Special Topics in
Film Studies: Joss
Whedon
Dr. David Lavery
Fall 2014
PH 308, M 600-900
Introduction: From the Mind of Joss Whedon
An overview of the book’s approach, like Whedon’s work a hybrid, a
fusion of Howard Gruber’s case study method for understanding the
nature of the creative process with a neo-auteurism.
Each creative person is unique in a unique way.
—Howard Gruber (“From Epistemic Subject” 177)
Special Topics in Film Studies:
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
The Genius of Joss Whedon
You could never hope to grasp the source of our power.
Über Buffy to Adam in “Primeval”
But Joss just keeps saying, “Don’t worry. I have it right here.”
Sarah Michelle Gellar on the filming of “Restless” (Udovitch 62)
Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
Describing Joss Whedon as a “genius” has, of course, become
commonplace: Candace Havens uses it in the subtitle of her Joss
Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy*; cityofangel.com, Kristy
_______
* Although Havens’ “biography” does offer some valuable
insights (the interview with Jeanine Basinger, for
example, is most welcome), it is, as a piece of
scholarship, inexcusably rushed, unreliable, and
dishonest. Any attentive reader can spot scores of errors
both careless (Joss [sic—Joe] Reinkemeyer) and
ungrammatical (“Essential to Joss’s concept for Buffy
was to take all of the misery of his high school years and
put them [sic] into the series” [33]) and will no doubt
wonder, too, why no documentation of sources, none, is
provided. Quotation after quotation, most from Whedon’s
many interviews (important sources for this book as well),
fill Havens’ pages—all uncredited, creating the erroneous
impression that the book is the author’s continuous
conversation with its subject.
Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
Bratton’s useful (if ungrammatical) comprehensive Angel website,
calls him “a creative force of unimaginable genius”; Buffy herself,
Sarah Michelle Gellar, described her boss as a “mad genius”
(Gellar, “An Interview”); key collaborator David Greenwalt applies
the term to his colleague (Watcher’s Guide I, 244); adherents of the
Whedon grocery list use the term; the epilogue to one of the first
academic books on Buffy speaks of “The Genius of Joss Whedon.”
That last one, of course, is my own, authored just after Buffy’s
Season Four finale, written and directed by Whedon, and I am not
here to dispute use of the designation in describing the subject of
this book. Such characterizations, including my own, are in keeping
with a long tradition, going back to the word’s Latin origin. In
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Speaker’s Meaning, Owen
Barfield offers a concise
summary of its history: “The
Romans . . . would never have
said of a man that he is a genius.
They would have said that he
had, or was accompanied or
inspired by, a genius. We prefer
to say that he is one” (78). To
say Whedon is one is thus to
identify him as in possession of (I
am quoting the Oxford English
Dictionary) “that particular kind of
intellectual power which has the
Special Topics in Film Studies:
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
appearance of proceeding from a
supernatural inspiration or
possession, and which seems to
arrive at its results in an
inexplicable and miraculous
manner” (OED Online, 1989
Edition).
The particular example which
inspired my use of the term in
2002 was “Restless.” When Mim
Udovitch visited the set of Buffy
the Vampire Slayer that year
while writing a cover story on the
show for Rolling Stone, she
learned that the final episode of
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Season 4, then only days away
from production,* was not yet
written. “Like, in a couple of days
we start shooting the last episode
of the season,” Gellar would
observe, “and no one has any idea
what happens. But Joss just keeps
saying, ‘Don’t worry. I have it right
here’” (62). Whedon, we learn later
in the article, had an emergency
appendectomy earlier in the week,
delaying his completion of the
script for the season finale.
___________
* Udovitch’s piece was published in the May 11, 2000 issue of the magazine, but we
know from several references (she refers in the article to Gellar’s on-set visible scar,
acquired in Buffy’s flight from Adam in “The Yoko Factor” [4.20]; she watches the filming
of a scene in which Buffy regrets having studied French instead of Sumerian) that her
visit took place during the filming of “Primeval” (4.21), the next to the last episode of
season four.
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A few days later Whedon had evidently
completed the script for “Restless,” and he
would also direct, for the fourth consecutive
year, the season’s final episode, which would
air on May 23. Confirming his injunction to his
star not to worry, “Restless” turned out to be a
truly extraordinary hour of television, a kind of
TV 8½,* or Eliot’s Wasteland (Wilcox, Why
162-73), a postmodern, self-referential,
diegesis-bending, hour that would succeed in
summing up BtVS’s first four seasons and
pointing to its future.
_____
* During the filming of Fellini’s masterpiece, the Italian director had also deflected
the concerns of everyone from his producer to his star, Marcello Mastroianni, as to
whether or not “the maestro” actually knew what 8½ was about. Fellini would, of
course, incorporate these doubts into the film itself, making it in large part a movie
about the inability of Guido Anselmi (Mastroianni—Fellini’s alter ego) to make a
movie.
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Beyond the sense of high expectation that having the Whedon
stamp on it naturally inspired, neither I nor anyone else in BtVS’s
audience knew what we were in for beyond an Internet rumor,
correct as it turned out, that it would be a dream sequence.
Whedon had himself disclosed that much (in a Fanforum interview):
The last episode is all dreams,
and it’s just about as strange
as it needs to be. It was a very
fun and beautiful way to sort of
sum up everything everyone
had gone through, what it
meant to them and where they
are. It’s divided into four acts
that are four dreams: Giles,
Willow, Xander and Buffy.
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We did not know, however,
that each of these dreams
would in fact be equal in
style, strangeness, and
oneiric suggestiveness to the
famous “dancing dwarf”
dream of Dale Cooper in the
third episode of Twin Peaks,
a series Whedon has often
cited as among his all time
favorites.
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Exhausted from their final battle with Adam and from the enjoining
spell that made their victory possible, the Gang gathers at Buffy’s
house to unwind and watch videos. Before they have finished even
the coming attractions on the first tape, they are, however, all sound
asleep. Their dreams, however, are anything but sweet, as we learn
by entering the mindscreen (as Bruce Kawin calls it) of first Willow,
then Xander, Giles, and Buffy. Each of the four is stalked in turn by
the spirit of the First Slayer.
As the Scooby Gang wanders through their respective dream
worlds—as Willow struggles with her stage freight, fear of opera,
and doubts about her evolution beyond nerd status during a surreal
performance of Death of a Salesman, worrying all along that her
secret will be discovered; Xander dreams of assignations with not
only Willow and Tara but Buffy’s mother and worries about his future
while finding himself in the midst of an Apocalypse Now reddux
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(Principal Snyder as Kurtz); Giles becomes Buffy’s dream dad and
frets about the clash between Watcher duties and his “own gig,”
merging the two as he bursts into song at The Bronze (which has
merged with his own living room); and Buffy finds herself perplexed
by a purely-bureaucratic Riley and a human Adam who accuses her
of being a demon (planting questions that would not be answered
until Season 7’s ”Get It Done” [7.15]), before her own final struggle
with, and vanquishing of, the First Slayer, the dream diegesis
merges with the real set of the Santa Monica studio where BtVS
was filmed.
In one captivating tracking shot a fleeing Xander runs from the First
Slayer; the camera, in one continuous steadicam take, follows him
into Giles’ apartment, through a hallway and out into Buffy’s dorm,
into Buffy and Willow’s room, through a closet into his own dank
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basement apartment, where his stepfather/the First Slayer plucks
out his heart. The textual geography of the shot makes perfect
dream sense—for in dreams, after all, are not all places and times
contiguous? But the dream contiguity of the diegesis of “Restless” is
in reality the equally surreal contiguity of the extra-diegetic actual
television shooting set. Whedon has simultaneously taken us inside
the unconscious minds of the Scooby Gang and behind the scenes
of a television show’s production.
In Xander’s “Restless” dream, Buffy and Giles express their
disappointment with Apocalypse Now, and Xander finds himself
defending it. Then a popcorn-chomping Giles reverses his critical
opinion, announcing his sudden realization: “I'm beginning to
understand this now. It's all about the journey, isn't it?” Giles’ “this,”
we may say, refers not to Coppola’s film but to Whedon’s creation.
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The line is not the only one in “Restless” that takes on selfreferential meaning.* Even the twice repeated, first by Tara, then, in
“Restless’” last shot, in Buffy’s own mind—
“You think you know . . . what's to come . . . what you are. You
haven't even begun.” **
—seemed to speak not just to the destiny of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer but of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, over a decade later,
____________
* Another example: in the scene at the Bronze in Giles’ dream, we find the following
exchange:
Willow: Something is trying to kill us. It's like some primal . . . some animal force.
Giles: That used to be us.
Xander: Don't get linear on me now, man.
Of course there seems little danger of “Restless” itself becoming linear, even in
straight-arrow Giles’ dream segment.
** In the first episode of Season Five, “Buffy vs. Dracula,” written by Marti Noxon,
Dracula, seeking to convince Buffy that her power is very near his own, intones
the same line to her.
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the admonition seems even more relevant, with “you” becoming not
Buffy or Buffy but Joss Whedon himself.
It is not my intent here to dispute Whedon’s “genius,” but I do want to
follow a different tack.
From the Mind . . .
Here’s how something like this happens. We all sit around
scratching our heads. Then Joss says something to the effect of
“Can Holland come back all dead and take Angel on an elevator
ride to hell but end up right back where he started?” then I just try
to work out the details. Bush burning, and its name is Joss.
—Tim Minear, posting to the Bronze after “Reprise” (Angel 2.15)
"And the bush was not consumed" (Exodus) is a perfect metaphor
of the life of a creative person.
—Howard Gruber (“And the Bush was not Consumed” 269)
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In a Universal Pictures trailer seen in theatres prior to the release of
Serenity (2005) viewers were greeted by an opening title that reads:
“From the Mind of Joss Whedon.”* The phrasing, intended for both
_________________
*At the time of writing, the trailer remains viewable on YouTube at
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0BvP99-Ci6k.
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experienced visitors and newcomers to the Whedonverses alike, is
telling. Serenity—a big screen manifestation of a failed television
series—we are being promised, will not be just any work of popular
culture; it will not be written by a committee, or rewritten and
reshaped according to the findings of focus groups. It will be the
product of a particular mind, a unique imagination—the same
intelligence, we learn in a subsequent title, that brought Buffy the
Vampire Slayer and Angel into the world.
This book makes a similar assumption. Its subject is not what has
come out of that mind—the film scripts (both doctored and original),
the television episodes and series, the comic books, song lyrics, the
movies. Over thirty scholarly/critical books on that work, well over
200 essays and articles (including over thirty issues of the scholarly
journal Slayage which I co-edit), and a dozen conferences (in the
US, Canada, Australia, the UK, France, Turkey) have more than
satisfactorily examined, and continue to examine, those.
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Nor is this a biography in any traditional
sense. As my title suggests, I want to
paint a “portrait” of Joss Whedon’s
creative life. Nicholas Hilliard once
proclaimed his desire to paint not just the
physical form of his contemporary Sir
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) but his
extraordinary mind (Eiseley 23). Out of
Bacon’s mind came the modern scientific
world view; out of Whedon has come the
‘verses that bear his signature, but I
understand Hilliard’s desire, though my
medium is words and not paint.
In a book called Waking Dreams,
psychologist Mary Watkins, with the
nature of creativity in mind, once
observed that the reason we are shocked
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when magicians pull rabbits out
of hats is because we were not
around when they inserted them
in the first place (137). This
book will investigate the
creative achievement of Joss
Whedon by tracking his rabbits
to their source. (A warning to
the dearly departed Anya would
be necessary here if she were
not, well, dearly departed.)
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1927
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In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea. (lines 1–5)
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Special Topics in Film Studies:
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
In order to undertake this task I will be adopting an approach every
bit as much a hybrid as Whedon’s work itself—a critical “combo
Buffy,”* if you will—which fuses psychologist Howard Gruber’s
case-study approach to understanding the creative process, applied
here for the first time to a pop culture creator, with a grounded-intelevision neo-auteurism. Allow me to explain as briefly as possible.
Fast forward through the remainder of this chapter if you like (I have
placed Whedon’s Gruber’s key insights in bold for the speed
reader); implement, if you will, the “revolutionary new ‘page turning’
process” (Whedon, “Introduction,” “Once More with Feeling” Script
Book, ix): it won’t hurt my feelings if you move directly to Chapter 1:
Television Son. The remainder of this book will not have as much
resonance or intellectual depth for readers who zap the next few
pages, but it will remain meaningful nonetheless.
__________________
* Xander in “Primeval” (BtVS 4.21): “So no problem, all we need is combo Buffy—her
with Slayer strength, Giles' multi-lingual know how, and Willow's witchy power.”
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Howard Gruber’s Approach to the Study of Creative Work
I proceeded like an explorer in a new territory, reading the
notebooks [of Darwin] through, over and over again, figuring out
what he was focusing on, what his cryptic notes meant, trying to
recreate his thought processes from one day to the next. I tried to
freeze the current of his thinking at crucial points.
—Howard Gruber
Simply put, the approach of the late Howard E. Gruber (1922-2005) is
"To start with an individual whose creativity is beyond dispute . . . [a]nd
then . . . to map, as carefully as I can, what is going on in that person's
mind over a period in which creative breakthroughs were occurring"
(“Breakaway Minds” 69).* What interested Gruber was not the “Aha”
experiences so often focused on in the history of creativity. Such
moments, he was convinced, are always "part of a longer creative
process, which in its turn is part of a creative life.” “How are such lives
lived?”—that was what Howard Gruber wanted to know.*
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Howard Gruber’s Approach to the
Study of Creative Work
I proceeded like an explorer in a
new territory, reading the notebooks
[of Darwin] through, over and over
again, figuring out what he was
focusing on, what his cryptic notes
meant, trying to recreate his thought
processes from one day to the next.
I tried to freeze the current of his
thinking at crucial points.
—Howard Gruber
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
Simply put, the approach
of the late Howard E.
Gruber (1922-2005) is "To
start with an individual
whose creativity is beyond
dispute . . . [a]nd then . . .
to map, as carefully as I
can, what is going on in
that person's mind over a
period in which creative
breakthroughs were
occurring" (“Breakaway
Minds” 69).*
____________
* Gruber’s own magnum opus
was a study of Darwin—Darwin
on Man (1981).
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What interested Gruber was not
the “Aha” experiences so often
focused on in the history of
creativity. Such moments, he was
convinced, are always "part of a
longer creative process, which in
its turn is part of a creative life.”
“How are such lives lived?”—that
was what Howard Gruber wanted
to know.*
______________
* For more on Gruber, see my essay
“Creative Work: The Method of Howard
Gruber,” from which much of my overview
here is drawn.
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"There is no need,” Gruber was convinced, “to think of the
individual as solving problems in a mysterious way called
'genius'" (“The Emergence of a Sense of Purpose” 6). Creativity, in
fact, is not “a set of properties that a person has in a certain moment
and carries around with him. . . . The question is really not the 'ivity'
of it—the property list—but how people go about doing it when they
do it" (“From Epistemic Subject” 175).
Historically speaking, creative individuals often "leave better
traces." Indeed, "the making and leaving of tracks . . . is part and
parcel of the process itself . . . a kind of activity characteristic of
people doing creative work." "Wittingly or not," he notes, they
"create the conditions under which we can study their
development" ("Which Way is Up?" 119). What sort of traces are to
be discovered?
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[N]otions that seemed too absurd to be written down, transient thoughts
still too fleeting or awkward for written expression, taboo ideas that can
expressed only when muted or transformed. And there is another sort of
thinking that leaves very little trace, although it is not rejected or
suppressed: the personal imagery ones uses to carry a thought along,
the personal knowledge one gains of a situation only by actually being in
it—seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling it. Doing, enjoying,
remembering, imagining it. This is the fine-structure of experience, well
nigh invisible except to the person himself. (“On Creative Thought” 253)
For creative people "a long and well-worked through
apprenticeship is vital to the development of a creative life." The
particular circumstances vary: "Teachers and mentors may be imposed
upon the young person, or sought out, or discovered in a lucky accident.
They may be physically present or far away, living or dead models." But
the end result is the same: "models and mentors there must be, as well
as the disciplined work necessary to profit from them" ("Foreword to
Notebooks of the Mind" x).
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Early in their life's work, creative individuals make "good
moves"—strategies, "first stroke[s] of the brush [which] transform
the canvas"—that "set the stage for the protracted creative work of
which it is only a part" ("From Epistemic Subject" 172). (These
moves are often recorded in an "initial sketch": a "rough draft or
early notebook to which the worker can repair from time to time—
that serves as a sort of gyroscope for the oeuvre" ["Inching" 26566].) Though "delays, tangents, and false starts" are equally as
common and "almost inevitable," creative individuals find ways of
managing their work "so that these inconclusive moves become
fruitful and enriching, and at the same time so that a sense of
direction is maintained." "Without such a sense of direction," in fact,
as Gruber shows, "the would-be creator may produce a number of
fine strokes, but they will not accumulate toward a great work"
("Inching" 265).
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Creative people, Gruber found, are not as isolated as once
believed: they are, in fact, extremely good at collaborating, at
interacting with peers. They often devote their skills and a surprising
amount of time to establish environments and peer groups ("personal
allegiances") capable of nurturing their work ("Breakaway Minds" 72;
"And the Bush" 294-95).
Creative people are willing to work hard for a very long time, even if such
work does not produce immediate results or rewards, and this work
remains enjoyable for them. "Perhaps the single most reliable finding in
our studies," Gruber observes, "is that creative work takes a long time.
With all due apologies to thunderbolts, creative work is not a matter
of milliseconds, minutes, or even hours—but of months, years, and
decades" ("Inching" 265). Creative individuals should not be thought of
as obsessed or fanatic: "the creative person cannot simply be driven,"
Gruber writes. "He must be drawn to his work by visions, hopes, joy of
discovery, love of truth, and sensuous pleasure in the creative activity
itself" ("And the Bush" 294).
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Creative individuals, Gruber discovers, "need to know a lot and
cultivate special skills" ("Breakaway Minds" 71): Darwin, for
example, knew a tremendous amount about such esoteric subjects
as barnacles and animal breeding, knowledge which shaped his
discoveries about evolution; Leonardo's precise knowledge of
anatomy informed his art; Newton's hands-on experience as the
maker of scientific instruments was "instrumental" to his theorymaking ("Foreword to Notebooks of the Mind" x). Creative
individuals sometimes acquire this knowledge through a "special
kind of narcissism" ("And the Bush" 280) such as that exhibited by
Darwin when he used himself as his subject in order to study man's
higher faculties.
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Creative individuals possess a "network of enterprises.” "In the course of
a single day or week," Gruber notes, "the activities of the person may
appear, from the outside, as a bewildering miscellany. But the person is
not disoriented or dazzled. He or she can readily map each activity onto
one or another enterprise" ("The Evolving Systems Approach" 13). That
creative work is often "spread out over months and years has
consequences for the organization of purpose." For "in order to make
grand goals attainable, the creator must invent and pursue subgoals."
Individuals must find ways of managing their tasks through a network of
enterprises ("Inching" 265).
"The creative person must develop a sense of identity as a creative
person, a sense of his or her own specialness" ("And the Bush" 294-95).
Creative people possess, and seek to possess, unique points of
view, special perspectives on the world. Such points of view, in fact,
are likely to distinguish the creative person more than any particular
problem solving ability.
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The ongoing work of creation is often guided by what Gruber
calls "images of wide scope." "There is probably a place," Gruber
writes, "for a special term such as 'image of wide scope,' distinct
from metaphor, to refer to the potential vehicle of a metaphor that
has not yet been formulated or to refer to supple schematization . . .
that might enter into a number of metaphors" ("Inching" 256).
Darwin's notebook sketches of the tree of evolution, Einstein's
"thought experiment" of a voyage on a beam of light in order to
understand reality from its perspective—these are classic examples
of images of wide scope, Freud's numerous drawings, his rendering
of neurons in the brain, which recently inspired an entire art
exhibition at the SUNY Binghamton.
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
Creative individuals . . . "have at [their] disposal a number of
modalities of representation. Systems of laws, taxonomic
systems, and thematic repertoires [the term is Gerald Holton's] . .
.—are all pertinent" ("Cognitive Psychology" 315). Various thinkers
develop direct, special ways of thinking: Wordsworth in iambic
pentameter, von Neumann in mathematical equations, Dr. Johnson
in prose ("Aha Experiences" 48). These "private languages and
modes of thought" must be translated, however, into public
discourse.“
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
Ordinarily, an "overriding project [emerges] that unites all the
enterprises," though this is not always the case ("History and
Creative Work" 9). Each enterprise is governed by plans and
intentions, but, due to the nature of the coupling, the frustration of
one plan does not bring the whole system to a halt. Rather the
individual overcomes obstacles through new procedures: he or she
may, for example, turn to a related enterprise which had been
placed on the "back burner." "How the individual decides whether to
struggle with . . . difficulties or to shift to some other activity," Gruber
notes, "is regulated by the organization of purposes as a whole"
("Cognitive Psychology" 315).
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
The pages ahead will plot the conformity of Whedon’s life and work
through application of Gruber’s scheme. Think of the epigraphs
highlighting key Gruber ideas that serve to presage each of the
book’s two parts and every chapter as roadmarkers intended to
“place” the stages of Whedon’s creative development across his
career.
My subject, however, is not a great figure in the history of science or
a canonical writer. Joss Whedon’s creative achievements have
been in popular culture, most significantly in television and film, so it
is my intent to enhance Gruber’s method by melding it with a
medium-specific approach.
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Neo-Auteurism
It may well be that the early development of art
forms and/or new media of communication
exhibits a natural tendency to anonymity. Poetry,
for example, is authored by "anonymous" before
Homer or Chaucer or Dante appear on the
scene; Gilgamesh and Beowulf precede The
Iliad or The Canterbury Tales. In architecture,
the Gothic cathedral, the anonymous work of
thousands, comes before the acknowledged
creations of a Christopher Wren or Frank Lloyd
Wright.
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In the first four decades of the movies,
authorship was seldom at issue. Though
directors like D. W. Griffith, Erich von
Stroheim, Sergei Eisenstein, and Charlie
Chaplin were recognized as artists of the
medium, in the normal course of things it
was more customary to credit a producer or
even a studio as the true origin of a work of
movie art. It was only after World War II,
when French "cinéastes" associated with
the journal Cahiers du Cinema—chief
among them François Truffaut, a future
important director of the New Wave, in his
essay on the "politques des auteurs"
(1954), began to speak of movie auteurs:
the French word for "author."
Special Topics in Film Studies:
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François Truffaut, "Une
Certaine Tendance du
Cinéma Français" ("A
Certain Tendency in
French Cinema"),
Cahiers du Cinéma
(1954)
“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
Andrew Sarris (US):
Auteurism’s American
champion
The America Cinema: Directors
and Directions, 1929-1968
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
“In its more extreme incarnations auteurism can be
seen as an anthropomorphic form of ‘love’ for the
cinema. The same love that had formerly been lavished
on stars, or that formalists lavished on artistic devices,
the auteurists now lavished on the men—and they
largely were men—who incarnated the auteurists’ idea
of cinema. Film was resurrected as secular religion; the
‘aura’ was back in force thanks to the cult of the auteur.”
--Robert Stam
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
Foucault
Barthes
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
William H. Gass, "The Death of the
Author.” Habitations of the Word:
Essays. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1985. 265-88.
“[W]hen, in 1968, Roland Barthes
announced the death of the author, he
was actually calling for it.”
The death of the author is comic, not
tragic; it "signifies a decline in authority,
in theological power, as if Zeus were
stripped of his thunderbolts and swans,
perhaps residing on Olympus still, but
now living in a camper and cooking with
propane. He is, but he is no longer a
god.”
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
Anti-television scholars like Todd Gitlin
have insisted (in 1994) that “There is still
virtually no place in American television,
commercial or public, for a serious writer
or director to make a career” (xiii) in a
medium in which all artistic purposes are
“subordinated to the larger design of
keeping a sufficient number of people
tuned in” (56). “In headlong pursuit of the
logic of safety,” Gitlin writes, “the
networks ordinarily intervene at every
step of the development process. It is as
if there were not only too many cooks
planning the broth, but the landlord kept
interfering as well” (85).
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
John Caughie, “Authors and Auteurs: The Uses of Theory.” In Donald, J. and Renov, M. (Eds)
Handbook of Film Studies. Sage (2007).
After Barthes, the search
for the author “was driven
underground for a fairly
brief period to the place
where unfashionable
ideas regroup.” (Caughie
18-19)
“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
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Only now, half a century into the medium’s
existence, have we come to recognize that
television as well might have authors.
First, television was thought of as a producer’s
medium: talk of Steven Bochco’s Hill Street Blues
(NBC, 1981-1987) became a critical
commonplace. Soon after, both industry and fans
found themselves all abuzz over movie auteur
David Lynch’s role in the creation and directing of
Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990-91). By the end of the
century, David Kelley (Picket Fences, CBS, 19921996), David Milch (NYPD Blue, ABC, 19932002), Joshua Brand and John Falsey (St.
Elsewhere, NBC, 1982-88; Northern Exposure,
ABC, 1990-1995) were, if not household words, at
least known television authors.
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny
The Parallel Courses of Cinema & TV
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
But in this century, in an era which Jason Mittell
detects a growing interest in television’s “operational
aesthetic,” a foregrounding of “the constructed
nature of the narration,” and new audience interest
in how favorite shows gets made (Mittell 35), such
figures as Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, NBC, 19992003), David Chase (The Sopranos, HBO, 19992007), Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, HBO, 2001-2005),
Amy Sherman-Paladino (Gilmore Girls, WB, 20002006; CW, 2006-2007); J. J. Abrams (Alias, ABC,
2001-2006), Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse
(Lost, ABC, 2004-2010), and Joss Whedon have
emerged as television auteurs. The original auteur
theory’s appeal, the critic Peter Wollen has noted,
was obvious: it "implie[d] an operation of
decipherment . . . reveal[ing] authors where none
had been seen before" (77). Television scholars,
myself included, were struck anew by that appeal.
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Jason Mittell
“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
In the 1970s and 80s, however, not only
auteurism but literary authorship as well,
faced dire challenges from new theoretical
trends:
After hundreds of years of outstanding
health, and as fetishised intellectual
superhero and focal point for art and
literature, under the Tel Quel theorists, the
author had suddenly withered and perished.
As is the case with quick passings, though,
many who were close to the author—
namely, large numbers of art history and
literature academics—have had great
problems dealing with the death, and some
still refuse to let go, their work a continuing
eulogy. By contrast, and almost Oedipally,
many of academia's next generation were
only too happy to witness the death and
The Death of the
Author Redux
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”
have whole-heartedly welcomed the text and the
reader's inheritance of the author's powers, estate,
and superhero . . . status. And, of course, political
economists who do not particularly believe in texts,
readers, or authors, instead regarding the world as
populated by products and producers, were keen to
see discussion of the author come to an end.
The Death of
the Author
Redux
In “Resurrecting the Author: Joss Whedon’s Place in
Buffy’s Textual Universe,” the work from which I have
been quoting, a brilliant, knowledgeable, and
suggestive talk given at the first scholarly conference
on Buffy in 2002, Jonathan Gray not only supplies a
multi-media history of authorship but issues a call for
bringing the auteur back from his current “undead”
status. These pages intend to answer Gray’s call, but
in synchrony with Gruber’s understanding of creative
work.
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“From the Mind of Joss Whedon”