Believe you me, I adore Joss' stuff and think he is wonderful, and I'm really excited about Wonder Woman. He scripted X-men and X2 as well, IIRC, and they have some good girl moments. And I really respect his conscious devotion to the cause of feminism.
BUT. I think he has subconscious issues that he really has difficulty getting away from. Primarily, in Buffy/Angel and even Firefly, women almost without exception are punished for having sex; either that, or if they're sexually free in any way, they're demons. Buffy sleeps with Angel; he loses his soul. Buffy sleeps with Riley; okay, not too much obvious punishment there, but then you look at that episode, I can't remember the title, but the one in the old orphanage? Buffy sleeps with Spike... ahahaahaha. Faith, a sexually strong woman, is constantly being abused by other characters for it and Faith the character does suffer from her unwillingness to abide by social strictures; it's what gets her into trouble. When Faith is at her most gorgeous and sexy (I just rewatched a bunch of Faith episodes and drooled like a fanboy. Can you tell? My love for her is so shallow...) she's usually being evil, like in Bad Girls. Or in Angel when she's in the club, dancing like crazy and causing a fight. Cordelia has not one but TWO, count 'em, TWO demon pregnancies and never gets to sleep with Angel. I just re-watched "Expecting" and at the end Cordelia's talking about what she learned from the experience, and she has a line, "Sex is bad", and Angel says "Nah, we all knew that already." And they're meant to be joking but in a deeper sense they're really, really not: Buffy and Angel have subtextually huge, huge issues with sex and female sexuality that you can't get away from. "Dirty Girls", which is the episode where Caleb shows up in S7 Buffy? So Caleb's supposed to be all evil and everything, right? Except... in many ways, Caleb gives voice to all the subconscious messages of the show. It's creepy and it's frightening and it's there.
But at the same time, I love Buffy and it really does have its strengths and I rewatch it frequently and all that jazz. It's just, you know, every time someone says Joss is a feminist I think about that, because he is, but he also has major subconscious problems with female sexuality and a virgin/whore complex. In a major way.
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Re: Joss Whedon and Bechdel's law
Date: 2006-06-18 07:07 pm (UTC)BUT. I think he has subconscious issues that he really has difficulty getting away from. Primarily, in Buffy/Angel and even Firefly, women almost without exception are punished for having sex; either that, or if they're sexually free in any way, they're demons. Buffy sleeps with Angel; he loses his soul. Buffy sleeps with Riley; okay, not too much obvious punishment there, but then you look at that episode, I can't remember the title, but the one in the old orphanage? Buffy sleeps with Spike... ahahaahaha. Faith, a sexually strong woman, is constantly being abused by other characters for it and Faith the character does suffer from her unwillingness to abide by social strictures; it's what gets her into trouble. When Faith is at her most gorgeous and sexy (I just rewatched a bunch of Faith episodes and drooled like a fanboy. Can you tell? My love for her is so shallow...) she's usually being evil, like in Bad Girls. Or in Angel when she's in the club, dancing like crazy and causing a fight. Cordelia has not one but TWO, count 'em, TWO demon pregnancies and never gets to sleep with Angel. I just re-watched "Expecting" and at the end Cordelia's talking about what she learned from the experience, and she has a line, "Sex is bad", and Angel says "Nah, we all knew that already." And they're meant to be joking but in a deeper sense they're really, really not: Buffy and Angel have subtextually huge, huge issues with sex and female sexuality that you can't get away from. "Dirty Girls", which is the episode where Caleb shows up in S7 Buffy? So Caleb's supposed to be all evil and everything, right? Except... in many ways, Caleb gives voice to all the subconscious messages of the show. It's creepy and it's frightening and it's there.
But at the same time, I love Buffy and it really does have its strengths and I rewatch it frequently and all that jazz. It's just, you know, every time someone says Joss is a feminist I think about that, because he is, but he also has major subconscious problems with female sexuality and a virgin/whore complex. In a major way.