Mythology: Joss Whedon
By Martin Felipe
May 1, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Not to disparage these other folks. They’re brilliant in their own right, but Whedon stands above them all. He creates worlds that grow and evolve over time. He explores all corners of these universes, often to surprising results. They are thematically rich, yet he presents them with a wink, a sense of humor that deflates any pretension. He populates them with interesting characters that are multifaceted and evolve over time. And he plays for keeps.
When the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuted in the late ‘90s, it had to overcome the reputation of the movie, a silly trifle that most folks had forgotten by the time the show came along. The legend is renowned now, but at the time, Whedon had to disavow the film. It didn’t conform to his vision for the character, he claimed. The studio meddled and turned what he envisioned as a feminist commentary on horror conventions into a silly high school vampire farce.
I can tell you that I wasn’t interested in the show. I disliked the movie quite a bit. I had hoped for something more along the lines of Whedon’s original concept, not the shallow fluff it turned out to be. So I rejected the television counterpart until finally the critical raves became too loud for me to ignore and I caught up with it between the second and third seasons.
In retrospect, this is probably for the best. Like many shows, Buffy takes a while to kick in. Much of the first season and first half of the second season is populated with silly monster of the week nonsense. Giant praying mantises, robot lovers, that sort of thing. Yes, I got it, these were allegories for high school life, but it’s still pretty frivolous and redundant.
However, there was the occasional episode here and there, like the first season’s Angel, which showed promise and hinted at the deeper themes that would eventually become the show’s trademark. Also, Whedon spends the early episodes building the world, developing the characters, and formulating that trademark witty dialogue for which he is so famous. Looking at Buffy as a whole, the first season is like the boring exposition parts of a novel. The foundation we need to endure to get to the good stuff.
And boy is that stuff good. Once we know the world, Whedon takes great joy in upending it. I knew this show was playing at something unique and exciting when, halfway through the second season, Buffy’s romantic interest becomes evil, kills Giles’ romantic interest, and starts stalking the Slayer.
This may not seem too revolutionary in our post-Lost, post-Galactica world, but back in the late ‘90s, this was some pretty strong stuff. Much has been made of the subtext of the boyfriend becoming a big jerk, but even setting aside the symbolism, this was the type of storytelling that one figured television didn’t have the balls to present. Sure, The Sopranos was getting some raves for doing similar things on HBO, but Buffy was supposed to be a high school show. The vampires were a threat, but Buffy was supposed to swoop in and save the day. And the good guy vampire was supposed to stay a good guy vampire.
But Whedon knew what these expectations were. He knew the clichés, and he knew how the so-called fanboy community liked to poke fun at them. As a fan himself, he toyed with these expectations, pulling the rug out from under viewers who had grown accustomed to the standard directions television went. He’d lead them down that direction, only to swerve at the last moment.
Over the course of seven seasons, Buffy pushed the limits of its mythology. It explored the consequences of the characters’ actions. The supernatural wasn’t an easy deus ex machina, every choice lead to results that the characters didn’t consider, and when those results came a knockin’, the group emerged from the aftermath, time and again. They were changed, and the status quo shifted forever.
This constant resetting of the stage was anathema to what the networks wanted at the time, and still kinda is. The basic form of a show should never change. A viewer should be able to pop in and out at any time and be able to pick up what was going on, because it‘s always what‘s going on. Prior to Buffy, The X-Files had done some experimenting with long form storytelling, but the vast majority of its run consisted of stand-alone episodes. Also, over on HBO, The Sopranos was tinkering with serialization as well, but HBO was encouraging it. They were positioning their original programming as being a literary alternative to the main networks’ formulas. Buffy, was testing these waters for the regular networks.
The payoff of this was a mixed bag. Certainly the show found a devoted fan base, as well as critical adoration. Despite its pop cultural relevance, it never really became a mainstream hit, due perhaps to being on the WB Network, but more likely due to the genre, or silliness of the title. Some folks were very unlikely to take a show entitled Buffy the Vampire Slayer seriously, despite how serious it became. However, Folks like Abrams and Moore saw what Whedon was doing and realized that he was making television safe for them to follow suit.
Buffy even spawned the spin-off Angel, about Buffy’s evil again, good again vampire lover. Angel’s first season suffers a bit from the same thing as Buffy’s. Whedon spends a lot of time developing an alternate supernatural LA for Angel and his pals to live in. There were also some casting issues early on, but by the end of the first season, Whedon had done it again.
Angel’s nemesis, the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart, was established, Angel’s sidekicks, other transplants from Buffy, had formed a unique new chemistry, and new sidekicks were emerging. The Buffyverse had expanded to include the Angelverse, and now that the Angelverse was in place, Whedon again began to delight in toying with the limits of where he could take it. In some ways, Angel takes even greater narrative risks than Buffy, and goes to some pretty dark places. While I’ll always have greater affection for Buffy, I think I consider Angel to be the overall superior show.
Whedon wasn’t satisfied with just monkeying around with vampire lore, however. His next big thing came along, and he called it Firefly. In 2012, Firefly is almost synonymous with a network bungling the potential of a budding new show. Certainly in the wake of its cancellation, we’ve seen networks take more and more chances with low rated, though critically acclaimed programs. I don’t know if the backlash FOX continues to suffer for mistreating Firefly has anything to do with that, but I do know that, were it to have debuted in, say 2008, there’s a good chance we would have gotten more than 14 episodes.
Such speculation is, of course, pointless. We got what we got, which is those 14 and a movie. Much of the lore behind Firefly contends that Joss does more with 14 episodes than most show runners do with 100. While I’m inclined to agree, looking at the typical Joss structure, he spends the first season or so planting the seeds for the insanity to come. Were Firefly to have followed the same pattern, imagine how far he could have taken the story of Malcolm Reynolds and his misfit outlaw crew.
Where no Buffy has gone before, of that I have little doubt. Presented as a sort of anti-Star Trek, Firefly is like a show, not about the Federation, but about a bunch of Han Solos (if you’ll indulge my metaphor mixage) on a space ship. Told from the point of view of the losers of a civil war, Firefly isn’t quite dystopian, but it also doesn’t glorify the establishment of the year 2517. Because of the sprawling nature of the story, the Fireflyverse certainly had the potential to be more far reaching than the Buffy/Angelverse, even if it does lack aliens or supernatural elements. Had Firefly been allowed to continue, the possible directions Whedon could have taken it were pretty much the universe.
Of course, as is now legend, it was not to be. The fanatical yet tiny audience was such that Whedon was able to make a movie to tie up loose ends, and in this movie he certainly pulls few punches, killing off some main characters, including a fan favorite. Yet one wonders how similar to his initial vision for the back half of season one the movie is, had it gone that route, and where Whedon was thinking to take it beyond that point. If Buffy and Angel are any indication, Firefly’s initial 14 episodes would prove to be quite tame in comparison.
Joss’s final show is probably his least revered, probably due more to the story behind it that to the quality of the show itself. Dollhouse tells the story of an underground industry of what are essentially personality hookers. A rich client can come along and order a Doll. Said client expresses their specifications, and the Dollhouse programmer Topher Brink imprints the Doll with the necessary personality. Then, after the assignment, he wipes them clean until the next job. Oh, and these Dolls are regular people who’ve indentured themselves to the House for a set period of time.
Okay, so this is a pretty complex setup for the show, not to mention the complex ethics of such an organization. Rumor is, FOX just wanted to keep it at that, having weekly adventures with Echo, the Doll star of the show, sort of a Charlie’s Angels where the Angel gets to be someone new every week. Leave the ethical explorations out of it.
Sure enough, the first handful of episodes are pretty much Doll assignments of the week. There is an FBI investigation into the Dollhouse providing a slight serialization, but, for the most part, each episode stands on its own. Then, a few episodes in, the mythology deepens. We discover that the Dollhouse’s reach extends beyond just a tiny little company. They have their fingers in all aspects of society.
By the time Dollhouse premiered, fans had developed expectations of Whedon’s mythological ambitions. When the initial episodes seemed so tame, the show’s reputation was tainted. Fans considered it a compromised vision, constrained by a network that didn’t understand what makes Whedon’s work special. There may be some truth to this. I don’t know.
Thing is, Dollhouse was following the Buffy/Angel model. It was establishing the basics, then beginning to play within the world. Even the harshest of critics noted an upswing in quality as the season progressed. Then, against all reasoning, the low rated project lucked into a second season renewal.
I’m sure that Whedon and his team realized that this was a mere stay of execution, not a sign of a long run. As such, the second season is far bolder, really examining themes of identity and individuality, while also expanding the reaches of the Dollhouseverse to show how deep into the world its influence spreads. The season finales of both indicate nothing less than apocalyptic consequences of the Dollhouse. This is a mythology that had so much room to grow and expand. Despite a somewhat maligned and unfair reputation, Dollhouse has the potential to be as fully formed, clever, and richly thematic as any of Whedon’s other mythologies.
And now, with the release of Cabin in the Woods, he’s done it again. Not that the box office is explosive, but it’s likely to make back its investment and live a long life as a horror classic. The reviews are as enthusiastic as ever for his work. And, within a month’s time, unless there’s some sort of unforeseen Dollhousepocalypse, The Avengers will give us his first ever blockbuster. It’s not a Whedon project in the strictest sense; he’s working in a universe Marvel created for him. But who knows? Perhaps the clout it grants him will lead to another of his personal projects, like a sequel to Dr. Horrible (a notable Whedon work that I couldn‘t end this column without at least mentioning). Whatever he does next, I’m already on board. The dude’s earned it. While mainstream success may have eluded him, those of us who appreciate long form genre storytelling know that it just doesn’t come any better that the work of Joss Whedon.