A Lesbian’s Distorted View of Joss Whedon Deconstructed

Well I came upon, thanks to Fark.com, an article by this angry lesbian dissing my personal GOD, Joss Whedon. Calling him a rapist – how original coming from a lesbian feminist – and puking all over Firefly/Serenity. Well I wasn’t gonna take that lying down and decided to take her down. I’m such a geek so take this with a grain of salt and well its a long read.

I cut down the article a little because of much of the redundant dung that could be found in it and not to mention the large amount of feminist kookery. And by kookery I mean the feminist rhetoric that express masculinity as treatable disease and thinking along those lines I don’t know why I’m even bothering with this because frankly angry man-hating lesbians? Come on. She thinks I’m a rapist already, and yet has never met me, so what’s the point right? None really, but I just felt like vainly indulging in rants against some vain self-indulgent deluded feminist who attacks one of my rare masters.

A Rapist’s View of the World: Joss Whedon and Firefly

I have become increasingly interested in examining Joss Whedon’s work from a feminist perspective since I had a conversation with another lesbian feminist sister at the International Feminist Summit about whether Joss was a feminist. I am really quite shocked by how readily Joss is accepted as a feminist, and that his works are widely considered to be feminist. I decided to start re-watching Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and also to watch Firefly and the movie Serenity.

Let’s just begin with “lesbian feminist sister”. Really? How fucking more 40 years ago can this get? When I read this, I cringed. I just knew I was in for a shitload of feminazi bullshit… wait it gets better.

I have to say that now that I have subjected myself to the horror that is Firefly, I really am beyond worried about how much men hate us, given that this was written by a man who calls himself a feminist.

Men don’t hate women. But it’s obvious by reading what follows that you hate men. Calling men rapists with impunity is exactly what’s wrong with the feminist movement.

For myself, I’m not sure that I will recover from the shock of watching the malicious way in which Joss stripped his female characters of their integrity, the pleasure he seemed to take from showing potentially powerful women bashed, the way he gleefully demonized female power and selfhood and smashed women into little bits, male fists in women’s faces, male voices drowning out our words.

You obviously haven’t watched the Firefly or Serenity. Mal is a MALcontent and a dick, he’s the anti-hero who will end up, despite all his failings, saving the galaxy with the help of River, a girl. If you had ANY understanding of Whedon’s series and storytelling mastery, you would know that his characters are often deeply flawed and evolve over a long period of time into a better and good person. Even Buffy was deeply flawed and the anti-feminist personified.

The pilot episode, Serenity, was written and directed by Joss Whedon. The basic plot of the series is Malcolm Reynolds and his second in command Zoe, have made a new life for themselves after fighting a war against the Alliance, which they lost. They bought a Firefly, an old space ship, and Mal calls it Serenity, after the last battle they fought for the Independence. The pilot of the ship, Wash, is Zoe’s husband. Kaylee is the ship’s mechanic and Jayne, the final member of the crew, is the brainless brawn. This bunch of criminals go around stealing things and generally doing lots of violence.

Hmm Hmm pardon my geekery here, but it’s former renegades that are surviving in a galaxy run by an evil alliance. Their acts are criminal, but their goals are not. Frontier life, as depicted in this show, is violent. Deal with it.

They also take on board passengers. There is Inara, a Companion (Joss Whedon’s euphemism for women in prostitution). She rents one of the ship’s shuttles. Simon, a doctor and his sister River. And a Shepherd (which means preacher), a black male character.

The first scene opens in a war with Mal and Zoe. Zoe runs around calling Mal ‘sir’ and taking orders off him. I roll my eyes. Not a good start.

She calls him Sir because he’s the captain and she’s the second in command. In a command structure there are protocols to follow. But you seem to be too blinded by your hate of men and your anger towards them to see this.

The next scene is set in the present. Mal, Jayne, and Zoe are floating about in space. They come into some danger. Mal gets all panicky.

The next scene we meet Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic. <- Lookee, lookee, feminist empowerment. In this scene Mal and Jayne are stowing away the cargo they just stole. Kaylee is chatting to them, happily. Jayne asks Mal to get Kaylee to stop being so cheerful. Mal replies, “Sometimes you just wanna duct tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.” Yes, that is an exact quote, “Sometimes you just wanna DUCT TAPE HER MOUTH and DUMP HER IN THE HOLD FOR A MONTH.” Kaylee responds by grinning and giving Mal a kiss on the cheek and saying, “I love my Captain.”

Yes but subtly Kaylee often serves as the voice of reason in the show. What no props for that? Plus not all women are strong fighters. Some are girly-girls and that’s alright. Remember the Vulcan IDIC. Woe that may be to geeky for your non-geek mind.

What the fuck is this feminist man trying to say about women here? A black woman calling a white man ‘sir’. A white male captain who abuses and silences his female crew, with no consequences. The women are HAPPY to be abused. They enjoy it. What does this say about women, Joss? What does this say about you? Do you tell your wife to shut up? Do you threaten to duct tape her mouth? Lock her in the bedroom? Is this funny to you, Joss? Because it sure as fuck ain’t funny to me.

This says he’s the fucking captain and he’s the boss. I’m one of those Alphas you refer to later, but I learned to shut the fuck up because I’m not the boss at work and my boss rules the lot and whether his decisions are based on insane troll logic, I have to follow them because he’s my captain. His head will get cut off if there’s a fuck up.

Our first introduction to Inara the ‘Companion’, Joss Whedon’s euphemism for prostituted women, is when she is being raped/fucked/used by a prostitutor. I find it really interesting to read the scripted directions for this particular scene:

Once again you haven’t watched the series. Companions are in control in this series, both pimp and ho. Whether that’s right or wrong is not my place to judge, it’s a storytelling device. But please, enough with the accusations of RAPE. She’s not getting raped especially not by the impotent virgin in the scene you are referring to. She consented. And in the storyline, it’s pretty explicit that she enjoys her vocation. It’s just a series, not real-life remember?

But there is one really big question that does not get answered. The women who ‘choose’ to be ‘Companions’ are shown as being intelligent, accomplished, educated, well-respected and presumably from good families. If a woman had all of these qualities and opportunities then why the fuck would she ‘choose’ to be a man’s fuck toy? Would being a fuck toy for hundreds of men give a woman like Inara personal fulfillment? Job satisfaction? A sense of purpose? Fulfill her dreams? Ambitions?

Lady, you need to get out more. A lot of intelligent, accomplished, educated, well-respected women do some really dirty stuff for the fun of it. Not everything that gets people off is edifying. A lot of people like some really freaky shit for their sex lives. For a long time your orientation was considered a deviancy by most of the world, now it seems if you get any 2 girls drunk enough you can get them to do dirty things to each other without asking much. With the sexual revolution came the dark side of sex, now that everything’s out in the open. You take the good with the bad.

Money doesn’t seem to be the motivation behind Inara’s ‘choice’ to be a ‘Companion’, presumably she just ‘enjoys’ swanning around in ridiculous outfits. And being used as a fuck toy by men is seemingly a small price to pay for the pleasure.

The outfits were awesome for one. Then for 2, yeah, some women really love sex that much, what’s the big deal? There are consequences, but once again, IDIC.

At any rate, Inara’s apparent ‘power’ is merely a figment of Joss Whedon’s very sick imagination. In a later episode, Inara is shown to have set down three very specific rules in relation to her arrangement to hiring one of Mal’s shuttles as her base of operations. 1) No crew member, including the Captain would be allowed entrance to the shuttle without Inara’s express invitation. 2) Inara refuses to service the Captain nor anyone under his employ. And 3) the Captain cannot refer to Inara as a whore.

Mal agrees to all of these rules but he breaks every single one of them. Blatantly and deliberately. The third thing that Mal says in the first interaction between Inara and Mal is, “She’s a whore…” Does Inara stop him from calling her a whore? Nope. She just goes on smiling and being gracious. So he calls her a whore again. Lovely man this Mal is, dontcha think?

Back to my Mal is a prick argument, up there. In the end he’s a changed man.

In regards to her servicing the crew, she begins to service the Captain and the male passengers of the ship from day one. The following is an excerpt from the script of Serenity. Book is a black male character. He is a Preacher and disapproves of Inara’s ‘profession’.

BOOK Is this what life is, out here?

INARA Sometimes.

BOOK I’ve been out of the abbey two days, I’ve beaten a Lawman senseless, I’ve fallen in with criminals… I watched the captain shoot a man I swore to protect. And I’m not even sure if I think he was wrong.

INARA Shepherd…

He is shaking a bit, tearing up.

BOOK I believe I just… (a pained smile) I think I’m on the wrong ship.

INARA Maybe. Or maybe you’re exactly where you ought to be.

He lowers his head. She puts her hand on it, a kind of benediction. We hold on them a second.

It is clear from the outset that a large part of Inara’s service involves addressing issues of male inadequacy and fulfilling many other emotional needs of her clients. The ability to do this IS a resource and it is therefore a service that Inara must perform. BUT Inara services all of the male passengers and the Captain in this way. She also services Kaylee but the relationship between them is a little more reciprocal. In any case, Mal makes it pretty obvious that he expects his emotional needs to be serviced by Inara and she willingly obliges. Mal also allows the male passengers to demand her emotional services and does not tell them to stop, despite the terms of his agreement with Inara. Inara is not paid by any of these men for her time, energy and emotional support.

OH COME THE FUCK ON! It’s pretty clear that by not servicing others, it’s meant as in sexual services. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t relate to the other members and never bonds with them. You are really fucking reaching here.

Given the fact that women are largely absent from the action and the dialogue of the majority of scenes it is unsurprising that the action onscreen is highly homoerotic. Men jostle with each other for power. Pushing each others buttons, and getting into scuffles. This intense homoeroticism is present from the outset as Mal asserts his rights as alpha male on the ship.

Women are NOT absent. Jesus Christ the best fucking scene of all the series is the “Nothing in the Verse” scene and that’s got an all girl scene. So please spare me the bullshit. And the whole Men Jostle [...]on the ship part… well the same can be said of women in real life. Women are highly competitive for territory and control with each other. I don’t see how guys fighting each other is homoerotic? Is this another one of those feminazi theories that men fighting are actually men who want to fuck each other but are too repressed to admit it? No, men fight because they have an evolutionary need to take out their competition for dominance over territory and mates. There’s no homoerotic underpinnings in here. Mal must assert himself because he is the alpha and well, the captain, if his orders aren’t followed someone must pay.

Completely unnecessary and unprovoked violence is a spontaneous result of this hypermasculinised male character. In Serenity, Mal enjoys using a character called Simon as his personal punching bag. In one scene he walks up to him and smashes him in the face, without any provocation or logical reason. In another scene Simon asks Mal a question and Mal smashes him the face again. No reason, no explanation, just violence. Violence is a part of the landscape throughout the whole series and Mal is often the instigator. He is constantly rubbing himself up against other men, and punishing wayward women, proving and solidifying his manliness through bashing the shit out of anyone and everyone.

Mal HATES Simon. Mal has no control over his temper. Simon is everything Mal despises in other men. Do the math. Oh and yeah, remember, this is a TV show, we need some comic relief. But he gets to bang… I mean RAPE Kaylee – I wanted to speak in your twisted language here.

Zoe, the token black woman, acts as a legitimiser. Her role is to support Mal’s manly obsession with himself by encouraging him, calling him ‘sir’, and even starting the fights for him. Zoe is treated as a piece of meat by both her husband (Wash, another white male) and the Captain. Wash and Mal fight each other for Zoe’s attention and admiration, both relying on her submission to them to get them hard and manly. In fact there is a whole episode, War Stories, devoted to Wash and Mal’s ‘rivalry’. By the word rivalry, I mean violent, homoerotic male/male courtship conducted over the body of a woman.

Holy shit you haven’t watched the same show as I have. Wash worships Zoe and is subservient to her. Mal wants Zoe as a best friend and sees Wash as competition for friend time, cuz anyone with a clue knows Mal want’s to jump the Inara’s bones. And put Zoe and Rippley from Aliens in a ring and I have no clue who would win that fight. Zoe fucking rocks.

Zoe is not shown to have a personality of her own. She has no outside interests, no ideas or beliefs, no conversation with anyone other than Wash or Mal. She has no female friends, in fact she tends to dislike women. For example, she is the first one to insult Saffron in the episode Our Mrs. Reynolds, calling her ‘trouble’.

Saffron IS trouble, Zoe had this female’s intuition thing going. Come on. Zoe talks with everyone, even Jayne and he’s a dolt.

Zoe, of course, is meant to be our empowered, ass-kicking sidechick. Like all sidechicks she is objectified from the get go. Her husband, Wash, talking about how he likes to watch her bathe. Let me just say now that I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour. I have known a black woman whose white husband would strangle and bash her while her young children watched. My white grandfather liked black women because they were ‘exotic’, and he did not, could not treat women, especially women of colour, like human beings. I grew up watching my great aunts, my aunty and my mother all treated like shit by their white husbands, the men they loved. So you will forgive me for believing that the character, Wash, is a rapist and an abuser, particularly considering that he treats Zoe like an object and possession.

HOLY SHIT! Wash is a rapist for loving his wife of color because your grand-pappy was an asshole to women. You are sadly wounded and broken. But you are also in the same ballpark as your average ignorant bigot and racist bastard. Most racist pigs have that one story of that one black guy who done them wrong 40 years ago, so now all black people are scum to them and they went on lynchings. Way to go lady you make this world a better place for everyone.

I also love how you completely omitted (just an slight omission I’m sure) how on this crew there is River Tam, a woman. Super intelligent. Super Strong. Extremely agile and a great fighter. A little nutty sure, but you wanted a strong female character, and in the story line she’s only 16. So eh wow. But then you barely understand what you see when you watch firefly. You can only see it through your angry feminazi glasses.

You can’t stop the Signal…

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