Joss Whedon: Pop-Culture Potentate

“If Joss Whedon had had one good day in high school,” says Buffy executive producer and Angel co-creator David Greenwalt, “we wouldn’t be here.”

By here, Greenwalt may not just referring to the two television series that made Whedon a household name in the late 90s, but a world in which his geeky influence, confronting themes, and desire to make gender equality a reality has pervaded every element of pop-culture over the last 20+ years.

Whedon was born in New York City in 1964. His father was a TV writer, as was his grandfather, making him the first of the third-generation writers in America. But it was his mother, a teacher, aspiring novelist, and activist, who most defined Whedon’s love for the craft.

Even after spending ten years of his life studying at the same school, Whedon felt like an outsider. It was for this reason that he began delving into comic books and TV shows like Monty Python, while simultaneously reading the likes of William Shakespeare at the behest of his mother.

In 1980, Whedon’s mother took a sabbatical to England. He joined her, and spent the next three years at a prestigious all-boys boarding school called Winchester College. It left him feeling more isolated than ever, and the only way to protect himself from the onslaught of bullying (from both older students and teachers) was to make the bullies think he was too weird to be affected by their taunts, or would even enjoy them.

After graduation, Whedon returned to the US, and applied to Wesleyan University, a school with which he “clicked”. He completed his course in 1987, and moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles – where his father moved after his parent’s divorce – to become an independent filmmaker. “Three-G TV!” – third generation – joked a friend. But the last thing Whedon wanted to do was following in the footsteps of his father, whose work he felt was never as fun as the man himself.

While working at a video store, Whedon started writing spec scripts for shows like The Wonder Years and Roseanne, the latter of which resulted in him being hired as a staff writer. Whedon was ecstatic; his mother’s inspiration had resulted in him identifying as a feminist from an early age, so to be hired on a show which such a strong feminist agenda was a great opportunity. He wrote six episodes during his first season on staff, but they were either rewritten to the point they were unidentifiable by producers, or shot down by Roseanne Barr herself.

He quit the show, and started work on a feature concept that he had first thought about when leaving college. Initially conceived around a character known as Rhonda, The Immortal Waitress (“because it has to sound silly and not boring.”), Whedon completed work on the script for Buffy, The Vampire Slayer in the early 90s. The film was released in 1992, and was a commercial success, but Whedon was disappointed by the changes made to his original vision.

Around the same time, Whedon started working as a script doctor, working uncredited on films including Speed, Waterworld, Twister and X-Men. He wrote Alien: Resurrection (another poor realisation of Whedon’s script), and co-wrote Toy Story, which saw him nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Sick of seeing his work destroyed by others, Whedon turned his efforts to productions over which he could have executive control.

In 1997, he adapted Buffy, The Vampire Slayer into his first television show. The series was fundamentally different from the whimsical comedy that was the film. It was dark, it was powerful, and Buffy was a subversive, kickass character. The show immediately garnered a cult following, regardless of the tiny budget Whedon had at his disposal. Talking to the Edinburgh Film Festival, Whedon explained the personal place from where the show’s dark themes were generated: “I think it’s not inaccurate to say that I had a perfectly happy childhood during which I was very unhappy…. And I had a very painful adolescence, because it was all very strange to me. It wasn’t like I got beat up, but the humiliation and isolation, and the whole, existential ‘oh God, I exist and nobody cares’ thing about being a teenager, were extremely pronounced for me.”

The show aired on The WB for five years, before transferring to UPN for its final two seasons. Seasons eight, nine, and ten were released as comics, written by Whedon and other staff who had worked on the show. The series spawned a spinoff, Angel, that ran for five seasons, and was nominated for multiple awards, including an Emmy, Nebula Award and Hugo Award.

Whedon had hoped to create a “rabid, almost insane fan base” with Buffy, and he did. The show not only resulted in a demand for strong women in film, but changed the face of pop-culture television.

Near the end of the show’s run, Whedon made his first foray into comics with the miniseries Fray, which takes place in the far future of the ‘Buffyverse’.

In the early 2000s, Fox approached Whedon asking for new ideas. He launched Firefly in 2002 (meaning he was running three series at the same time), a space western series that developed a strong underground following, but was cancelled after its first season. “I’d rather make a show a hundred people need to see than a show a thousand people want to see,” said Whedon of his first unsuccessful production. The DVD release and subsequent reruns of the show resulted in fans crying out for a renewal, leading Universal Studios to fund a big-screen sequel: Serenity.

In subsequent years, Whedon created The Astonishing X-Men, the sixth issue of which is considered one of Marvel’s 70 best comics of all time. After 24 issues, Whedon became the second writer on Runaways, a series he’d been a fan of since its inception. He’d even had a letter published in the first volume, commending the story.

Work in film and television was slow. Whedon was a guest director on The Office, and Glee. “I had free time, but I’m pretty sure I mean my career was on the skids.”

In 2007, the Writers Guild of America’s strike brought Hollywood to a standstill. Whedon started work on a “project of love”, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Investing $200,000 of his own money into the production, a musical miniseries distributed on the web. In 2008, Time listed the series as #15 on the list of Top 50 Inventions of the year. Whedon won Best Directing and Best Writing for a Comedy Web Series at the Streamy Awards, and a Creative Arts Emmy.

Fox greenlit Dollhouse in 2009. It ran for two seasons, but was ultimately brought undone by conflicts between Whedon’s team and the studio.

The following year, Whedon co-wrote and produced The Cabin in the Woods, a horror-comedy that twisted genre expectations as he had done with Buffy over a decade earlier.

But the biggest step forward in Whedon’s career was the announcement that he would write and direct The Avengers, the keystone film in Disney’s monstrous superhero franchise. It became the fourth highest-grossing film of all time, and was compared to some of the greatest films of all time, though Whedon considered it imperfect.

During a two week holiday from production of the film, Whedon directed Much Ado About Nothing, a modern adaptation of the Shakespeare play.

Work began soon after on the sequel to The Avengers, while Whedon simultaneously developed the pilot for Marvel’s first modern tie-in TV series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Whedon had always considered himself a workaholic, but the process drained him. After the film’s release, Whedon stepped away from the Marvel film franchise for good.

Whedon has been a constant critic of the entertainment industry, both in and out of his work. In a 2015 interview, he decried that the current system was based on “genuine, recalcitrant, intractable sexism, and old-fashioned quiet misogyny”. He received criticism for his views, and in 2015 he left Twitter (or “You Suck Land”, as he calls it) to escape the barrage of hate he was receiving. Still, his views remained strong, and he called for his former colleagues at Marvel to lead the change in the depiction of women on screen, and the development of creative women in the industry.

He is an atheist, an existentialist, and a humanitarian, campaigning against ignorance and greed in what little time he has free.

“Be yourself…unless you suck.”

In the year since The Avengers: Age of Ultron was released, it’s been rather quiet on The Joss Whedon Front. Fans are excited by what the silence means; if history is anything to go by, it is sure to be something great.