That’s a personal, individual choice we all have to make. Some people are able to divorce the art from the artist with no problem. Others can never see them as separate. People like me are somewhere in the middle. If he directed another film I’d probably see it, but I doubt I could watch Buffy again.
You don’t, but at the same time, tainted is tainted.
I used to enjoy Bill Cosby, I had a whole bunch of his stand-up on cassette, I re-watched episodes of the Cosby show from time to time.
Now I can’t stand to hear his voice.
I don’t think that that is punishing myself, even though I have lost something due to his actions.
So, it is a legitimate question, can I continue to enjoy Firefly and Dr. Horrible(Never really liked Buffy, and twice through was enough for Angel), or has JW’s actions tainted them to where I no longer do?
I’ve never met him, but my understanding was that he was pretty friendly with fans.
It’s those who worked with him that he seemed to be a jerk to.
Objectively, it’s not a good management strategy (and I’ll point out I was a manager).
If you try to manage through intimidation and abuse, your subordinates are only going to work to the extent that you are able to focus your attention on them. If you have a sizeable group of people working for you, they’re going to realize the finite amount of time you have as one individual means most of the time they can safely slack off without fear of you noticing or being able to respond. Your subordinates are only going to work during the brief periods when you’re watching them - and while you’re doing that, all of your other subordinates are taking the opportunity to ease back. And the time you spend abusing your subordinates will itself be time taken away from when they could have been doing productive work.
It’s a lot more effective to work on building up a sense of respect and affection in the workplace. If you achieve that, your employees will supervise themselves and seek to do their best work without you having to constantly watch them.
The people who think tyranny is a good management strategy are just natural tyrants who are seeking a justification for their behavior.
I asked myself the same question. My provisional answer is: Yes, I can continue to enjoy them. So far the accusations are just that he’s an asshole, not that he’s a rapist or anything like that. And he seems to be an asshole to both men and women, given the complaints out there so far. Since the vast majority of us are assholes in some fashion or another, and genius goes hand in hand with passion and assholery, I’m not going to throw away his work just because he disillusioned me more than a bit. To be quite honest, I too was pissed when Charisma got pregnant in the middle of Angel. Working that into the narrative really fucked up that season. Not excusing him, but I can understand where he might have been coming from with that one.
And not clearly everyone who worked with him.
I’m trying to think of the biggest assholes I’ve worked with, whether they singled certain people/types to abuse, or whether they were pretty much equal opportunity assholes, hated by all…
One issue I have when I start going down that line of thinking is that- well, who has he been accused of being a jerk to? If everyone stops watching shows because the director was a jerk to the actors, isn’t there a risk that actors will stop coming forwards about it, because then they get, effectively, second-hand cancelled as well?
It’s not like avoiding an author who’s the sole creator of a book. For a film or TV show; I think you can enjoy the contribution of everyone else involved without letting one asshole get credit for it all, unless the people harmed start calling for it to be dropped, and I don’t think any of them have.
I’ve had my share of asshole bosses, and it varies. In one case, I was her favorite and never had a single problem with her. It was an endless parade of, “Isn’t Boss the worst?!” and me going, “um…” And she was, objectively, the worst, so it wasn’t people making a big deal out of nothing. In the end she was fired.
In another case, I was shielded from him by my direct supervisor. I heard stories but never took the full brunt of his ire. The effect was being terrified of him despite never having a negative experience with him.
After checking out his IMDB page, it seems I was cancelling him without even noticing. Other than a couple of SHIELD episodes I haven’t seen any of his television shows since Angel. I binge watched all the Marvel Universe movies last year, but since I rarely know who writes or directs things he slipped a couple of Avengers movies in on me.
Since I almost never re-watch any shows or movies, whether I could still enjoy them doesn’t enter the debate. I will in the future avoid his stuff, no great loss, there is so much stuff to watch now I can’t get to half of it.
Excluded middle. And he’s not just an asshole, his stuff sounds like typical bullying behavior. I thought we were trying to put an end to that, not just shrug our shoulders cause you like the guy.
He seems to be an asshole to women and men of color, not just men unless I missed someone.
And we are not all assholes equally, I’m willing to bet One American Dollar that none of the people on this board have never been banned from being in a room with a 15 year old girl.
It’s somewhat unlikely, but entirely possible, that an actor would make a deliberate choice to keep working with an abrasive and unpleasant director, because the actor believes that it will help him to become a genuinely better actor. But that should be a free choice, not something imposed by circumstances.
…a guy I went to school with a very long time ago took his own life. I found out about it because my best friend called me and said “I’ve got some great news for you. Jim’s dead.”
I went to his funeral. The room was overflowing. The tributes were beautiful. People talking about what a great guy Jim was. How he was always there for them. A great son, a great brother, a great friend. I have no doubt that everybody there was sincere.
A few days after the funeral service I went to hang out with some of my old friends from school. None of them were upset. All of them had stories about how he had bullied them in horrible ways. One of my quietest friends, somebody who never spoke ill of anyone, shared with me that he was looking forward to dancing on Jim’s grave.
Toxic people know what they are doing. They pick their targets well.
(Name changed to protect the maybe not so innocent.)
My uncle died tragically at age 30. From my POV, he was a Grade A asshole, insulting, belligerent and cruel. He was lazy and refused to work. He tormented me endlessly as a child. He mocked my dreams. He told me I was stupid and ugly. He died just as we were beginning to form a fragile peace.
The funeral, with all the people singing his praises, was surreal.
I’m sorry, but no. This is not a valid equation.
I’m an asshole and no one has ever accused me of being a genius.
A past boss/company owner of mine was an asshole, and belittled me and most everybody else there on a daily basis. I still like the products the company produced, though, and don’t hesitate to buy them.
I have the advantage of never having known whether Whedon was a mensch or a jerk in the first place, so I don’t much care if he was an ass to his underlings. If he did something worse, I could reconsider. I haven’t really liked anything he’s done that I’ve watched since BtVS and Angel. I quit watching his stuff after giving up on Dollhouse. Dollhouse, and even Firefly (though I enjoyed Firefly), seemed to be more fantasies for teenaged boys in the way women were portrayed, and held little interest for me.
This seems relevant…
Did I miss something in Dollhouse? Yes, it was about a company that developed a system of mind control. But the company was clearly portrayed as the bad guys and the mind control was shown as evil.
Is the aim to boycott any product where a bullying arsehole is involved in the manufacturing process? Seems to me that discriminates against media products where the arsehole in question is newsworthy. Whereas all the bullying at the organic farms and sweatshops goes unboycotted.
Probably, but it’s not only him. Lots of people in that business seem to have undergone “The Training”.
[Student] " I am Oscar-Dudd, millionaire…! I own a mansion und a yacht! " [/Student]
[Teacher] “Again…!” [/Teacher]
[Student] " I am Oscar-Dudd, millionaire…! I own a mansion und a yacht! " [/Student]
[Teacher] “Again…!” [/Teacher]
I have to take exception to this, strenuously. Yes, quite often people plan their pregnancies but quite often it doesn’t work out the way we expect. Women do not have a fertility button they can push and the perfectly planned babby comes out. Our birth control can fail, we can be trying to get pregnant but it happens only when it happens, we can be undergoing fertility treatments or IVF but get a surprise pregnancy outside of what the doctors do. It is not under our control. And there is a staggering array of accomodations to pregnancy in the history of film and television for a director to draw on–so many that it can become a metajoke, a la Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He didn’t HAVE to be an asshole and bully a pregnant woman (“Are you going to keep it?” REALLY?) and punish her for daring to have a life outside his fucking tv show. That’s just ugly behavior, for which he deserves a good raking over the coals.