Post by trashcanman on Aug 22, 2017 20:56:05 GMT 2
I'm sure DC is regretting hitching their wagon to this guy about now.
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/joss-whedons-ex-wife-warns-hes-a-hypocrite-preaching-feminist-ideals-in-revealing-essay_us_599ad248e4b01f6e801fa06c
Normally I steer as clear of this kind of celebrity gossip as I can, not really giving a fuck about any of it, but there are exceptions to every rule and Joss Whedon is one of those for me. He created perhaps the best live action television show of its time if not all time, the most beloved and enduring cancelled sci-fi show ever, the greatest superhero team up movie we'd never thought we'd see, and has written some the finest comics ever published, all against every possible odd. He's been a true geek and helped form the modern, accepted iteration of the culture that has formed the center of my life and was an early adopter of the concept that maybe not every main character in every story has to be a macho straight white male whose first answer to everything is violence. In a lot of ways, this man was the prototype for everything I love about modern entertainment. It just turns out he's a bit of a pretentious scumbag who publicly made a big show of respecting women while secretly disrespecting the one woman he owes the most respect to. What to do with this?
So yeah, he's had a pretty shitty time of it lately. First, his Buffy comic started sucking, then his Avengers sequel was meh and he had to shut down his Twitter after morons flooded his account with death threats over shipping Black Widow with not Hawkeye and a poorly written sequence that they misunderstood as her calling herself a monster because she can't have children. And now with this, he's scrubbed his fansite from the web and went into hiding with only a blurb from his reps saying that “Joss is not commenting, out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife.” Fair enough. It's probably wise to do that considering that the same people calling him a hypocrite for being a male feminist who scorned his wife are some of the nastiest cyberbullies around who see no irony in posting about how terrible bullying is on Facebook right before joining a mob that drives a teenager to suicide on Tumblr because they don't like her Steven Universe fanart (true story). Nobody needs or even deserves that from internet strangers.
But this whole thing illustrates the "white knight" stereotype a little too perfectly. People have long accused male feminists of putting on righteous airs to get pussy, and now here we are with their publicly visible ringleader for decades using his position as a bigshot to have affairs with young actresses. I don't even care that it's wrong so much as it's SO FUCKING CLICHE coming from a man who has made a career out of breaking so many of those. And that letter he wrote to his wife about being in a Greek myth and all of these women being needy and aggressive and the patriarchy made him do it? Fuuuuuuuck. That shit is pretentious, sexist, and pathetic to boot.
Not sure what to make of all this. On one hand, I have issues with his wife publicizing something so personal with the sole intent being to destroy a man's reputation and career, but on the other hand I can obviously relate to wanting to get these feelings out there [see a couple threads down from here] because as I've found out, there is no worse feeling than somebody you've loved for twenty years and given up your life for gaslighting you and giving their body and mind to somebody else while lying to you. So I have to sympathize. But on the other, other hand, we're talking about a heterosexual man surrounded daily by the likes of Charisma Carpenter, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amy Acker, Alyson Hannigan, Morena Baccarin, Felicia Day, and countless other incredibly charming, gorgeous, and talented women. I don't care how feminist you are, that shit is beyond tempting and whether we like to admit it or not, hormones and lizard brain instincts can override our rational thought processes at any time.
I think the real crime is that he wasn't upfront about his feeling with his wife, who was clearly a big inspiration throughout his career considering his work kind of turned into shit after she left him. Mistakes can be made, but over a decade and a half of cheating is just being a shitty person. Sorry. I can always separate the art from the artist, but I still can't help feeling really disappointed by this. Whedon is responsible for most of my favorite things of the last two decades and has been nothing less than a hero to me, and I don't have many of those. It's a real shame to see him destroy himself creatively, personally, and politically the way he has. And if all that wasn't bad enough, he took over the shitty-looking Justice League movie after it was already written, shot, and trailerized so he'll eat that backlash too when it comes out. Good luck with Batgirl. I'll be shocked if it even gets made at this point.
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/joss-whedons-ex-wife-warns-hes-a-hypocrite-preaching-feminist-ideals-in-revealing-essay_us_599ad248e4b01f6e801fa06c
Normally I steer as clear of this kind of celebrity gossip as I can, not really giving a fuck about any of it, but there are exceptions to every rule and Joss Whedon is one of those for me. He created perhaps the best live action television show of its time if not all time, the most beloved and enduring cancelled sci-fi show ever, the greatest superhero team up movie we'd never thought we'd see, and has written some the finest comics ever published, all against every possible odd. He's been a true geek and helped form the modern, accepted iteration of the culture that has formed the center of my life and was an early adopter of the concept that maybe not every main character in every story has to be a macho straight white male whose first answer to everything is violence. In a lot of ways, this man was the prototype for everything I love about modern entertainment. It just turns out he's a bit of a pretentious scumbag who publicly made a big show of respecting women while secretly disrespecting the one woman he owes the most respect to. What to do with this?
So yeah, he's had a pretty shitty time of it lately. First, his Buffy comic started sucking, then his Avengers sequel was meh and he had to shut down his Twitter after morons flooded his account with death threats over shipping Black Widow with not Hawkeye and a poorly written sequence that they misunderstood as her calling herself a monster because she can't have children. And now with this, he's scrubbed his fansite from the web and went into hiding with only a blurb from his reps saying that “Joss is not commenting, out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife.” Fair enough. It's probably wise to do that considering that the same people calling him a hypocrite for being a male feminist who scorned his wife are some of the nastiest cyberbullies around who see no irony in posting about how terrible bullying is on Facebook right before joining a mob that drives a teenager to suicide on Tumblr because they don't like her Steven Universe fanart (true story). Nobody needs or even deserves that from internet strangers.
But this whole thing illustrates the "white knight" stereotype a little too perfectly. People have long accused male feminists of putting on righteous airs to get pussy, and now here we are with their publicly visible ringleader for decades using his position as a bigshot to have affairs with young actresses. I don't even care that it's wrong so much as it's SO FUCKING CLICHE coming from a man who has made a career out of breaking so many of those. And that letter he wrote to his wife about being in a Greek myth and all of these women being needy and aggressive and the patriarchy made him do it? Fuuuuuuuck. That shit is pretentious, sexist, and pathetic to boot.
Not sure what to make of all this. On one hand, I have issues with his wife publicizing something so personal with the sole intent being to destroy a man's reputation and career, but on the other hand I can obviously relate to wanting to get these feelings out there [see a couple threads down from here] because as I've found out, there is no worse feeling than somebody you've loved for twenty years and given up your life for gaslighting you and giving their body and mind to somebody else while lying to you. So I have to sympathize. But on the other, other hand, we're talking about a heterosexual man surrounded daily by the likes of Charisma Carpenter, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amy Acker, Alyson Hannigan, Morena Baccarin, Felicia Day, and countless other incredibly charming, gorgeous, and talented women. I don't care how feminist you are, that shit is beyond tempting and whether we like to admit it or not, hormones and lizard brain instincts can override our rational thought processes at any time.
I think the real crime is that he wasn't upfront about his feeling with his wife, who was clearly a big inspiration throughout his career considering his work kind of turned into shit after she left him. Mistakes can be made, but over a decade and a half of cheating is just being a shitty person. Sorry. I can always separate the art from the artist, but I still can't help feeling really disappointed by this. Whedon is responsible for most of my favorite things of the last two decades and has been nothing less than a hero to me, and I don't have many of those. It's a real shame to see him destroy himself creatively, personally, and politically the way he has. And if all that wasn't bad enough, he took over the shitty-looking Justice League movie after it was already written, shot, and trailerized so he'll eat that backlash too when it comes out. Good luck with Batgirl. I'll be shocked if it even gets made at this point.
