The index to the entire Joss Whedon roundtable is here.
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How do we define “authorship,” anyway? Even in this age of endless reboots, remixes, and universe-building, there’s still some kind of value placed on the idea of originality, as there has been all along. Whether it’s Dickens’ attempts to tighten copyright law in order to shut down rogue performances of his work, JK Rowling’s attempts to shut down publication of a Harry Potter encyclopedia, Warner Bros. forbidding Rocky-Horror-style viewings of “Once More with Feeling…”, or countless post-finale interviews with showrunners offering the “right” interpretation of their show, the relationship between a reader and an author is largely defined by power and anxiety. Sometimes they’re protecting their money, but more often than not, especially in the case of flesh and blood writers like Dickens and Rowling, they’re guarding the sanctity of something more ineffable—something that gets at the etymological root of “authority.”
As auteurs go, Joss Whedon has never overtly demonstrated too much of this kind of anxiety. From the beginning, he’s positioned himself as a fan among many, but a kind of super-fan. He engages in projects that feel like fan fiction, recasting Dracula as a minor player on the Sunnydale scene, rewriting space opera from the position of the colonized in Firefly, continuing the story of Buffy in comic form, and even including his own image in a panel of Buffy’s dream sequence–look at the bottom of the page below. It’s Mary Sue through the looking glass!
Perhaps even more importantly, Whedon’s let fans behind the curtain of the production process, participating in early fan forums such as The Bronze and Whedonesque, and even going so far as to hire fans such as Drew Greenberg and Michelle Trachtenberg in later seasons of Buffy. When “authority” has influenced the direction of a text, Whedon’s always positioned himself as being on the side of fans–Fox stunted his vision of Firefly, Warner Bros. didn’t appreciate him enough to give his actors ER or Friends-level salaries, Fox hamstrung the development of Dollhouse, etc. Even his more recent, high-profile work within the Marvel franchise is so rooted in his own fandom that the difference between “adaptation” and “fanfic” gets hard to parse. It’s no wonder fans refer to him as “Joss”–he spent a lot of time and energy, especially early on, cultivating just that kind of intimacy.
But it’s important to remember that this intimacy was always charged with hostility. Jonathan Levinson on Buffy is probably the best example of this vexed closeness. In “Superstar,” for instance, Jonathan gets the intimacy that being on a first-name basis with Joss Whedon might lead to (included in the credits, influencing the rest of the plot of Season Four), but his desire for too much closeness, too much control, is what turns the other characters away from him at the end of the episode, and lays the framework for his return in Season Six as one of three Bad Fans. It’s common enough to have figures of bad fans in a text serving as negative examples of Reading Gone Wrong–the Trio has good company in Ben Linus on Lost, Silas Wegg in Our Mutual Friend, Felix Gaeta on Battlestar Galactica, Comic Book Guy and countless others. The thing that’s interesting to me is how, in “Superstar,” Jonathan’s “bad” fandom doesn’t look that different from the “good” fandom that came from all the people Whedon had been palling around with on The Bronze and Whedonesque. This relationship to authorial power–the boss who’s also your buddy–is ultimately unsustainable, and that’s where the vitriol behind the depiction of fans in Season Six of Buffy comes from, I think.
Which brings us to the present day, and Whedon’s decision to quit Twitter. In his recent interview with Buzzfeed, he blows off the idea that feminist blowback to the Black Widow storyline drove him from Twitter. To his credit, he’s pretty blasé about the whole thing, pointing out how much worse it is for women on Twitter than it would ever be for him. What struck me upon reading the interview, though, was how his reasoning had less to do with politics than it did with intimacy. Twitter is an intimate medium, and the intimacy comes with very little effort on either side. For instance: when I was writing my dissertation (which partially focused on Buffy, natch), I was following television writer and producer Jane Espenson on Twitter, and every now and then she’d announce a “writing marathon,” encouraging her followers to tweet how much they’d written. I didn’t mention her on my acknowledgements page or anything, but those goals felt supportive, and kept me on track toward finishing. I was never part of those early Bronze chat rooms, so I’ve always been a little put off by calling Joss Whedon “Joss,” but when I was writing my dissertation, Jane Espenson did feel like “Jane.” Twitter can feel like a place where you’re hanging out with your friends (shades of The Bronze, perhaps), but when it turns, it turns fast and hard.
With a property as big as The Avengers, the intimacy that characterized his early work just isn’t sustainable anymore, and that’s what his retreat from Twitter is about, I think. Like many others, I was pretty put off by the “big reveal” of Natasha Romanova’s sterilization backstory, and especially by her line that infertility made her a “monster.” I found myself making excuses for Whedon in my head, almost right away, since this seemed so different, at first, from choices he’s made in the past (except, of course, for that one episode of Dollhouse). If it were from anyone else, would I have been surprised by such a hacky motivation for a central female character? Getting depth for female characters in summer blockbusters is always tricky, especially for writers working within an established franchise. But because of my love for Buffy (and Angel and Firefly and Dr. Horrible and even Dollhouse) my expectations are higher, and my disappointment proportionally greater. Based on the tone of some of the responses, I’m not alone in my feeling that this cinematic disappointment is more personal than others.
But here’s the bind for Whedon: his “betrayal” isn’t as personal as it feels, because there’s just no way that he would have the same kind of control over the content of something like The Avengers. Nor can he position himself as a creative genius, hemmed in by the forces of an evil corporate Big Bad. He’s too close to this Big Bad, and his position is much more precarious–Dan Harmon and Amy Sherman-Palladino excepted, it’s rare for a showrunner to get booted from the fictional world s/he invented (and Community and Gilmore Girls both serve as cautionary tales for doing so). But The Avengers is different–he could get replaced on this project easily, though, so his old “I’m on your side, it’s the goddamned network fencing me in” approach isn’t available.
Ultimately, Joss Whedon is too close to too much power (without actually wielding that power) to be the Cool Dad anymore, the one who “gets it” but has to exercise authority because he loves you. The project is too big, its influence too far-reaching for him to be able to hang out on message boards and kibitz with fans. Twitter offers the promise of intimacy, but Whedon’s fans have come to expect something that approaches the real thing. And as Cool Dads have learned since time immemorial, the closer you are aligned with the machinery of power, the less possible it is to be everybody’s BFF. Whedon will just have to settle for being one of the richest guys in Hollywood.
It always struck me as odd that so many of Whedon’s fans consider themselves on a first-name basis — the way they casually say “Joss this” and “Joss that” jarred me.
Question for you or anybody else — is that presumption of familiarity as unusual as it seemed to me? Or is it actually typical of more committed parts of other fandom as well? e.g. there’s Kirby fans who sometimes call him “Jack”, but it doesn’t seem as much a thing there as the “Joss”-thing…
PS: could you say a bit more about Gaeta as a bad fan? It’s been a while, but I don’t recall that coming out in the show.
I don’t know of any other writers whose fans refer to them on a first-name basis, although you certainly get nicknames a lot (Gene Roddenberry is the Great Bird, Dickens is Boz, etc.). Often, I think this is shorthand for fans so they can recognize each other (JMK means you’re a fan of Babylon 5, for instance). The presumption of intimacy with Joss Whedon seems unique, at least in my experience (although I’m so curious if anyone else knows of a similar case).
I wrote a little bit about Gaeta as a bad fan here: http://parabasis.typepad.com/blog/2012/05/the-fandom-issue-fandom-is-so-gay.html. Comic Book guy and the Trio are less obscure examples, but I do think it’s the same dynamic :)
There is no “authorial power” in the sense that bosses have power over their employees, the state over the people, or a politically, socially, economically, and socially dominant group over a subordinate group. Frankly, this conception of the relationship between author and audience looks opportunistic on the part of the critic.
okay, thanks for that. I disagree, but now I see where you were coming from.
(Not to derail this into a BSG-thread, but for me the frustrating thing about Gaeta’s heel turn is that, diegetically, he was 100% right. Adama was frakking insane, and a terrible leader; his and Roslin’s plans were nuts. Mutiny was the only sensible option. The writers stacked the deck against Gaeta by having Zarek assassinate his political enemies; without that, it’s obvious that #gaetawasright)
” this conception of the relationship between author and audience looks opportunistic on the part of the critic.”
I don’t understand what you’re saying here? I’d agree that authors don’t exactly have power over readers, but authors often seem to *want* that power—and they do have some resources (copyright law can come into play if authors *really* don’t want fans making fan fiction, Prince has effectively kept his music off of YouTube, etc.)
And I don’t get where it’s opportunistic on the part of critics to point that out?
It’s opportunistic because it claims, for an audience’s conflict with an author – that is, a critic’s conflict, because that’s what a critic is: an audience member expressing an opinion – the same prestige as conflicts with actual power.
There’s a lot of fans who make a property there own by writing fan fiction or coming up with creative interpretations of a property, but if you are really into the idea of canon material, then I guess in a way Whedon kind of is the boss of your imagination. He gets to decide whether a Buffy story is “canon” or “happened”.
Ah, okay. I see what you’re saying, Graham. I don’t think Anne is really doing that…I”m not sure if you’re saying she is though.
I don’t mean to imply that there’s the same thing at stake in the relationship between a reader and a writer that there is in the case of something like national conflict or workers’ exploitation, but I do think that the relationship between a reader and a text can offer a staging ground for that kind of engagement with power. That’s part of what’s so interesting about fan fiction to me–how it reframes a text, often with different political priorities, etc. And, again, this kind of revision and re-reading along political lines is part of what has made Joss Whedon so beloved in the first place. One of the things I loved about Firefly, for instance, is how it exposed the imperialist myths at the heart of Star Trek, and thus felt like it was speaking truth to power.
So it’s not that the tension between intimacy and resentment between a fan and an author is the same as “actual power” – but I do think that there are some of the same dynamics at play.
@ Noah
It’s incidental to the point that Whedon can’t have the same relationship to fans as the writer and director of hundred million dollar movies as he did as the showrunner of a cult hit. But I think she is doing it in that paragraph.
@ Anne
Thank you for the reply!
I’ll take the opportunity to wander somewhat off topic, re Firefly and “speaking truth to power”: If you mean Star Trek is power because it’s the bigger franchise, then low budget conservative parodies of comparatively (comparatively) liberal mainstream Hollywood, such as God Is Not Dead, are also speaking truth to power. If you mean Star Trek is power because its message is imperialist, I would say rather that Firefly‘s unmistakable use of the Confederacy as the model for the Independent Faction inadvertently exposes the conservatism latent in some self-professed anti-imperialism (which is sometimes essentially merely anti-statism).
Anne, I’m new to the Buffy-verse. What is this about the “Superstar” episode? Sounds interesting. I’m interested in the concept of “bad fans”– Emily Nussbaum took it on from a different angle in the New Yorker last year.
I wonder how I would have responded to the Natasha “monster” line if it was someone other than Whedon writing it. Because I barely gave it a thought at first, or gave it the best interpretation I could. I’ve thought about it but I still can’t take it literally because I just don’t see how he would really think that makes her some kind of monster. But I guess the problem is that others might not take it that way.
@Graham: I meant more the second, but I take your point about the Independents and the Confederacy–the conflation of anti-statism and anti-imperialism is certainly at play in Firefly. Maybe his subversion/re-purposing of misogynist horror tropes is a better example. You certainly highlight, though, the way that formal radicalism is not the same as political radicalism (a good reminder, to be sure!).
@Kailyn: “Superstar” is a blast! A minor character casts a spell that makes him the hero of Sunnydale instead of Buffy (and then he’s summarily punished for doing so). And I love the Emily Nussbaum stuff on fandom–she had a great essay on Lost a few years ago along the same lines: http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/66293/.
I have to say that sometimes a Comic Book Guy is just a Comic Book Guy; a gag on a comedy show that’s funny because it’s true. See also the Trio. We all knew those guys before we saw them sent up (well) on TV.
…Not that that precludes some veiled hostility, but supposed to be funny before anything else and succeeded…
Jonathan is an interesting case. In his fantasy world in Superstar note that his idealized self was kind to Buffy and others. I don’t know that the same fellow belonged in the Trio – but then he wasn’t a great fit, was he, being hands-down the least bad?
@ BU
But unlike the Comic Book Guy, the Trio (didn’t we used to call them the Troika?) eventually do bad things that we’re supposed to take seriously.
I liked how relatively restrained/professionally distant Whedon has been with fans. Whedon seemed to genuinely appreciate the humanity of the fans, but was also doing some “for the audience” marketing when the network support was lacking. The projects he’s taken on recently just don’t fit into that dynamic.
Which for me is a relief and wise given how content writers are so hungry that the mundane act of turning off twitter put Whedon on the BBC – a minimal non-event of non-presence.
I also like it now that so many figures fail at distance. My points of comparison being people like Aaron Sorkin (who embarrassed himself on Television Without Pity in the 90s and includes an angry reference to it in nearly every script he writes) or Amanda Palmer or all the writers, authors and stars who seem incapable of navigating the delusions of intimacy in social media, particularly twitter.
Whedon’s negative fan/nerd figures strike me as less about fandom than a certain type of chauvinism (one might argue Whedon works better as a writer on male flaws than feminism). The Trio now seems like a metaphorical precursor to current creepy sexist zealotry among nerd branded pop culture product. Some of their behavior could be retroactively interpreted as a metaphor for swatting.
@MrFengi: I don’t know if I’d call Whedon “professionally distant”–after all, he was an active participant in fan sites for Buffy, which is how the line got blurred in the first place and is, I’ve always assumed, why fans refer to him by his first name. I do think you’re onto something here, though, about the way that his engagement with fans isn’t nearly as informed by resentment as many authors (Aaron Sorkin is a great example). Even with the recent hubbub about Age of Ultron, Whedon seems admirably personally unaffected by negative fan opinions–except in the ways he engages with the concept of fandom in his work (the cult of personality around Jasmine and the creepiness of the clientele in Dollhouse both seem to be comments on a certain kind of fandom, at least in my reading). So, yes, the Trio does anticipate “creepy sexist zealotry” (great phrase!), but I’d say that creepiness is part of a stereotype of fandom that’s been around for a long time.
@Graham Clark
Sure. (I don’t recall Troika being used, but it’s been a few years.) But consider: Comic Book guy is a comedy character on purely a comedy show. Buffy was an adventure show with a lot of wit and humor, not a comedy with adventure. I see no contradiction of my point in the serious side of the Trio’s crimes. It’s very much of a piece with the overall style of the show – albeit that they were by far the funniest seasonal Big Bad of all (notwithstanding that the Big Bad turned out to actually be Willow run amuck).
And on the intervening comments: Gamergate. There’s no lack of creepy and inappropriate in nerd culture, and I don’t know that I’m convinced at all that criticizing, by analogy/example/lampoon, the bad elements of fan behavior is any expression of hostility instead of just being calling bad things bad.
P.S. I really hope I haven’t killed yet another comment thread – I’ve been noticing a trend…
Well, let’s see if we can keep it going a big longer.
@MrFengi
“one might argue Whedon works better as a writer on male flaws than feminism”
Does he, though? It doesn’t take somebody of Whedon’s talent to come up with grotesques like the Trio. But when we consider his greatest male character – well, I don’t think the oldest article in this roundtable is entirely just to Xander, but it isn’t entirely unjust either: https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2012/03/xander-harris-hyena-boy/
As for Whedon’s feminist credentials, I’d say any evaluation of that has to account for how it is that so many women feel such a deep connection to his work. I don’t think this roundtable has gotten very deeply into that yet, and I don’t yet understand it to my own satisfaction.
I thought the Trio was very well done. It’s actually pretty rare to have genuinely sympathetic “nice” characters do genuinely evil, awful things in a believable way (and not some “join the dark side” nonsense.) I think it was quite good on the dynamics of male group identity and violence, and how geek identity can fit into misogyny and violence.
Xander’s a mess, but the trio worked really well, I thought. fwiw.
Are they sympathetic, though? We remember Jonathan from previous seasons, but he might as well have been introduced as a new character in season 6 for all that matters to the plot and his subsequent development, and in season 6, they’re just the dumbass preliminary villains until the real villain shows up (or rather is created by them) at the end.
Sure Xander is a mess, that’s what makes him interesting.
I thought they were sympathetic at first, collectively, until two of them turned into murderers, which kind’ve impaired my sympathy. Jonathan is still ‘What a guy!’, (notwithstanding a bit of bank robbery) anyway. -And what Noah said.