When Heroes Fall

We all have our heroes. Some heroes are real people - either past or present, maybe both. Some are fictional. I have a few in both columns. I have a couple of real-life heroes who showed up in my life when I needed them most. I have a few historical ones like Queen Elizabeth I and Jane Austen. They’re both heroes to me for different reasons.

Then there are the fictional ones. Numero Uno on my list - no one who really knows me will be surprised at all - Buffy Summers. Another: Commander Shepard (Femshep personally but Male Shepard is also a hero).

Whether our heroes are real or imagined - whether they are Professional Athletes or fictional superheroes, anyone from our own parents to movie directors, really anyone can be a hero to someone.

But what happens when they fall? What happens when you discover that the person you hail as a hero, not only has flaws (we really shouldn’t be surprised by that) but is outright deceptive in what their flaws actually are?

So strap yourselves in, my friends, because this ride is going to be bumpy.

Over the past several years I have seen a few celebrity heroes of mine fall in some really big ways. One of them I did actually consider a hero - Bill Cosby - I will NOT be talking about him today as he played such a huge part of my childhood and that one is just… difficult to talk about.

Another “Hero” I admired was Joss Whedon. I’m sure some of my readers can guess as to why and are not all that surprised by this. I put the word hero in quotations though because I didn’t see him as a hero per se.

I admired him greatly! I was very impressed that a man could create such an amazing, strong, but flawed female hero for the women of my generation. True, growing up I watched Wonder Woman - played by Lynda Carter and I loved She-ra and Cheetara from the Thundercats.

But there was NO ONE before Buffy, who I could actually relate to. I didn’t see myself in them. Another thing they lacked that Buffy has in abundance: flaws. Growing up watching those fictional characters come to life they were written to be perfect - the ideal (for the time).

Buffy was flawed. Aside from the literal demons, she had to fight every week on the show, she battled her own inner demons. She also very much wanted to be a normal girl and that was a huge struggle for her throughout the series (and the first thing about her that I completely understood and related to).

The Creator and the Created

I thought that Joss Whedon bringing her to life was brilliant. I greatly admired that. I even thought to myself when I was younger that if I ever actually published one of my vampire books (that I’ve been writing for years) and Hollywood wanted to make it into a movie, I would want no one other than Joss Whedon to direct and produce it.

Does that make him a hero in my eyes? Maybe. Most heroes swing on a pendulum that is borderline worship. I never saw him in that light. A hero, to me, isn’t someone to be worshipped.

While it has been hard, I have been able to separate Joss from Buffy. I know it sounds like an impossible task and as a creator of fictional characters myself, it hits close to home to separate a fictional character from their creator.

Here’s the thing: I’m going to quote the Starchild from Mass Effect 3 - for those of you who don’t know, the Starchild is an A.I. responsible for the destruction of thousands of species across the galaxy over thousands of centuries. Anyway, the Starchild says, “the created will always rebel against their creators.” I say it this way though, “The created will always SURPASS their creators.” Although, rebel is a great term for Buffy in this sense.

Let’s think of this in a more realistic term. Our children. Every generation that is born, evolves the human species in one way or another. And the generations before that one try to resist.

The point I’m making with the Mass Effect analogy is that the created in this instance - Buffy - has by far, surpassed her creator - Joss Whedon.

Joss Whedon’s Transgressions

Over the past several years now, Joss Whedon’s skeletons have been slowly crawling out of his closet. Skeletons never stay buried. They always find their way to the surface somehow.

Not only have things surfaced about his personal life and his professional bad behavior but those things connect to his creation of Buffy. Fans and critics alike have been analyzing Buffy and friends for a long time but now certain things are starting to make more sense. Like, for example, when he said in past interviews that he identified most with Xander.

Now, I love Xander. I always will but Xander doesn’t always treat the women in his life with kindness and respect. There are many other things that took place in the series that, knowing what we know now, definitely make more sense to how Joss Whedon’s mind works but this post is already too long so maybe another time.

It has taken me some time since last week’s very revealing interview in Vulture Magazine (I will link the article if anyone wants to read it) The Undoing of Joss Whedon where he demonstrates just how narcissistic he really is but also how manipulative, sexist, and delusional he really is. https://www.vulture.com/article/joss-whedon-allegations.html

His response to Gal Gadot’s experience of her career being threatened by him was absolutely, unequivocally, and so obviously - GASLIGHTING. By saying what he said, “English isn’t her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech.” He basically said - in his “flowery” language - that she didn’t hear what she heard. He said a similar thing about Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia Chase in Buffy, The Vampire Slayer when she relayed her accounts of his abhorrent, abusive behavior towards her many years ago.

The entire interview with him (which, I will say the actual interview was not that much) was him painting himself as a misunderstood genius, giving himself the role of victim.

Wow!!! Just Wow!!

Now many fans of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer have critiqued and made their own decisions regarding whether or not they will continue to love Buffy. I will write another post about that later because that is much more involved for me as to my decision. I will say this though, NO ONE WILL EVER RUIN BUFFY FOR ME.

I am going to be very honest though, when I read this interview, it did trigger me. It pissed me off! I did expect Joss Whedon to own up to his bad behavior but he instead put the blame on everyone else, including his dead mother.

Now, I won’t discount what he said about his parents and his childhood. Whether or not it's true is not for any of us to judge. We all have our experiences that no one else sees and that is just not something we should ever discredit or dismiss. What I do take issue with though, is the WAY he talks about it - he uses it at the beginning of the interview - as a way to gain sympathy from the readers as if, now that we know about it, that somehow admonishes him of all of his wrongdoing.

THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!!!

Then he goes on to say that he’s been in therapy for years and has Complex PTSD - the same thing I have. Yeah, it triggered me and made me angry. Why? Because he was using it to again, gain sympathy in the hopes that the readers will excuse his bad behavior.

NOT ACCEPTABLE!!!

Having a mental illness DOES NOT EXCUSE YOUR BEHAVIOR! Having compassion for someone with a mental illness and showing some understanding of how they got to the dark place they are at is not the same thing as excusing one’s behavior.

Yet, we seem to get these two things confused. I understand how it can be confusing but then we get people like Joss Whedon, using his childhood and mental illness as some sort of catalyst to say, “look at me! I can do no wrong because I have a mental illness and my childhood sucked!”

OH HELL NO!!!

Do you know how many people living today, whose childhood sucked?! Do you know how many people living today are struggling with mental illness and are wanting more than anything to be happy and live a “normal” life?!

Joss Whedon doesn’t get to use that as an excuse to be the “monster” that he says in the interview, he identifies with. Which, again, using the term monster to describe yourself DOESN’T LET YOU OFF THE HOOK!!

And let’s not forget what he said about admiring strong women but as he discovered he is capable of hurting them, he says, “usually by sleeping with them and ghosting them or whatever.” What?!!!

Look, I don’t know if this has escaped anyone’s notice but WE ARE ALL CAPABLE OF HURTING OTHERS! That doesn’t mean we should do it!! What the hell?!!

Joss Whedon really goes out of his way to try to get sympathy from the readers and fans of his work by painting himself the victim but also through attempted (and failed) manipulation and gaslighting.

I will say that, in my opinion, the journalist didn’t do the best job here. There are flaws in this article, for sure. But the gist of it is this: Joss Whedon, in his OWN WORDS, did more damage to his image than any reporter could ever do.

I don’t want to leave this without mentioning Ray Fisher. The reason is because of the way Joss Whedon tried to paint both him and Zack Snyder, as well as Gal Gadot in this interview.

He tried to paint the two men as conniving maniacal evildoers trying to undo all of his “good deeds” while attempting to paint the woman as an unintelligent, naïve, almost child-like person (which speaks to the centuries upon centuries of men doing that to women - and he calls himself a feminist?).

Not to mention that by painting them in this way, he also exaggerated his own abilities, thereby trying to make it seems as though his "specialness" - my word, not his - is better than Zack Snyder. Not in the least bit humble or respectful.

He called Ray Fisher a bad actor in both senses of the word. I watched both versions of The Justice League and I have to say, Not only was Zack Snyder’s version 10x better but Ray Fisher did a superb job, at least from where I am sitting.

Then outright lying about the reason Zack Snyder left the project was just… Outrageous! He wanted so much for people to believe that he was “the good guy” that he actually did the opposite in this interview.

There is still so much more to say but I will leave that for another time. I’m still processing some things but for now, these are my thoughts. I will leave you with this quote from the article though as it points to the purpose of my post and goes back to the title here. Scott R. Kurtz pretty much sums it up with this,

“As fans, we have a bad habit of deifying whose work we respect. When you built these people up so big they have nowhere to go but down, I don’t know why we’re surprised when they turn out to be fallible humans who fall.”

This is so true and something we should all start to contemplate and reflect on. There is a lesson here for all of us to learn.

Thanks so much for reading!