Exiled to Sunnydale: The VULTURE interview of Joss Whedon.

As Sonny Bunch noted, there are people who think that this interview is favorable to Joss Whedon. Like Sonny, I heartily disagree with that stance. What comes across in the article is the portrait of a man who understands that he is in trouble, and more or less intellectually comprehends why, but still remains stubbornly certain that he really can’t be all that bad. Or, at least, he’s always been this bad; so what’s changed? Why has everything been taken from him now?

You can go round and round on that question: everybody agrees that it’s awful when bad things happen to good people, but nobody wants to be introspective about the sometimes selective nature of karmic backlashes. There could have been, indeed, other targets for the social media lightning storm that collapsed Whedon’s life. Ones that were equally worthy, too. But that’s not the same as saying that the storm wasn’t deserved. It was deserved. I hate saying it, because I loved BtvS and Firefly; but I can’t lie here.

My conclusion? Pray for the guy. Just like the rest of us, he rather badly needs it.

Moe Lane

PS: …No, no PS. Just pray for the guy.

5 thoughts on “Exiled to Sunnydale: The VULTURE interview of Joss Whedon.”

  1. And if you cannot find it in yourself to pray for someone as morally corrupt as Whedon, then you have a bit of praying to do for yourself.

      1. Perhaps y’all could ask for a sign – that Joss should gain the introspection he so desperately needs in time to lead a revival of BtVS before he dies…

        Mew

  2. May he seek forgiveness and find redemption

    (Shrug). I didn’t grok the “Joss Whedon is my master” thing back in the day.
    Now I’m in the “I’m glad lots of his stuff didn’t really appeal to me” camp. Especially since so many of his foibles are obvious in retrospect.

    But the people I knew who were passionate, vocal members of his fandom, and incorporated that into their identity?
    I’m not sure they’ll ever forgive him

  3. My read, based on this… he was a deeply toxic person who could make it rain. Hollywood is very welcoming to people like that, whenever it can get away with it. A lot of his toxicity was subconscious – he might have been lying to the interviewer, but he was absolutely lying to himself. That whole conversational dance thing covers a lot of deniability – internal and external.

    The real “sin” that crushed him in the end was that his version of Justice League was bad. If it hadn’t been bad, and Snyder’s hadn’t been so much better by comparison, he’d still be getting calls. It’s not like “I knowingly cheated on my wife for 15 years and used gaslighting to keep her from believing it” was enough to sink him, after all.

    I know I don’t want to be near the guy. I don’t want anyone I care about to be near the guy. I don’t hate him, though. I wasn’t one of the ones he hurt.

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