I’m not boycotting movie director Joss Whedon or anything. I’m just saying I’m not very interested in his movies or television shows anymore.
Look, I’m a Joss Whedon guy. I watched Buffy. I watched Angel. I was all about Firefly. I even trudged through Dollhouse even though absolutely nothing happened for a looooong time. I enjoyed his work so much that I didn’t even altogether blame Whedon for infusing vampires with souls. But that’s why I’ve been so curious why he’s taken the soul out of everyone else.
April 16, 2012 at 4:13 pm
I'm not sure you can say the Uglies series comes out pro-environmentalist. After all the society that exerts the strict environmental controls is the same society that drills holes in people's brains to make them shallow and unthinking and tries to keep them from doing anything meaningful– and the overlords DEFEND making people dumb by saying it's for the good of the planet……..
Just because a book places environmentalists in charge doesn't mean that it's saying environmentalists are good.
Also, Whedon does seem to have a very real concept of how sin is a choice… look at Dr. Horrible– even as he's singing about how he has no choice, it's obvious that he has a very real choice….
Sure, Whedon SAYS his favorite philosopher is Sartre, but at the same time, his work provides a really interesting jumping off point for discussions….
Also, Mal is really cool.
And the NCR says my writing is spamarific, so I'm commenting over here…… which is sort of annoying since I can't respond to the people over there. Argh.
April 16, 2012 at 4:22 pm
The Bay Line.
April 16, 2012 at 4:25 pm
I think Mr. Whedon is going through some bad times– either personally or creatively. I loved Dr. Horrible right up to the really dumb ending. (Is there such a thing as a Daemn ex machina?)
Could be explained by him trying to work through personal problems, or by him trying to make "deep, artistic" stories. (The hipster/emogoth side of that drives me insane.)
April 16, 2012 at 4:58 pm
Sorry guys, you lost me after Buffy and Angel. What these movies talk about is the metaphysical world, and because God is verboten, only demons are available to entertain. If all customers are aborted, Whedon will have no customers and will have to entertain himself, kind of like solitary confinement.
April 17, 2012 at 4:12 am
Infusing vampires with souls? Vampires are ghosts (they're basically the things from The Grudge)—they're nothing but souls. (Don't argue this with me, I write vampire books that incorporate the actual folklore of about twelve cultures.)
And Whedon, that slackjawed illiterate hack, actually has them angst about how they don't have souls—because apparently, they're still self-aware. It's not like demons are just using the bodies (a defensible theory of vampires); they still retain their identities. As I said on my own blog a while back, "Joss. Get out the crayons and construction paper, I need you to try to explain what you think the word 'soul' means. 'Cause, body-self dualism is bad enough: but soul-self dualism is just…it's just awful."
As for Firefly…any civilization that could terraform more than one planet in a few centuries would never fight the Independents or the Reavers—people who could terraform on that scale in that time, would never have to, they can build their own planets, and good luck living long enough for your conflict with them to be a "war" in any traditional sense. Leaving to one side the question, "Why didn't they just re-terraform the earth?"