Hmm .. Whedon secretly a HeManWomanHater?

[viktor_haag]

Ran across this blog post written by a woman named Karen Healey. In it she muses about Whedon's tendency to (a) be a lot more careful with his girl characters than his women characters, and (b) to mete out grim outcomes for 'grown up' females in his series, especially those who are 'sexually independent'. I hope that's a fair summary, but perhaps reading the original article and associated comments is a better way to get a real picture about the detail of her point (and the associated conversation).

I skimmed, I did not read in detail, but I still couldn't help having this thought almost immediately: "Hold on a minute. How, really, is what happens to Whedon's 'women' any different than what happens to Whedon's 'men'?"

I was quite hard pressed, actually, to see any happy futures for any adults in any of Whedon's work. I'm not convinced off the hop that the list of 'happy ended women' in Buffy/Angel/FireFly/Fray/AmazingXMen isn't every bit as small as the list of 'happy ended men'.

In short, I'm not sure Whedon is so much a closet misogynist as he is a closet misanthropist.

However, I'm not really sure I have the energy to propose this idea and carry through with discussion in Karen's own comment space.

So, this post is more of an observation, really, or a musing, and not necessarily a call for debate. But feel happy to comment if you want to.

Comments

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

It's why many people think Whedon would be a good GM. A) Imagination. B) He drags characters over the coals, which makes for drama, which often makes for good RPing.

Doug.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Dragging characters over coals appeals to a subset of gamers though. I am one of those folks that don't particularly want my character to get smacked with all sorts of angst. (Like when your GM kills your pet dog for example... 8))

[thebitterguy]

Well, everyone gets a happy ending at the end of Buffy, if they survive.

Well, the characters do. The actors get a life of bit parts and Motor City Comic Con appearances.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I agree, but I think Karen's point was not that no-one in Whedon's universes gets happy endings, but that "children are good, adults are bad, vote labour, vote labour, vote labour". I think she has a point that "growing up" is punished in Whedon's universes over and over and over again. And more specifically, girls who "grow up to become women" (or who are women) get punished.

[mneme]

I think this is much more accurate. Whedon, in general, doesn't seem to think that happy endings make for good stories, so he doesn't seem to write them.