MOTHER JONES BY E-MAIL

«--Previous Post | Blog Index | Next Post--»

On Joss Whedon, Male Feminist

How I wish I'd remembered to link to this when I wrote earlier this week about the misogyny of the Horton Hears A Who movie.

It's Joss Whedon, the man who gave us Buffy the Vampire Slayer (go ahead and laugh—LOVED it), Angel, Firefly, and much more. Here's a guy who builds killer vehicles around strong, female protagonists and gets rich.

It's his acceptance speech for an award from Equality Now and is one of the best indictments I've encountered of media pack mentality, intellectual laziness, and the near impossibility of having a national conversation around sexism.

Problem is: people think merely asking a seemingly feminist question, while tuning out on the answer, will suffice. Also, the speech is hilarious. Whedon is riffing about all the poseur 'journalists' who interview him and ask the same question, one to which they clearly never do more than type up the answer: How come you write about such strong women?

Enjoy, with my compliments.

Comments

Yep, that is a great follow up to the 'A Feminist Hears a Who' editorial. There really should be a way to protect the intent and integrity of a person's work so that when the message gets distorted or changed, those responsible have to answer for it in some way. Can anyone imagine far into the future, when Buffy becomes part of the public domain and some Hollywood jerk does a remake, slightly tweaking the story so that Buffy is just a little dependent on her male friends, so that being pretty or having a nice figure is something she seems ate up about? To be frank, I've never seen the movie, assuming it would just be air, but now I'm going to take a look.

Posted by: Paul Miller on 04/13/08 at 6:42 AM Respond

*swoon*

LOVE Joss Whedon!

Posted by: kelly g. on 04/13/08 at 8:55 PM Respond

I was very impressed by the "interconnectedness" in Joss Whedon's response. First the fact that he realized the input of other people's influences in terms of his own mindset which allowed him to create those strong female characters: the influence of his mother, the influence of his father, the influence of his stepfather, the influence of his wife, the female friends in his entourage. Second, equality being seen as the idea of equilibrium, the feet-on-the-ground ability "to stand on the earth" rather than some lofty ideal to aspire to ...or give lipservice to. Impressive.

Posted by: Kathy Giannini on 04/14/08 at 4:36 AM Respond

Pop culture is a waste of time. Yes, even "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Look deep within yourself; you know this to be true.

Posted by: Zack on 04/14/08 at 4:28 PM Respond

Zack, look deep within yourself. You're a douchebag. You know this to be true.

Just because one is on the left doesn't mean that she can't enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Don't be so god damned smug.

Posted by: Brock on 04/17/08 at 4:24 PM Respond

Deborah, thanks for contributing to the destruction of the Imus program. The phony "aw shucks" routine is positively awful. Your solutions to racism which you apparently see everywhere are infantile and the just plain ponderous babbling is mind numbingly boring and uninspired.

Posted by: howard on 04/18/08 at 11:41 AM Respond

Thank you.

Posted by: Sharon on 04/30/08 at 12:34 PM Respond