Joss Whedon: So Cancelled His Thread Got a Sequel

[BigFatCoward]

8 hours ago, Vaughn said:

Ok, let me rephrase then - you're making a case that most Whedon sets and productions were fine. Sez you: "I am referring specifically to the idea that Whedon's productions are generally toxic environments, which does not seem to be borne out by the evidence we have." If I read a story about how someone is an abusive to, say, 30% of the people who worked for them, my instinct isn't to focus on the 70% who weren't impacted.

 

 

To be fair, at the minute it's probably more like 0.3% of people who have made allegations. If it was 30% nobody would be arguing anything. 

[Ran]

1 minute ago, BigFatCoward said:

To be fair, at the minute it's probably more like 0.3% of people who have made allegations. If it was 30% nobody would be arguing anything. 

Indeed. He's worked with hundreds of people at this stage in his career. 

5 hours ago, Mr Gordo said:

Michelle's statement was that he was never to allowed alone with her in a room AGAIN. Clearly he was and something happened, and then he wasn't allowed to be after.

I think the lack of clarity in her statement makes it very hard to be clear about the whys and wherefors of the situation. A scenario:

If the equivalent of HR found out Whedon was alone with her to talk over a scene and then said, you know, she's under age, it's a liability risk, lets make sure that doesn't happen again, and then she hears that for some reason she's not supposed to be alone with him and leaps to conclusions, thinking she dodged some sort of bullet, she could in all honesty present this as something suggesting he was known to be abusive when in fact it was purely benign. 

Implausible? Sure. Impossible? No. Which is why until Trachtenberg or someone in the know feels comfortable saying more about it, it's just very unclear what the factual import is of her remark. One can, of course, make any number of assumptions that one would like to make.

[Lord Varys]

The idea that the guy running the show should not be alone with an underage actress as part of a general agreement is just bizarre. His job would (also) be to ensure Trachtenberg is comfortable with things, to help her if she had problems with her colleagues and other people she was working with ... and also to go through work-related stuff she was not comfortable with (yet) to be doing with other people around.

The idea that you work in an environment where people operate that being alone with an underage actress puts you in danger if you are the guy in charge is a complete reversal of the power dynamics.

This whole thing indicates that Joss Whedon was unable to pull himself together to the point that he was acting civil and kind and like a normal person with a minor girl - something that is completely unprofessional. Even if Trachtenberg were a virtual Klaus Kinski on set ... Whedon was the adult, the guy running things. He should be the guy resolving and moderating conflicts, not the opposite.

And I really don't see any need to defend this guy and his behavior. His writing doesn't change, the shows he made don't change, either. If you like his work, you can continue to do so even after he turned out to be an ass. Especially since he most definitely wasn't the sole reason why Buffy and Angel turned out to be pretty good - most of his other stuff seems to be rather mediocre by comparison, anyway.

It is a kind of weird behavior to imagine that people working in the industry do so under ideal circumstances or are nice and kind people in general.

[Inkdaub]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

He's worked with hundreds of people at this stage in his career. 

The overwhelming majority of whom will not be saying anything remotely negative about him until years from now when it doesn't adversely affect their careers and their lives...if even then.  I think this is getting glossed over.  The working environment...the entertainment industry when your boss is Joss Whedon...is going to be different to the point of being unrecognizable to most of us.   The idea that some people haven't backed up these accounts means less than nothing. 

 

[Ran]

We don't know what we don't know, in other words, but what we definitely do know is that the people who have shared their stories do not come remotely close to "30%"  of people who Whedon worked with. Which is why Vaughn was responded to on that score. That's a metric he introduced, and it's a faulty one.

[BigFatCoward]

1 hour ago, Inkdaub said:

The overwhelming majority of whom will not be saying anything remotely negative about him until years from now when it doesn't adversely affect their careers and their lives...if even then.  I think this is getting glossed over.  The working environment...the entertainment industry when your boss is Joss Whedon...is going to be different to the point of being unrecognizable to most of us.   The idea that some people haven't backed up these accounts means less than nothing. 

 

By the same token their is limited incentive for anyone to come out and say 'they are full of shit'. The court of social media would have anyone who did this ostracized as well.  

[Fez]

4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The idea that the guy running the show should not be alone with an underage actress as part of a general agreement is just bizarre.

No, that's the one thing that's not bizarre. There's been enough child predators over the years in Hollywood (not that there's been an endemic number or anything, but any number is bad), that studios often have very specific rules to protect them. Having a blanket rule that no one is allowed to be alone with an underage actor doesn't seem out of line with that.

And, if Whedon is/was a toxic asshole, it seems easy to imagine him totally ignoring that rule and then getting in trouble over it.

[BigFatCoward]

I wont have a meeting with one of my adult male staff alone if they are going to get a bollocking. I can't imagine scenario where I would think telling off a 14 year old girl with only us in the room is a good idea. 

[Lord Varys]

19 minutes ago, Fez said:

No, that's the one thing that's not bizarre. There's been enough child predators over the years in Hollywood (not that there's been an endemic number or anything, but any number is bad), that studios often have very specific rules to protect them. Having a blanket rule that no one is allowed to be alone with an underage actor doesn't seem out of line with that.

And, if Whedon is/was a toxic asshole, it seems easy to imagine him totally ignoring that rule and then getting in trouble over it.

We are talking about the situation around the year 2000. Were any such rules standard in the industry back then? I mean, Trachtenberg - or anybody else, for that matter - didn't say such a rule was in place for her and other producers/writers/adults on the show, right?

The implication here is that this was a special Joss Whedon situation ... and, as we already discussed, if this had truly been an official rule in place for him (and not the informal things we sort of assume it was) then Whedon was already well-known as a pretty abusive and ugly guy back when he did the last seasons of Buffy.

If we had reason to believe that Trachtenberg couldn't be alone with any adult person working on the show then we would have an alternative narrative here. But so far there is no reason to assume that.

[Heartofice]

I think Trachtenbergs tweet seems to make it quite clear that the rule was specifically about Whedon not being allowed in a room with her. The implication was this was introduced after some incident. 

[Zorral]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

Indeed. He's worked with hundreds of people at this stage in his career. 

I think the lack of clarity in her statement makes it very hard to be clear about the whys and wherefors of the situation. A scenario:

If the equivalent of HR found out Whedon was alone with her to talk over a scene and then said, you know, she's under age, it's a liability risk, lets make sure that doesn't happen again, and then she hears that for some reason she's not supposed to be alone with him and leaps to conclusions, thinking she dodged some sort of bullet, she could in all honesty present this as something suggesting he was known to be abusive when in fact it was purely benign. 

Implausible? Sure. Impossible? No. Which is why until Trachtenberg or someone in the know feels comfortable saying more about it, it's just very unclear what the factual import is of her remark. One can, of course, make any number of assumptions that one would like to make.

That's called straining at flies.  And again, victim blaming, at the very least refusing to believe that what a woman says is what she said.

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

That's called straining at flies.  And again, victim blaming, at the very least refusing to believe that what a woman says is what she said.

I absolutely believe she said what she said. I do not know the import of what she said, because she hasn't told us. Pretending we know more than we do strikes me as a fairly obvious epistemological error.

[polishgenius]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

If the equivalent of HR found out Whedon was alone with her to talk over a scene and then said, you know, she's under age, it's a liability risk, lets make sure that doesn't happen again, and then she hears that for some reason she's not supposed to be alone with him and leaps to conclusions, thinking she dodged some sort of bullet, she could in all honesty present this as something suggesting he was known to be abusive when in fact it was purely benign. 

 

 

Her statement was vague but it wasn't that vague. 'I am brave enough now to repost this' and "With his not appropriate behavior....very. Not. Appropriate." do not imply someone jumping to conclusions about a rule she'd heard about.

[BigFatCoward]

2 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

 

Her statement was vague but it wasn't that vague. 'I am brave enough now to repost this' and "With his not appropriate behavior....very. Not. Appropriate." do not imply someone jumping to conclusions about a rule she'd heard about.

It's incredibly vague. Was he shouting and screaming at her. Or was it something far more sinister. If it is only extremely aggressive asshole behaviour, leaving the potential allegation of something much more inappropriate hanging is disgusting. No way she doesnt know that is how some people are going to interpret that statement. 

[Ran]

8 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

It's incredibly vague. Was he shouting and screaming at her. Or was it something far more sinister. If it is only extremely aggressive asshole behaviour, leaving the potential allegation of something much more inappropriate hanging is disgusting. No way she doesnt know that is how some people are going to interpret that statement. 

It's the magnitude of potential implications of what she said, without knowing which of them is right, which makes me reticent to speculate. It could genuinely be something that most people will go anywhere from "Okay, a bit unpleasant, I guess"  to "Jeez, what an asshole" or even to "Why isn't he in jail?"

That's a huge range. Hopefully there'll be a day where someone feels comfortable to explain it further, but we are owed nothing and can certainly live with our epistemic uncertainty.

[polishgenius]

7 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

It's incredibly vague. Was he shouting and screaming at her. Or was it something far more sinister. If it is only extremely aggressive asshole behaviour, leaving the potential allegation of something much more inappropriate hanging is disgusting. No way she doesnt know that is how some people are going to interpret that statement. 

 

Sure, but Ran's premise is that it's vague enough to guess that he might not have done anything at all and just heard about a rule in place about her. It'd have to be a lot vaguer than that for me to think that was a possiblity.

 

[DMC]

45 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

leaving the potential allegation of something much more inappropriate hanging is disgusting.

No, I don't think her choice not to go into any more detail is disgusting at all.  You acting like she's somehow obligated to satisfy rampant speculation is, however, fairly nauseating.

[BigFatCoward]

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

No, I don't think her choice not to go into any more detail is disgusting at all.  You acting like she's somehow obligated to satisfy rampant speculation is, however, fairly nauseating.

Rampant speculation she started. She made a statement that to many people read like Whedon is a fucking paedophile, she could just say 'I dont want to go into specifics but for clarity Joss Whedon did not behave is a sexually inappropriate way towards me'.  

Even if he is the vilest bully on earth, can you imagine a significant portion of your friends and family hearing something like this about you if it's not true. 

[Week]

4 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Rampant speculation she started. She made a statement that to many people read like Whedon is a fucking paedophile, she could just say 'I dont want to go into specifics but for clarity Joss Whedon did not behave is a sexually inappropriate way towards me'.  

Even if he is the vilest bully on earth, can you imagine a significant portion of your friends and family hearing something like this about you if it's not true. 

Or he did do something inappropriate and you are demanding that she re-live a trauamatic event because of your concern over "rampant speculation".

Get over it -- she doesn't owe anyone shit.

Contextualizing many of these incidents and discussions to a personal and non-celebrity level is misguided IMO and most often leads to these types of wholly inappropriate demands of people who may have been victimized.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, BigFatCoward said:

She made a statement that to many people read like Whedon is a fucking paedophile, she could just say 'I dont want to go into specifics but for clarity Joss Whedon did not behave is a sexually inappropriate way towards me'.

She's not Joss Whedon's publicist.  She's entitled to make whatever statement she wants.  Blaming her because people may jump to conclusions based on her statement is some seriously fucked up ethics.