The Fake Tragedy of Joss Whedon by two

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The Fake Tragedy of Joss Whedon

POSTED BY: TWO
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 16:29
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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 4:06 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

I copied a Matthew Yglesias blog "The Fake Tragedy of Joss Whedon" from
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/the-fake-tragedy-of
-joss-whedon.php
There are 66 comments and more after the blog.

Kevin Carey is saddened by the imminent demise of Dollhouse:

"Relatedly, Dollhouse has been canceled right on schedule, i.e. just when Joss Whedon was getting to the point. It is (soon: was) not a show about sex or human trafficking or prostitution. It’s about identity. For the first 20 episodes, we’re meant to believe that Echo is merely a cipher masking Caroline, fighting to regain the identity she sold away. But now, as she struggles to integrate the various identities that the dollhouse has “imprinted” on her brain, we see that it was about Echo all along. And this, of course, is everyone’s struggle: integrating the various identities the world thrusts upon us: consumer, spouse, parent, worker, thinker, artist, daughter, son. And, particularly in the modern world, the tearing pain of choosing among them when we’re told that the freedom of self-definition is the thing we should value most. Whedon is fast becoming one of the great tragic figures in popular culture, a man of huge talent, vision and integrity whose work keeps getting killed before its time."
-- http://www.quickanded.com/2009/12/saturday-tv-blogging.html

Color me unmoved by the alleged tragedy of Joss Whedon. What happened to Firefly was arguably tragic. But by the time Dollhouse came out, it was clear that the place for idiosyncratic, ambitious television was cable where a show could be viable with a smaller, but more devoted audience. We’ve had Battlestar: Galactica we’ve had The Wire we’ve had Mad Men it doesn’t take a genius to see how this goes.

But you get paid more money to develop a show for a network, and Whedon wanted more money so he gave us Dollhouse, a show with a ton of promise but also dozens of artistic compromises. Getting “killed before its time” was inevitable. Whedon’s fans want to see him make the kind of show he can only make on cable. And I’m sure one cable network or another would be happy to develop a show with a creator who comes with a fervent built-in fanbase. But he doesn’t seem to want to do it. I think it’s a shame, but it’s his own fault.

End of Matthew Yglesias blog post: "The Fake Tragedy of Joss Whedon"

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 4:53 AM

PENNAUSAMIKE

Joss' propensity for creating beloved characters and then killing them off also pretty much assures never achieving more than a very specific fan following.

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 4:55 AM

BYTEMITE

I dunno... Last time, Whedon vowed he'd never work with Fox again. I have my suspicions that Fox promised him something good enough to win him back, and I can't imagine that something could be just money. You don't take money from a venomous snake just so it can bite you.

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 5:01 AM

BYTEMITE

I don't think any of Joss' shows were canceled because he kills off characters, pennusamike.

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 5:18 AM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Joss would partially agree with Matthew Yglesias's blog post about cable TV. This month Joss said, "The stuff that is going on in cable is really interesting and I absolutely think I would be interested in finding a home there. ... I just want to do nudity because it’s all about the nudies."
- http://scifimafia.com/2009/12/what%E2%80%99s-next-for-joss-whedon-cabl
e-dr-horrible-sequel-glee-terminator/

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 5:41 AM

PENNAUSAMIKE

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I don't think any of Joss' shows were canceled because he kills off characters, pennusamike.

I didn't mean it that specifically.
I just meant that killing off beloved characters is one element of Joss not achieving commercial success on par with his creative abilities.

If I were to name another trait that hinders commercial success, I think Joss creates quirky characters that STRONGLY speak to some folks, but that mainstream audiences don't embrace.

As an example, let's look at two Mals and a Castle.
BDM Mal is closest to Whedon's original vision for Mal.
Dark and troubled; a bit of a smartass but still on the raggedy-edge.
Series Mal was "lightened up" to meet FOX's standards, and I think most Firefly fans prefer series Mal.
Richard Castle is really Mal with no spirit-crushing defeat at Serenity Valley to blight his soul.
Castle is a solid hit for ABC; admittedly in part because it has a mundane-friendly setting,
(another crime show instead of a space-western).

I think Castle is the MOST commercially-viable character,
BDM Mal the LEAST.
My preference is for series-Mal, Whedon's talent tempered by un-written-but-still-real audience expectations, which I think the heads of the creative side of FOX correctly predicted.

Which brings my point around to the original poster's;
that Whedon shows could thrive in a cable environment.
(Tho' I would still be opposed to killing off beloved characters.)

Mike

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 5:42 AM

CYBERSNARK

Well, Dollhouse had two critical ingredients that were beyond Joss' control:

Money, which Fox was willing to invest in a new show and cable networks were not.

Eliza Dushku, who was IIRC already under contract to Fox and who directly asked Joss for a show.

Would Dollhouse have lasted even this long with another actor in the lead? Would Joss (after brainstorming and effectively co-creating a show with ED) have the gall to say "screw you, Eliza, I'm taking my show and leaving you in the lurch" (indeed, would any sane human being)?

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 6:19 AM

BYTEMITE

Actually, less than Captain Reynolds, I see Castle (personality-wise) as a Captain Hammer only with a kid and slightly more socially conscientious. But I think you're talking in terms of the quipping.

I'm not sure, honestly, I think to really compare which formula is more successful we'd have to see what Castle's DVD sales and the movie DVD sales after they've both been out seven years compared to the Firefly DVD sales.

Since Serenity is technically a continuation of Firefly, I think we'll see at least approximately similar numbers, though you're right, Serenity will be slightly lower because some people will have heard that it's darker than the series. So you do have some point with Whedon's way of alienating fans. But I think both the series and the movie will have higher DVD sales than Castle after a comparable amount of time.

The assumption being made is that the audience is simple and only wants to be entertained. My thinking is entertainment AND a strong story will win an audience over any day. Castle is entertaining, but ultimately I don't think it has a strong story arc, it's even more episodic than the few stand-alone Firefly episodes that Fox requested.

I'm going to pose a controversial question: are BDM Mal and series Mal as really that different? They're still identifiably the same character. Joss went darker with both Serenity the pilot and Serenity the movie, but that doesn't mean that Mal doesn't have bitter angry moments during the rest of the series. He was made "jollier" but he's still not exactly/always "jolly."

Perhaps this is the difference between Mal making the hero move and returning medicine to Paradiso versus Mal refusing to let a stranger into their mule when Reavers are attacking. I read that Joss was going to open Mal up, make him more personable and bring back Mal's inherent heroism that he lost in Serenity Valley as the series went on (as we see in the movie), but Fox made Joss start at a different stage in that character arc. But it's still Joss' vision of Mal.

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 7:01 AM

OUT2THEBLACK

Quote:
Originally posted by two:
...But you get paid more money to develop a show for a network, and Whedon wanted more money so he gave us Dollhouse...

Wrong .

Eliza still had a deal with Fox to develop another couple of shows...Dollhouse was one of those shows...

There's much more to Joss than money .

Friendship , for example .

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 4:29 PM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

Quote:
Originally posted by out2theblack:
Quote:
Originally posted by two:
...But you get paid more money to develop a show for a network, and Whedon wanted more money so he gave us Dollhouse...

Wrong .

Eliza still had a deal with Fox to develop another couple of shows...Dollhouse was one of those shows...

There's much more to Joss than money .

Friendship , for example .

Correct. Joss came up with the idea for the show as a favor for Eliza. It was she who had the development deal with FOX and in order for Joss to produce the show it had to be with FOX. I doubt the amount of money he was going to get for it entered his mind before he pitched the idea to them.

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