Huh. I guess the Joss Whedon Rehabilitation Tour isn’t going well:
Joss Whedon’s interview with New York magazine was many things: a complete denial of responsibility for the pain he caused, a self-mythologizing “woe is me” pity party, and a not-so-subtle dig at the people he victimized. Journalist Lila Shapiro gave Whedon enough room to paint a terrible picture of himself, with plenty of paint left over for his fellow pseudo-feminist power-tripping ilk.
Bottom line, Whedon is the personification of the hateful asshole manager at McDonalds who is completely invested into making their overworked and underpaid employees miserable every goddamned day. Cruelty is always the default.
And I don’t care that Whedon is a gifted, award-winning writer and director. Too many idiots buy into the sick delusion that anything goes when you’re creating Art, even when it hurts other people. Yeah, I was an asshole. But I’m rich, and I won an Emmy, so it was worth it.
Omelet. Eggs. It’s still a lame-ass alibi. Narcissistic shitbags sure love using it, though.
But Whedon did apologize, however. Sorta kinda maybe.
“This was a very young cast, and it was easy for everything to turn into a cocktail party,” Whedon told New York. “Sometimes you have to yell”, he added.
Supposedly, the “yelling” got pretty bad. Michelle Trachtenberg (who played Dawn Summers, Buffy’s sister) said there was a rule on set that Whedon was not allowed to be in a room alone with her. Trachtenberg was fifteen years old. Hey, spare the rod, spoil the child, right?
Thankfully, Charisma Carpenter (who played professional mean girl Cordelia Chase at Sunnydale High School) isn’t having any of Joss Whedon’s bullshit:
“For nearly two decades, I have held my tongue and even made excuses for certain events that traumatize me to this day,” she began.
“Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working together on the sets of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel,” she wrote of the show creator. “The disturbing incidents triggered a chronic physical condition from which I still suffer. It is with a beating, heavy heart that I say I coped in isolation and, at times, destructively.”
Carpenter claimed Whedon found his alleged misconduct “amusing,” claiming he was particularly cruel to her while she was pregnant, even calling her “fat” in front of cast and crew.
“He was mean and biting, disparaging about others openly, and often played favorites,” she wrote. When Whedon found out she was pregnant, she says, he asked the actress if she was “going to keep it” and “manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and faith against me,” Carpenter alleged.
Speaking about her pregnancy and stress, Carpenter wrote that all her joy was “sucked right out,” adding, “I made excuses for his behavior and repressed my own pain.”
Thing is, although Whedon is getting his ass handed to him right now, some people are missing the forest fire for the trees. The most disturbing aspect of Whedon’s predatory behavior is how damned long he kept getting away with it. Carpenter was silent for over twenty years because she felt it wasn’t safe to speak up. Truth be told, Whedon isn’t an abberation. Not at all. In this ugly, misogynistic culture, Whedon is just the same old same old.
And when brutalization of women is normalized, bad men do bad things because they feel comfortable doing so, especially when they’re in a position of power. It doesn’t matter whether it’s at your neighborhood Mickey D’s or a soundstage in Hollywood, some men are gonna be the thugs who think rape is “sexyfuntime”.
Chris Noth of Sex and the City and The Equalizer was busted for being a creep who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Behind the scenes on Doctor Who, John Barrowman got off on showing his junk to actresses on set. So did Louis CK on Louie. Bill Cosby acted like sexual assault was an Olympic sport and he really wanted to win that gold medal. After multiple complaints of misconduct, Jeff Garlin was finally kicked off The Goldbergs. The monstrous Harvey Weinstein went to jail.
But don’t forget that the men who committed these crimes got away with it for years because even though everybody knew what was going on, these men kept on doing it because other men did nothing about it. For years women were assaulted, harassed or lost their jobs because of these men and other men did nothing about it. It was only when other women stopped being silent and started raising hell that these men faced consequences for their awful behavior and women shouldn’t have to do the heavy lifting most of the time because otherwise things won’t change.
If something ugly is going down on a movie set, the male actors can stop it. For example, Winona Ryder remembers what happened when director Francis Ford Coppolla was bullying her during the filming of Bram Stoker’s Dracula:
During a recent interview with the Sunday Times, Ryder recounted an incident on the set of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in which director Francis Ford Coppola urged the other actors on set to join him in heaping verbal abuse upon her to elicit an emotional response. Ryder said costars Reeves and Anthony Hopkins, however, refused to join in.
The scene in question finds Ryder’s character lying on a bed with Dracula (Gary Oldman), and he turns into a bunch of rats. Off camera, Ryder said, Coppola was shouting, “You whore! You whore!” in an attempt to get her to cry. “To put it in context I’m supposed to be crying,” she told the Times. “Literally, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu… Francis was trying to get all of them to yell things that would make me cry. But Keanu wouldn’t, Anthony wouldn’t… the more it happened, I was like… It just didn’t work. I was, like, really? It kind of did the opposite.”
Reeves and Hopkins knew that what Coppola was doing to Ryder was bullshit, so they stopped it. Now, as a counter-example, I bet Shelly Duvall wished Jack Nicholson said something to Stanley Kubrick when the director played sick mind games and verbally abused the terrified actress for a goddamned year while shooting The Shining. But Nicholson said and did nothing. It was no big deal. Same old same old.
The only language that misogynist jerks understand is “male”; they’re incapable of hearing the word “no” unless another man says it. Therefore, any man who claims to be a feminist ally is obligated to use this leverage when it’s necessary. If they don’t use it, they’re part of the problem.
Men can’t get away with pretending that nothing is happening and telling themselves that women aren’t being victimized and doing nothing and acting like Sgt. Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes anymore. If a dude’s commitment to feminism begins and ends with him putting a #Me Too bumper sticker on his Prius, he’s a fraud.
It’s just the same old same old.
JKC
Well said. Thank you.
Kristine
That poem. Damn. Makes me think back to all the garbage that went on at USF in the mid-70s. The stories we heard on Mondays about what happened over the weekend.
I haven’t read the Whedon interview. Heard enough to think I probably won’t. I was a late-arriving Buffy fan–I didn’t start watching until S5. I haven’t watched an episode in years and I’m not sure how I feel about it now. It’s harder to enjoy when you know what went on when the cameras weren’t running.
And then there’s Keanu Reeves, who keeps showing this good, decent face.
stinger
Thank you.
Roger Moore
The problem is that the normalization means the “give them enough rope” approach won’t work. There will be a lot of men who happily accept whatever excuses their fellow men give for their misbehavior, so giving them the publicity to tell their side of the story will help them rally people to their side.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kristine: What makes Keanu so remarkable for me is he manages to remain a compassionate human being while the toxic culture surrounding him would make it so easy for him not to be.
The Thin Black Duke
@Roger Moore: Thing is, the people who buy into Whedon’s bullshit are the same people who have already made up their minds. They’re already a lost cause.
Baud
Assholes suck.
Lacuna Synecdoche
The Think Black Duke @ Top:
To be fair, the article makes clear that incident occured during the final season, which would make Trachtenberg at least 16, more likely 17, at the time.
That doesn’t really change the overall critique, just setting it out there for accuracy.
Professor Bigfoot
Got-damn, dead, spot TF on. Bloody well said, sir.
AM in NC
Thank you so much for this. As a woman, I know that far too many male assholes only understand “male”. Dudes gotta step up and call that shit out – especially because so much of the underlying talk that normalizes predatory male behavior takes place ONLY around other men.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Thin Black Duke: that man is one of the very few about whom there is simply NO negative reporting (aside, of course, from criticism of his acting)
I’ve never seen that man spoken ill of anywhere.
The dude really is the hero we don’t deserve.
Nancy
“The only language that misogynist jerks understand is “male”; they’re incapable of hearing the word “no” unless another man says it.”
Thank you for saying this. Sadly, more powerful than if I say it.
WaterGirl
Thanks for this post.
@Kristine: Great post. That poem, though. It was hard to listen to all the way to the end. So brave. So much truth.
Roger Moore
@The Thin Black Duke:
I think you have it a bit backward. Yes, there are people who are on the abuser’s side and will never accept he did anything wrong. There are also people who are on the victims’ side, and once they hear their stories won’t be willing to accept the abuser’s excuses. Neither of those groups are likely to be swayed by whatever the abuser has to say for himself. But there are also people who are willing to listen to both sides of the story, and my impression is that most people in that category are trying to lend a sympathetic ear to everyone. Those are the people who might be swayed by hearing the victims’ side, or mostly the victims’ side, and not the abuser’s excuses. Giving the abuser equal footing will generally make him more sympathetic and make those people more inclined to accept, if not that he did nothing wrong at least that the abuse was in some way excusable as necessary.
geg6
Thank you for seeing us and naming, TBD. Wish more men would.
Scout211
Thank you, thank you, thank you, The Thin Black Duke, for saying this and for just an amazing front page post. Your words had me tearing up as I read through the whole post.
mali muso
Thanks for this. As a mother to a 5 year old daughter, I am sometimes overwhelmed with worry about her future and how to prepare her for the hostile world that is out there.
Miss Bianca
It’s always interesting (read, “horrific”) to me when I hear these tales of how directors would abuse women and children on set to get them to cry. Not men – women and children. Child star Jackie Coogan told stories of how the director on one picture threatened to kill his dog to make him cry. I mean, wtf? Think about that – and the structures of the stories themselves – that it’s *so important* to make *women and children cry* that men will resort to threats and abuse to make it so.
ETA: And hoo boy, does Coppola’s Dracula *suck*, btw. I caught it on TV a few months back and saw the scene in question. Mainly, I just felt bad for *all* the actors involved in that shitshow. All that agony for poor Wynona and it didn’t even make good art. I mean, talk about fucked up.
The Thin Black Duke
@Roger Moore: I think I understand what you’re saying. And yeah, it’s important to listen to both sides of a story so that you can make an informed decision. What problematic for me is that there are some situations that you can’t play the “both sides” card. For example, I know that cops have a hard, ugly and demoralizing job. Having said that, when I read the story about a cop handcuffing a group of nine-year-old black girls for being “rowdy”, that’s when “both sides” gets flushed down the toilet. There are some situations where what’s “right” or “wrong” is very clearly defined. Same goes for the story where I’m reading that Whedon was prohibited from being alone in the same room a a teenage girl. That’s fucked up, and I’m not going to waste my time arguing with someone who’s trying to see Whedon’s point of view. Some things aren’t that difficult to figure out.
MisterDancer
…I mean, I just did a post on MLK Day about “moderates,” and where that all-too-often ends up.
There were a LOT of “moderates” who “wanted to hear all sides” around Bill Cosby, too — until the weight of publically-reported evidence in mainstream media, became too much. (Yes, Hannibal lit the fuse, but that fuse could have fizzed out without victims bravely stepping forward, even in the face of NDAs and legal threats.)
And I say this because people forget the goal of #MeToo was to stop having only one side, heard. All too often, fame allowed one side to utterly drown out the people they impacted, and that needed to stop.
When people say they want to hear from both sides n these situations, they should also be saying our systems of media (much less jurisprudence) should allow for both sides to be heard. And they should be judging any silence not from the presumption of guilt (and we know we default to that as humans in this culture, legal system be damned!), but the presumption of high risk for speaking their truths.
If people say they want to hear from both sides, but do not factor in the massive social and economic risks/penalties for victims coming forward, then their both-siderism is as useless as the one practiced by much of our media, today, around politics.
cain
Great post and I agree 100%.
How is it supposed to work to get you to cry and also act at the same time? My anxiety is already acting up just thinking about the mechanics being done to make an actress cried. It’s just abuse.
Chris Johnson
Power is bad for people, it seems. Power did that guy no favors. He had some good notions and then got swept up in the power of being a TV showrunner, and then a blockbuster movie director, and I’m sure it’s possible to handle that with decency. I get that Whedon didn’t. I don’t think he’s a Weinstein: there are degrees.
There’s an excellent pdf on showrunning: https://qetz.al/thought-log/11_laws_of_showrunning.pdf
I would say the question is, how important is it to create situations where one person has to wield that kind of power? It seems to ruin people.
MisterDancer
And thanks, man, for putting this whole shitty business in a broader context. I think, sometimes, people look at Figure X doing Crappy Thing Y and think about it just from a “well, I never liked their work, anyway!” POV.
There is a reason this stuff comes up, and gets discussed, and gets clicks, and it’s not just because my rewatch of FIREFLY is “ruined”. As you say, it says something…not great…about how the Entertainment industry works, that we can all whip out a half-dozen examples without blinking.
JML
Whedon fundamentally doesn’t get that even if he’s a damaged person with C-PTSD (it would explain some things to be sure) it doesn’t make what he did ok. He still seems to think that he should simply be forgiven and told it wasn’t really his fault and allowed to continue merrily on his way with no consequences. People are still responsible for their own actions, even if mommy/daddy were malignant narcissists, your siblings were abusive bullies, etc.
Instead, as soon as he got the power to inflict harm upon others and exercise power over people, he did it viciously and destructively, using the people who worked for him as his own personal playthings. And he still doesn’t get it. He still thinks that he’s the one who is being treated unfairly.
Hollywood, like many other places (athletics, politics, education) is definitely somewhere that talent or the perception thereof has historically trumped all. You can be a giant shitbag, so long as you deliver on screen. Because this garbage is rampant all over the place: it’s producers, directors, and actors. Actors have been let off the hook because they were “passionate” or “method” or other nonsense, producers & directors get by so long as the ratings are up, the box office is big, or the awards keep flowing. It can be an ugly cesspool. (God I hope Keanu really is the consistently good guy he always comes off as. It’s be nice to have at least a few decent humans)
The Thin Black Duke
@MisterDancer: Well said. Thank you. By the way, have you seen the trailer for the upcoming movie about the Bill Cosby debacle?
Benw
Sorry to go OT, but I have a rant. This morning my kids’ school district made the COLOSSALLY UNACCEPTABLE decision to make masks optional in the buildings WITHOUT INFORMING PARENTS until an email went out at 9 am. After sending out an email last night that masks would remain enforced even with the ruling by that fucking asswipe judge overturning the Governor’s mask mandate. The schools WILL NOT keep our kids safe. My kids are now home but we don’t know what to do since the school district obviously CANNOT be trusted to keep their fucking word or protect the kids. Our friends who are parents of an immunocompromised child are BEYOND FURIOUS.
RinaX
Joss Whedon’s downfall is quite gratifying. I always has a problem with him, his writing, and his arrogance. Both Buffy and Angel became completely unwatchable in reruns for me years ago. I refused to give any of his other shows a chance after the way he treated Cordelia on Angel.
Him getting the Avengers gig pissed me off, and to this day the Jossier moments in both films make me wince. However, I take comfort in the fact that they played a part in leading to his comeuppance.
UncleEbeneezer
Excellent post. Don’t forget Kevin Spacey. Lest anyone think this problem is somehow confined only to heterosexual men.
SiubhanDuinne
@Miss Bianca:
Sorry to be That Pedant, but I think you’re thinking of Jackie Cooper (whose memoir was called Please Don’t Shoot My Dog). Although something similar could easily have happened to Jackie Coogan as well, and it’s just horrible to contemplate.
The Thin Black Duke
@UncleEbeneezer: Yeah, I know. Unfortunately.
MisterDancer
@Chris Johnson: Actually, from what I can tell it’s pretty critical to have someone who can make decisions for a work. Some shows, like KILLING EVE, cycle thru showrunners, but most of the best-loved shows tend to keep to one showrunner.
And, actually, the writer of that piece, Grillo-Marxuach, is overall (from what I know) an example of a good showrunner. His work on THE MIDDLEMAN and THE 100 is usually praised, esp. the former; and his one massive, ugly misstep with the latter is something he’s on record as regretting — and was a story issue, not a cast/crew situation.
Also recall that John Rodgers, of the Crazifaction factor, is also a Showrunner. David Simon has been praised not just for shows like THE WIRE, but for the cast/crew speaking positively about their experience — and how Simon took their criticisms.
I think, if anything, it’s the fact that these people tend to get poor oversight, and no guidance on how to treat cast/crew that helps create such monsters. “As long as you’re making money, we don’t care” seems to be a major issue with Leadership in entertainment; I’m reminded of the Kevin Smith story about Jon Peters’ obsession with giant spiders. To most people that’s clearly a sign the fella has poor instincts, but because of the way the industry works, no one put him in check due to past successes…until he started failing.
UncleEbeneezer
@MisterDancer: Thank you. It is the victims not the accused who routinely don’t get a fair hearing in our society. Contrary to the claims of misogynists and their supporters, it is the wealthy, powerful, male etc., will get their defenses widely heard, considered and deferred to, in our society. #MeToo was about reminding us that the victims deserve equal attention, which they far too often don’t get.
Scout211
As The Think Black Duke points out in the title: Joss Whedon Isn’t An Aberration, He’s the Same Old Same Old.
Ask any female. It may never rise to the level of Joss Whedon’s abuse, but no female I have ever talked to could honestly say that they had never had an experience where a male was inappropriate with them in their workplace.
And The Thin Black Duke is correct. We women have been coming forward for decades. But “locker room talk” is not a defense. And “she was coming on to me” is not the correct interpretation of, “Good morning, Mr. Smith.” Men are going to have to start speaking up more often and louder. Sigh. I just hope my granddaughters have a better time of it when they start their careers.
MisterDancer
@The Thin Black Duke: I read an interview with Bell about it yesterday, not caught the trailer. Not sure I can survive the rage-induced fury I’ll have watching it, to be honest. :(
The Thin Black Duke
@RinaX: Do you know what sucks? So many of my gay friends have referred to this scene as a wonderful example of what you’re supposed to do as a straight person when a friend comes out to you. It brings tears to my eyes very time I come across it. Damn you, Whedon.
UncleEbeneezer
@The Thin Black Duke: I’m sure there’s all sorts of examples of predatory behavior aimed at men in the fashion industry.
oldster
Good post, TBD. Thanks.
trollhattan
@MisterDancer: IDK if I’m down for this–movies and shows about “a beloved monster” aren’t entertainment, per se. Wonder what the angle will be?
The Thin Black Duke
@trollhattan: From what I’ve seen, the former jello pudding sales guy doesn’t come across too well.
randy khan
I propose a two-part test:
If someone is abusive towards women on set (or anywhere) and not men, that person is a misogynist and shouldn’t be working in the business.
If someone is abusive towards men and women on set (or anywhere), that person is an abusive jerk and shouldn’t be working in the business.
MisterDancer
@trollhattan: I can strongly recommend the interview with Bell I mentioned, for “the angle”. It’s multiple angles, in fact, which makes sense because Bill Cosby is a complex figure, especially in the Black community. And there’s more:
And there’s more. Really, just read the whole thing, I don’t want to put words in Bell’s mouth. :)
JWR
“Too many idiots buy into the sick delusion that anything goes when you’re creating Art, even when it hurts other people.”
I learned about another creep today. Excellent post.
The Thin Black Duke
@randy khan: I’m down with that. For example, Epstein and Maxwell should have been buried underneath the jail years ago.
jo6pac
I’m a big Buffy fan and his other TV shows. What a truly awful person he is and I’m glad this all has come out but will stop his career? Sadly I don’t think so.
PJ
@Chris Johnson: There’s a quote that I’m mangling here (and I can’t remember who said it originally – probably someone 3000 years ago), but it’s not that power corrupts everyone, but that power shows you who people really are. There are people without power that you probably would never know are “bad”, simply because they don’t have the opportunity to do things without feeling the consequences, but once they get the power, they will do the bad things, just because they can.
Joss Whedon wasn’t a “good guy” that the pressures of TV production turned into a raging asshole; he was a raging asshole (see his behavior in college) that, once he became a showrunner, finally had the opportunity to terrorize and harrass people and dove right in.
WaterGirl
@Lacuna Synecdoche: Sounds like she may have been 15 when she started and that there were enough issues that he wasn’t allowed to be in a dressing room with her – I don’t know but I am guessing that the bad behavior and that rule likely didn’t start in the final season.
Subsole
@Miss Bianca: The smaller and more insignificant the kingdom, the more monstrous and cruel the tyrant.
JML
@jo6pac: well, it might? his star has fallen now that he couldn’t fix Justice League and he was yanked off The Nevers. I don’t think anyone is particularly interested in handing him a big pile of money to do whatever he wants right now, and realistically he hasn’t had a hit since The Avengers. (Age of Ultron was financially successful but a huge mess, The Nevers wasn’t exactly a runaway, Justice League was a crap-fest that he arguably made worse, he wasn’t really very involved in Agents of SHIELD and that’s ended now). So you factor in the bad press any Joss vehicle would get right now and he’s probably on the bench for a good long while. But it goes back to the basic problem: Hollywood would be burying all of this if he was still making hits.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Professor Bigfoot: heck, they were praising the sleeze bag as some kind of feminist icon.
bluefoot
Thanks for this. This behavior and its pervasiveness isn’t limited to Hollywood.
In my experience, part of the reason people with power openly behave badly is because that’s how they signal they are powerful. Mostly they are signalling to each other – it’s a display of in-group status. The rest of us are just props for their status displays.
Almost Retired
To some points made above about the motivation or obtaining the point of view of the alleged harasser, in sexual harassment law, the harasser’s motivation or intent is irrelevant. It’s the objective and subjective effect on the victim that matters. It doesn’t matter to the victim (or the law) what the harasser’s purpose was. “I wasn’t trying to make her uncomfortable” is not a defense, legally or morally.
Subsole
@MisterDancer:
Wait, what about the spiders now?
Geeno
Keanu Reeves was just a couple years removed from Bill & Ted stuff when making that movie. The Matrix, Constantine, John Wick – all in the future. Someone like Coppola could’ve smothered his career in its infancy. How much easier did the more experienced Oscar-winning Hopkins make it to do the right thing by doing the right thing?
No one wants to go alone, and it’s hard to go first, but someone has to.
The Thin Black Duke
@bluefoot: It doesn’t help that this culture loves to deify assholes with money.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well yes, of course, false accusations of rape against black men has been been a common game since like forever. It is like in Cosby’s case Cosby was able to use that reasonable skepticism to hide it behind.
The more one thinks about Cosby the more weirder he becomes, it’s not like the dude didn’t have the charisma to get all the female attention he could want, nor as far as I am aware, people accuse Cosby of being an asshole off stage like say Weddon here. So, WTF, this some deranged “everyone needs a hobby” thing?
Sure Lurkalot
@Scout211:
But “voices carry” only (or especially) when men speak up about other men’s behavior.
There’s a whole lot of abuse happening…the offense, a world fashioned where it’s prudent that the offense be hidden or suppressed, where the abused are not believed, the abused need to rely on others to be credible.
The Thin Black Duke
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Thugs like Cosby especially like to abuse the women that say “no”, because they like to see the look on their faces.
MisterDancer
@Subsole: So…the video is in 2 parts (due to old YouTube rules), esp. annoying because it cuts off in middle of the spider discussion:
(Content Warning for language, esp. homophobic stuff)
And ironically given today’s topic, Peters paid out for a sexual harassment lawsuit over the Superman movie he eventually did make…which did not have a spider, but had lots of other stupid stuff, in my opinion.
Nicole
@SiubhanDuinne:
Jackie Coogan’s mom and stepdad stole all his money. In the wake of him having to sue them, and finding out they’d spent everything, California created the “Coogan Account,” a bank account specifically for child actors, in which 15% of the child’s earnings is to be directly deposited, to be held until the child turns 18. So now parents can only steal 85% of their child star’s earnings.
(Technically, all money earned by a child actor on productions based out of California is the child’s, but only 15% goes directly into the Coogan account where nobody can touch it)
WereBear
@The Thin Black Duke: You don’t know it came from him. Also, his first wife has revealed just how much she contributed to his work, all unspoken and unpaid…
It’s a collaborative industry and a gem of a scene could come from any direction.
Whedon reminds me of the conclusion of Tony Soprano’s therapy; they just got better excuses.
NeenerNeener
Barrowman showed his junk to women? I guess it really is all about the power trip then.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: You are right, and I am wrong. I bow to your always excellent grasp of relevant factoids, Mob Enforcer, and not only because I’m trying to protect my kneecaps!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Thin Black Duke: I thought in Cosby’s case he would drug them so they were unconscious.
West of the Rockies
Amazing how many people rally around and protect abusive men (Whedon, R. Kelly, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby). It’s ludicrous.
Eggbert
Source re Louis CK?
I had never seen an allegation that he exposed himself to anyone on set.
Nicole
Oh! Can we add the actor who (was) playing Harry Potter on Broadway? The actor playing Ginny Potter filed a complaint against him in November. He was pulled from the show, investigation launched and they just this week publicly announced he was fired.
I am pleasantly surprised, as it didn’t take a guy backing up the accusation for the theater to pull James Snyder from the show. Because the frustrating thing about Whedon is that Charisma Carpenter was public for years over Whedon’s rage at her for getting pregnant but crickets was all you heard; it didn’t affect his professional reputation one whit. It wasn’t until Ray Fisher (a guy) spoke up that the floodgates opened. Mind you, I’m not taking away from Fisher’s courage; his career appears to have taken a pretty big hit over his refusal to shut up and go away and a film career is a huge, huge thing for a gifted young actor to be willing to sacrifice. It’s just that it often seems like these things don’t get opened up until a man says something- the stuff about Cosby wasn’t really a secret (at the very least, it was pretty well known he was terrible to work with), but it was a standup routine from a guy that started the ball rolling.
But yeah, as others said above, this is hardly unique to entertainment. It’s everywhere.
The Thin Black Duke
@WereBear: You’re right. I apologize for not giving credit where credit was due. The amazing Marti Noxon wrote that sequence with Willow and Cassie.
laura
And when brutalization of women is normalized, bad men do bad things because they feel comfortable doing so
When hasn’t, when isn’t the brutalization of women normalized? It’s the air we breath, it’s the water we swim in, it’s the reality for more that half the world’s population and has been since forever as far as I can tell.
I can remember my first blatant sexual humiliation at 17 like it was 5 minutes ago even though I am an old. Since then I’ve seen both squat & diddly by men collectively to change the culture. Like everything else, I’ve seen and benefitted from the efforts of women to fight and demand the most basic of rights and agency, but I’m inured to the reality that power concedes nothing without a fight. Roe is going to be deader than a doornail just in time for summer hijinks. Bounty hunting women is on the way. I’m never going to see the white male patriarchy burnt to the fucking ground, but I dream of it constantly.
Also, I’m so grateful that you are now a front pager TBD, your writing is as elegant as your nym. When watergirl organizes the zoom with W Kamau Bell, this joint will be hoppin! Keep bringing fresh stuff, keep moving the conversation forward and so many side ways. Thank you a bunch.
Brachiator
This is an ongoing problem in the entertainment and arts industries. Movies, music, theater. It is often about exploitative and predatory behavior. And it is not just about straight men being predators. Read some history of the Hollywood studio system. William Haines, one of the early Hollywood stars, and openly gay, was for a time a kept man, hired out by powerful women. There were orgies, gay, straight and whatever, where bosses paid or coerced young men and women to cater to various desires.
But the focus was often on young women, definitely. Early on Joan Crawford was signed to a six month contract by her studio. This meant that if she were not assigned a movie, and no one considered her to be that talented, she had to be available to be the “date” for various men as favors to the studio bosses. Many of the women signed onto these types of contracts were never able to get out of these tawdry arrangements and go on to have real careers.
More recently, the showrunner for the Hawaii 5O reboot was fired, largely because he was abusive towards the stars of the show. He was particularly abusive towards one of the main female leads.
There is often a perverse element at play here where people who are jealous of young, talented and beautiful people, have a burning need to bring these people down, to defile them, to feel that if they can abuse them, then their own self-worth has been enhanced.
They also know that there is a steady stream of potential victims pouring in, so these people feel that they never have to stop or be careful.
And yeah, there are variations of this in other institutions, churches, the Boy Scouts, college and Olympic athletics.
There have been recent stories about how the country music scene is in deep denial over abuses there. It is convenient to believe that the problem is in godless, non-Christian Hollywood, not with the good old boys who love Jesus and whiskey.
The Thin Black Duke
@Eggbert: Yeah, he did.
.
Wvng
@Chris Johnson: I think it’s men in power generally, not just in show business by any means. As a male I find that deeply depressing.
WaterGirl
@Almost Retired: So for once, “intent” doesn’t matter. Very interesting.
The Thin Black Duke
@laura: Thank you, laura.
trollhattan
@MisterDancer: If the show revolves around letting the women speak, then I get how it can be a net positive.
It does bug me he’s out, if not technically free. I can’t imagine how the victims must feel.
villiageidiocy
@JML: I so agree with this. Being a broken human, in and of itself, does not exempt you from being a decent person. It makes being a decent person harder, but you are still obliged to manage your own behavior as best you can. If you can’t, well, the rest of us get to decide whether we have to tolerate your company. Simply recognizing your brokeness, acknowledging your shittiness, even apologizing for it, is not sufficient to let you back in the door. Buddy you got work to do — you can ask for help or go it alone, — either way is fine. But if you aren’t making a real effort toward managing your issues, then you don’t really know what the problem is and all I see are crocodile tears.
WaterGirl
@West of the Rockies:
Brachiator
@Wvng:
It is not just men. Some people in power covet the young, the beautiful, the talented.
Nicole
@Wvng:
Yeah. Although there is also a pervasive culture in film/tv that yelling and shouting is how you show YOU CARE, MAN. I talked once with a makeup artist who mentioned she had just finished working on an independent film with an all-woman production team and said she started getting anxious in the production meetings… because no one ever interrupted her when she was speaking; they let her complete her thoughts. She was not accustomed to being treated with that kind of respect. As I recall, I think she said the shoot ended on time and on budget, so the aggressive yellyellscreamscream culture on a lot of sets is not necessary to producing good work on budget. Hell, as the excerpt from Winona Ryder points out, screaming can have the opposite effect; the screamer gets exactly what the DON’T want.
(Bram Stoker’s Dracula is so not a good movie. I mean, jesuschrist, Mina Harker is a far more dynamic, active character in the original book and that was written in the freaking 1880s! There was nothing anyone could have done with that dishrag of a film role.)
satby
wanted to see it again and thank Thin Black Duke again, because it’s so true.
satby
@SiubhanDuinne: Margaret O’Brien’s mother was the one tormenting her with terrible images during filming to make her cry. It never surprises me when a child star turns out to be a mess as an adult.
Roger Moore
@Chris Johnson:
My gut feeling is that power is worse for people who are already damaged. Somebody who’s basically a decent person who cares about the people around them can manage to keep their soul intact when they are given great power. Someone who is already damaged is much less likely to succeed at that. Instead, they’ll use the power to indulge their worst impulses. This isn’t 100%- an otherwise decent person can lose themselves in the power, and a damaged person might avoid temptation- but that’s the way the smart money bets.
Of course this applies to any kind of power. That’s why it’s so important to give people plenty of try-outs along the way. It gives you a chance to find the damaged people who will let power go to their head as early as possible. It’s an important reason why we want politicians to work their way up the ladder rather than jumping from private citizen to president; we need to see how they do with lesser power before giving them greater power. Again, it’s not perfect, but it’s much more likely that someone who didn’t abuse their power as governor will manage to avoid the dangers of power as president than someone who was never tested.
FelonyGovt
Working as a staff attorney in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I was frequently shocked by the words and actions of some of my male colleagues when no one else was around, for example away on a business trip. Part of the problem was that decent men had a tough time believing that another man would actually say or do such things. I think that still obtains to some extent.
(Of course this is a different issue than someone who is abusive in front of a whole cast).
VeniceRiley
Well said.
I’ll be waiting for the men to get right on that./s
BTW have we memory holed John Lasseter and Les Moonves?
MisterDancer
@Eggbert: (sigh) Barrowman’s…this exposing his junk thing has been known for a while.
Here’s a pretty good summary of the allegations: https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/john-barrowman-flashing-doctor-who/
The Thin Black Duke
@satby: Sometimes it’s the parents of child actors who are the real monsters. Jaid Barrymore, Drew’s Mom, used her daughter’s fame to attend lavish Hollywood parties. Never mind that Drew was still a child.
JML
@Nicole: well, let’s be honest about it: part of the reason Ray Fisher has been taking swings is because his part got substantially cut in the effort to make Justice League a 2 1/2 hour movie instead of a 4 hour movie, and his potential star-making turn vanished in the editing bay. And some his accusations haven’t held up very well.
With Hollyweird it always gets a little more complicated because actors can be malignant narcissists just as much as the directors and producers and will engage in unprofessional behavior too. (Charisma Carpenter, to her credit, owns this noting that she did crap like radically cutting her hair in the middle of filming an episode without telling anyone)
Joss Whedon being revealed as an abusive and unprofessional scumbag who has hidden a deep misogyny under the guise of an ally (and explicitly used that veneer to gain cover for his behavior) also doesn’t mean that everything everyone says about him is automatically correct or true. Ray Fisher got fucked by Joss & the studio in losing most of his part in Justice League, but it doesn’t mean that it was because Joss is also a giant racist and so is everyone at Warner Brothers…it could also be that his character was played by the least famous person in the cast and they cut down everyone that wasn’t the biggest stars to fit the movie into a shorter run. Was he unprofessional and dismissive and a total douche in how he went about it? Almost certainly, because he’s shown himself to be an arrogant, abusive d-bag. Was he motivated by race? Hmmm…
MisterDancer
My Partner is a huge DRACULA fan, and got me to read it last year.
I was so impressed, I’m (slowly, nay glacially) working on a Mina/Irene Adler (“The Women” from Sherlock Holmes) story. Both are characters — women — I hope to do justice to, as they’ve both been ill-served by adaptions, by and large.
The Thin Black Duke
@VeniceRiley:
Nope.
But we gotta make room for the bright and shiny new predators being added to the list.
Roger Moore
@JML:
That’s not quite the same thing, though. It’s really the failure as a director that’s doing him in. Maybe the abuse is turning into the final deciding factor on whether he gets one more chance, but it has only become a factor once the shine came off. If his last movie had been a smash hit, there would be people lined up to give him another job regardless.
The Thin Black Duke
@Roger Moore: “Power doesn’t corrupt. Power reveals.“
geg6
@Eggbert:
It’s the whole reason he was “cancelled” and he’s been whining about it ever since. There were multiple accusations against him. He’s an asshole.
Roger Moore
@Almost Retired:
I’m not sure if that’s true. Reasonable expectations for the job do factor into whether something is legally actionable. As an example, writers on TV comedies have successfully argued that raunchy humor is part of the job, so their constant telling of sexually suggestive jokes wasn’t sexual harassment. A director could argue their abuse was intended to get an actor into the right frame of mind for a scene. Of course that would be a much stronger argument if they were only abusive when the actor needed to be angry or upset for the scene. If they’re constantly abusing people regardless of what the acting demands, that argument would be more likely to fail.
MisterDancer
Do I really need to go into this? How horrific a stereotyped portrayal Kendra was? How Charles Gunn was originally portrayed, and how the “solution” they came up with was to have an Evil Law Firm download Lawyer knowledge into his brain? (Much less how he broke Charles and Fred up, just to pair her with…yet another White Guy).
Or the crap waste of Robin Wood on BUFFY, his legitimate and intriguing backstory reduced to playing second fiddle to Spike’s character arc+psuedo-consolation prize for Faith? Or the lack of Asian — much less Chinese — actors in any major role in FIREFLY, despite the claimed future Sino-American alliance background, and use of Chinese language and cultural artifacts onscreen?
YES. Yes, Joss Whedon has a long-standing and painful history of poorly developing, specifically, Characters of Color. Him choosing to cut out what little emotional resonance JUSTICE LEAGUE would have had (and does, from what I hear tell of the Snyder Cut) because it “doesn’t make sense”…and then to add in business like the Flash falling on Diana’s breasts for “humor”?
Good grief. Do not get me started, man. Folx who’ve been paying attention to Joss as fans of his work, we sadly know his flaws, and yes this was a big one. Hell, it’s easy to assume nothing like what Ray reported had ever come up before because Joss just never had enough Actors of Color around for him to treat badly.
Just because we don’t want to talk over the women who have very real issue with Joss’ web of lies, both as fans and especially as cast members, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have other issues.
Roger Moore
@West of the Rockies:
I think people tend to rally around and protect powerful people period. We’re just a lot more likely to object to it when the powerful people use their power destructively than when they use it for good.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Some people care more about the powerful people than their victims. Sometimes it is because they know or believe that those in power may help them one day.
And powerful people can use persuasion or force to make sure they get what they want.
Harvey Weinstein proved he had power by branding at least two actresses as “difficult to work with” because they refused him. They lost work and their careers were damaged.
This also sent a message to other people as well. Assisting people could cost you work.
Roger Moore
@The Thin Black Duke:
It’s a nice, succinct way of saying it, but it loses some nuance in an attempt to be short and sweet. Power both reveals and corrupts. The corruption is slower than the revelation, but people who start out just fine can become corrupted by continued access to power.
Miss Bianca
@MisterDancer:
Sadly, yes, I think this is most likely a correct take. I mean, I still love the guy’s work, but a deconstruction like yours makes its flaws glaringly apparent.
(I haven’t seen Dollhouse yet. Had been planning to watch it. Now, in the wake of all these revelations, I’d be almost afraid to.)
The Thin Black Duke
@Miss Bianca: See Station Eleven instead. It’s everything Joss Whedon isn’t.
Jess
This is a tiny little incident, but it left a huge impression on me. I was chatting with two men at an art workshop, one about my (middle) age and the other about a decade older, and the older one cut me off when I was speaking. The younger one intervened and said, “Hang on, she wasn’t finished,” and just like that the older stopped, apologized, and shut up. It was amazing. I felt so much gratitude and validation. I wish more men would start doing this.
Brachiator
@JML:
Ray Fisher was ignored until other accusations from white actors bubbled up. His accusations have held up pretty well.
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
Dollhouse is an interesting concept that should have been developed better, though it’s hard to know where to lay the blame for its failures. Its big flaw is very common with media built around some kind of exploitation of the characters. It wants to, and does, get into how nasty the exploitation is, but it also uses the titillating aspect of that exploitation to try to suck people in. It also has a very unsatisfying ending. It feels like they found out they were cancelled and tried to tie up all the loose ends in too few episodes.
James E Powell
Curious to know who made the rule & what prompted them to do so.
WereBear
@The Thin Black Duke: Fascinating. Now we both feel better :)
...now I try to be amused
This is not to excuse Whedon or anyone else, but John Rogers pointed out that most showrunners were writers before getting the job. That is, they went from managing nothing and no one to managing a complex project with a large team and a large number of roles, under tremendous pressure. It’s not surprising if many showrunners fail or become Mr. Hyde.
Miss Bianca
@The Thin Black Duke: I’ve read the book, and frankly wasn’t all that psyched about it. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t watch the series, but…let’s just say I’d hope to be pleasantly surprised
ETA: I don’t mean to say I hated the book, I liked it. Just not as much as I’d expected.
Brachiator
@MisterDancer:
This is not just a Joss Whedon problem, but an ongoing Hollywood problem. It may stand out more in the case of Whedon because his other characters were often quite well portrayed. The contrast is painful because often you can see the opportunities wasted.
Emma from Miami
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Eggbert: The reports are that Louie CK liked to masturbate in front of women. Sigh. Really. I couldn’t make this up. Several women comedians reported this, and this was what his fall was about.
Brachiator
@Emma from Miami:
Why would he think that pulling his junk out to anyone was funny?
Miss Bianca
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Oh, man. I only really know Louie C K from his stint on Parks and Recreation, which I loved, and made me think he must be a decent guy.
Really, you’d think a lifetime spent in the theater would have taught me by now that actors are *not* their characters, and that stuff I love about their characters? THAT’S CALLED “ACTING”, MAN…
Roger Moore
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
It’s more than just reports. He was unusually candid in admitting to it, claiming he thought at the time it was consensual and no big deal.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Miss Bianca: I know, I liked his last show a lot, and then this … I really don’t understand men and their dicks. It’s unfortunate, but really, the baseline seems to be “all men are dicks”, and then some men beat the odds and are actual decent human beings.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Roger Moore: That just amazes me. Why in the world would he think any woman would want to watch him masturbate?!? Ick. What a treat for the eyes. :-(
Maybe I’m in a minority among women, but I’ve never really been taken with penises unless I was actively having sex. I don’t want to have to look at them. Actually, I think they look weird, sort of raw looking.
Emma from Miami
@Brachiator: I’m not his friend or his brain. No idea. Juvenile sense of humor? However, according to one of the producers in the show, when he was asked to stop, he did.
MisterDancer
I was speaking directly to a comment basically excusing Joss RE: Fisher’s allegations, so I spoke about Joss’ specific history in that area. Wasn’t trying to tie it to a larger point, as I didn’t see the need to muddy the waters in my pushback.
And yes, it’s more painful when you see someone allegedly being Progressive around gender presentation, getting jobs and praise for such…and then failing to do so in other areas. Thus my frustration.
Eggbert
Sarah Silverman, her sister, and a number of other women have indicated that they said yes when Louis CK asked them if they wanted to watch him masturbate.
That’s a no from me, but different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
Ruckus
@The Thin Black Duke:
They are if you don’t want to actually know.
The word I keep seeing in my head is respect. And when that respect is not there, we have trouble in human city. As it always has been and always will be, in all aspects of humanity. Most people, but especially many men, have zero actual respect for anyone other than their heroes. And that reflects the world around them and continues the behavior that leaves respect out of most relationships, no matter their basis.
Just One More Canuck
@The Thin Black Duke: As a soccer dad who’s seen more than his share of abusive coaches, psychotic parents and entitled players, I learned a long time ago that sports doesn’t build character, it reveals character. Clearly, that applies pretty broadly
Roger Moore
@Just One More Canuck:
I will say more or less the same thing I said above: sports both reveal character and develop it. Revealing happens quickly, developing happens slowly, but they both happen.
WaterGirl
@Eggbert: I was trying to figure out why both of your comments went into moderation. The first comment with a new nym has to be manually approved, and i did that.
Then your other comment went into moderation. Looks like you have a “7” in your email in one comment and an “8” in your email in another. If you change your email, even if you keep your nym the same, WordPress thinks you are a new person.
Jinchi
Yikes!
They didn’t just threaten to kill the dog. They took the dog around a corner and fired a gun to make the 8 year old think they’d actually done it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOJQEHl9eDs
Brachiator
@MisterDancer:
And your comments here were right on the money.
Just One More Canuck
@Roger Moore: Agreed – in my daughter’s case, she was not a young prodigy, but worked incredibly hard to turn herself into a great player, a trait she also applies to her school work.
Brachiator
@Eggbert:
I didn’t know much about Louis CK, didn’t know his work and still don’t.
But this tries to confuse issues of consent. Louis CK, by his own admission, asked women comedians who were not his friends if they would let him do his thing. They did not feel totally free to say no, given how show business works.
This is not the same thing as asking Sarah Silverman, who was a friend of his.
And Louis CK did not ask his male buddies, “hey, can I pull it out and perform for you?” Wonder why?
How many people ask people who they do not know if they can expose themselves to them?
Jess
@Brachiator: I am in no way excusing men who do this sort of thing, but I’m pondering the question of why they would feel the urge to do so, and why some might convince themselves it would get a positive response. While I have certainly looked at other people with lust and admiration, as a woman I am much more accustomed to having men look at me that way back when I was young and attractive. It strikes me that many men (Not All Men [TM]) are so powerfully swayed by sexy visions that those who are not (like many women) have a hard time understanding it, even as we may play to it. Yet those men are not inspiring the same reaction, or same degree of reaction, in the women they desire. It must be difficult to have those feelings and not have them returned in the same way, and I suspect some try to convince themselves that showing off their dick and masturbating in front of women is as much a thrill to the women that it would be to them, were the situation reversed. Maybe this is why many straight men like to occasionally dress up in drag at sanctioned events (Halloween and such), and flirt with other men. They want to inspire the same lust that drives them, reversing what they see as a power imbalance.
Just some thoughts and speculations–not a solid position.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Emma from Miami: Why would anyone over the age of 5 think it was ok to expose ones genitals to co-workers at work. But he stopped when asked not to be a flasher…ummm ok…
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Jess: It’s not about sex, it’s about power. I want to do this, or make you feel that (embarrassed, afraid, powerless) just because I can. I could give a crap what someone’s intentions were. This is a god damn workplace for fuck’s sake.
WaterGirl
@Jess: If I had to guess, I would guess that the act of masturbating in front of various women would give that man a never-ending series of masturbatory fantasies for the future.
Not being male myself, I am perfectly willing to be told that I am wrong about that.
Emma from Miami
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I am not defending him, for God’s sake. But, I don’t know, there’s a qualitative difference between coercing people into sexual acts and pulling an idiot stunt that he stopped as soon as he was asked. And it’s curious that it all blew up at the same time that it became public that one of his co-stars had been accused of sexual harassment by about 20 women.
Feathers
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Not so much now, but “flashers” used to be a fairly common joke trope. Here’s a Benny Hill sketch from the 70s: Benny Hill & The Love Machine: Doing the Flash. I think the notion that “the workplace” as somewhere where certain things were inappropriate and out of place is newer than people think, especially outside of the corporate world. The fight against “prudery” was seen as a noble cause. There was probably a brief instant where that may have be true, but men coasted on the idea for decades.
Starboard Tack
@Jess: I think it’s more about shame and validation.
Brachiator
@Emma from Miami:
There is criminal and there is unethical. I don’t know that he stopped when asked. But doing it in the first place was not stupid, it was gross and demeaning to the people who he subjected to his boorish behavior.
Roger Moore
@Just One More Canuck:
This is why the quality of the coach is so important. A coach can have a much bigger influence over a player than most teachers can. Most students have a given teacher for one period a day for no more than a year. They can have a coach for several hours a day for years, and they may well be paying more attention to what the coach says. It’s an incredible influence, more than just about any adult except the parents. If the coach builds their players up and teaches them good lessons, it can be incredibly valuable. If the coach is destructive and teaches them bad lessons, it can be terrible.
I was very positively influenced by my high school swim coach. He wasn’t much of a swimmer himself, but he knew how to motivate people positively, and he had very good values. My favorite story about him is one he told every year at the beginning of the season. It was his rule that swimmers weren’t allowed to go skiing during the season; it gave kids muscle aches and led to injuries to people who weren’t careful. The penalty for skiing during the swim season was to have to sit out the next meet.
One year, some of the top swimmers on the team went skiing the week before the conference championships, figuring the coach wouldn’t dare leave them off the team for such an important meet. They figured wrong. When the coach found out, he suspended them for the next meet and told the rest of the team they would have to step up if they wanted to do well. The team responded well and pulled out a victory by one point. It was a good story because it made three important points: nobody on the team was above the rules, principles were more important than winning, and everyone needed to be ready to step up when they had the opportunity. They’re all good points to make, and spending that much time with someone who believed in them was good for me and for a lot of other swimmers the man coached.
Alexx Kay
@Miss Bianca: (#18): Though if the abuse had resulted in good art, that wouldn’t have made it OK — though that could complicate one’s response.
One of my favorite films is Night of the Hunter. It’s got some stuff in there about gender relations that is astonishingly progressive by today’s standards, much less when it was made. But I saw a documentary about the making of it, and the director’s treatment of the female lead was appallingly abusive. I still think the film is great, but that doesn’t make the abuse justified, At All.
People are complicated, and only rarely predominantly good or evil. But specific actions very often are easily so classified, and should be encouraged or discouraged as such.