I knew this moment would arrive, the moment when we have to talk about Joss Whedon, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and how the very first life lesson Buffy teaches us is not to have heroes. Or perhaps not to put anyone on a pedestal.

Why now? Well, because this week I watched Season 1 episodes 7 (Angel) and 8 (I Robot, You Jane), and the experience of being let down by someone is a recurring narrative driver.

Angel is the episode in which Buffy finds out what we suspected but did not yet know: Angel is actually a vampire. It seems clear there’s more to the story, but we won’t learn the whole story…yet. But we will learn that while he is guilty of hiding his true self from Buffy, he is innocent of the worst assumptions Buffy and the Scooby Gang made about him in the wake of the discovery. I’ve mentioned in previous posts how Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as a show, tends to judge its characters according to who their best selves are (or even could be) more than by their worst.

I Robot, You Jane may call for a whole additional post to talk about what it says about technology, the Internet, and the risks and opportunities inherent in progress, but suffice to say the central let-down comes in the form of the ultimate catfishing: Willow is falling for an online chatroom boy, the first guy who seems to pay her attention and love-bombs her. And then she finds out he’s actually a demon she inadvertently set loose in (not on, in) the Internet.

In each case, the disappointment is about more than finding out someone isn’t who they say they are, each character also wonders why they didn’t spot it. Why were they so gullible or trusting or even resistant to listening to their own gut until it was a bit too late. It’s classic self-blame the victim stuff.

At the end of Episode 8, Buffy, Willow and Xander have an exchange that is a little amusing, and a lot poignant. Willow is definitely depressed about her poor taste in boys, and what it says about her that the one guy who liked her was a demon robot. Buffy points out it doesn't say anything, because her main object of affection was a vampire. And Xander reminds us all about the She-mantis he fell or. All of which does actually make Willow feel better.

The final moment of the episode, they first laugh about the realities of living on a Hellmouth and how they're doomed and will never have a normal relationship, and then their laughter subsides, and they all look depressed about that reality is classic Buffy vibes. If you don't laugh, you cry, so they try to quip and snark their way through the absurdity of their existence, but every now and then it's comes back to them that it's also still kind of a bummer.

Joss Whedon, Buffy’s creator and show runner for the first few seasons, was explicit about Buffy smashing the stereotype of the helpless blonde girls as victim. But he wasn’t content to leave it at that; he explicitly positioned himself as exactly what a male feminist looked like. He gave speeches about feminism and equality (including at an Equality Now gala that one of my close friends and a fellow Buffy fan attended). Whedon gave interviews about writing strong women characters in order to advance equality. He put himself on a pedestal for a group of people (i.e. women) who are forever hungry for some non-woman to address the feminist struggle.

But as it turns out, he was just another ego-driven jerk corrupted by what he thought was invincible social capital. It actually started when his ex-wife wrote a pretty scathing piece about him not being what he seemed to be. But for a lot of people (me included) that was easy to dismiss or at least not dig deeper into…we weren’t in their marriage. Sounded toxic, for sure, but you know…he said, she said, and the truth somewhere in between, right?

It wasn’t until years later (2020), when Justice League actor Ray Fisher accused Whedon of toxic, racist, abusive behavior on the set, that some of the actors in the Buffyverse (all women, to be clear) divulged that they too had met the toxic abusive Whedon so many of us did not know (or want to believe) existed. It was like a dam broke, and we were hearing about verbal abuse, retaliatory casting and writing decisions, philandering within the hierarchical structure of a set he ran, racism, misogyny, and perhaps most shocking, that there was a policy that he was wasn’t allowed to be alone in a room with then teenage Michelle Trachtenberg (!)

When he had an opportunity to offer a mea culpa and sincere apology, he passed on that. He did this particular post-scandal interview that was, by turns, self-pitying, acerbic, full of denial, and without empathy for the outcomes related to his own choices. No bueno.

Offering and apology and taking some accountability might have changed the outcome for Whedon, but we got neither, and to this day he is far removed from the public eye. The scuttlebutt is that he quietly does some script-doctoring, but that’s about it.

In many cases I am fine with rejecting the art of an artist I detest. My day to day consumer choices are frequently driven by considering the economy “vote” i’m making when consuming, not wanting to put money in the hands of people or companies I believe are antithetical to my values. I absolutely recognize that if you scratch the surface of almost any person or company, you’ll find opinions and actions with which you disagree. But some people just make it so easy to see their venality and flaws. Usually this doesn’t happen with people who’ve created art I deeply care about…I am not and was never a Woody Allen fan, an R. Kelly fan, a Roman Polanski fan, a JK Rowling fan, etc. I can let their stuff go and do it easily.

Whedon hits differently.

From an economic POV he doesn’t own the IP anymore, but he probably does still make residuals from it. As do all the actors and other writers/directors, etc. The streaming services are very opaque about how they compensate artists and creators in general…if you pay a monthly fee for those services, do your actual watching habits influence individual residuals, or are people paid a straight licensing fee?

And unlike JK Rowling, who proudly trumpets how much money she’s pouring into her transphobic beliefs, we’re not hearing much, if anything, from Whedon. (I actually looked up his political donation record on the FEC site, and it remains all pointed towards progressive candidates and causes.)

Again, unlike Rowling, Whedon was not going to be involved artistically in the now-canceled Buffy reboot, nor would he be. (In case you didn’t know, Rowling is closely involved with the new HBO mini-series, an executive producer and supposedly involved in artistic decision-making.)

Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, has said she will forever be proud to be associated with Buffy, but doesn’t want to be forever associated with Joss Whedon. I’m sure she has to grapple with how to acknowledge that Buffy was a seminal work that helped and inspired countless people, especially girls and women, and that the work done on the series by those actors and a team of writers and directors and other contributors, is both brilliant ant important, and under the shadow cast by its originator.

I guess I come down on the side that learning the character of the originator, learning that that character is even more disappointing given what we were purposely led to believe about him, has to inform how we watch the series now. Cannot help but change how we watch it. And that it’s worth calling out.

Calling out the lesson that putting people on pedestals is risky.

Calling out that some choices hit different now.

They really do hit different, and I am trying to be mindful when they do, and to not just keep it to myself.

That’s my choice today. I reserve the right to change my mind, but it’s where I’m at. I don’t see how you can enjoy any work independent of the knowledge you have about the creators of that work. I’m curious if you manage that compartmentalization, or if you make different choices around this topic…and what those choices are. Care to share?

As mentioned above, I watched Season 1, episodes 7 (Angel live recap) and 8 (I Robot, You Jane live recap).

I think I really will talk most about episode 8’s take on new technology, and how eerily prescient it seems today, in a bonus extra newsletter soon.

The core #BuffyLifeLesson in Episode 7 is that we all hide our inner demons as long as we can. Relationships are complicated. People have secrets. Past loves. Inner demons. And though we're all motivated to hide those inner demons, not everyone wears theirs like a vamp face you can see. So beware, but also: Listen. Perhaps that demon is manageable. Perhaps it’s something you can live with. Perhaps there’s more to the story. Don’t be a sucker, but don’t think perfection is out there either.

The core #BuffyLifeLesson in Episode 8 is that technology and media and tools can be used for good or evil. At the end of the day, it is the humans who determine how any tool will be used. And it is also humans who can control for the evil usage. It’s like, hey, sure, guns kills people. But it’s people wielding guns that kill people, and people wielding legislation or regulation who can try to minimize the potential for gun-wielding people to do damage. Oh yeah. I went there.

Season 1 is two-thirds done, so we’re recapping our way to the season finale. And I’m wondering how these lessons land if you haven’t watched Buffy (or not recently anyway)? So, tell me two things: How Buffy-literate are you? And if you’re really not, do these #BuffyLifeLessons resonate anyway? And do they even make you want to watch the show maybe? 🤞🏼

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