Hey, since Charisma Carpenter recently told her truly horrifying story about how Joss Whedon treated her on the set of Buffy and Angel (which was backed up by Amber Benson) there’s going to be an instinct I want to discourage:
The instinct to say, “Well, I never liked him anyway.”
Joss Whedon’s failings as a creator are well known. He’s a subpar director, he’s an at-best mediocre writer. But the thing is, when you counter the reveal that an abuser is an abuser by commenting that you never liked the abuser’s work, you are subtextually saying that if you did like their work, you might be a little more okay with it (even if you don’t mean or think that).
Abusers are very common in artistic fields, especially film, and are often protected by dint of being talented or commercially successful. The very idea of the auteur (that the director is the ultimate author of a film) is used to forgive or excuse abuse (so they’re forgiven if they do horrible shit to their cast and crew in order to realize their vision). Look at Roman Polaski or Woody Allen; The idea that their crimes were excusable because they were creating great films allowed them to make it to old age without ever seeing consequences for their crimes.
I’m not going to deny that Buffy, Angel and Firefly meant a lot to me, once upon a time, and up until a few years ago, they were still things I looked back on fondly. But that doesn’t excuse who Joss Whedon is, and it turns out who he always was. And he go to hell.
