined by her sexuality, but enriched by it. Willow’s relationship with Tara, another witch, is not only healthy for the most part, but is arguably the most stable relationship in the show(Ford). Whedon positively portrays homosexual characters and relationships at a time when homosexuals were largely vilified in society, partially due to the fact that the AIDS epidemic, which terrified Americans, was known to spread among gay men(aids.gov). As a result, LGBT people were increasingly treated as pariahs and viewed as “other” in more ways than just their differing sexual orientations. By depicting Willow as more than her sexuality, but rather a powerful woman, a caring friend, and a brilliant hacker, Whedon actively combats many of the stereotypes that surrounded lesbians.
By the time Willow came out of the closet in the fourth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, it was 1999 and the movements both for and against LGBT rights were beginning to gain a lot more traction(PBS). In 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act which ruled that no state that did not recognize same-sex marriage had a legal obligation to recognize a homosexual marriage from another state within its borders(PBS). That same year, the Supreme Court ruled in Romer v. Evans that gay people were not entitled to protection against discrimination and revoked Colorado’s 2nd amendment that protected gay people against hate crimes(PBS). There was a significant amount of backlash from the LGBT community and it’s allies. Many influential people, such as Coretta Scott King, for example, spoke up against these regressive events and encouraged civil rights activists and feminists to take a stand against homophobia(PBS). Joss Whedon, who strongly identified as a feminist, agreed with Scott King when she publicly stated in 1998 that “freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right …, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.” Less than a year later, Whedon wrote Willow, who was already a main character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to discover that she was a lesbian; he aimed to positively represent gay characters on television to alter society’s opinion of homosexuality as somehow deviant and wrong. Not only was Whedon dissatisfied with the status of LGBT people in society, but he did not endorse their treatment on other television shows(Ford). In one interview, Whedon expressed distaste for the common theme of television shows exploiting gay and lesbian relationships to increase viewership only to take away the same-sex relationship soon after(Winslade).
In many of Whedon’s other works, including Firefly, Angel, and Dollhouse, while Whedon continues to write scripts with feminist themes and to create strong female characters, the focus shifts from social justice issues to a preoccupation with corruption(Pascale 314). Firefly, which is equal part feminist and a critique of the American government, marks the beginning of this shift. In Firefly, the Alliance (the governmental organization) that is supposed to protect its citizens fails to do so and becomes oppressive. In Angel, the biggest evil Angel Investigations, a team of private detectives, faces is Wolfram and Hart, a supernaturally evil law firm. In Dollhouse, a major corporation has access to such unregulated advanced technology that it is able to take away any individual’s free will. As the anxieties and priorities of American society shifted, the major themes in Whedon’s projects also changed to reflect concerns about “corporations and corporate control, about the United States, and about politics”(Pascale 318). It wasn’t until Firefly aired in 2002 and 2003 that Whedon began to pay attention to the corporate evils that plagued American culture.
One of the major themes in Firefly is Whedon’s concern that the American government cared more for the elite few than for the common people. Through Firefly, Whedon expresses his concerns with “a government that claims to be doing what is best for its citizens but in reality does many questionable things in the name of peace and security”(Pascale 319). The Alliance, a metaphor for the American government, cares more about gaining power for itself than for the well-being of its citizens. In Firefly, the Alliance leaves whole populations of people on remote planets in an attempt to gain more power by colonizing(McRae). The Alliance does not provide these people with goods, supplies, or assistance, fully expects them to “craft their own livelihoods from the land or raw materials native to the landscape”(McRae). As a result, the planets distant from the core of the Alliance have high crime rates and people who live in abject poverty. The people who live on the core planets of the Alliance, on the other hand, are incredibly wealthy, technologically and medically advanced, and ignorant of the suffering of people on distant planets. Through Whedon’s metaphor for the Alliance as the United States government, he comments on the increasing disparity between the incomes of the rich and the poor in America. In the year 2000, two years before Firefly premiered on television, the gap of percent change in after-tax income between the rich and the poor reached an all-time high(Stone). By 2000, the income of the wealthiest 1% in America had increased by 200% since 1979 while the income of the bottom fifth had plummeted(Stone). Whedon, a strong believer in equality among the classes, uses Firefly to point out the dangers of such disparities in wealth in a separate universe so viewers are able to watch and draw conclusions objectively(McRae). Governmental injustice in Firefly ignites insurgence among the characters; by portraying the rebellious yet honorable crew-members as morally superior to the government, Whedon encourages audience members, too, to stand up against inequality.
Additionally, many of the events that take place in Firefly and Serenity, the follow-up movie to Firefly, parallel the human radiation experiments of the 1950s and 60s that were released by the US government. In Serenity, the main characters discover that years earlier the Alliance had experimented upon citizens of a distant border planet called Miranda by releasing chemicals that were supposed to render the people complacent; however, the Alliance’s plan did not work and ultimately half of the citizens of Miranda grew so complacent that they were unable to move and died of starvation. The other half grew so aggressive and violent that they transformed into the evil and inhuman reavers. The experiments on Miranda were well-kept Alliance secrets and the main characters felt betrayed upon discovering them. Similarly, soon after President Bill Clinton created the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in 1994, government documents from the 1960s that detailed unlawful human experiments during the Cold War were released(Faden). The majority of Americans, Whedon included, felt betrayed by this scandal just as the characters in Firefly felt betrayed by the Alliance. Additionally, the radiation experiments performed by the United States government were led by wealthy white officials, but the targets were citizens of low-income black towns, which parallels the Alliance’s experiments on poverty-stricken border planets(Faden). In both Firefly’s fantasy universe and America’s reality, those considered undesirable by the most powerful individuals in their respective societies were victimized by the governments that were supposed to protect them.
Angel, too, focuses on corruption; one of the major themes of the later seasons of Angel is Wolfram and Hart, an evil law firm, and “the ethics of working for an organization that is actually in control of the world”(Pascale 320). In the 1990s and early 2000s, an unprecedented number of corporate scandals shook America(Patsuris). Whedon, like many other Americans, was disturbed by the rise of corporate corruption in a society that increasingly valued success over ethics. Whedon reveals this concern during Angel’s run from 1999 to 2004 by repeatedly depicting Wolfram and Hart as outwardly virtuous but shockingly monstrous in reality. Whedon parallels the anxiety of declining ethical codes in major American businesses through the corrupt Wolfram and Hart that is willing to hurt people and act amorally to pursue power.
Dollhouse, which ran from 2009 to 2010, is, like Angel, a response to corporate control, but is also a response to Whedon’s anxiety about the dangers of technology(319). In an age in which technology is getting increasingly more powerful, Dollhouse expresses Whedon’s fears that if corporations such as The Network in Dollhouse are not regulated, they will abuse any technological advancements they have access to in order to pursue power and money. In Dollhouse, The Network essentially hollows out peoples’ inherent personalities and memories, temporarily inserts other personalities and memories into them, and rents them out to individuals who are willing to pay. The Network, which is clearly presented as evil as whole, is not managed by exclusively evil people but rather individuals who are morally grey but exhibit a lot of positive qualities. By writing likable characters as workers for an evil organization who know exactly what they are doing, Whedon illustrates the principle that corrupt organizations aren’t necessarily run be evil executives, but good people are capable of justifying evil for the sake of power or money(Tresca). This abuse of power by otherwise decent people is why, Whedon suggests, large corporations should not be trusted with too much power.
In all of Whedon’s works, he manages to relate to audiences and express himself through metaphors about current events and his concerns about society. It is through his commentaries on issues such as feminism and sexual orientation in all of his works that he has made a name for himself as a pioneer of women's and LGBT rights in television. While his signature work is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon has created many other quality television shows and movies as well. Some of his more recent well-known contributions include Avengers: Age of Ultron, Cabin in the Woods, and an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. Joss Whedon’s genius lies not only in his ability to create quality entertainment, but also in that he is able to influence viewers to pay attention to important social and moral issues in order to make positive change in the world.
Source: Examiner
Joss Whedon is a screenwriter, director, producer, and showrunner for many well known TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Angel, and Dollhouse, among others. Joss Whedon’s most influential pieces in the late 1990s and early 2000s were written as a response to his discontent with certain aspects of American social and political life. Whedon’s works serve as thinly veiled commentaries on issues such as misogyny, homophobia, and corruption.
All of Joss Whedon’s works star strong female characters as a result of his involvement in the feminist movement. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which premiered as a movie in 1992 and as a TV show in 1996, Whedon attempts to disrupt the common trope of the girly blonde girl as the first to die in a dangerous situation. In the DVD Commentary for “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon complains about the trope that the “blonde girl who goes into a dark alley… gets killed in every horror movie” and explains that the initial inspiration was his intention to “subvert that idea … and create someone who was a hero where she had always been a victim”(Murray). Buffy, a bubbly blonde cheerleader and the titular character of Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, would stereotypically be a helpless character and be murdered if she were to come face to face with a vampire. However, in Whedon’s universe this bubbly blonde cheerleader has superhuman strength and manages to take down adversaries significantly more powerful than she is repeatedly. Buffy is both superhuman and incredibly human all at once; while she possesses extraordinary gifts and strength, she deals with modern feminist issues alongside apocalyptic ones. For example, many of the evil vampires Buffy defeats make chauvinistic statements before Buffy slays them (Drewniok). In one episode, Luke, an old, macho vampire, calls Buffy a “little girl” when he attacks her and refuses to acknowledge her as a formidable opponent (Drewniok). At the same time, Luke struggles to hold his own against Buffy; he does not actually believe that she is not a threat, but he attempts to take away her agency by convincing her that she is weak because he fears her. When Buffy stakes him, she has not only proven her strength by triumphing over an evil vampire, but she defeats the voice that tells her she is less capable because of her gender.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer the movie, the precursor to the hit TV show, was released in 1992 at the end of the 2nd wave feminism movement and towards the beginning of the 3rd wave feminism movement(Rampton). By this time, women had achieved many of the goals they had set for themselves in the 2nd wave feminist movement, which included the ability to become leaders and succeed in many fields they had previously ignored them; in fact, organizations designed to protect women had been created and there was a general awareness and support of feminism(Rampton). Only then, when women had gained these freedoms in society, did the third wave feminist movement, which focused more on the subtleties of mistreatment of women, begin; it was then, at the crossroads between the second and third waves, that the focus began to gradually shift from basic human rights to less publicized issues such as female representation in the media(Rampton). Whedon, a self-proclaimed feminist who “took classes in feminism at Wesleyan", attempted to address the misrepresentation of women in the media by fully fleshing out his female characters(Pascale). Because Buffy The Vampire Slayer addresses female stereotypes from conception to completion, Buffy is an inherently feminist television show.
In all of Whedon’s shows, he consistently shows females as strong and capable and places them in positions of power. In Whedon’s works, females are not valued less than males or even exclusively for their femininity, but rather for the qualities and skills they offer as a complete human being(Wilcox). In Firefly, for example, there are four major female characters in an ensemble cast of nine, and all four of them are feminist characters in their own right. Kaylee Frye is the sole mechanic on a spaceship; Kaylee, who is brilliant, is highly respected by males and females alike. River is the most powerful person on the ship, can read minds, is highly skilled at combat, and is able to protect her friends and crew-mates. Zoë is the first mate of the ship and also a veteran. Inara is a sex worker but is greatly revered not in spite of her work, but because of her work in a world in which Companions are highly educated and trained in the arts at special schools. By creating a cast of strong female characters that draw strength from a variety of different places and express their strength in a variety of different ways, Whedon supports the belief that females are no less capable of great things than males and that all females, even sex workers, are deserving of respect(Wilcox).
Another strong female character Whedon wrote is Willow Rosenberg, Buffy’s best friend and sidekick in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Willow, who is a witch, draws strength from both her gender and her sexuality. As Willow gradually discovers that she is a lesbian and becomes more self-confident, her magic parallels her growth as a person and exponentially increases(Ford). Willow is an example of a homosexual character who is not defined or confined by her sexuality, but enriched by it. Willow’s relationship with Tara, another witch, is not only healthy for the most part, but is arguably the most stable relationship in the show(Ford). Whedon positively portrays homosexual characters and relationships at a time when homosexuals were largely vilified in society, partially due to the fact that the AIDS epidemic, which terrified Americans, was known to spread among gay men(aids.gov). As a result, LGBT people were increasingly treated as pariahs and viewed as “other” in more ways than just their differing sexual orientations. By depicting Willow as more than her sexuality, but rather a powerful woman, a caring friend, and a brilliant hacker, Whedon actively combats many of the stereotypes that surrounded lesbians.
By the time Willow came out of the closet in the fourth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, it was 1999 and the movements both for and against LGBT rights were beginning to gain a lot more traction(PBS). In 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act which ruled that no state that did not recognize same-sex marriage had a legal obligation to recognize a homosexual marriage from another state within its borders(PBS). That same year, the Supreme Court ruled in Romer v. Evans that gay people were not entitled to protection against discrimination and revoked Colorado’s 2nd amendment that protected gay people against hate crimes(PBS). There was a significant amount of backlash from the LGBT community and it’s allies. Many influential people, such as Coretta Scott King, for example, spoke up against these regressive events and encouraged civil rights activists and feminists to take a stand against homophobia(PBS). Joss Whedon, who strongly identified as a feminist, agreed with Scott King when she publicly stated in 1998 that “freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right …, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.” Less than a year later, Whedon wrote Willow, who was already a main character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to discover that she was a lesbian; he aimed to positively represent gay characters on television to alter society’s opinion of homosexuality as somehow deviant and wrong. Not only was Whedon dissatisfied with the status of LGBT people in society, but he did not endorse their treatment on other television shows(Ford). In one interview, Whedon expressed distaste for the common theme of television shows exploiting gay and lesbian relationships to increase viewership only to take away the same-sex relationship soon after(Winslade).
In many of Whedon’s other works, including Firefly, Angel, and Dollhouse, while Whedon continues to write scripts with feminist themes and to create strong female characters, the focus shifts from social justice issues to a preoccupation with corruption(Pascale 314). Firefly, which is equal part feminist and a critique of the American government, marks the beginning of this shift. In Firefly, the Alliance (the governmental organization) that is supposed to protect its citizens fails to do so and becomes oppressive. In Angel, the biggest evil Angel Investigations, a team of private detectives, faces is Wolfram and Hart, a supernaturally evil law firm. In Dollhouse, a major corporation has access to such unregulated advanced technology that it is able to take away any individual’s free will. As the anxieties and priorities of American society shifted, the major themes in Whedon’s projects also changed to reflect concerns about “corporations and corporate control, about the United States, and about politics”(Pascale 318). It wasn’t until Firefly aired in 2002 and 2003 that Whedon began to pay attention to the corporate evils that plagued American culture.
One of the major themes in Firefly is Whedon’s concern that the American government cared more for the elite few than for the common people. Through Firefly, Whedon expresses his concerns with “a government that claims to be doing what is best for its citizens but in reality does many questionable things in the name of peace and security”(Pascale 319). The Alliance, a metaphor for the American government, cares more about gaining power for itself than for the well-being of its citizens. In Firefly, the Alliance leaves whole populations of people on remote planets in an attempt to gain more power by colonizing(McRae). The Alliance does not provide these people with goods, supplies, or assistance, fully expects them to “craft their own livelihoods from the land or raw materials native to the landscape”(McRae). As a result, the planets distant from the core of the Alliance have high crime rates and people who live in abject poverty. The people who live on the core planets of the Alliance, on the other hand, are incredibly wealthy, technologically and medically advanced, and ignorant of the suffering of people on distant planets. Through Whedon’s metaphor for the Alliance as the United States government, he comments on the increasing disparity between the incomes of the rich and the poor in America. In the year 2000, two years before Firefly premiered on television, the gap of percent change in after-tax income between the rich and the poor reached an all-time high(Stone). By 2000, the income of the wealthiest 1% in America had increased by 200% since 1979 while the income of the bottom fifth had plummeted(Stone). Whedon, a strong believer in equality among the classes, uses Firefly to point out the dangers of such disparities in wealth in a separate universe so viewers are able to watch and draw conclusions objectively(McRae). Governmental injustice in Firefly ignites insurgence among the characters; by portraying the rebellious yet honorable crew-members as morally superior to the government, Whedon encourages audience members, too, to stand up against inequality.
Additionally, many of the events that take place in Firefly and Serenity, the follow-up movie to Firefly, parallel the human radiation experiments of the 1950s and 60s that were released by the US government. In Serenity, the main characters discover that years earlier the Alliance had experimented upon citizens of a distant border planet called Miranda by releasing chemicals that were supposed to render the people complacent; however, the Alliance’s plan did not work and ultimately half of the citizens of Miranda grew so complacent that they were unable to move and died of starvation. The other half grew so aggressive and violent that they transformed into the evil and inhuman reavers. The experiments on Miranda were well-kept Alliance secrets and the main characters felt betrayed upon discovering them. Similarly, soon after President Bill Clinton created the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in 1994, government documents from the 1960s that detailed unlawful human experiments during the Cold War were released(Faden). The majority of Americans, Whedon included, felt betrayed by this scandal just as the characters in Firefly felt betrayed by the Alliance. Additionally, the radiation experiments performed by the United States government were led by wealthy white officials, but the targets were citizens of low-income black towns, which parallels the Alliance’s experiments on poverty-stricken border planets(Faden). In both Firefly’s fantasy universe and America’s reality, those considered undesirable by the most powerful individuals in their respective societies were victimized by the governments that were supposed to protect them.
Angel, too, focuses on corruption; one of the major themes of the later seasons of Angel is Wolfram and Hart, an evil law firm, and “the ethics of working for an organization that is actually in control of the world”(Pascale 320). In the 1990s and early 2000s, an unprecedented number of corporate scandals shook America(Patsuris). Whedon, like many other Americans, was disturbed by the rise of corporate corruption in a society that increasingly valued success over ethics. Whedon reveals this concern during Angel’s run from 1999 to 2004 by repeatedly depicting Wolfram and Hart as outwardly virtuous but shockingly monstrous in reality. Whedon parallels the anxiety of declining ethical codes in major American businesses through the corrupt Wolfram and Hart that is willing to hurt people and act amorally to pursue power.
Dollhouse, which ran from 2009 to 2010, is, like Angel, a response to corporate control, but is also a response to Whedon’s anxiety about the dangers of technology(319). In an age in which technology is getting increasingly more powerful, Dollhouse expresses Whedon’s fears that if corporations such as The Network in Dollhouse are not regulated, they will abuse any technological advancements they have access to in order to pursue power and money. In Dollhouse, The Network essentially hollows out peoples’ inherent personalities and memories, temporarily inserts other personalities and memories into them, and rents them out to individuals who are willing to pay. The Network, which is clearly presented as evil as whole, is not managed by exclusively evil people but rather individuals who are morally grey but exhibit a lot of positive qualities. By writing likable characters as workers for an evil organization who know exactly what they are doing, Whedon illustrates the principle that corrupt organizations aren’t necessarily run be evil executives, but good people are capable of justifying evil for the sake of power or money(Tresca). This abuse of power by otherwise decent people is why, Whedon suggests, large corporations should not be trusted with too much power.
In all of Whedon’s works, he manages to relate to audiences and express himself through metaphors about current events and his concerns about society. It is through his commentaries on issues such as feminism and sexual orientation in all of his works that he has made a name for himself as a pioneer of women's and LGBT rights in television. While his signature work is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon has created many other quality television shows and movies as well. Some of his more recent well-known contributions include Avengers: Age of Ultron, Cabin in the Woods, and an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. Joss Whedon’s genius lies not only in his ability to create quality entertainment, but also in that he is able to influence viewers to pay attention to important social and moral issues in order to make positive change in the world.
Source: Examiner