Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[Jung]

So, I found this essay interesting.

I can't comment on his opinions of Joss Whedon's work, but his general points about "Nice Guy thinking" and fiction seem interesting.

Highlights:

A few of us have spent a while trying to put our fingers on exactly what we find so frustrating about Joss Whedon, and now our esteemed editor and I have started to rewatch Firefly, I think I've worked out exactly what it is:

Joss Whedon thinks exactly like me.

Or, to put it another way, Joss Whedon thinks exactly the way I used to before I grew up, got a girlfriend, and became less of an insecure douchebag.

Basically, Joss Whedon's portrayal of women tallies almost perfectly with the phenomenon known generally on the internet as Nice Guy Syndrome.

To lay it all on the line, both for the women in the audience who are wondering why the fuck these creepy guys are following them around, and for the men in the audience who are wondering why women find them so creepy, the key points of Nice Guy thinking are these:

1.Respect For Women is Paramount: The basis of Nice Guy thinking is the idea that Women must be Respected. It is the duty of men who Respect women to protect women from men who No Not Respect them. A woman is, of course, powerless before a man who Does Not Respect her, she can be saved only by the intervention of a Nice Guy.

2.Women Do Not Enjoy Sex: This is the central, axiomatic tenet of Nice Guy thinking. Sex is a service a woman performs for a man. Ideally she will perform it willingly for a Good man (i.e. me) who cares about her and Respects her, but frequently women are tricked or forced into providing sex for Bad Men because women are Stupid.

3.Men Are Evil, Male Sexuality is Evil: To be sexually attracted to a woman is fundamentally disrespectful. After all, women don't like sex, they only provide it out of a sense of social obligation. Therefore a man who respects women will do his utmost to suppress any sexual desires he has, and he will certainly not tell a woman he is attracted to her (a really Respectful relationship has to grow out of friendship remember). Nice Guys tend to idealise lesbianism as the perfect non-exploitative relationship for women, they tend to do this to give them an excuse to fantasise about hot chicks doing it.

4.Women Are Weak and Stupid: The reason it is so important to Respect women is because you, and only you, are capable of protecting them from the undeserving men who would demean them. Women are not capable of protecting themselves, or making their own decisions. A woman who has sex with another man is effectively being abused. A woman who has sex with you is wilfully degrading herself for your benefit.

In short, this all adds up to one fucker of a Madonna/Whore complex, and a totally sexist worldview which is inextricably bound up with the belief that you Truly Understand Women.

Joss Whedon is a feminist. And how. His shows are packed full of “strong women” and feminist themes and sisters doing it for themselves. Unfortunately they're also packed full of examples of fucked up Nice Guy logic.

I'm going to start with the big issue here, which is Whedon's portrayal of male and female sexuality. It isn't universal, but there is a strong tendency in Joss Whedon's works to view male sexuality as evil (see point three above) and female sexuality as play-acting (see point two).

I'm not going to count Angel and his Curse, that was a specific plot-event, and it was supposed to mirror a classic teen issue (“I had sex with this guy and he totally changed!”) but after the Angel drama, Buffy's next sexual encounter is with Parker who, while manipulative, is direct and honest about the fact that he's after sex. Of course the way he treats Buffy is horrible, but that's sort of my point – he's the Nice Guy's classic idea of the “jerk” who extracts sex from women by trickery. And of course corn-fed Iowa boy Riley only realises his own attraction to Buffy when it manifests in his punching Parker in the face (thus allowing the worthy Nice Guy to overcome the unworthy Jerk and claim his reward in the shape of hot Buffysex). Then of course Riley gets written out for being too boring, and Buffy gets with Spike.

The Buffy/Spike arc is telling, particularly when taken over the course of seasons 5-7. Like Parker, Spike is quite upfront about the fact that his attraction to Buffy is sexual and it's this as much as the fact that he's a soulless killing machine that makes their relationship so destructive. Buffy clearly doesn't actually enjoy having sex with him (see point two) she's just reacting badly to her traumatic resurrection experience. And of course Spike's Evil Male Sexuality finally culminates in an attempt to rape Buffy (because remember folks, all men are potential rapists). Then between series six and seven, Spike gets his soul back, effectively redeeming him, and his redemption, of course, manifests as his no longer being overtly sexually attracted to Buffy. His redemption arc culminates, in fact, when Buffy gives Spike the “best night of his life” by lying platonically with him while the world burns.

There's a bunch of similar examples in Buffy, Oz isn't allowed to have sex with Willow until he has first proven himself worthy by refusing to have sex with her, and of course when Willow gets together with Tara, Oz is effectively retconned out, with Joss insisting that Willow is definitely gay because, as per point three, lesbianism is inherently empowering. Faith's promiscuity is deeply intertwined with her psychological scars, and Anya's love of sex is presented, along with her literal-mindedness and love of money, as a mark of her ex-demon “otherness”.

Inara is a classic male fantasy, but more than that, she's a classic Nice Guy fantasy. She's a woman you can have sex with without feeling bad about it. Indeed the whole Companion ethos is constructed around the assumptions of the Nice Guy worldview. Respect is paramount, and the whole thing is sublimated in ritual to ensure that respect is maximised at all times. The companions do not enjoy sex (you never once see Inara have an orgasm). The role of the companion is to select men who she considers worthy and allow them to have sex with her. It's “empowering” only in the sense that the Companion is always detached from the whole proceedings, the perfect untouchable being who briefly lowers herself to be with her client

Put simply, it's a very male idea of what female sexuality is and should be, and viewed as an ideal of female sexual behaviour, it's actually kinda creepy. Inara doesn't choose clients who she's attracted to, or people she thinks will satisfy her sexually (a number of her clients in the series are virgins she's been hired to make a man out of). Her decision to service somebody or not is almost entirely a judgement of their moral character which, yet again, is a pillar of the Nice Guy ethos, where sex is a reward for good behaviour.

The final element of the Nice Guy ethos is the most controversial and the most destructive. Deep down, all Nice Guys believe that women are weak, stupid bitches who don't know what's good for them.

This is the bit I'm going to get most flak for trying to pin on ol' Joss, but bear with me.

The really dangerous thing about the Nice Guy ethos is that it leads you down circular lines of argument like “I'm a nice guy, so there's nothing wrong with the way I'm acting towards this girl” or – to relate this back to good old JW “Joss got an award from Equality Now! That means nothing he creates could ever be sexist in any way”.

To put it another way, Nice Guys like to believe that the world is divided into Nice Guys and Jerks, and that the only reason that there are any problems with sexism at all is because of the Jerks (and that incidentally part of the reason there are so many Jerks out there is because women keep having sex with them, so really the women are to blame).

To put it yet another way, Nice Guys believe that there are Good People and Bad People, and everything the Good People do is Good and everything the Bad People do is Bad.

Let's bring this back to Whedon.

In the Firefly episode Shindig, Inara hooks up with an evil man named Atherton Wing. Atherton Wing acts like the stereotypical Jerk. He takes Inara for granted, gloats about the fact that everybody wants to have sex with her but only he gets to, and keeps going on about how she's his because he bought and paid for her. He asks Inara to come and stay with him to be his Personal Companion, and she considers it even though he is patently evil. Finally Mal baits him into calling Inara a whore, at which point Mal punches him and they wind up in a duel.

This then leads to the following exchange

Inara: You have a strange sense of nobility Captain. You'll lay a man out for implying I'm a whore but you keep calling me one to my face.

Mal: I might not show respect to your job, but he didn't respect *you*. That's the difference. Inara, he doesn't even see you.

First off, see that word “respect” again. Remember guys, that's what it's all about. You respect women, other guys don't. How do you know? Well you know you respect women, don't you? And the other guy treats them differently to you, so the other guy must not respect women.

Secondly, look at what happened here for fuck's sake. Inara, a Companion, one of the most highly paid, high-status individuals in the entire 'verse, falls in with a Bad Man and she is completely incapable of extricating herself without Mal's help. She's supposed to be the goddamned poster child for female empowerment in the series but the moment she's faced with a man who (horror of horrors) “doesn't respect her” she becomes totally powerless and has to be rescued by Mal. Mal who, let us not forget, calls her a whore, pays no attention to her wishes, and generally treats her very, very badly.

But it's okay, because he respects her. Just “her” of course. He doesn't respect her choices, her career, her wishes or her privacy, but he respects “her” as a kind of abstract entity. But in the Whedonverse that's the way it is, there are Bad Misogynists who Oppress Women and there are Good Guys who fight against them. The idea that an otherwise sympathetic character could have an attitude towards women that isn't appropriate (or even, shock horror, that Joss Whedon could have attitudes that are not appropriate) is simply unthinkable.

Reactions?

[Crazedwraith]

ok the guy;'s probably got a point but I can';t help but be amused by the way he explains away or flat out ignores people that just don't fit his theory. Anya, Zoe, Kaylee. Cheifly.

Man, I never like the way though that when ever 'nice guy syndrome' is brought up everything jumps to 'you've used this phrase therefore you are totally repugnant misogynist'.

[Aaron]

Inara wasn't in any real danger. We know she can handle herself and the threat of being blacklisted was enough to stop at least one standoff. Its not that Inara couldn't handle herself, it was that Mal couldn't control himself.

[Infinity Biscuit]

It's an issue with Whedon's work I've seen before, too. Even in Dr. Horrible where you have what seemingly is a reversal where the Nice Guy ends up hurting the girl worse than the Jerk ever did, Captain Hammer still fit the Jerk idea to a T with no deviation or any sort of realisation that the "Jerk" is a fake role, and Penny had no ability on her own to have saved herself at any point; everything was just a direct consequence of what the men were doing.

[Straha]

ok the guy;'s probably got a point but I can';t help but be amused by the way he explains away or flat out ignores people that just don't fit his theory. Anya, Zoe, Kaylee. Cheifly.

Man, I never like the way though that when ever 'nice guy syndrome' is brought up everything jumps to 'you've used this phrase therefore you are totally repugnant misogynist'.

I haven't watched the rest of the Whedonverse, but I think it holds true for the rest of Firefly.

Think about Zoe, why did she end up with Wash? Admittedly my memory isn't as sharp about the series as it once was, but I remember thinking at the time that their relationship made no sense because there never seemed to be a moment when they were in love. There were plenty of moments that would make sense if they were in love (her picking him over Mal when they get kidnapped by the Jewish gangster), and plenty of moments when we were told they were in love, but never a moment where I could say "Ah, yes. They're in love, that explains it." In context of the universe the commentator's theory even makes more sense, why does Zoe, a war vet with probable PTSD, pick Wash? Because he's utterly non-threatening, respects her like nothing else, and does whatever he can to please her because he's insecure about their relationship.

Kaylee's infatuation with Simon might be a strong counter-warrant to this theory, and I'll leave it to someone who has watched Firefly more recently to explore that, but I'll pick out one strong example. When she first joined the crew it was because Mal had found her having sex in the engine room. She was having sex in the engine room not because she liked the dude, but because she liked engines. When the sex is interrupted she doesn't even miss a beat before engaging in engine talk, she just really likes engines.

[Crazedwraith]

OK, I'm not sure how either of those are supposed to fit the pattern.

We don't exactly know how Zoe and Wash ended up together, since it happens And I wouldn't agree that they don't seem to be love. I don't get how you have moments that make sense when they're in love and then complain the show never shows that they're in love.

As for Kaylee, she likes banging dudes, she also like engines. She pursues the doctor cos she's got the hots for him.


Anyway, assuming you buy into this theory. How do you write them so they're not so "nice guy"y?

[Jung]

Man, I never like the way though that when ever 'nice guy syndrome' is brought up everything jumps to 'you've used this phrase therefore you are totally repugnant misogynist'.

I'd say the thing that's so insidious about the kind of thinking Hemmens talks about is it's basically Victorian sexism, but repackaged in a way that sounds woman-friendly and allows people holding such views to imagine themselves as enlightened not-sexist people who deeply care about the plight of the poor oppressed women, and it's really easy to fall into this kind of trap because it resonates with very common ideas.

"They need to be protected by us Nice Guys because they're so oppressed."
"They are nice loving people who want deep emotional connections and gentle cuddles, not like us bestial men who just want to stick our dicks in something warm and female."
"They have trouble standing up to the tough, violent, assertive, competitive men because they're just such nice gentle people."
Etc.

[Jung]

Anyway, assuming you buy into this theory. How do you write them so they're not so "nice guy"y?

Well the essay seems to be describing two major thrusts of this kind of thinking:

1) Sex is something women give to men, rather than something women really want for its own sake*. In a good relationship it's a reward bestowed on a "good" man by the woman, in a bad relationship it's something the man cons, pressures, or forces the woman to give him.
2) Women are not competent to protect themselves from the "bad" men; they need "good" men to protect them.

* Incidentally, the tendency to idealize lesbianism in this kind of thinking is pretty ironic because if you think about it the very existence of lesbians kind of indicates the "only does sex to please the horny men" model of female sexuality is bullshit.

This seems fairly straightforward to understand and avoid to me.

[Straha]

We don't exactly know how Zoe and Wash ended up together, since it happens And I wouldn't agree that they don't seem to be love. I don't get how you have moments that make sense when they're in love and then complain the show never shows that they're in love.

Because we're told not shown about the love, and I honestly cannot think of a single scene which shows them engaging in a loving manner. I suppose the best way to phrase it is that I see the side-effects of love, but none of the symptoms?

All that aside I don't even think that if they were in love it would detract from Hemming's main point because the only reason we get for them to be in love is because he's such a nice dude and he treats her right.

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

Edit: And I think being open with flaws in what you like is a good thing and not in the "now I won't look unrefined" way, since it both gives you the ability to be better at giving and taking recommendations and it lets you be honest with what you like and not do things like abandon it if you notice it has problems. Everything has flaws but if you can accept them and take them honestly you can like a show for what it is and not have the switch suddenly flip from "best" to "worst".

That's part of it, but I'm not convinced its the only factor. Part of the problem I suspect is that its a very big, pervasive and somewhat subtle problem that is hard for a single person to visualize. We can pick up on alot of the individual factors (EG not being able to distinguish between criticism and like/dislike of something.) and the result of those sorts of mindsets (you start thinking in absolute rather than relative terms.) but trying to piece them together is just difficult because of how pervasive it is. Its easy to fixate on SDN because that's just one symptom of the larger problem, but I can see elements of the same behaviour spread across different boards and cultures across the internet - I encounter similar behaviour (or variations on certain behavioural patterns) on Spacebattles as well, or in the SFconsim boards I occasionally browse.

I actually find Spacebattles to be more problematic than SDN because SDN has effectively isolated itself (and burned whatever bridges it has.. it will never be what it was, and that may actually be a blessing.) and the place was always a blunt and open about likes and dislikes so it was easy to see where the problems lie. Whereas SB is still a going concern (and a rather open and tolerant one at that) and alot of the underlying issues tend to be subtle (the obsession with Hard scifi realism in vs debates, for example.). I find many more people who disturb the fuck out of me over on SB than I do on SDN and its only gradually been fixed (all that 'creeper' stuff being outlawed, for example.)

[Jung]

I remember one review I read of that opened with exactly this observation about nerds; they cannot take criticism of stuff they like, reacting with "you don't like my toys? I hate you!"

I doubt it's an exclusively SDN problem by a long shot.

I suspect it's kind of just human nature: humans are naturally political animals predisposed to viewing criticism as attack; not reacting to it that way is a counterintuitive learned skill. Though I wonder if it's worse with people like sci fi nerds because they have so much investment in their literary tastes and hobbies.

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

IF SDN has had a problem, its that its always had a core of nastiness. Long ago that nastiness was directed outwards (which means it gave the boards a sense of unity and belonging, becuase it was unified by opposition to some arbitrary 'threat'. CF: the SW vs ST stuff.) and it was generally obscured by alot of the silliness and general bantering/goofiness that characterized the earlier boards (because its fiction and who takes fiction seriously?) Over time, the vs debates paled and died out/became polarized (particularily post-ICS, that did a huge job of polarizing the issue between two extremes and it has remained polarized ever sense. Small wonder its become tedious and dull and depressing and compromise is impossible.) and the focus (the enemy) shifted into more 'mature' venues - politics, religion, news, etc. The only thing is, there was no external threat anymore, the target was obscure and intangible principles, and more often than not the 'target' shifted to people who believed/upheld those principles. Usually from withint he board. The growth of 'seriousness' from dealing with mature topics (hah) and the constant infighting that arose from the N&P oriented debates eroded away the stuff cushioning that hard, mean core of the board... until there was nothing left but the cold, hard, serious, nasty core. Over time people were either driven away by being targets, or disgusted by the poisonous nature of the discussions, or just the general stagnation of discussion.

The seeds were always there, it was simply a matter of seeing how long people could hold off the decay. Ultimately the only way to change it would have been to change the mindset/board culture, but that was probably impossible. Mindset is always the core of how we perceive things. If we're fixated on things being a certain way to 'make sense', or if we think that things are only good if they exist a certian way (esp because its the only way we're comfortable with), then there is greater chance for all those bad things people hate to set in. Its by challenging yourself constantly, trying to expand those horizons (it matters less whether you fail or succeed in expanding them, or the degree of growth - its the trying that matters because people will simply grow at different rates.) It's in your ability to look at things from a different perspective, to tolerate those perspectives, or to have your ideas challenged and still be able to like things because it may not be the way things are.

People keep saying I'm differnet like I've somehow pulled this bizarre 'jekyll and hyde' routine, and they react to other people on SDN much like the way I remember them considering the 'old' me. This is utterly bemusing to me because I am still the same person, I still have much of the same likes... its just that I've learned not to be so uncomfortable by expanding those horizons or looking at things in a different way. I've gone from being one of those people who said 'stark just likes to hate/criticize' stuff to one of those who values his insights because he offers an opinion different from mine, and I learn from it. I am still me, only.. more diversely so, and its deepened my appreciation of shit.

[Bakustra]

I'm going to say that the real problem with Joss Whedon is that he's an idiot. Why does Firefly/Serenity have pre-The Searchers Space Sioux? Because Whedon is an idiot who wanted to have his space western without thinking about it. Why does The Avengers endorse the national security state and manipulating people through lies? Because Whedon is an idiot who wanted to string stuff together without thinking about the implications. I mean, I'm not familiar with his TV work, so I can't say as much about the Nice Guy stuff (though it does sound pretty compelling), but I can say that one thread that runs through his work that I'm familiar with is simple stupidity. Which probably explains some of why TVTropes emerged from a Whedon fansite.

[Gands]

I could never work out if Whedon was trying to say anything about the Firefly universe.

Mal and friends were clearly part of the Space Confederacy. But what the hell was the source of their civil war? Were they actually slaving things? We've seen lots of "indentured servitude." Mal and friends perpetuate a narrative wherein they're being prosecuted for trying to be free, but we don't really see much of the argument aside from platitudes. Is there any depth, or is it a shallow thing wearing the clothes of something more meaningful?

[Instant Sunrise]

God DAMN have I been on the biggest Bikini Kill/Le Tigre kick lately.

Maybe I should try and like bands that are actually putting out new work.

[Bakustra]

God DAMN have I been on the biggest Bikini Kill/Le Tigre kick lately.

Maybe I should try and like bands that are actually putting out new work.

Well, if you wait long enough, there should be some new Kathleen Hanna stuff under Julie Ruin coming out... sometime.

[Flagg]

I could never work out if Whedon was trying to say anything about the Firefly universe.

Mal and friends were clearly part of the Space Confederacy. But what the hell was the source of their civil war? Were they actually slaving things? We've seen lots of "indentured servitude." Mal and friends perpetuate a narrative wherein they're being prosecuted for trying to be free, but we don't really see much of the argument aside from platitudes. Is there any depth, or is it a shallow thing wearing the clothes of something more meaningful?

No, the outer colonies wanted to be their own entities and the Alliance basically says "no, you're part of us now" and then wins a war. The whole "space confederacy" thing is really overblown.

[Bakustra]

I could never work out if Whedon was trying to say anything about the Firefly universe.

Mal and friends were clearly part of the Space Confederacy. But what the hell was the source of their civil war? Were they actually slaving things? We've seen lots of "indentured servitude." Mal and friends perpetuate a narrative wherein they're being prosecuted for trying to be free, but we don't really see much of the argument aside from platitudes. Is there any depth, or is it a shallow thing wearing the clothes of something more meaningful?

No, the outer colonies wanted to be their own entities and the Alliance basically says "no, you're part of us now" and then wins a war. The whole "space confederacy" thing is really overblown.

Like I said, Whedon's an idiot. He wants to have a Space Western without dealing with anything about the actual Western as it exists. Space Confederates exist without any sort of ideology beyond "No, you shut the fuck up dad Alliance", Space Native Americans are all eye-rollingly bloodthirsty and murderous (and in the movie, are the results of an experiment[!]), and we have Space Hollywood American Racial Makeup, but with Mandarin thrown in for coolsies.

[Djinnkitty83]

To be fair, considering the large number of Chinese rail-workers/slaves-in-all-but-name in the 'old west', the presence of Mandarin is at least consistent with his seeming "Imma make the Old West in Space with no regards to context" aims.

[magic princess]

Firefly has a host of problems but I think you can still spin it to produce something acceptable for your daughters to enjoy watching. And that's better than a lot of the downright toxic television out there. It just still has flaws you can drive a mac truck through.

[Flagg]

Whedon doesn't really go with thematically deep storytelling.

[timmy]

I never once until now considered that reavers are supposed to be an analogue for Native Americans.

I actually took the whole thing at face value, to be honest. Enjoyed it for the characterisations, rather than the setting.

[Sandman]

I'm with timmy on this. Being that Firefly was a space opera of sorts, I filed the Reavers under 'space monsters', more or less.

[Ralin]

To be fair, considering the large number of Chinese rail-workers/slaves-in-all-but-name in the 'old west', the presence of Mandarin is at least consistent with his seeming "Imma make the Old West in Space with no regards to context" aims.

I was inordinately pleased when I heard and understood the bits of Mandarin spoken by the Chinese immigrant characters in Tremors IV.

Also I'm suddenly thinking of this game I've been wanting to run for my usual RP group for awhile. The idea is that they begin investigating an alien spaceship crash and get drawn into (unsuccessfully) trying to prevent an alien invasion of Earth.

Also the aliens are D&D illithids.

Basically this entire game will exist for the sake of the scene where the alien leader telepathically addresses the planet during a presidential State of the Union speech and goes -Denizens of Earth! I, Xenu, have watched your pitiful planet ever since it was created-

-Five thousand years ago-

-By God-

And he'll continue in that vein for a bit. Then after he finishes there will be dead silence for like half a minute, and then Obama's voice will be heard coming from the TV saying, "And I for one welcome our new illithid overlords, and wish to remind them that as the leader of a powerful Earth nation I can be of great use to them in controlling my fellow humans."

I so need to make this happen.

[The Spartan]

Is it stupidity, or a sort of intellectual laziness? I get the sense that he gets a Cool Idea and then incorporates that into a story without really bothering much to think through all the ramifications outside of the immediate plot.