Joss Whedon

Curse your sudden but inevitable popularity

They keep on telling me that you never forget your first time. I’m not sure if this counts, but something happened to me yesterday evening for the first time and it’ll certainly be a while before I forget it. I was talking to a girl in work (which is strange enough on its own) and when I mentioned that I had seen the Avengers movie a few times already, she replied that she had seen it to and that she thought Joss Whedon had done an amazing job. This is the first time that an ordinary person, a non-nerd, a “Norm” has known who Joss Whedon was, let alone mention him to me unsolicited. I think that this is going to happen a lot now, and that the world is going to know finally who Joss Whedon is.

The closest I’ve come to Joss-Recognition with a Norm before this was a couple of years ago in a bar in Dun Laoghaire. I was carrying a couple of pints back to my table, and was looking quite splendid in a Firefly t-shirt. A woman walking in the opposite direction said to me “Oh my god, you like Firefly. I love Twilight!” I tried to tell myself that there was a chance that she was talking about the Season 8 antagonist and not my most favourite ever series of movies. She was really good looking with red hair the same colour as a sunset seen through fire, as well as an amazing smile. But when she told me that she was Team Edward, I just kept walking back to where my friend was sitting. That was the night I pretty much gave up on having a Joss conversation with anyone who wasn’t a Browncoat.

I was lucky enough to see Marvel Avengers Assemble (still hate that title) a week before the General Release in Ireland and I spent a lot of that week reading articles about the movie and interviews with Joss Whedon, for I had no fear of spoilers. A lot of the interviews, moreso than the articles, were in places that I really didn’t expect to ever see a Whedon interview, though from Disney’s point of view they are probably as important as any bit of advertising for the Avengers. I couldn’t help but notice that many of the different sources were referring to Whedon like he had just fallen out of the sky on to the set of the Avengers movie and talked about his previous works the same way a play you acted in in school would be talked about in a job interview.

One of the hallmarks of nerdhood is being very passionate and probably slightly obsessive about the things that interest you and that you care about. I know of few better examples of this than the Browncoats and the lasting love that surrounds Firefly. But that obsession and dedication does bring with it a certain sense of false familiarity with the people who create the things we love. If you have enough time, enough money and the ability to research, you can meet a lot of your heroes at shows and conventions all around the world, all around the year. I’ve yet to meet Whedon, but I have been lucky enough over the years to meet Bruce Campbell, Kevin Smith, Lou Ferrigno, Mark Millar, Leonard Nimoy, and a handful of other people. That accessibility is largely because the fame that these people possess is not “full fame”. The fame is close to idol worship to the people who know them, but it’s limited to a relatively small proportion of the population. And whether it’s right or wrong, the knowledge and the dedication and the accessibility and the interaction gives a sense familiarity and belonging.

But Joss Whedon doesn’t belong to us anymore. He belongs to the world now. There’s a group of people who are going to see this movie and find out who Whedon is but who weren’t there for the past, for the things that made Joss who he is, the things that made us who we are. They didn’t go through the heartbreak of Firefly or the pride of heart swelling Serenity. They didn’t go through the watering down of Dollhouse and Alien Resurrection or the growth of the Can’t Stop The Serenity movement. They didn’t share the power of Buffy or the atonement of Angel. They might not know that Castle used to be Captain Tightpants and they might not care that once upon a time, he did the impossible.

Having said all that though, I hope that the people who love Avengers will get to experience all these things. I hope that Whedon’s message spreads. I hope that his words on humanism and Atheism reach more ears. I hope that donations to Equality Now go through the roof. I hope that strong female characters won’t be a news worthy things, that they’ll just be a worthy thing. I hope that the people who make the decisions realise that quality is not an anathema to profit (thank you, Aaron Sorkin), and that dumbing down is the same as giving up.

I suppose that it just marks the end of an era. Being a Browncoat has always been something that I’ve been very proud of, kind of like a secret society. Most of the people in my life who I call my friends are Browncoats and I wouldn’t know a lot of them without that uniting factor. But the whole world is about to know what we’ve known for so long. I hope that this is one time that a secret shared just makes it better.

Of the 85 screens where I’ve seen movies for Republic of Cinema so far, 7 of them have been Whedon screenings for Cabin In The Woods, Serenity, and Avengers. By the time that Republic of Cinema comes to a close and I’ve seen a movie on every screen in Ireland, I hope to have that number up to about 30. Avengers will get more screenings, and I’m going to try my hardest to get to “Much Ado About Nothing” as much as possible. I’m not sure of the time frame yet for “In Your Eyes” but the movie sounds amazing and I hope that when I’m looking back at this adventure, I can count it as part of my triumph. Another man who is breaking big at the moment is Dublin born actor, Liam Cunningham. He’s currently burning up your television screens as Davos Seaworth in Game of Thrones. Much like Whedon, he’s being labelled as an “overnight success” despite the fact that he’s been working in TV and film pretty consistently for the past decade. Maybe losing your hair a growing a beard is a sign of talent and a key to success?

Speaking of bald, bearded men with talent… my friend Wayne, a fellow Browncoat who just happens to own one of two screen-worn Jayne hats, has designed a pretty awesome looking tshirt that’s available on Teebusters for the frankly silly price of €8.99. If you use the discount code of bill&ted1 you’ll get it for an even cheaper price!

Excellent!

Actually…maybe some secrets are worth sharing.