Last month, actress Charisma Carpenter publicly confirmed a longstanding open secret in Hollywood: Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator and Avengers writer/director Joss Whedon is an irredeemable asshole.
For years, fans of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which aired on the WB and UPN from 1997 to 2003, have had to reconcile their adoration for a show about a teenage girl who slays monsters with the criticism that often swirled around her creator.
Mr. Whedon’s early reputation as a feminist storyteller was tarnished after his ex-wife, the producer Kai Cole, accused him of cheating on her and lying about it. The actress Charisma Carpenter, a star of the “Buffy” spinoff “Angel,” hinted at a fan convention in 2009 that Mr. Whedon was not happy when she became pregnant.
In July, Ray Fisher, an actor who starred in Mr. Whedon’s 2017 film “Justice League,” accused him of “gross” and “abusive” treatment of the cast and crew. . . .
On Wednesday, Ms. Carpenter released a statement in support of Mr. Fisher, in which she said Mr. Whedon harassed her while she was pregnant and fired her after she gave birth in 2003. . . .
Over the past week, many of the actors who starred on “Buffy,” including Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Buffy Summers, have expressed solidarity with Ms. Carpenter and distanced themselves from Mr. Whedon. The actress Michelle Trachtenberg, who played Buffy’s younger sister, Dawn, alleged on Instagram on Thursday that Mr. Whedon was not allowed to be alone with her.
“I would like to validate what the women of ‘Buffy’ are saying and support them in telling their story,” Marti Noxon, one of the show’s producers and longtime writers, said on Twitter. Jose Molina, a writer who worked on Mr. Whedon’s show “Firefly,” called him “casually cruel.”
Maria Cramer, “For ‘Buffy’ Fans, Another Reckoning With the Show’s Creator,” New York Times, February 15, 2021
If the copious fan-issued blog posts and video essays on this damning series of insider testimonials is an accurate barometer, Millennials have been particularly crestfallen over Whedon’s fall from grace. It’s only over the last few years, really, I’ve come to truly appreciate just how proprietary they feel about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That surprises me still, because I tend to think of Buffy as a Gen X artifact; after all, the modestly successful if long-derided (by even screenwriter Whedon himself) feature film was released five years before its TV sequel. (If you don’t remember—and I’ll bet you don’t—the movie’s shockingly impressive cast includes no less than pre-stardom Xers Hilary Swank and Ben Affleck.) I recall seeing this one-sheet on a subway platform during the summer between sophomore and junior years of high school—
—and thinking somebody had finally made a spiritual sequel to my formative influence: Joel Schumacher’s Gen X cult classic The Lost Boys. (Turned out, however, I was gonna have to do that myself.) I was sold! I marvel still at how the advertisement’s economical imagery conveys the movie’s entire premise and tone. So, yes—I was the one who went to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer in theaters. Guilty as charged.
But it was the TV series, I’ll concede, that took Buffy from creative misfire to cultural phenomenon, so it stands to reason it made such an indelible impression on Millennials. I submit that more than any content creator of his cohort—more so than even celebrated pop-referential screenwriters Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino or Kevin Williamson—Whedon is preeminently responsible for the mainstreaming of geek culture at the dawn of the Digital Age.
Buffy not only coincided with the coming out of geeks from the dusty recesses of specialty shops, it helped facilitate that very cultural shift: As John Hughes had done for Gen X a decade earlier, Whedon spoke directly to the socially and emotionally precarious experience of adolescent misfits, and his comic-book-informed sensibilities (before such influences were cool) endowed the Buffy series with a rich, sprawling mythology—and star-crossed romance (beautiful though it is, Christophe Beck’s Buffy/Angel love theme, “Close Your Eyes,” could hardly be described as optimistic)—over which fans could scrupulously obsess.
What’s more, all three cult serials Whedon sired were alienated underdogs in their own right: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a reboot of a campy B-movie on a fledgling, tween-centric “netlet” that no one took seriously; Angel, a second-class spinoff that was perennially on the brink of cancelation (and ultimately ended on an unresolved cliffhanger); and Firefly, his ambitious Star Wars–esque space opera that lasted exactly three months—or less than the average lifespan of an actual firefly. That these shows struggled for mainstream respect/popular acceptance only burnished Whedon’s credentials as the bard of geek-outsider angst…
… making him, arguably, the first “rockstar” showrunner. Before Buffy, we seldom knew or cared who the guiding creative hand behind our favorite TV show was; now showrunners are the new auteurs. Quick: Can you name the creator of Grey’s Anatomy? Downton Abbey? Breaking Bad? Of course you can. When a series wows us straight out of the gate, we often prematurely deify the showrunner, as we did with True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto and Game of Thrones’ Benioff and Weiss. And when a show “jumps the shark,” we don’t merely chalk it up to the inevitability of creative fatigue as we did in the happy days—the old It was fun while it lasted shrug-off—but rather we lay blame, directly and sometimes even vitriolically, at the feet of the series showrunner. (At some dinner tables, Lost creator Damon Lindelof’s name is still as verboten as Trump’s).
HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME
As the fantasy cinema of Spielberg and Lucas had done for Gen X, Joss Whedon’s influence on pop culture—and the impressionable minds consuming it at the turn of the millennium—is quantum. And the dispiriting news about one of the founding fathers of contemporary geek culture arrives at a disquieting moment of introspection for the target demographic. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the latest pop-cultural sacred cow from the ’90s to be unhappily if necessarily subjected to retroactive scrutiny, as Millennials come to better appreciate, with no small measure of conflicted emotion, that perhaps the girl-power ethos that helped shaped their moral identity wasn’t the apotheosis of progressive feminism they’d assumed, merely an imperfect, evolving ideology, even at its purest.
First, the Harry Potter legacy was tainted by transphobic comments defended by author Jo Rowling. Then the recent announcement of a Sex and the City revival—to say nothing of its de facto remake, Emily in Paris, also created by Darren Star—compelled a sober reappraisal of what sure seemed like an aspirational wish-fulfilment fairy tale at the time, but now sorta smacks of white entitlement and conspicuous materialism. (As Millennial culture reporter Ej Dickson noted, “while critically acclaimed and hailed as subversive at the time of its release, Sex and the City itself has aged rather poorly, presenting a fantasia of New York City in which everyone is white, thin, heterosexual, and prone to wearing oddly positioned belts.”) Topping it all off, we’re experiencing something of a collective empathetic awakening—better late than never (I guess)—for jailbait fantasy–turned–punching bag Britney Spears:
It’s been a heartening, if long overdue, corrective to decades of casual cruelty toward a woman who has openly struggled with sexual objectification, paparazzi surveillance, harsh media scrutiny and mental health. Spears isn’t the only specter of turn-of-the-millennium femininity to become the subject of a massive public reconsideration recently, either.
Judy Berman, “From Britney to Buffy, We’re Suddenly Rethinking Postfeminist Pop Culture—and Nothing Could Be Healthier,” Time, March 2, 2021
You know what? I retract my parenthetical conditional: It is unequivocally better late than never to be doing all this. “Interrogating the stories we have long taken for granted is healthy,” cultural critic Naomi Klein once wrote, “especially the comforting ones.” I’ve engaged in such narrative interrogation time and again on this blog, particularly with respect to the superhero stories and action comedies I grew up on—Buffy the Vampire Slayer among them. Being woke—a term I don’t use pejoratively here—isn’t a fixed state; it’s a fluid one. So, whether you came to Buffy by way of the movie, as this late-stage Xer did, or the TV series, which I also watched fanatically, let’s talk for a bit about Buffy Summers and the pop-cultural landscape that birthed her.
GIRLS WITH GUNS
With a steroidal Stallone cradling his priapic rocket launcher against a leave-nothing-uncharred backdrop, there is perhaps no more transparently spot-on representation of the 1980s action-movie mentality than this:
The Reagan years were the heyday of the macho action hero. But beginning in earnest with the kinder, gentler sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991, Hollywood went all-in on star-driven, so-called “girls with guns” films: Demi Moore in G.I. Jane (1997); Angeline Jolie’s video-game goddess Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2001); Geena Davis’ soccer mom–cum–superspy in The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996); Bridget Fonda’s drug addict–turned–trained assassin in Point of No Return (1993). On the Western front, Sharon Stone played a gunfighter in The Quick and the Dead (1995), and Madeleine Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson, Andie MacDowell, and Drew Barrymore formed a posse of outlaw prostitutes in Bad Girls (1994).
TV was capitalizing on the trend, as well, not merely with Buffy and Dark Angel (from Terminator writer/director James Cameron), but the syndicated smash Hercules: The Legendary Journeys begat Xena: Warrior Princess, and Star Trek: Voyager took the long-running franchise where it had never gone before—with a woman in the captain’s chair. Certainly Buffy, Xena, Captain Janeway, and Sarah Conner (who later headlined her own television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) all made positive, needle-moving contributions to popular culture with respect to gender representation—countless books, essays, and articles have examined that subject exhaustively—but there’s also no denying most of the aforementioned “girls with guns” are dubious ambassadors of feminism: They were all created (or co-created) by white men—many, no doubt, with good-faith intentions—who for the most part had them doing the same violent things Stallone and Schwarzenegger had before them.
In Cameron’s True Lies (1994), bored housewife Jamie Lee Curtis’ arc is to learn to be as proficient at deception and ass-kicking as hubby Arnold—to live comfortably in his world. And she was far from the only “woman warrior” of her time groomed by men to act like men:
Into every generation a slayer is born: one girl in all the world—a Chosen One. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer.
So proclaims the opening narration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In other words: This is a messiah narrative. Buffy Summers is our savior. Not our dream girlfriend, necessarily, so much as our dream mother—or at very least, dream babysitter. No, she isn’t a damsel in distress or a sex kitten—so, there’s that—but she’s still “the other.” She’s a “strong female lead,” such as it is, but her superheroic specialness keeps her at a distance from the rest of us.
And her mystical birthright requires a lifelong and involuntary commitment of self-sacrifice, under the auspices of a council of stuffy old white men in tweed, no less. Buffy is empowered, sure—but without her consent, and at great personal cost. In exchange for the unsolicited honor of being our guardian angel, you will live a short and restrictively regimented life. Really? As I recall, Neo was offered a choice between colored pills. Antonio Banderas was presented with an opportunity, not a mandate, to wear the mask of Zorro. Harry Potter was invited to attend Hogwarts, not conscripted to serve there. Buffy wasn’t deserving of the same consideration? (In final season of the show, Buffy did, to be fair, wax existential about some of this herself… but long after the series had outlived its central metaphor—high school is hell—and irretrievably abandoned its keen sense of humor.)
While we’re on the subject: Why is it Slayers are exclusively female? The show often reiterates yet never justifies that overt stipulation. The TV series is considered a vast improvement in every way over its source material, yet the movie offered a logical and persuasive—even thought-provoking—rationale for why only females can perform the function of a Slayer: It is a woman’s biological—not supernatural—cross to bear. In the presence of a vampire, a Slayer would experience uterine cramping—a natural reaction to their unnaturalness, as it’s explained. Like childbirth itself, the “superpower” of vampire detection is a special privilege—and burden—of womanhood. That’s a fascinating feminist thematic that got quietly scuttled in Buffy’s evolution from failed movie to hit TV series.
BOYS TO MEN
You know, I spent years taking story-development meetings around Hollywood, and evaluating pitches and scripts as part of a critique group of working screenwriters, and I can’t begin to tally how much calculated consideration went into making sure every female character adhered to the “strong woman” archetype, as if such a thing were codified like screenplay formatting itself. If she was the protagonist, she had to be willful-yet-flawed; if she was a love interest, she had to be supportive, yes, but dimensional in her own right. Make her like Ellen Ripley! Make her like Carrie Mathison! It was a deliberate, if creatively misguided, attempt to do what Joss Whedon accomplished so magnificently when he conceived Buffy in the first place: take an archetypal trope—like the pretty blonde girl who’s always the first to die in a horror movie, usually gruesomely and nakedly—and turn it on its ear.
What was seldom subjected to any scrutiny, however, was the constitutional profile of the archetypal male hero: the views he held; the values he demonstrated; the way he might be perceived by the audience—consciously or unconsciously, for good or for ill. It was like we cracked that code a long time ago—done and done! Sure, we needed to do better with respect to the way we positioned and represented women and BIPOC characters in our fictions, but the White Male Hero had pretty much been cast in bronze. The visage changed from time to time—John Wayne’s swagger gave way to Clint Eastwood’s sneer; Bruce Willis’ snarkiness was succeeded by Vin Diesel’s surliness—but the swinging-cock spirit that animated the archetype stayed more or less the same, unexamined and uncontested.
Heteronormative narratives written by white men about white men have been the Western literary standard as far back as the Homeric epics, but, encouragingly, that’s been changing. More and more, our popular fictions are exploring the experiences of people of color (in the horror movies of Jordan Peele, for instance), persons with disabilities (Lifetime’s Christmas Ever After), and the untold history of the LGBT community (Gentleman Jack). Moreover, publishing is providing opportunities and combatting stereotypes through #OwnVoices, “a term coined by the writer Corinne Duyvis [that] refers to an author from a marginalized or under-represented group writing about their own experiences/from their own perspective, rather than someone from an outside perspective writing as a character from an underrepresented group” (the website of the Seattle Public Library, “General Recommendations: Own Voices,” BiblioCommons, last modified March 2, 2021).
Accordingly, heterosexual male writers have an opportunity (an obligation?) to exercise greater moral imagination in how we portray ourselves—to challenge the reductive, self-perpetuated stereotypes of “violent action hero” and “oafish manboy” that pervade so much of our pop culture. There’s a glorious, creatively fertile spectrum between “full Liam Neeson” and “full Will Ferrell” that’s been left largely unexplored in commercial storytelling of late. SNL alum Jason Sudeikis is doing exactly that with his football-coach protagonist on Ted Lasso, a straight white adult male who unironically exemplifies kindness, courtesy, chivalry, optimism, cultural sensitivity, and prosocial values—and with good humor, to boot. We could learn something from Sudeikis’ example.
Incidentally, I recently re-watched Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman for the first time in a long while (another movie, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this aging Xer first saw in theaters a lifetime ago in 1992), and it occurred to me we could perhaps use more stories like that one—stories about men mentoring boys (and vice versa), that explore what it means to be a man with emotional earnestness, in all of its messy complexity. Maybe just maybe, straight male writers should worry a little less about engineering “strong female characters,” and instead apply greater effort into crafting decent male characters who might provide a healthy model for masculinity that prescriptively instructs how to better embody its virtues and exert ethical discipline over its primal impulses.
Because we—as a culture, I mean—are failing our boys. We are not giving them the tools to be honorable gentlemen of decency, of integrity, of principle. Parents endow those values in their sons—one would hope—but storytellers can imbue our cultural narratives with them. I don’t think I’ve seen a more chillingly accurate and understated dramatization of the openly predatory world ordinary women—meaning not Black Widow or Buffy—are forced to navigate on a perpetual basis than Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020). Parents ought to watch it, and discuss it, with their sons—to give them a window into what daily existence is like for the opposite sex. Because men need to stop otherizing women, in our everyday lives and definitely in puerile shit like this—
—and start sympathizing with them. It’s all-too-convenient to ascribe society’s sexist and misogynistic ills to high-profile scumbags like Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and, yes, Joss Whedon; they are merely celebrity symptoms of a deeper structural dysfunction—a culturally ingrained patriarchal mindset. Men who consider ourselves feminists should be meticulously reexamining our understanding of—our unchallenged assumptions about—our own masculinity. That’s how we might contribute to the cause—and that goes double for my male storytellers out there.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
And what about my Millennials—the ones now attempting “to reconcile their adoration for a show about a teenage girl who slays monsters with the criticism that often swirled around her creator”?
Don’t say shit to him about it—Whedon ain’t worth the expenditure of oxygen. He doesn’t deserve to be known by our children, nor remembered by us. Fuck ’im! That he turned out to be a hypocrite and a creep should in no way trigger a personal identity crisis on your part, and I say that on behalf of the generation that learned its values from Bill Cosby.
To be clear: I don’t mean “cancel him.” Canceling is the easy way out. Canceling is about putting something out of sight rather than putting it in its place. I can’t recall the plot of a single Saturday-morning cartoon I so zealously awoke before dawn each week to watch, but I still think back from time to time on many of the early life lessons learned from Fat Albert, and I’m eternally grateful to The Cosby Show for giving me one of the (very) few shared entertainment experiences I had with my pop culture–averse late father—to say nothing of the reflective conversations he and I would have afterward about the show’s weekly theme.
I feel no self-imposed pressure to reconcile that with who Cosby himself was later revealed to be—that’s got nothing to do with me—nor would I spend a minute worrying about how to explain any of it to members of Gen Alpha for whom The Cosby Show is a culturally irrelevant antiquity (and that’s predicated on the doubtful premise they’re even aware of it). So, I might suggest the next step for conflicted ex–Whedon fans isn’t “canceling Joss,” but rather letting go—intentionally and permanently—of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The practice of minimalism teaches that “letting go” isn’t an action per se—it isn’t about doing something. Rather, its about not doing a given thing any longer—not giving it any more space in your life or in your head. It’s about moving on—and not in the heated spirit of good riddance, but rather in dispassionate recognition that some things have served their purpose and need to be left on the road behind us else they’ll retard our own forward motion. Such is how I finally let go—gave myself the permission, and the gift, of letting go—of Batman after a lifetime of following his adventures.
Like all pulp superhero fiction, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was intended to serve us at a particular stage of our emotional and intellectual development; it was meant to help carry us into adulthood—not be carried by us into adulthood. Perhaps Buffy became too important, much the way Star Wars did (another Chosen One narrative, as it happens). Please, Millennials: Don’t visit Buffy on your kids the way we imposed Star Wars on ours; don’t consign their imaginations—or your own—to transitory fantasies from a previous century. Right now—as I type this—the nostalgia-industrial complex is placing a (presumably safe) bet on you: that you’ll buy the repackaged ’90s ephemera they’re selling. Here’s an alternative: Let the disheartening revelations about Whedon serve as a reminder, however unpleasant and unwelcome, that even when you can, sometimes it’s best to not go home again.
And, hey, that aspects of some your formative faves—not just Buffy, but Harry Potter and Sex and the City, too—seem morally questionable in retrospect can arguably be viewed as a heartening epiphany: It’s a marker of the demonstrable progress we’ve made, of the enlightenment we’ve attained, of the sensitivity we’ve cultivated in the span of a single generation—yours. It’s evidence that, with generational exponentiality, we’re continuing in the right cultural direction. Christ, when I was a kid—not that long ago—network TV’s most valiant heroes drove around with a Confederate flag painted on the roof of their car. We weren’t born woke and neither were you; rather, we’re awakening, ever and always—and that’s more than the almighty Joss Whedon can say for himself. If Buffy helped with that along the way, give her your sincere thanks—and then bid her fond farewell.
I’m not letting go of Buffy the Vampire, Angel or Firefly. I’m letting go of Whedon. It is possible to separate the guy from the works, especially collaborative efforts like television shows and movies where there are so many other people involved in the making than simply the primary creator. And I’m sure as hell not going to hurt the cast members and crew who worked so hard on those shows by denying them their royalty checks through boycotting said shows.
No, it’s just WHEDON we should let go of. His works stopped being solely his the moment he began working with other people to bring them to life on the page and screen, and even less his the moment we fans latched onto the finished works. Once it’s told, a story becomes the spiritual property of everyone who hears it. It no longer resides solely within the teller. Otherwise, how would H.P. Lovecraft’s eldritch lore have been continued long after its racist, homophobic creator died? Others picked up the story and carried on with it, added to it, made it their own, while sharing it with readers who then made it their own.
What we have to understand is that works often transcend their creators, so that they become part of the public domain, even before the creators of those works are dead. So no, we don’t have to let go of the works we love just because the maker turns out to have been an asshole the entire time.
Hey, Michael! This was a particularly long and nuanced post (even for me!), so my thanks to you — and everyone here — for reading and commenting on it. I appreciate the time and attention you all spent on it; I never take that for granted.
Yes, I concur: Once a work of art or entertainment is released to the world, it belongs to everyone — not merely the artist who created it. What I’d hoped to say through this post — and I’m not altogether convinced I credibly or sufficiently accomplished it — was that prior to Whedon, fans of a given media franchise seldom established an emotional connection to the person who created it. In this instance, it wasn’t that Buffy fans saw themselves in Buffy (or Angel, or any of the characters) so much as they saw themselves in Whedon. Whedon became a kind of geek god — a founding father of superfan culture. There is literally an academic institution called the Whedon Studies Association devoted to studying his scripts and shows. I can’t think of any latter-day writer — particularly one whose stock-in-trade is genre television (which only in the last twenty years or so has merited serious consideration) — who’s inspired a more rabid following.
So, when I saw over this past month Millennials trying with great emotional difficulty to reconcile their lifelong devotion to Joss (not necessarily Buffy, but all-things Whedon) with the revelations about his abhorrent behavior — as in this video from Council of Geeks — I saw an opportunity to offer a sober reappraisal of how Buffy went from an inconsequential movie to a revolutionary TV series; how it became culturally important, then too important, and why I (subjectively) believe the best thing we can do now is let Buffy go — just move on to new interests with gratitude in our heart for what Buffy the Vampire Slayer meant to us.
I never meant to imply we should “boycott” Buffy. Quite the opposite. To boycott something is to take action against it. Letting go, on the other hand, is a decision one makes to no longer put any effort or energy into something; rather than applying a firmer grip on something, you simply spread your fingers… and offer it up to the wind.
Case in point: I’ve never watched The Mandalorian or Star Trek: Picard. I’m not boycotting those shows — I’m not actively digging my heels into the ground over them (“Fuck Alex Kurtzman!”) — I merely let go of Star Wars and Star Trek. I don’t give them any more space in my life or in my head. I made a decision after The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi that Star Wars no longer adds any value to my life; I made a similar decision about Trek after the three J.J. Abrams movies. Hell, perhaps The Mandalorian and Picard are great shows — people I trust have told me they are — but I’m not even tempted to sample them, because I reached a point in my life where I just felt those franchises had ceased to be the joyous diversions they once were, and had instead become joyless obligations. So, I let them go.
And I have friends who still watch those franchises fanatically — and that’s their prerogative — yet seem to draw nothing but anger and anxiety from the experience. And I advise them, if they solicit my advice, to just let them go. “You can decide to stop watching new Star Wars movies anytime you want,” I’ll say. “Just like that! Just because you’ve always watched them doesn’t obligate you to continue to do so in perpetuity. This isn’t Scientology — you haven’t signed a billion-year contract with Lucasfilm.” But most of those folks aren’t there yet — they’re not ready to let go.
We all have to decide for ourselves how we spend the only three resources we have in this life: our money, our time, and our attention. Most of the things we bring into our life demand at least two, if not three, of those finite assets. So, I am very selective about what I bring into my life, and these days about what I keep in my life — that is, things I once enjoyed that no longer add value to my life’s experience. Buffy joins Star Wars and Star Trek and Batman among the pastimes I’ve left on the road behind me — with gratitude in my heart for all of them.
There’s one other thing I’d like to address, and I’m going to use my reply to you to do that (though it applies to Jeff and Bonita’s comments, as well): Please permit me to relieve you of any concern you may carry over financially disadvantaging cast and crew members on Buffy/Angel/Firefly by denying them royalty checks. With the exception of a select few above-the-line creative contributors (the actors, the writers, Whedon himself), 99% of the thousands of people that worked on those shows — some of whom are personal friends of mine — did so for a flat salary, and are not entitled to royalty benefits. Once that job came to an end in 2003, they never saw another dime from it. (And even those who do receive royalties watch them diminish appreciably with each passing year, so…)
Anyway, if Buffy and Firefly still add value to your life, God bless. But if anyone reading this feels in their secret heart like they’re still hanging on to Buffy out of some sort of brand loyalty or nostalgic yearning, I’m here to give you permission — if you’re looking for it — to let it go.
Thanks, as always, Michael, for contributing to the conversation — for adding value to the blog.
Sean
Great expansion here on your thoughts. I think Buffy is a bit of a different situation than say Star Wars or Marvel because there isn’t any new active content, not even the canon comics. There’s a Boom! comics reboot, but that’s hardly kicking down the pop culture doors. In a way, maybe I have “let go” of Buffy, because I’m not invested in that new comic, though I wish everyone involved great success.
For me, Buffy remains part of my past that I revisit every so often.
Yes — that is absolutely an important distinction, Jeff: that Buffy isn’t an “active” franchise. (Save the who-cares-less comics from Boom! you cited and those dreadful YA novels by Kiersten White). Given that stipulation, the way in which some Millennials — just speaking generally now — might be “holding on” to Buffy is in their anticipation to share it with their own children (like the tweet I included in the post above, with the guy wondering how he’s going to explain Whedon when he introduces his children to Buffy, the show that brought he and his wife together).
I would advise against that. If you’re a 35-year-old Buffy fan, and the show has personal significance to you, I would never suggest renouncing or disavowing it, but I also wouldn’t recommend making a date to sit down with your kids and screen the series for them from beginning to end. Just because it means something to you (again: the royal “you”) doesn’t mean it will — or should — mean anything to them. That would be a healthy way Millennials could “let go” of Buffy — by letting go of the compulsion to visit it on their own children. I mean, if an episode happens to come on cable when you’re all sitting in front of the TV together, and you explain to them the show was a point of shared interest during their parents’ courtship, that’s innocuous enough. But putting them through a crash course of all 250 combined episodes of Buffy and Angel is just too much. It’s not gonna mean anything to them — nor should it. Just learn to be okay with the fact that it means something to you. That’s what I would advise my young Millennial parents out there. In that sense, you are “letting it go” not by relegating it to the past, but rather by not carrying it into the future. You’re saying it was culturally important once, but doesn’t need to be ever and always.
I think you have the right perspective on it, Jeff: Buffy provides a window into your personal past, to be accessed at your pleasure and discretion. We should all let our children make their own discoveries, not force-feed them the ephemera of our own youth. It’s a bad habit we’ve gotten in to, and since the fault for that lands squarely at the feet of my generation, I’m trying to do a little cleanup!
Letting go is basically giving up on the shows and movies, though, isn’t it? Doesn’t it have the same effect as a boycott if one simply stops watching, spending on merchandise, and so on? At that point, it’s essentially killing off the content through neglect, and I’m not sure it’s entirely fair to all the others who contributed to the works even if they’re not profiting monetarily from it, but it’s part of their own body of work. I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over said works. I don’t go to conventions and I don’t do cosplay or regular roleplaying. I simply pop in the DVDs and watch.
I guess what I’m saying is that it’s possible to continue enjoying the works without forgiving the prime creator thereof. Just my two cents, for what they’re worth.
Michael!
First off: Thanks to you and to everyone who commented on this dense post, because each of you, in your own way, helped me give deeper and further consideration to the matters raised in the essay itself. I appreciate that; your “two cents” are worth much, sir! That’s why I keep this blog and cherish the feedback I get; posts like this one are an expansion of ideas developed and workshopped in earlier essays, and themselves contain ideas that will seed posts to come. I’ve always said these essays are never intended to be my Final Word on the thesis du jour; instead, they’re merely a conversational opening salvo.
To your point: Yes, an artist needn’t pass a “purity test” in order for one to take pleasure and/or value from his work. Like I said to Jeff, after Leaving Neverland, I just couldn’t stomach the thought of ever listening to a Michael Jackson song again; I turn the dial if one comes on (and I grew up listening to Jackson). In that instance, I couldn’t separate the music from the man’s alleged misdeeds. But Chinatown remains a favorite film I’ll happily revisit (I attended a rooftop screening of it in Hollywood in 2019); I also re-watched Rosemary’s Baby in the last two years, and The Ninth Gate, despite its imperfections, can still draw me in if I happen to catch a bit of it on cable. Polanski’s work still has value for me, despite reservations I harbor about the man himself. There’s no one-size-fits-all rule to any of this stuff; we all need to decide on a case-by-case basis what’s worth our time, money, and/or attention, and what isn’t. As former New York Times reporter Peter Marks somewhat sheepishly confessed in the third episode of Allen v. Farrow:
Will I ever watch an Allen film again? Probably not. But not strictly on account of the troubling allegations against him — though certainly that — but also because nowadays I find his films to be predicated on a similar privileged-white view of New York as Sex and the City. I think we’ve told enough of those stories. As both a storyteller and a New Yorker, I want my hometown to be a city in which there is a place for everyone — not just wealthy white folks. As we rebuild and reconceptualize the Big Apple in the decade to come, I want it’s blue-collar beating heart better represented in fiction.
I’m not boycotting Woody Allen — I’m not actively refusing to give him my time, money, or attention — I’m just letting him go (and his filmography with him). Same as I let go of Star Wars, and Star Trek, and superheroes. (I only ever give those things thought in order to blog about them for the sake of studying their greater sociocultural context.) Same as I let go of the Encyclopedia Brown books I adored in elementary school, and the action comedies I worshipped as a teenager (Lethal Weapon and Die Hard and its ilk). Same as I let go of Halloween, a movie that had a huge influence on me and a long-running series I followed faithfully, through its good times and its bad, all the way through Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009) before deciding I’d had enough; even John Carpenter’s participation in the recent “legacy” sequels wasn’t enough to lure me back. I had already let Halloween go at that point, and felt no desire — not even a flicker of interest — to go back to it. Same with Picard — good or bad, I just didn’t care; I’d said my goodbyes to that franchise, and I’m at total peace with that.
I guess what I’m saying is, letting go isn’t about punishing an artist — be it Michael Jackson or Woody Allen or Alex Kurtzman or Joss Whedon — but rather giving myself permission to walk away from a once-beloved movie or series or franchise or brand that simply isn’t adding value to my life anymore. Truth is, I sold my Buffy, Angel, and Firefly DVDs several years ago — well before Whedon’s fall from grace. I looked at these massive boxed sets taking up space in my home (and in my life) and I said, “I enjoyed these shows fifteen, twenty years ago… but do I have any desire to ever revisit them?” And I realized I didn’t; they were of a certain time in my life, and I’m grateful to them for the joy they provided, but — speaking only for myself here — I didn’t need to carry them with me indefinitely.
Last Halloween, I re-watched John Carpenter’s Vampires — another DVD that’s taken up shelf space in my home for 20 years(!) — and as much as I admire its commercial imagination (its badass horror-Western aesthetic), with age and perspective, I found the film completely bereft of moral imagination. That’s not the kind of story that inspires me anymore — as a writer or as a human being. Accordingly, I donated the disc to the public library the next day. I let it go. I acknowledged it as something I enjoyed in my youth, and gave myself the gift of leaving it on the roadside behind me.
One by one, I waded through my DVDs and asked myself when the last time was I’d watched each (if I could even remember), and if I ever really had plans to watch it again. And I wound up with a (very) small handful of personal classics that still have value to me — The Lost Boys; Major League; State of Grace; Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade — that I felt were worth continued space in my life. Everything else got sold or donated. I even donated my copy of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; I told myself I needn’t be an Indy completist — that it was okay to let go of a sequel I don’t enjoy to a movie I think is perfect in every way (Last Crusade).
What I have now is a very selectively curated collection (though I’m loathe to even use that word) of movies I watch with regularity (meaning annually), and that add value to my life. When I look over my DVD shelf, I can say with absolute certainty that all of them are my favorite movies — they all mean something to me. The movies that meant something to me once upon a time but haven’t in ages? All of them I let go.
I share that because I want my friends to know there is tremendous lightness of spirit that comes with giving oneself permission to permanently let things go. I recall at one point in my thirties, I was still buying comics regularly — titles I’d long since stopped enjoying, that I read once apiece (perhaps), and that then went into indefinite “storage” in a box in my closet. Why was I still reading and collecting them? Because I’d always read comics, from the time I was a kid; I’d buy them for 75 cents at the corner candy shop in the Bronx and reread each one a thousand times. I’d share them with my friends, and vice versa. I’d always collected them, for as long as I could remember, so it truly never occurred to me I might reach a point where they ceased to have value to me. And for years after I reached that point of terminally diminished returns, I’d continue to spend money on a habit I wasn’t enjoying — that did nothing but fill my home with more worthless shit. When I finally gave myself permission to stop doing that, it was like a weight lifted! And then I packed a dozen long boxes of comics in the backseat of my car, drove them to a comic shop on Ventura Boulevard, and sold the lot for several hundred bucks. (And that was gravy, because I’d have happily given that shit away!)
And I have so many friends who continue to watch Star Wars and Star Trek — faithfully if not obsessively (none of them are cosplayers, either) — and all they do is bitch about how terrible those franchises have gotten. From my sympathetic perspective, being a Star Wars fan causes them nothing but anxiety! And I think, like me with the comics I once collected, they continue to buy into those franchises not out of pleasure, but out of habit. They watch Star Wars simply because they’ve always watched Star Wars; they’re not fans (anymore) so much as brand loyalists.
Now, if any of them still get genuine enjoyment (value) from being Star Wars fans, God bless — keep watching! But if they don’t, I want them to know how easy — how liberating — it is to let go. It’s not about doing something; it’s about not doing it any longer. I say to them, “You can let this thing go and I promise — I promise — you won’t even miss it.” It’s like getting out of a bad relationship; it doesn’t mean the relationship wasn’t once good, it’s merely an acknowledgment that it is no longer serving you well.
Next month, I’ll be posting an essay that examines the specific strategies these nostalgic mega-franchises deploy to keep us watching each new offering. My goal is to show people — particularly Xers, the demographic most susceptible to such engagement tactics — how a given multimedia initiative keeps us hooked on its product, even and especially after we’ve stopped enjoying it. Ideally, this will give folks the tools they need to let go of them — if that’s what they choose to do! That’s something we all have to decide for ourselves: Does this thing I’ve enjoyed still add value to my life? If it does, fine; but if it doesn’t… we needn’t hold on to it simply because that’s what we’ve been trained to do. That’s next month’s discussion, Michael, and I certainly hope you’ll toss in your “two cents” when the time comes!
Sean
This is a tough one for me, Sean. We’ve talked about it a bit. I recently watched the entire series of Buffy again and thoroughly enjoyed it, start to finish. There’s so much talent to love that goes beyond Whedon the man: writers, actors, make-up artists, etc. I don’t want to take away those achievements because Whedon turned out to be a scumbag. I had to reconcile this within myself: can I enjoy Buffy separated from Whedon? And yes, I believe I can. Do his mistakes get to rob me of one of the pieces of entertainment that set me on my writing journey? Hell no. It will remain something I can return to every decade or so as a means of self-reflection, of seeing my past.
However, there is certainly an asterisk next to the title now. A stain, to be sure. If people want to never watch it again, that’s certainly understandable. But for me, there’s too much personal context and joy to be found within the series to cancel it entirely.
I agree, Jeff. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. And though I’m disappointed/disgusted and deeply saddened by Whedon’s abusive behavior, I can’t deny that his work has had a huge influence on me as a writer. It “takes a village” to make a show…and a damn talented one to make a show that profoundly impacts a generation. So when I sit down for my next Buffy-Angel-thon, I will enjoy it as a celebration of the hundreds of amazing people who gave years of their lives to create one hell of a show(s).
Bonita! Thanks so much for this comment! Please see my direct reply to Jeff, because all of it applies to your note, as well: If Buffy adds value to your life, enjoy it in good health — and don’t feel any need to justify that. If, however, it no longer adds value — either now or at some point in the future — don’t be afraid to let it go.
I briefly referenced the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso in the post above, and I’ll just take this opportunity to say that among its many other virtues, one of the major themes of the show’s first season is letting go. It’s actually one of the healthiest and most emotionally candid dramatizations of that theme I’ve ever seen, and I highly recommend the series. It demonstrates one of the key points of this essay with far greater eloquence and emotional impact than I could manage.
Thanks so much for popping by, Bonita! Hope you’ve remained healthy and productive throughout pandemia. I encourage everyone to check out Bonita’s latest work of flash fiction, “Xochitl’s Cantina,” here.
Sean
Sean – I think your post is wonderfully thought provoking. Keep it up! And thanks for the shout out to my latest flash fiction😊
Thanks, Bonita! And I’m happy to promote “Xochitl’s Cantina”! You and Camilla are turning The Werewolf Whisperer into a vast supernatural myth in its own right!
Jeff!
Thanks so much for reading and commenting, and for sharing your own reflections on Whedon and Buffy and what they’ve meant to you. This essay was very much written in acknowledgment of the profound influence Whedon and his work have had on a generation of creative thinkers.
Based on the responses I’m getting, it would seem I did a substandard job of making my point; I take full responsibility for that. Letting go of Buffy, as I define it, never had anything to do with “canceling” Whedon or the creative achievements of all who contributed to his various series (including the man himself). It had more to do with putting Buffy into the context of a broader cultural perspective: fully acknowledging the ways it moved both the medium of television and the culture itself forward, but also recognizing that we have in fact moved beyond it — that Buffy is a pop-cultural (to say nothing of feminist) relic from another era at this point.
As I said in my reply to Michael above, we all have to decide for ourselves how we spend the only three resources we have in this life: our money, our time, and our attention. Most of the things we bring into our life demand at least two, if not three, of those finite assets. So, I am very selective about what I bring into my life, and these days about what I keep in my life — that is, things I once enjoyed that no longer add value to my life. If Buffy and Firefly still add value to your life, God bless. No one need put an asterisk next to them. I don’t put an asterisk next to The Cosby Show. I made a decision a few years ago I could no longer listen to the music of Michael Jackson (and Thriller was the first album I ever owned), but I still watch the movies of Roman Polanski. What I’m saying is, there’s no one-size-fits-all rule to any of this stuff; we all need to decide on a case-by-case basis what’s worth our time, money, and/or attention, and what isn’t. As New York Times reporter Peter Marks somewhat sheepishly confessed in the third episode of Allen v. Farrow:
What I’ve written about on this blog — exhaustively, as you know! — is how the nostalgia-industrial complex deploys calculated tactics to keep Xers and Millennials addicted to 1980s and ’90s ephemera, and to share my own journey of how I let go of Buffy, of Star Wars, of Star Trek, of Batman, and how my life isn’t worse off for it. (It’s better off.) I have so many friends who call me up after seeing Return of the Skywalker or the season finale of Picard or Coming 2 America and need to be talked off the ledge, because they’re so depressed that their childhoods were just “shit all over.” And I tell them I how I let go of all that stuff — not just the belated sequels, but the original movies that (still) hold a special place in my heart… but not on my DVD shelf. And they all say, “Yeah, I get that intellectually, but I keep hoping the next movie will redeem the franchise.” I sense they want to let go, but they’re afraid. And I’m here to say if that describes you (the royal “you”), letting go isn’t scary. Letting go isn’t doing something — it’s not doing it any longer. It isn’t a repudiation of one’s past, just a signal that we’re moving on.
All that said, if Star Wars or Buffy or Firefly still contribute positive value to your life in return for your time, attention, and money, by all means, enjoy! I’m not here to rain on anyone’s parade. The point of this post was to say that reconciling one’s love for Buffy with one’s unease with Joss shouldn’t be a source of personal conflict for anyone; it shouldn’t shatter or delegitimize your worldview! Buffy only occupies as much space in our head and in our life as we allow it, and all I’m suggesting is that we allow it space — or not allow it — mindfully, and intentionally.
Anyhow, pal, I’m grateful for the time and attention you gave me so freely here — thank you.
SPC
See my reply above to your thread with Michael. Buffy has become something I’ve put in my past that I will continue to enjoy here and there. I think the canon comic ending with “Season 12” really capped off the story for me. I’m not really chomping at the bit for more Buffy or Angel stories because I’ve gotten what I need from them. And when I revisit them once or twice a decade, it’s always with new eyes and fresh context.
You are 100% spot-on about Whedon and the almost deity-like worship of his fans. Hell, I remember being on those very early internet chat rooms where cast/crew and even Joss himself would show up to connect with fans. There was a very real sense of community that most shows didn’t have. That myth of Joss has been broken, buried, and the earth salted.
Yep — 100%. My reply to your reply above covers my response to this. You’ve curated the Buffy stories that have meaning to you, you take satisfaction from the experience, and you selectively revisit it every so often to stay in touch with something about your “then-me” that keeps you centered. That’s an absolutely healthy relationship to have with the fiction one loves.
As for Whedon: Yes, I elaborated a bit on the man himself in my response to dellstories, and I completely second your comment on it here. God, that’s a topic that could probably fill its own blog post, but suffice it to say Whedon’s fall from grace definitely illustrates the “dark underbelly” of the geek subculture. He truly became one of the power-mad supervillains he used to write about; he became Warren Mears. It is sad — and it is confounding. We thought he was wiser than that — that he was a man of decency and enlightenment. There are parallels with the revelations about Bill Cosby, who was so instrumental in instilling the values that my generation came of age on — and then turned out to be the antithesis of all of that. I guess all I can say is that the values themselves are worthy of honoring, even if the messengers who preached them aren’t. It’s a contradiction we just need to learn to accept.
An awful lot of brilliant people are flawed. I start out expecting little. Having said that, I have a huge list of actors/actresses I refuse to watch–I don’t care how great the movie sounds (please don’t let that include Firefly) who I will not watch! If I were a vampire person, I suspect Buffy would now be on that list!
Indeed, Jacqui. One of the intentions of this (admittedly dense) post was to highlight the unique culture of hero worship that emerged around Whedon, and why his fall from grace has been so crushing to a generation that really saw a kindred spirit in him. But this is absolutely a reminder, however unwelcome, that artists are humans, too — and oftentimes the most insightful artists are the most complicated/conflicted people among us. It is absolutely possible for a writer to embed his fiction with ideals that he himself doesn’t live up to. I suspect for many of us — writers, I mean — fiction is aspirational: We often write about the world we’d like to see, and the kind of people we’d like to be, even (and especially) if the reality falls far short of that.
Thank you, as always, my dear friend, for indulging my esoteric posts and contributing to the ensuing conversation!
Now I’m looking for the like button on your comment! I’m pushing it virtually.
Thank you, Jacqui! I looked into that issue at one point — why there is no option to “like” a comment on my blog posts — and I believe it has something to do with the fact that that particular feature isn’t offered on a self-hosted WordPress.org site. When I started this blog, I opted for WordPress.org over WordPress.com because even though this site isn’t monetized — I don’t sell any products, services, or ad space — I wanted full ownership of and control over my platform. But for whatever reason, even though you can “like” a post, you can’t “like” a comment on WordPress.org. (There’s also no “Reblog” button, either.) Who knows why? I don’t worry too much about those bells and whistles, though; I’m must focused on producing quality content.
Hey, Sean–fascinating post, although I have trouble replying to it in detail, and I always find that mildly distressing. You put so much effort into your posts, but I simply lack the references. I watched very few of the TV shows you discuss. I decided at a young age that books were better than TV and most movies.
So, I can’t relate to a lot of the toxic male stuff. I simply refused to watch it, and later, refused to watch when women were recast as violent protags, just like men. That wasn’t my idea of feminism, although I do like the idea of wiggle-room there. The more “real feminism” gets prescribed–you can’t be a real feminist unless you fill-in-the-blank–the less authentic is becomes, IMO. Grass roots have always been more convincing than top-down change, although again, that’s just an opinion.
Anyway, going back to books and movies, when I was a kid I loved Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang, and Mary Poppins. Both of them had Dick Van Dyke acting the male lead. I don’t want to know if he was secretly awful–his portrayals of men formed part of the fabric of my childhood. And I loved Richard Harris in Camelot, along with Star Trek in its nearly constant reruns (canceling that show has to go down as one of the great chucklehead moves of all time). I read Hobbit and LoTR, Narnia, and many other books more obscure. But even fairy tales and Jane Austen had more nuanced men than the movie fare of the 80s. (I’ve watched very few movies that came out in the 70s, other than the obvious Star Wars.) I mentioned Smith and Jones in an earlier reply–watching it again as an adult, I realized they were considerably less toxic and more nuanced than John Wayne, whom I always disliked.
So, I guess for me, it’s always been a matter of only watching and reading something that didn’t seem like it was just a waste of time, or worse, harmful. But I never tried to sell a script in Hollywood, or even a book to a publisher. Getting included in anthologies was as far as I went down that road.
I suppose what I dislike most is the idea of an overarching narrative, that movies and TV shows must portray something to further an agenda. I’ve always resisted being told what to think. What I’d like to see, rather than the prevailing narrative becoming more “progressive” (whatever that means: it’s been so overused, it means nothing anymore, IMO), is no overarching narrative at all. Put good stories out there, and see what people like. I realize that I’m coming from a self-publishing mindset, and I do recognize that movies require more resources, and thus, more people to agree. But still. We’re seeing some conservative movies and shows, and even though they’re usually not my thing, I’m glad they’re there. Along with heteronormative Hallmark romance movies, which I don’t watch, either. I think it’s better to let people make up their own minds. : )
Your contributions are always thoughtful and welcome, Cathleen! You never have to make any apologies for that, and the last thing I want to create in you is a sensation of distress! Everyone who takes the time to visit me here should feel free to contribute to whatever extent they wish, and I am grateful to all who do.
In fact, all the previous readers to leave a comment focused mostly on the opening and closing sections of this post (the material about Whedon and Buffy), but as I drafted this essay, I was actually more interested in the “Girls with Guns” and “Boys to Men” sections — the parts to deal with the state of feminist storytelling — which you’re the first to directly address down here in the group discussion. Thank you. I certainly offered a lot to chew on in this post — perhaps too much (I suspect, based on the responses I’m getting, I may’ve muddied the arguments I’d hoped to make) — so it’s encouraging to see some of the essay’s finer points also resonated.
It seems to me there’s a tendency among Millennials to (understandably) assume they emerged from the womb fully woke — which is to say, innately enlightened. And now they’re in their thirties, and they’re looking back — sometimes uneasily — at the fiction they consumed as suggestible adolescents and saying, “Gee, some of this isn’t quite as progressive as I thought.”
If you haven’t seen Amy Poehler’s new movie on Netflix, Moxie, I recommend it. (Here’s an excellent, spoiler-free article about it.) In it, Poehler represents third-wave feminism, and her daughter (played by Hadley Robinson) draws influence from that but eventually adopts more of a fourth-wave feminist ideology befitting of her generation’s perspective. And the movie deals with the ways each generation picks up the ball from the one before it, and moves that ball forward, but no one should ever mistakenly think their conception of feminism is the final and authoritative iteration of the movement. You know? Elder generations have things to learn from our descendants, who have certainly achieved wokeness (for lack of a better term) a hell of a lot faster than we did, but those younger generations would also do well to recognize that they stand on the shoulders of previous-wave feminists and progressives who have experience and wisdom and a desire to still support and contribute to the cause. Each generation does its part to bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice; we’re all on the same team.
With regard to how politics can/should be handled in popular storytelling, I recommend this fascinating analysis of Star Trek: Picard, which demonstrates that Trek at its finest was less concerned with promoting a particular political agenda (either progressive or conservative) than it was with presenting a humanist perspective on a given issue — in a universe in which everyone had a place — and examining that subject from all sides, offering each of us a chance to both argue and challenge our convictions in a “safe space” that wasn’t there to judge us. That’s the kind of morally imaginative storytelling I advocate for as a blogger and aspire to as an author. I believe that kind of storytelling can change the world for the better, and I call on writers of my own gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation — straight white males — to think more creatively (and morally) about the kinds of stories we’re telling. To that end, I think there’s tremendous benefit to interrogating the types of stories we’ve been writing and/or consuming for the past quarter century (give or take), and asking ourselves Where do we go from here?
Anyway, that was what I hoped to achieve with this post, whether or not any of it came across as clearly as I’d intended. Either way, I’m indebted to you, Cathleen, for the time and attention you gave so freely, and for the valuable contribution you made here. Thank you.
Sean
You’re very welcome, Sean. And “Where do we go from here?” is always the relevant question. I’d like to see the answer be “nuanced characters,” because that’s what I like. But time will tell. : )
You’ve probably heard the old secret to storytelling, Cathleen: Simple plots; complex characters.
“Where Do We Go from Here?” is also the title of the final number in “Once More, with Feeling,” Buffy‘s musical episode. So, I guess that was my little Easter egg!
>there’s a tendency among Millennials to (understandably) assume they emerged from the womb fully woke — which is to say, innately enlightened
Amazing how many people claim nowadays that they would have marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr
INCLUDING MANY WHO SUPPORT TO THIS DAY THE SORT OF RACIST LEGISLATION KING OPPOSED
And I’m not trying to crap on Millennials. Anyone who read the essay above should sense I’m appealing to Millennials to avoid the nostalgia trap Gen X got stuck in. I admire Generations Y and Z: They got woke a lot faster than we did! But they don’t know everything, and when they act like they do, that’s when conservatives start in with all their “SJW!” horseshit. None of us are woke; instead, we are awakening. And I would ask younger generations to be patient with Xers and Boomers who are making a good-faith effort — and there are lots of us — to adapt to a changing, ever-sensitizing world that’s markedly different from the one we were born into. If we happen to be a step behind on this issue or that issue, don’t call us out for it; call us in.
As for MLK: Indeed, Dell, there are many hypocrites out there who invoke King’s name and yet exemplify everything anathema to his message. But I think, despite that blasphemy, King would be more hopeful today than ever at the way in which young people are bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice with inspiring strength and vigor. We’ve already seen some very progressive policies advanced — and even major legislation passed — by the Biden administration, which is a direct consequence of the pressure the progressive movement has put on the Democratic party the past few years. As a democratic eco-socialist, I was a big-time Biden skeptic, but give the man credit: He is listening to us — and ignoring the noise from the right! (Which is driving them batshit, by the way.) We’re not gonna win every fight, no, but we are gaining ground. By all indication, we are entering an era of progressive politics not seen since FDR. I’m incredibly optimistic for what comes next!
“Maybe just maybe, straight male writers should worry a little less about engineering “strong female characters,” and instead apply greater effort into crafting decent male characters who might provide a healthy model for masculinity”: Amen to that, Sean! Also, this has been my struggle for a while now–as the mother of a transgender daughter, how do I reconcile my adoration of the Harry Potter-verse with the vileness and transphobia of its creator? It always brings to mind the same struggle Orwell had about Dali. His conclusion was “One ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other.” Orwell went on to say (and this might apply more to the current debate about Dr. Suess and the nonsense that his books have been ‘cancelled’–it was Dr. Suess Enterprises that determined that six out of the more than sixty he wrote would no longer be published because they contained racist imagery–hardly a cancellation): “The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp.”
As I’ve expressed to everyone else here who took the time to read and comment on this long, esoteric piece, thank you, Suzanne, for your wonderful and much-appreciated contribution to this discussion.
In my reply to Jeff above, I address the complexities of reconciling one’s appreciation for a work of art/entertainment with any misgivings we may (rightfully) have about the artist him- or herself. Beyond Cosby and Woody Allen and Michael Jackson, when I was growing up, there was no A-list movie star (except perhaps Harrison Ford) we looked up to more than Mel Gibson. He didn’t just star in some of the coolest action movies of our youth (the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon franchises), but he was romantic in Forever Young, and charming in Maverick, and absolutely riveting as a desperate father in Ransom. All terrific performances, right? And then he turns out to be this staggeringly talented director, too! It’s a cliché to say it, but he was everything to everyone: Women wanted to be with him, and men wanted to be him.
And then we find out what an emotionally unstable, manically raving bigot he is! And it’s definitely hard to compartmentalize that when you watch his work now; it’s kind of tainted his impressive filmography, I’m sad to say. But it goes to your point about Dali: Mel Gibson can be both things — a filmmaker of breathtaking talent and a vile misogynist/racist. Both things can be true at the same time. And once you accept that, it’s up to you to decide how much of Mel Gibson you want to invite into your life moving forward. I definitely watch less of his stuff than I used to — I wrote a long reevaluation of the Lethal Weapon series last year in the wake of the George Floyd murder — but I recently revisited Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet for the first time in three decades and was floored by it. (Still, as much as I marveled at Gibson’s galvanizing performance, the audiotapes of his obscene rantings were playing in the background of my subconscious over his “To be or not to be” soliloquy, so…)
And thank you for making that spot-on accurate point about Dr. Seuss, which I’d considered addressing in this post before deciding not to go too far down the rabbit hole of “cancel culture” (that seemed like a worthy subject for an entirely separate essay). As I briefly mentioned in the piece above, “canceling” is about putting something out of sight rather than putting it in its place. When we “cancel,” we simply avoid the thorny complexities of reconciling our adoration of a particular work (like, for instance, Harry Potter) with the morally objectionable positions of its creator (Rowling’s transphobia). There are no easy answers to those personal dilemmas, as I’m sure you understand only too well, since you haven’t proffered any to your own. But I at least hope that this essay — and the ensuing discussion it’s inspired — has made it clear that if you continue to enjoy the work of an artist whose views and/or behavior you nonetheless find repugnant, you don’t need to justify that to anyone (including and especially yourself); and if, alternatively, you can’t reconcile those things (as I was unable to do after Leaving Neverland), then give yourself the gift of letting it go. When we let go, we absolve ourselves from having to invest any more energy or angst into something that is no longer bringing appreciable value to our lives.
Thanks so much, Suzanne, for being such a faithful friend of this blog.
Sean
>arguably, the first “rockstar” showrunner
I’d put Rod Serling here, and maybe Gene Roddenberry. Possibly even Norman Lear?
Indeed, Dell, all three of them crossed my mind when I made that particular assertion. Serling, I might argue, is in a different category because he was the on-screen face of The Twilight Zone; he was the only “regular cast member,” as it were, so he had a public profile that wasn’t afforded to most other showrunners. Roddenberry is also a bit iffy, in my book, because Star Trek didn’t really become a hit until after it was canceled, and following the tepid response to The Motion Picture (over which he exerted appreciable creative control), Roddenberry was unceremoniously sidelined from his own franchise: On each successive film, he would pitch the same story — something about the Enterprise crew stopping Oswald from assassinating JFK, only to have Spock fire the kill shot from the grassy knoll — and the producers appointed by Paramount would just ignore him and do whatever they wanted. Though his creative vision launched the original series (as well as The Next Generation), the franchise really took flight — if you’ll forgive the cornball analogy — under the auspices of subsequent custodians, like Nicholas Meyer and Rick Berman. (That’s a debate that probably deserves its own post.)
Norman Lear, for sure — very celebrated showrunner, and rightfully so. But Whedon, for reasons I address in my reply to Jacqui above, was the first modern-era showrunner (meaning post–NYPD Blue) to inspire a cult of hero worship on a level we’d just never seen before (not in television, anyway; only in cinema). Because of his geek-outsider credentials, and the fact that he was reclaiming creative control of a concept that had been (by his appraisal) butchered by the Kuzuis, and that the concept melded then-contemporary teen culture with a sprawling supernatural mythology and comic-book sensibility, he managed to hit a very unique nerve. Accordingly — and this is the point I made to Michael above — fans related less to Buffy or Willow or Angel or Malcolm Reynolds than they did to Whedon himself. I mean, Christ: There’s an entire field of academia devoted to “Whedon studies”! That’s what makes him the first “rockstar” showrunner in my (admittedly subjective) estimation: not merely his influence on the culture, but the cult of personality that developed around him. And the fact that we now know the showrunner behind all our favorite series is directly attributable, I would argue, to the precedent he set (however inadvertently).
Thanks for popping by, pal! Hope you’re well…
This article makes an argument for J. Michael Straczynski
Straczynski, in fact, was well-known among the show’s biggest fans, because he was one of the first creators to communicate regularly w/ his fans online
https://www.techradar.com/news/is-babylon-5-secretly-the-most-influential-tv-show-of-the-past-25-years
To my regret, Dell, Babylon 5‘s run coincided with my time in college, an anomalous period of life during which I watched little-to-no television at all. (I think I’ve discussed that elsewhere on the blog, though I’ll be damned if I can remember where!) Even shows I’d watched obsessively throughout junior high and high school — like Coach and Seinfeld and Roseanne and Married… with Children — became casualties of a schedule that was so packed with a fifteen-credit-per-semester course-load, multiple part-time jobs (including at a mom-and-pop video shop), and dating the woman I would later marry; I’ve still never seen the later seasons of any of those series, just an occasional odd episode from them. To this day, I’ve actually seen very little of DS9, despite my passion for Trek, because that show also ran during those same years (I’ve had the entire series earmarked to watch from beginning to end for several years now, and I hope to perhaps finally get to it this autumn).
I also recall when Babylon 5 premiered that it drew many (unfavorable) comparisons to Deep Space Nine, and that it was sort of dismissively regarded — I assume unfairly — as the chintzier version of a similar concept, without the brand pedigree the name Star Trek carried. I recognize now, based on articles like the one you’ve linked to here, that it was a series far ahead of its time — one that required a bit more viewer patience than was the norm at the time to appreciate all it was trying to accomplish and innovate narratively.
To that end, TechRadar is probably onto something when it proffers that Straczynski’s influence on televisional storytelling is both underestimated and underappreciated. He wasn’t so much “rockstar” showrunner, I suppose, as a “cult band” showrunner, much the way Rush was a cult band for most of their career: If you were in the club, you knew how important and influential the work of both Straczynski and Rush were… but it was a relatively exclusive club, alas.
Part of the reason I make the case that it’s time to retire culturally monopolistic franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek — my latest piece, “In the Multiverse of Madness,” addresses that subject as directly and forcefully as I ever have — is because doing so leaves room for new creative visions to emerge, like B5 and Firefly and The Orville. There is only so long a franchise can remain innovative, the way Star Wars and Star Trek objectively were; after a while — maybe twenty years? maybe thirty? — innovation gives way to nostalgia. That’s why, in my estimation, Seth MacFarlane has had such success with The Orville: He’s unequivocally playing in the Star Trek sandbox, but he isn’t beholden to its medusan mythology. If he wants to do a story about gender reassignment, for instance, he doesn’t have to worry about whether that subject has been covered in one of the previous 8,000 episodes, movies, or tie-in novels, or whether it’s violating established “canon.” It’s the same way Firefly was arguably “The Adventures of Han Solo,” but without the canonical baggage.
If I’m someone like Straczynski, I’d much rather create my own space opera than take an assignment on the USS Kurtzman… but it’s a hell of a lot easier to sell a new Star Trek series (to the audience as well as the studio) than it is to launch a project from scratch like B5 and Firefly. MacFarlane understood that, which is why he sold The Orville as a Galaxy Quest–style Star Trek spoof before subversively backdooring into The Next Generation. He intentionally misrepresented what he was selling in order to get a studio to produce it and an audience to watch it, and then trusted they would like what he was offering enough to forgive him for his deception. In our Golden Age of the Mega-Franchise, that’s sometimes what it takes to get a new genre idea through the development process to an audience.
This is a really thought-provoking article, Sean. I enjoyed reading it very much. I feel a bit nervous leaving a comment, like I’m taking a step into a deeper universe beyond my ken.
I grew up enjoying shows like Xena, Hercules and Buffy, appreciating the strong leading characters who could both break your heart and kick your ass. I dug the writing, the comedy, the martial arts, and the growing depth of the characters- especially in the first few seasons of Buffy. I didn’t give much thought to the showrunner(s). I was happy to see Sam Raimi’s name attached to Hercules and Xena, probably what brought me to the show in the first place. But I’d no idea who Joss Whedon was and didn’t particularly care.
I haven’t re-watched Buffy since it was airing on TV. I enjoyed the viewing experience, then left it behind. Does hearing worrying things about the showrunner all these years later affect my appreciation of the show? Honestly, no it doesn’t. And I don’t think it should. He didn’t make it by himself. As other commenters have pointed out, it takes a huge group effort to make a successful TV show. Many people put so much time, effort and love into that show that it seems ridiculous to suddenly decide “Oh, I can’t like this anymore.” (And don’t get me started on the extremely worrying and growing “cancel culture” mob-mentality that has wormed its censorious and destructive way into our daily lives. That’s for another comment.)
Wakizashi! I’m so delighted you’ve joined the conversation here on my blog (Wakizashi and I “met” recently on Goodreads in a discussion thread about werewolf fiction, and he keeps a great book-review blog I recommend), but, boy oh boy, did you pick a doozy of a post as your first experience here! Just to orient you: I publish one post per month, but it’s typically a “deep-dive” essay; they average about 2,500 words, but this one was well over 3,000! The essays mostly explore the way narrativity gives shape and meaning to our lives, how it’s been corrupted by corporate “mega-franchises” that leverage nostalgia to nourish consumerism, and how it can be reclaimed as a powerful force for positive sociocultural and -political change. (I recently curated links to my highest-value posts on a “Best of the Blog” page.) My wife — whose wisdom I celebrated in last month’s post — once suggested I change the blog’s tagline from “Writer of Things That Go Bump in the Night” to “Highly Academic Discussions about Really Dumb Shit”! It pains me to admit that would be far more brand-accurate…
“Here Lies Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is an admittedly ambitious essay — I’m thinking now perhaps too ambitious — that attempted to cover a few (interconnected) themes, including the cultural influence of Whedon/Buffy, the third-wave feminist landscape against which both Whedon and Buffy rose to prominence, the creative opportunity straight white male storytellers have to expand their moral imagination, and advice from an Xer to Millennials about the perils of holding on to Buffy beyond her (already passed) expiration date. Even considering its length, there is admittedly quite a bit packed into this post. I have always treated my blog as an intellectual incubator: a place to experiment with form and content. Sometimes my reach exceeds my grasp. Was this one of those “honorable failures”? I don’t know — ask me again in six months, after I’ve had a chance to step away from it.
I’m glad you shared your reflections on Xena and Buffy, Wakizashi, because it gives me an opportunity to elaborate on a point I think is germane to my thesis: Most of the pop culture we consume — the movies we see, the shows we watch, the books we read — is ephemera; it’s something we enjoy at a given moment in our lives and seldom, if ever, revisit it. That’s how it’s meant to be. That’s why the handful of movies or books that we consider our favorites — the ones we make appointments to re-watch/reread every few years — have meaning, because we keep finding something in them that speaks to us in an intensely personal way. (For example, I once wrote about how Sean Penn’s Irish mob thriller State of Grace had something profoundly meaningful to say to me when I first saw it at 14, and then again when I rediscovered it at 41. I watched it again this past weekend for St. Paddy’s and marveled anew at what a masterpiece it is.) But most entertainment is — and I don’t say this pejoratively — disposable. We watch it; we enjoy it (or don’t enjoy it); we move on.
Some works, however, resonate — not just personally but culturally. They affect the zeitgeist. Star Wars is probably the reigning example of this: For almost 45 years, it has spoken to millions of people across multiple generations. And one of the things I’ve tried to do on this blog is show how sometimes a media franchise can become too important. I really don’t believe we were meant to still be consuming Star Wars stories half a century after George Lucas conceived it. That goes to one of my favorite Alan Moore quotes, “that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times.”
What’s more, the corporations that own these franchises have figured out how to weaponize nostalgia — how to imprison Xers in the ’80s and now Millennials in the ’90s. So, the last section of the essay above, “Where Do We Go from Here?”, is my plea to Millennials to not fall into the trap that ensnared my generation — to not carry around Buffy for the rest of their lives. And that would be the case even if Whedon himself hadn’t turned out to be such a creep! I look at my Xer friends, for whom being a Star Wars “fan” is the source of so much anxiety (and even anger), and now I see Millennials angsting over their divided feelings about Whedon/Buffy, and I feel like no one is telling any of these folks, You don’t have to hang on to any of that. You know? None of us signed up to be a Star Wars fan — or a Buffy fan or a Harry Potter fan — for life. The minute this shit starts to be a burden instead of a pleasure, let it go — and make room in your life for new interests.
But that’s easier said than done, because we are fighting a nostalgia-industrial complex that keeps us watching these mega-franchises by both leveraging FOMO (see it now before spoilers get posted!) and by hooking us on the dopamine hit we get every time we “spot an Easter egg” (WandaVision, for instance, was less about telling a cohesive story than it was about fueling fan theories about the broader MCU — and fans ate it up). So, it isn’t always our fault when we can’t let go of a “fan favorite” series — we’ve been trained (programmed?) to keep watching, no matter what.
Anyway, Wakizashi, that was your induction ceremony to my blog! I’m so grateful you popped by, and please do so again. And feel free to contribute as much or as little as you like in the comments — you’re not being graded!
Sean
I watched State of Grace recently on your recommendation. It’s a great film with some truly outstanding performances. I initially didn’t recognize Robin Wright in it; is this where she met Sean Penn? Oldman was his usual manic self. How was his accent in your opinion?
I watched the original Star Wars movie to death when I was a kid in the 1980s. I adored the original trilogy, but I don’t watch them anymore. I’ve succeeded in letting them go. That Alan Moore quote you cite is right on the money, isn’t it! Has anything else in pop culture had the same kind of impact as George Lucas’s original films? One reason I believe Star Wars remained so beloved for so long was because there were only the original three movies for over twenty years. Now it’s become oversaturated and lost its magic. Too much of a “good thing,” let alone the huge drop in quality in writing good characters and story. But yes, as you say, it is quite bizarre that we are still “consuming Star Wars stories half a century after George Lucas conceived it.”
“NIC, nostalgia-industrial complex” is such a cool term. Did you coin it? It’s going to be very interesting to see where we go from here. At the moment, it feels a bit like we are sliding down a slippery slope to somewhere dark and unpleasant. I just hope we don’t end up in Orwell’s Room 101. Oh yeah, and I’m so relieved to hear that you’re not grading me on these comments;)
Glad you loved State of Grace, Wakizashi! (The director, Phil Joanou, recently made the entire film available for free — in HD, no less — on Vimeo.) Yes, as I understand it, Penn and Wright met on that project. SoG was also Oldman’s introduction to American audiences — up till that point, he’d mostly only starred in British productions — though given the movie came and went from theaters so quickly, it was really only with JFK (1991) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) that we properly sat up and took notice of him. His accent is actually quite fascinating in SoG: He completely conceals any trace of a British inflection, but it isn’t what I’d call a “Noo Yawk” intonation, either — which is probably a good thing. He sidesteps the trap of doing a hacky “New York gangster” shtick in favor of creating something unique unto itself. Jackie Flannery is such a fascinating antihero: a sensitive thug. Oldman played him perfectly.
(One other thought on the matter of Oldman’s cadence in State of Grace: Not everyone from New York, incidentally, has an identifiable accent. My wife, raised in Queens, has quite a thick accent, though it’s diminished considerably after two decades in L.A. Still, if she’s just been on the phone with an East Coast relative, it comes out with a vengeance! I’ve been told by most New Yorkers that I have zero trace of regional inflection — I came up in the Bronx — but whenever I meet someone new out here in L.A., one of the first things I get asked is, “Are you from New York? You sound like it.” So, I guess I have enough of a tonal undercurrent that people from outside New York pick up on it, but it’s too subtle to stand out if that’s what you’re used to hearing. All that said, I find Oldman’s accent in that movie not only fascinating, but oddly soothing: I could fall asleep to him reading the phone book like that.)
Christ, there’s so much I could say about Star Wars, I’m trying to decide as I type this how far down the rabbit hole I should go on that subject. Most of what I have to say about Star Wars can be found in “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” but I do very much agree with your assessment that part of the fun of the original trilogy was that it was a contained narrative — a relatively narrow view of a more expansive universe only glimpsed or imagined from the intentionally limited vantage Lucas provided; accordingly, so many of the events that led up to A New Hope and away from Return of the Jedi were left gloriously ambiguous. When oblique references were made to things like the Clone Wars, we the audience were invited by the storyteller (Lucas) to fill in those narrative blanks.
And part of the joy of Return of the Jedi was feeling like the overarching saga was resolved, yes, but that each of us got to decide for ourselves what came next — we left the theater dreaming up our own Episodes VII, VIII, and IX. (We all had our own wonderful ideas about what happened to Luke, Han, and Leia post-Jedi, until all of that was obviated by The Force Awakens.) The power of characters like Darth Vader and Han Solo came from their mystique — i.e., not fully understanding how they came to be the people they are when we meet them. The gaps in the biographical records of those heroes and villains invite the audience to participate in the storytelling itself. That’s where its special magic came from!
I haven’t seen The Mandalorian — I’m finished with Star Wars forever — but one of the pieces of praise I frequently hear about it is that it doesn’t lean on the same old characters and conflicts that all five Disney-era SW movies do; it’s its own thing. And yet when young Luke Skywalker made a surprise appearance in the season-two finale, fanboys wet themselves — because they were flush with a nostalgic dopamine hit. And now there’s all this gleeful superfan excitement about Hayden Christensen potentially reprising the role of Anakin in the upcoming Obi-Wan series… as if we’ve all collectively forgotten how universally hated his performance was in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith! Huh? That’s the power of the nostalgia-industrial complex: It makes us nostalgic for things we didn’t even like the first time around! Cha-ching!
I did not coin the term “nostalgia-industrial complex,” no; I first encountered it in a New York Times article titled “Summer ’19 Brought To You By Nostalgia-Bait Movies,” and have used it ever since. If you want to see a really fascinating analysis of our culture of nostalgia, watch Patrick (H) Willems’ amazing video essay on how the Austin Powers trilogy inadvertently predicted it… and why we can’t move forward if we keep gazing backward.
Thanks again, Wakizashi. You are welcome here any time!
Sean
I have some books by Woody Allen. Without Feathers, Side Effects, and Getting Even. Funny as hell
But I just can’t bring myself to read them again
OTOH, the more I hear about Mr. Rogers, the more I hear that he really WAS like he appeared on his show, that he really WAS a genuinely good person
When I was in high school — probably around the same time as I saw Buffy in theaters, give or take — I’d taken a liking to When Harry Met Sally…, and someone recommended that I check out the films of Woody Allen, because Rob Reiner had clearly drawn influence from them, so I went on a tear, powering through most of Allen’s filmography.
Look, he’s a brilliant guy, and you have to admire any artist that can make a film a year for four decades and stay creatively sharp and culturally relevant, but I’ve been on the edge about him for a few years now, anyway, and Allen v. Farrow is the last nail in the coffin for me. I just can’t with him anymore. Same with Michael Jackson: After Leaving Neverland, I will change the station any time a Jackson song comes on. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t think either Jackson’s discography or Allen’s filmography should be banished from the cultural canon — I won’t boycott a radio station or cable channel for playing that stuff — but it’s something I am no longer willing to invite into my life. Each of us have to decide those things for ourselves.
Agreed about Mr. Rogers. We yearn to be reminded — now more than ever — that there really are upstanding, decent people in this world, and particularly in showbiz. That’s why we adore Tom Hanks so much (I mean, who else were they gonna cast in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood?): because he seems by all accounts to be a genuinely decent, ego-centered human being. We’ve indulged antiheroes for the last few decades now; I sense a longing for pure heroes again. That’s why I love what Sudeikis is doing on Ted Lasso: Just when we needed one, he gave us a hero who unironically exemplifies big-heartedness, kindness, courtesy, chivalry, forgiveness, optimism, cultural sensitivity, and prosocial values — and with good humor, to boot. These days, that is subversive.
https://twitter.com/Goodable/status/1373412882675826693
Indeed, Fred Rogers was a man of extraordinary kindness and sensitivity; he was “woke” long before that was a thing. I grew up on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood myself — I imagine we all did — and I lament that his brand of empathetic compassion and ethical reasoning was the cultural exception rather than the norm. We grew up and got too cool for it, I suppose. Too jaded. And — to be fair to ourselves for a moment — there were too many capitalists programming our television:
In addition to Rogers’ remarkable moral compass, it probably didn’t hurt that he produced his show in Pittsburg — meaning not New York and definitely not Hollywood — and that because it aired on public television, he wasn’t beholden to corporate/commercial interests. I mean, I look back at all the after-school cartoons I grew up on — He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and The Transformers — and it’s so obvious (in retrospect) they were toy commercials masquerading as narrative entertainment. Hell, there’s an argument to be made even the PSAs at the end of each episode were cynically motivated — merely a bad-faith diversion from the producers’ true agenda of pushing plastic:
And we were trained — programmed? — so well, here we are forty years later still letting the same violent cartoon characters sell us yet more expensive, useless merchandise. If only men like Fred Rogers had been venerated as the heroes they were, the lifelong role models they should’ve been. Over this past year, I’ve come to believe, with everything that is in me, that 21st-century storytellers have a moral obligation to provide aspirational heroes and prescriptive stories to help guide us into a new era of sustainability and equality for all — one predicated on an ethos of sympathetic coexistence, not extractive exploitation. We’re in a cultural “writers room,” and we’re being asked to help break the back of a new narrative. That’s the creative and ethical challenge of our times. When we start demanding better of our fictions, perhaps then we’ll begin to demand better of ourselves.
Support for your statements about the impact of fiction on our lives:
Adam Lee reviewed “Jesus and John Wayne” by Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, “… a history of white evangelical Christianity in America in the 20th and 21st centuries”
Quoted from https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2021/03/book-review-jesus-and-john-wayne/ :
>Briefly summarized, the book’s thesis is this. Over the decades, white evangelicals have constructed an image of their ideal leader: a man (obviously) who’s unpolished, tough-talking, and rough around the edges; who may not fit the choirboy ideal, but is unrestrained by political correctness or wishy-washy liberalism; and who, most importantly, believes that the world is a dangerous place and the only way to be safe is to be tougher than all adversaries.
>This ideal leader is always ready to unleash violence to defend his world – whether that’s his wife and kids, or Western civilization as a whole – against the hordes of barbarians at the gates. As Du Mez puts it, they want “a protector, an aggressive, heroic, manly man… someone who would break the rules for the right cause”.
>…
>Many of these pop-culture evangelicals drew their ideas about manhood from fiction, looking up to literary characters like James Bond, Indiana Jones, or Mel Gibson’s heavily fictionalized William Wallace in Braveheart.
End quotes
While I haven’t yet read the book in question, and have no idea how well these points are supported, if they are true then one can easily imagine how much better the world would be if those particular people had chosen different role models
Wow, Dell — thank you for bringing this book to my attention! I’ve just bumped it to the top of my to-read queue. You always bring something valuable to these conversations, my friend; you enrich this blog with your contributions. You have my sincere gratitude for that, sir.
I suppose it’s fair to say (based not on the book itself but rather Adam Lee’s must-read review), Jesus and John Wayne operates on the same premise I first explored here a few years ago in “Changing the Narrative” — that the stories we tell shape our worldview, and, correspondingly, our worldview dictates our perception of reality, therefore our fictions are all the more likely to become self-fulfilling prophecies — and it calls out the same archetypal “macho, red-blooded American male” that I took to task last summer in “Forget It, Jake, It’s Tinseltown.” That’s what I meant when I said the visage changes with each generation, but the “John Wayne swagger” that animates the archetype hasn’t particularly evolved. (To be clear: I am in no way suggesting these ideas originated with me or that I’ve somehow expressed them with exemplary vigor or clarity, merely that I am but one humble member of a growing chorus of culture critics arguing that an intellectual and ethical interrogation of our favorite cultural narratives and archetypal heroes is long overdue.)
And when you consider what a fucking phony-baloney Wayne was — an actor playing the part of a tough guy whose bumptious jingoism was pure facile overcompensation for his utter dearth of actual patriotism — it’s no wonder that the last great 20th-century hero of the political right was himself a B-movie actor who embodied cowboy diplomacy, and their new messiah in our postnarrative millennium is a reality-show host. The religious right doesn’t have any ideological convictions to speak of, merely “an image of their ideal leader: a man (obviously) who’s unpolished, tough-talking, and rough around the edges; who may not fit the choirboy ideal, but is unrestrained by political correctness or wishy-washy liberalism; and who, most importantly, believes that the world is a dangerous place and the only way to be safe is to be tougher than all adversaries.
“This ideal leader is always ready to unleash violence to defend his world — whether that’s his wife and kids, or Western civilization as a whole — against the hordes of barbarians at the gates. As Du Mez puts it, they want ‘a protector, an aggressive, heroic, manly man… someone who would break the rules for the right cause'” (Adam Lee, “Book Review: Jesus and John Wayne,” Daylight Atheism, Patheos, March 24, 2021).
On the matter of Reagan-era machismo, a few days ago, I came across an absolutely excellent reappraisal of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns for its 35th anniversary. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but here’s a key excerpt:
Part of why, in this post and many others on this blog, I implore consumers of pop culture (particularly but not exclusively Generation X) to leave behind the stories we’ve long cherished isn’t just because they keep us tethered to the past — because there is in fact value in those intimate connections, to the extent they allow us to maintain a sense of historical narrativity; consider, for instance, the way Biden is restoring our collective sense of goal-based reality by studying bygone modes of political calculus and nimbly pivoting accordingly.
No, I recommend we selectively let go of (not cancel) some of the stories we revere (when it’s appropriate to do so) because they wed us to archetypal ideals that may no longer be serving us well, a point I elaborate on in the comments section of that 13th Dimension article when I was challenged by another reader named “Tonebone.” We restrict our moral imagination when we continue to exalt, sans ethical interrogation, late-20th-century narratives like Star Wars and The Dark Knight Returns and, yes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, too.
In his critique of The Dark Knight Returns, Fred Van Lente points out that when we grow up, we realize that the pulp-fiction conceits that entertained us as children may not make for viable models in the real world — that “you can’t cure trauma by traumatizing others. You cure it through love.” But the legions of fanboys who’ve remained willfully addicted to those very superhero narratives aren’t learning those lessons — because they’re not growing up. They remain in a state of arrested emotional and intellectual development, in which “angry tough guys who break things and push other people around yet always see themselves as the victim” are the self-confirming expression of “a certain set of ideas about masculinity, race, hierarchy, militarism and authority” that give these manboys vicarious reassurance in a world in which they feel they have no agency. Case in point: The week the so-called “Snyder Cut” was released, this (and this) was the kind of shit they were posting on Twitter. Tells you everything you need to know.
But what if the storytellers went to work providing a new kind of hero — one who embodies compassion, sensitivity, and forgiveness? That’s what Jason Sudeikis is offering on Ted Lasso. And not just via the titular hero, either: Juno Temple’s Keeley Jones is also a person who holds herself — and those around her — to higher moral standards than your typical sitcom sexpot. All of the characters on Ted Lasso are fundamentally decent people. They’re all wrestling with some measure of emotional pain, and they make mistakes and ethically questionable judgment calls with regularity — but then they own up to them and try in earnest to make amends. And I’m not saying every story has to be in that precise mode — good people trying to do noble things (and sometimes coming up short) — but we can take certainly take a cue from Ted Lasso‘s exquisite moral imagination. As Van Lente so astutely observes, the world is full of Batmen… but imagine what it might be if it were populated by more Ted Lassos? Change the fictional landscape, and who knows — we might even change the actual one.
I’m indebted to you for your spirited engagement, Dell.