Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Wilder, S A

Titel

Vicious Bitches?: Joss Whedon, "Billy," and the Cultural Retext

Ist Teil von

• Slayage (Murfreesboro, Tenn.), 2021-12, Vol.19 (1/2), p.114-142

Ort / Verlag

Murfreesboro: Whedon Studies Association

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EBSCOhost Film and Television Literature Index with Full Text

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• (Billy Blim, "Billy" Angel 3.6, 12:19-22, Minear & Bell) Introduction As part of the ongoing #MeToo/Time's Up movement that has roiled Hollywood, in February 2021, after nearly two decades of rumor and speculation, actress Charisma Carpenter used the social media platform Twitter1 to recount ongoing abuse suffered at the hands of executive producer Joss Whedon while working on the television series Angel. Carpenter, who played main cast character Cordelia Chase in the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-200З) and the first four seasons of its spin-off series Angel (1999-2004), received immediate support and affirmation from several other actors and series personnel who had worked with Whedon and herself on these shows.2 Her revelations form the latest in a series of such claims that question Whedon's long-held status as a male feminist television series creator. According to Carpenter, Whedon deserves blame for the abrupt tonal shift of her character and her unsatisfying arc over the fourth season: her final season as a regular cast member, and one where her character was impregnated and gave birth to a demonic female force that served as the season's primary antagonist. Combined with the way discourse around shows with which he is involved is commonly framed, connection and attribution of auteur status to Whedon are virtually inevitable, regardless of the complicated realities of production.3 Using television scholar Taylor Cole Miller's concept of the retext (2021), which argues that more than merely a change of context, changed viewing circumstances produce a new televisual text, this paper examines a single episode from season three of Angel that ostensibly critiques misogyny.