Joss Whedon

I'm sure I'll get some batshit insane Whedon worshippers responding (or not, since this place is empty as hell), but Whedon can be terrible in his writing and treatment towards women. He gets this aura of "OUR FEMINIST SAVIOR" from some people, and it's just crap if you spare a few moments to parse out his work.

He's a lazy writer when it comes to women and falls back on rape or almost rape as a crutch in his writing waaay too often.

Buffy: Spike almost rapes her, but then does penance somehow, and all is forgiven.

Dollhouse: Come ON. Echo is basically a sex slave; her mind is erased so her body can be given to men. The show is marketed as "oh she can be a secret agent and kick-ass" but the issues of human trafficking aren't brought up until the second season. I kind of liked the concept of Dollhouse, but the execution sucked. And you can do a drinking game out of how many times Echo gets punched in the face or is bleeding in an episode.

Comics: his run on Runaways was *terrible*. I believe he had the one child bride character who ran away from her abusive husband.

Avengers: Black Widow is taunted by Loki with a slow rape by Hawkeye and then calls her a "mewling quim". So she gets called a cunt. Awesome.

Last, and this breaks my heart, is Firefly. I love Firefly, and was one of the people who so badly wanted it back. Then the reunion special happened and Tim Minear talks about how Joss excitedly pitched the show to him with stories like: "Inara gets gang raped by Reavers, and Mal finally treats her like a lady rather than a whore." I'm sorry, but what? How would that be a great story to tell in the universe of Firefly? Inara only gets to be a "lady" after being raped? I felt sick after watching that reunion, and I'm glad a second season was never made.

I like his stuff- early Buffy is great, Dollhouse had it's moments, and I still love Firefly. However, people need to reevaluate the how awesomely feminist he is.

Cabin in the Woods was great.

LeeLee wrote:

I'm sure I'll get some batshit insane Whedon worshippers responding (or not, since this place is empty as hell)

Oh, I'm sure we can have a calm, rational discussion about this.

LeeLee wrote:

Dollhouse: Come ON. Echo is basically a sex slave; her mind is erased so her body can be given to men. The show is marketed as "oh she can be a secret agent and kick-ass" but the issues of human trafficking aren't brought up until the second season. I kind of liked the concept of Dollhouse, but the execution sucked. And you can do a drinking game out of how many times Echo gets punched in the face or is bleeding in an episode.

Yeah, but so was pretty much everyone else in the show. And human trafficking is brought up the moment Ballard shows up on his little crusade in the first season.

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Avengers: Black Widow is taunted by Loki with a slow rape by Hawkeye and then calls her a "mewling quim". So she gets called a cunt. Awesome.

Loki is also a mass-murdering piece of shit. He not a good guy.

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Last, and this breaks my heart, is Firefly. I love Firefly, and was one of the people who so badly wanted it back. Then the reunion special happened and Tim Minear talks about how Joss excitedly pitched the show to him with stories like: "Inara gets gang raped by Reavers, and Mal finally treats her like a lady rather than a whore." I'm sorry, but what? How would that be a great story to tell in the universe of Firefly? Inara only gets to be a "lady" after being raped? I felt sick after watching that reunion, and I'm glad a second season was never made.

I haven't seen that reunion special, but I'd take talk like that with a grain of salt. Minear could've misremembered or misinterpreted what Whedon was talking about. And even if he did, a big part of writing is coming up with ideas. Some of them are going to be incredibly shitty, which is why writers need other writers to discuss things with, and editors, so they can hopefully drop the shitty ideas and keep the good ones. You shouldn't hold something against a show when it was never part of it.

Whedon is a lot of things, and I have enjoyed quite the number of things he wrote, but a feminist he ain't. The only reason his women are allowed to kick ass is because he masturbates to waif-fu.

It's just that his fellow writers, on average, have such a godawful track record that he looks better in comparison.

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Yeah, but so was pretty much everyone else in the show. And human trafficking is brought up the moment Ballard shows up on his little crusade in the first season.

Then Ballard proceeds to join up with Dollhouse and pimp her out. I know he wants to take them out from the inside, but Ballard just shows himself to be pretty ineffectual character. I liked Dollhouse, but it had execution issues. I will give props for Adele's emotional journey- she is a fucking amazing actress.

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Loki is also a mass-murdering piece of shit. He not a good guy.

My issue with this is that Joss goes back to the rape well with this, and it's lazy writing.

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I haven't seen that reunion special, but I'd take talk like that with a grain of salt. Minear could've misremembered or misinterpreted what Whedon was talking about. And even if he did, a big part of writing is coming up with ideas. Some of them are going to be incredibly shitty, which is why writers need other writers to discuss things with, and editors, so they can hopefully drop the shitty ideas and keep the good ones. You shouldn't hold something against a show when it was never part of it.

Oh, Minear has discussed this several times on different podcasts and this would have been a second season story. He's repeated it so often, I doubt he's misremembering.

Yeah, he does have a better track record in writing powerful women. However, sometimes it doesn't evolve more than "she's powerful because she can beat people up".

LeeLee wrote:

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Yeah, but so was pretty much everyone else in the show. And human trafficking is brought up the moment Ballard shows up on his little crusade in the first season.

Then Ballard proceeds to join up with Dollhouse and pimp her out. I know he wants to take them out from the inside, but Ballard just shows himself to be pretty ineffectual character. I liked Dollhouse, but it had execution issues. I will give props for Adele's emotional journey- she is a fucking amazing actress.

True, I didn't really care for the fact that he wound up joining up with them. And when they threw in his relationship with Echo, it kinda made his previous obsessive quest to save whoever she used to be really, really retroactively creepy.

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My issue with this is that Joss goes back to the rape well with this, and it's lazy writing.

Eh... I dunno. When establishing someone as an evil piece of shit, threats of torture and rape to death are a pretty effective way of establishing "the bad guy is BAD."

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Oh, Minear has discussed this several times on different podcasts and this would have been a second season story. He's repeated it so often, I doubt he's misremembering.

Ugh. Well, in that case, I'm just glad that never made it into the show.

The Avenger's thing wasn't movie-breaking for me, but the mewling quim thing really threw me out of the movie.

It's really the Firefly thing that makes me really sad; I love that show to pieces, but with a storyline like that waiting in the works, I really question their judgement. When Tim Minear states the storyline in the reunion special, the cast looks horrified.

I didn't even know what quim meant, so it didn't bother me.

I guess it's true that ignorance is bliss.

[quote="Penguin"]

LeeLee wrote:

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Avengers: Black Widow is taunted by Loki with a slow rape by Hawkeye and then calls her a "mewling quim". So she gets called a cunt. Awesome.

Loki is also a mass-murdering piece of shit. He not a good guy.

Yeah, but the difference between Iron Man 2 and Avengers is that Black Widow got to be a badass at the climax of the movie in IM2. In Avengers, her Moment of Greatness was showing vulnerability. Besides, Loki is supposed to have THE silver tongue, the words and the wit to tear someone down and utterly destroy them or sew chaos. It seemed really out of character for him to fall back on western gendered slurs.

As much as I still like Firefly, I have always had huge problems with Inara's character. Well, with the concept. I really love the idea of Companions being such an honored profession (though we're only really shown that once; the rest of the time, we're told that). However, if Companions are so valued and honored in society, then Mal should have never called her a whore. Despite Whedon's attempt at being sex-positive, there was still a lot of sex-shaming going on in that show, though not as much as AtS or BtVS. I was also really, really bothered by the fusion of East and West in Firefly, but the only people of Chinese descent I ever remember seeing were extras.

Then there's Alien 4...

Just kidding; I'm not touching that shitty movie.

Though his work is (usually) enjoyable, I don't get why everyone keeps giving him feminist cookies just because he's not as bad as everyone else. And I'm really uncomfortable that so many people seem to turn to a dude to tell "feminist" stories.

Soylent Green wrote:

I don't get why everyone keeps giving him feminist cookies just because he's not as bad as everyone else. And I'm really uncomfortable that so many people seem to turn to a dude to tell "feminist" stories.

Yeah, his work manages to be less chauvinist than the norm, but I am not sure people who call him a feminist actually know what that means.

Soylent Green wrote:

Then there's Alien 4...

Just kidding; I'm not touching that shitty movie.

I'd say he gets a pass on that one anyway - He was only the writer and it's pretty clear he didn't give a shit and basically submitted a modified dry-run for Firefly for it.




Also I like Alien 4...

[quote="Soylent Green"]

Penguin wrote:

LeeLee wrote:

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Avengers: Black Widow is taunted by Loki with a slow rape by Hawkeye and then calls her a "mewling quim". So she gets called a cunt. Awesome.

Loki is also a mass-murdering piece of shit. He not a good guy.

Yeah, but the difference between Iron Man 2 and Avengers is that Black Widow got to be a badass at the climax of the movie in IM2. In Avengers, her Moment of Greatness was showing vulnerability. Besides, Loki is supposed to have THE silver tongue, the words and the wit to tear someone down and utterly destroy them or sew chaos. It seemed really out of character for him to fall back on western gendered slurs.

As much as I still like Firefly, I have always had huge problems with Inara's character. Well, with the concept. I really love the idea of Companions being such an honored profession (though we're only really shown that once; the rest of the time, we're told that). However, if Companions are so valued and honored in society, then Mal should have never called her a whore. Despite Whedon's attempt at being sex-positive, there was still a lot of sex-shaming going on in that show, though not as much as AtS or BtVS. I was also really, really bothered by the fusion of East and West in Firefly, but the only people of Chinese descent I ever remember seeing were extras.

Though his work is (usually) enjoyable, I don't get why everyone keeps giving him feminist cookies just because he's not as bad as everyone else. And I'm really uncomfortable that so many people seem to turn to a dude to tell "feminist" stories.

YES! This is what I'm not so eloquently trying to say about Loki...he was much more subtle in Thor, rather than resorting to name-calling.

The rape story bothered me in Firefly moreso because Mal repeatedly called Inara a whore and Companions were supposed to be, as you said, a respected profession. It seemed that Joss didn't know what to do with this though after he set it up, because Inara gets treated like shit most of the time because she chooses to have sex on her own terms. In the planned rape episode, Mal was supposed to barge in while she was recovering "kneel before her and kiss her hand, finally treating her like a lady." Why is she now a lady because she didn't choose to have sex but was instead violated? UGH.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

Soylent Green wrote:

I don't get why everyone keeps giving him feminist cookies just because he's not as bad as everyone else. And I'm really uncomfortable that so many people seem to turn to a dude to tell "feminist" stories.

Yeah, his work manages to be less chauvinist than the norm, but I am not sure people who call him a feminist actually know what that means.

On tumblr???

Penguin wrote:

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My issue with this is that Joss goes back to the rape well with this, and it's lazy writing.

Eh... I dunno. When establishing someone as an evil piece of shit, threats of torture and rape to death are a pretty effective way of establishing "the bad guy is BAD."

Well, what you have to remember is that since television and comics started to tackle the issue of rape, it's gone from "this is a serious thing that affects women, let's incorporate it into the storyline as a way to raise awareness of it, all the while treating it with the gravity it deserves" to 1) the default "bad thing" to happen to women and 2) a lazy way to make a work more "gritty". Any portrayal of rape in media now is in the shadow of both of those depictions. I haven't seen the film so I'm talking out my ass here, but I'm gonna guess Loki didn't threaten to rape any of the men. There's also issues with how the actual rape or threat of rape is portrayed. Sometimes it's shot or drawn in such a way that it titillates the viewer (as is the murder of women, occasionally) which brings a whole clusterfuck of nasty implications with it.

Soylent Green wrote:

I don't get why everyone keeps giving him feminist cookies just because he's not as bad as everyone else. And I'm really uncomfortable that so many people seem to turn to a dude to tell "feminist" stories.

Because like everything else, the mainstream media have co-opted feminism and purged it of everything that makes white straight guys even slightly uncomfortable. That's why we have heroines with anatomically impossible figures fighting bad guys in six inch stillettos with long flyaway hair that nobody ever grabs, and they've all been raped and that's what's given them the awesome power to kick ass, and none of them need a man except all of them really want just the right kind of dick between their legs to settle down and be nice girls next door who give great head and love anal sex. And that's feminist because hey, the heroine knows martial arts and the bad guys call her a bitch after she knocks their teeth out.

No publishing company or television studio is going to have an actual feminist working for them, clomping around in her Doc Martens and getting her armpit hair caught in the photocopier. She'd just write stories about frumpy fat chicks on their periods, women who hate men, and lesbians. But not the hot lesbians that make out for guys in bars, the real bulldyke, hit with the ugly shovel lesbians with buzzcuts and boiler suits. People (read: men and boys) don't wanna read or watch anything like that! They don't want a heroine who fights bad guys in a hoodie and sweats and sensible shoes, who's decided a man would be a complication. Where's the titties? Where's the hot naked babes? You don't want a feminist, you want a dude who understands all this chick shit. So sure, the blonde kicks ass and takes names, but she's got perky boobs and is nice and insecure without a man, so there's something for everyone, right?

LeeLee wrote:

Yeah, but the difference between Iron Man 2 and Avengers is that Black Widow got to be a badass at the climax of the movie in IM2.

She hit people in IM2. She won verbal bouts and hit people in Avengers. *shrug*

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In Avengers, her Moment of Greatness was showing vulnerability. Besides, Loki is supposed to have THE silver tongue, the words and the wit to tear someone down and utterly destroy them or sew chaos. It seemed really out of character for him to fall back on western gendered slurs.

More like UK-specific gendered slurs. Seriously, the only reason I knew WTF "quim" was was simply because I hang out at this board and knew it was one of ZoZo's favorite nicknames for vag. On one hand, though, it's not because he name-calls. He does that quite a bit. It's because he does this out of the fucking blue. It doesn't make sense for him to do that, the more I think about it and talk with friends. Even if he knows about the gender perceptions of the society she comes from, he's cut her down far more easily with insults like "You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers" than saying "HAR HAR HAR YOU ARE A GIRL HAR HAR" because she has never, in either movie, displayed any insecurity about this.

So on one hand... nah, he ain't above name-callin'. On the other.... he's better at it than what we got in the end of that scene.

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As much as I still like Firefly, I have always had huge problems with Inara's character. Well, with the concept. I really love the idea of Companions being such an honored profession (though we're only really shown that once; the rest of the time, we're told that). However, if Companions are so valued and honored in society, then Mal should have never called her a whore. Despite Whedon's attempt at being sex-positive, there was still a lot of sex-shaming going on in that show, though not as much as AtS or BtVS. I was also really, really bothered by the fusion of East and West in Firefly, but the only people of Chinese descent I ever remember seeing were extras.

I think part of the problem with this is that Mal was a born-and-bred colonist, which was supposed to be part of his Browncoat background: rustic, lawless and backwards, yet all about liberty. He believed in personal liberty and all that good-soundin' shit, but because of the way he was raised... well, maybe it's reading too far between the lines but I get why someone who'd been a faithful Christian, with generally socially liberal ideals, and then grew bitter and cynical would still have a problem with professions that didn't jibe with his or her religion that they'd abandoned, even bitterly. We've been told by the same shitty media that the same people who reject their faith over major questions should also automatically reject everything that came with it, but that shit is hard. There's always that nagging voice, that desire to keep a grip on previous morals to show you're not one of the sinners even though you've completely rejected that shit, that makes you tend to want to find something to judge. In other words, Mal might be completely disgusted with God, the concepts of faith that led him to believe in victory and whatnot, but he still believes prostitution is wrong, and hates that Inara is involved in it, no matter how respected she might be.

If you wonder where so many "anti-theists" come from, the atheists who tend to get dismissed as "trying to be edgy" come from... that's where it is. If you don't get it, you've had the luxury of changing your mind without literally every figure of authority in your life telling you you're a piece of shit.

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Though his work is (usually) enjoyable, I don't get why everyone keeps giving him feminist cookies just because he's not as bad as everyone else. And I'm really uncomfortable that so many people seem to turn to a dude to tell "feminist" stories.

At this point I think it's worth pointing out that any political position is subjective. He might've been a chauvinistic douche by our standards, but he could've been a radfem in Hollywood circa 1997.

Cyberwulf wrote:

Well, what you have to remember is that since television and comics started to tackle the issue of rape, it's gone from "this is a serious thing that affects women, let's incorporate it into the storyline as a way to raise awareness of it, all the while treating it with the gravity it deserves" to 1) the default "bad thing" to happen to women and 2) a lazy way to make a work more "gritty". Any portrayal of rape in media now is in the shadow of both of those depictions. I haven't seen the film so I'm talking out my ass here, but I'm gonna guess Loki didn't threaten to rape any of the men. There's also issues with how the actual rape or threat of rape is portrayed. Sometimes it's shot or drawn in such a way that it titillates the viewer (as is the murder of women, occasionally) which brings a whole clusterfuck of nasty implications with it.

It's true, he didn't threaten to rape any of the men. But here's the dialog from that scene, where Loki is locked in a cell and Black Widow interrogates him from the other side of the glass, c/p'd from IMDB:

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Loki: Your world in the balance and you bargain for one man?
Natasha Romanoff: Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that, I'm Russian... or was.
Loki: And what are you now?
Natasha Romanoff: It's really not that complicated. I've got red in my ledger, I'd like to wipe it out.
Loki: Can you? Can you wipe out that much red? Drakov's daughter, Sao Paulo, the hospital fire? Barton told me everything. Your ledger is dripping, it's gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer... PATHETIC!
[cut to Stark and Banner attempting to hack S.H.I.E.L.D.'s computers]
Loki: You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers.
[Cut to Hill and Fury discovering the Security breach]
Loki: You pretend to be separate, to have your own code,
[Cut to Rogers discovering the weapons and looking shocked]
Loki: something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away!...
[Slams glass with his fist]
Loki: I won't touch Barton. Not until I make him kill you! Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear! And then he'll wake just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams, I'll split his skull! This is my bargain, you mewling quim!
Natasha Romanoff: [fearfully] You're a monster!
Loki: [laughing] Oh no, you brought the monster.
Natasha Romanoff: [back in normal state] So, Banner... that's your play.
Loki: What?
Natasha Romanoff: [on intercom] Loki means to unleash the Hulk. Keep Banner in the lab, I'm on my way. Send Thor as well.
[walks out]
Natasha Romanoff: [to Loki] Thank you for your cooperation.

He doesn't actually state rape but it can be easily argued that it's implied, and I'm willing to concede that much. But what I basically got from that scene was that Loki was on a MY PLAN IS AWESOME supervillain power trip, ended it with a shitbird insult, and got pwnt in the face by having Black Widow figure his plans out just from his gloating.

Cyberwulf wrote:

Because like everything else, the mainstream media have co-opted feminism and purged it of everything that makes white straight guys even slightly uncomfortable. That's why we have heroines with anatomically impossible figures fighting bad guys in six inch stillettos with long flyaway hair that nobody ever grabs, and they've all been raped and that's what's given them the awesome power to kick ass, and none of them need a man except all of them really want just the right kind of dick between their legs to settle down and be nice girls next door who give great head and love anal sex. And that's feminist because hey, the heroine knows martial arts and the bad guys call her a bitch after she knocks their teeth out.

No publishing company or television studio is going to have an actual feminist working for them, clomping around in her Doc Martens and getting her armpit hair caught in the photocopier. She'd just write stories about frumpy fat chicks on their periods, women who hate men, and lesbians. But not the hot lesbians that make out for guys in bars, the real bulldyke, hit with the ugly shovel lesbians with buzzcuts and boiler suits. People (read: men and boys) don't wanna read or watch anything like that! They don't want a heroine who fights bad guys in a hoodie and sweats and sensible shoes, who's decided a man would be a complication. Where's the titties? Where's the hot naked babes? You don't want a feminist, you want a dude who understands all this chick shit. So sure, the blonde kicks ass and takes names, but she's got perky boobs and is nice and insecure without a man, so there's something for everyone, right?

The funny thing is, this is probably exactly why Whedon is considered a feminist. I mean, what was his big start? Buffy? The 1990s? As godawful as things turned out, I'm sure he probably had to fight a lot to make a female protagonist who consistently kicks ass. Granted, I've never seen more than a single episode of that show. But, a big part of show business is getting producers to OK it, after all. Which basically means you have to convince some asshole that your idea is "marketable." So it may be that "getting raped" for a female character is every bit as much justification for going on a revenge binge as "all I ever cared about died" is for male ones.

I mean, he probably had to fight pretty hard just to get what we wound up with. Writers needing to be talked out of things works both ways.

(Also fighting crime in a hoodie would be as dumb as fighting it in a cape srsly what are you thinking)

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I was also really, really bothered by the fusion of East and West in Firefly, but the only people of Chinese descent I ever remember seeing were extras.

This is a big problem with sci-fi in general. Most authors who have some egalitarian sensibilities like to pretend their future world is "egalitarian" without thinking what that really entails. It's the simple fact that, without the stranglehold Western Euro-US culture (aka "default" culture) has on the landscape, things would look and feel very different.

Instead, we get some different color people (sometimes just different NAME people) thrown in a world that looks exactly like the Western-centric world of today. The implicit assumption is that the other people were finally subsumed and absorbed, abandoning their own identity. Equality through domination, the typical white Western view of "I'll treat you more or less like an equal as long as you talk like me, dress like me and pretend to be just like me (but keep your 'exotic' women and delicious food for my enjoyment, okay?)"

That is a good point. When I first saw the show, I figured that once you got into much more firmly Alliance planets you'd see a lot more Chinese people, since the Alliance was supposed to be the big amalgamation of the US and China from Earth. But if anything those planets were the whitest. With the exception of the Operative in Serenity, all their troops were white, too. White people gonna oppress, I guess.

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

This is a big problem with sci-fi in general. Most authors who have some egalitarian sensibilities like to pretend their future world is "egalitarian" without thinking what that really entails. It's the simple fact that, without the stranglehold Western Euro-US culture (aka "default" culture) has on the landscape, things would look and feel very different.

Even then, "egalitarian" usually means "90% American with a few trademark non-American characters thrown in for good measure". Take Star Trek TOS, for example...we have a Russian, an Oriental, a Scotsman and a black woman (with an American accent). Everyone else is American. DS9: a black American Station Commander, an Anglo-Indian Doctor, and a load of alien crew/staff, most of which are American. Voyager: an American Native, a few aliens (with Anglo-American accents), and - you guessed it - an all-American crew. Even the designation for the ship is "USS", and the Enterprise was even an American ship.

Just accept it: in the future we will all be American! (that would be funny if it wasn't so true... )

On a side note, does Joss Whedon himself actually claim to be a pro-feminist writer? I think you can have a strong and capable female lead without her being a feminist.

Cunovendus wrote:

Just accept it: in the future we will all be American! (that would be funny if it wasn't so true... )

Except it probably isn't true, it's just Western vanity? The Roman civilization fell, the British empire crumbled, and the American way will fall into disuse. Signs point to a revival of the Chinese fiefdom, though.

Cunovendus wrote:

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

This is a big problem with sci-fi in general. Most authors who have some egalitarian sensibilities like to pretend their future world is "egalitarian" without thinking what that really entails. It's the simple fact that, without the stranglehold Western Euro-US culture (aka "default" culture) has on the landscape, things would look and feel very different.

Even then, "egalitarian" usually means "90% American with a few trademark non-American characters thrown in for good measure". Take Star Trek TOS, for example...we have a Russian, an Oriental, a Scotsman and a black woman (with an American accent). Everyone else is American. DS9: a black American Station Commander, an Anglo-Indian Doctor, and a load of alien crew/staff, most of which are American. Voyager: an American Native, a few aliens (with Anglo-American accents), and - you guessed it - an all-American crew. Even the designation for the ship is "USS", and the Enterprise was even an American ship.

Just accept it: in the future we will all be American! (that would be funny if it wasn't so true... )

On a side note, does Joss Whedon himself actually claim to be a pro-feminist writer? I think you can have a strong and capable female lead without her being a feminist.

Well, it depends on what country's sci-fi you are watching. In Dr. Who, we are all going to be from GB in the future it appears.

Yes, Joss does claim to be a pro-feminist writer. He likes to quote in speeches an exchange where a reporter asked him "Joss, why do you write such strong female characters?" and he answers "Because you keep asking me that question." Except if you look up that quote, it never actually happened, he just imagined it and used it in a speech he gave at Comic-con or something. He talks about how his mother was a feminist and he was raised to be one as well.

It's not that he writes his characters to be feminists: they aren't crusaders for women's rights or anything- he just says that they are feminist-friendly because they can beat men up.

Penguin wrote:

LeeLee wrote:

Yeah, but the difference between Iron Man 2 and Avengers is that Black Widow got to be a badass at the climax of the movie in IM2.

She hit people in IM2. She won verbal bouts and hit people in Avengers. *shrug*

Haven't seen IM2, but I got to admit, I thought her sort of outsmarting Loki was pretty cool. It's a good example of how being vulnerable isn't necessarily the same as being weak, if that makes sense.

Cunovendus wrote:

I think you can have a strong and capable female lead without her being a feminist.

Yeah, as LeeLee says, it's not whether a character is "a feminist". The question is whether the overall work is feminist (or has feminist themes or is at the very least woman-oriented). Does it pass the Bechdel Test? Are the female characters characters in their own right, or are they just there to be love interests/damsels/fuel rivalry between the male characters? Are they just stereotypes/worn out tropes?

Of course none of this is hard and fast, either. Ghost in the Shell fails the Bechdel Test by and large, but I still love the Major as a character. I love that her existential crisis has to do with the fact that she's almost a full cyborg (and not to do with being raped). I love that Batou gruffly and quietly carries a torch for her, even though she's not interested (and in the series she hints that she's not interested in men at all) and at no point do they ever get together for the sake of getting together/having a sex scene. She's the second in command of the section, which is otherwise all male, and she doesn't have to be "bitchy" to get the men to fall in line because none of them have any problem with a female commander. I don't like that she gets naked in the movie, but I do like that Batou puts his jacket on her shoulders - it's a gesture of respect because her body is not for him to look at.

LeeLee wrote:

Yes, Joss does claim to be a pro-feminist writer. He likes to quote in speeches an exchange where a reporter asked him "Joss, why do you write such strong female characters?" and he answers "Because you keep asking me that question." Except if you look up that quote, it never actually happened, he just imagined it and used it in a speech he gave at Comic-con or something. He talks about how his mother was a feminist and he was raised to be one as well.

It's not that he writes his characters to be feminists: they aren't crusaders for women's rights or anything- he just says that they are feminist-friendly because they can beat men up.

Exactly. And do you think anyone can give Joss Whedon any criticism on what he does with his "strong female characters" (like having them not only forgive the guy who almost raped them, but also having them throw over absolutely everyone who supported them, comforted them and loved them for their would-be rapist) now? Fuck no. He's a Feminist, you see, and therefore every lovingly shot scene of his heroine broken and crying is Right and Correct and Most Feminist.

LeeLee wrote:

Well, it depends on what country's sci-fi you are watching. In Dr. Who, we are all going to be from GB in the future it appears.

True. And if it was shot in Somalia, I think it's safe to say that according to them, the whole world will be African and Muslim.

Interestingly, the Warhammer 40k future bears more resemblance to the Holy Roman Empire/pre-20th century Germany than anything else, even though Games Workshop aren't from Germany - at least I don't think they are. Although that could be because empires = evil (and kingdoms are generally good, even though they both feature a single figurehead holding absolute power - and at least empires have a senate!)

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Except it probably isn't true, it's just Western vanity? The Roman civilization fell, the British empire crumbled, and the American way will fall into disuse. Signs point to a revival of the Chinese fiefdom, though.

Also true, actually. However, I was more referring to the Americanisation of the whole world. You'll be hard pressed to find many countries in which there isn't a single McDonalds anywhere. They don't need to physically conquer the world, just spread their culture far and wide, and market it until it becomes the default.

Ultimately though, I don't think egalitarianism is possible while we have religion, or old hatreds, because certain people will always hate each other. India and Pakistan will always hate each other (because India are mainly Sikh and Hindu, which, in the eyes of the Muslim Pakistanis, is evil), the various African countries hate each other (ever wondered why such a big continent, with so many exportable resources such as gold and diamond, can be so full of starving people? Simple: war and corruption), and the Scottish and Irish will always hate the English (because we're the evil Anglo-Saxon invaders who took their country, and King Edward I was an evil Pagan, according to Mel Gibson ), etc etc. So...yeah, while people still have old hatreds to cling to, a unified Earth cannot happen. tbh, I'm not even sure I'd want it to - if history has taught us anything, it's that centralised power = bad, m'kay?

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He's a Feminist, you see, and therefore every lovingly shot scene of his heroine broken and crying is Right and Correct and Most Feminist.

I dunno...I think everyone's allowed to break down and cry sometimes. Unless it happens all the time. Bear in mind that Buffy is still a teenager for most of the series. I think he does it in an attempt to add depth to the character (whether it works or not is another matter). Forgiving someone for rape/sexual assault, however, is a bit unbelievable. I don't think she'd do that.

Besides, having recently watched the series again, I've noticed that Buffy has almost no weaknesses whatsoever. The only one I've actually seen is her utter inability to form a relationship of any kind, which a) is usually down to the other person and not her (because Buffy is almost never wrong - something else I've noticed!), and b) isn't even a weakness if you look at it from a different point of view - the only reason it can really be a weakness at all is because she feels that she needs one.

Cunovendus wrote:

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Except it probably isn't true, it's just Western vanity? The Roman civilization fell, the British empire crumbled, and the American way will fall into disuse. Signs point to a revival of the Chinese fiefdom, though.

Also true, actually. However, I was more referring to the Americanisation of the whole world. You'll be hard pressed to find many countries in which there isn't a single McDonalds anywhere. They don't need to physically conquer the world, just spread their culture far and wide, and market it until it becomes the default.

But it never really becomes the default, does it? The concept of McDonald's is copied, but the Japanase MakoDonaldo or the French McDo are not a carbon copy of the original Mickey D's in Des Plaines, Illinois. They sell rice in Chinese McFranchises, not fries; no European McDonald's has the exact same menu, all of them incorporating regional tastes and dishes; the Indian BigMac has patties that aren't made of cow beef. Sure, it's an American concept, but in whatever country McDonald's manages to root itself, the concept is changed to fit the cultural ground.

It makes sense that American products get shipped far and wide, because the American economy is (was?) the leading one. In time, however, the American hegemony will fade away again. Maybe not in a 100 years, but in 500? Definitely.

Yeah. For a while, it was French fashion, language, music that dominated things (in Europe, anyway) and people cried about losing your own language and culture to France. Now it's English, and America. In a hundred years, it will be something else. Oh boo.