Ferretbrain Hates Joss Whedon

[skull_bearer]

I mean, it started off as pretty good deconstructions of the flaws in Whedon's writing (particularly the rather skeevy Dollhouse) but now their articles have gone straight into hatedom outright bashing with the last two podcasts on Cabin in the Woods and Avengers, both of which contained so much projection you could probably use the contributors for powerpoint presentations.

It's a bit annoying, I really liked Ferretbrain, but this isn't a road I want to see the site go down. While I certainly don't believe that any film is above or below criticism, there's a point where you have to draw the line because the assumptions you're making and actions you're projecting onto the film and its makers just isn't supported (ie, the idea that Cabin in the Woods was Whedon ranting against horror movie audiences, rather than a hilarious commentary on the tropes of modern horror movies).

It's also rather fascinating, in a depressing way, just how hard they're projecting. The image of critical superiority they're attributing to Whedon could be far more accurately directed (as we have no idea what Whedon was thinking when he made these films) at the Ferretbrain crew themselves.

:(

Comments

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

I think it was around Cabin and Avengers that it became clear to me that they had their own idea of what Whedon was doing, and no amount of evidence to the contrary would change their minds. It was after watching them trying to force two perfectly good film to fit the faulty paradigm they'd set up that I realised they were seeing the films through Whedon-hate goggles and I was wasting my time.

It's a shame, I like Ferretbrain/

[arkan2.livejournal.com]

Well, now I've seen The Avengers and listened to the podcast and read the comments, and I admit I'm still in the dark. I mean, I guess there was a little bit of armchair psychoanalysis there in the discussion of Black Widow's interrogation scenes (personally, I haven't come to any conclusions about her character's presentation in the movie yet, but I'm fascinated by the discourse) and maybe one or two other places, like a call-back to their joke in the "Cabin Fever" podcast about "The Networks" (which I never took very seriously).

Mostly, the podcast struck me as two people good-naturedly poking fun at a film they thoroughly enjoyed and occasionally getting into an aspect of it they didn't enjoy so much; and the comments seem to be mostly about discussing the depiction of Black Widow, which as I said, I find interesting to follow.

I don't mean to be combative here, and I apologize if I come across that way. I'm very interested in your perspective on all this - it's just that so far, I'm having trouble seeing it that way.