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Who is Joss Whedon?

Joss Whedon is a writer and director responsible for creating a number of television programs including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly. His career began as a script writer for the television program Roseanne. He worked for a number of years as a script doctor, contributing to films like Toy Story and Speed. One of his earliest experiences writing for films was his script for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The original movie was more lighthearted than Whedon's original script. Five years later, he was able to resurrect the concept as a weekly hour long television program starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. The program was a critical success and ran for seven seasons before continuing as a series of comic books.

Equality Now Speech

In 2006, Whedon was honoured by the organisation Equality Now for his contribution to representing women as strong, independent and intelligent.

Meryl Streep: Mothers are often the vanguard of cultural institutions and transformation and tonight, as well as paying tribute to Joss Whedon and the wonderful female characters that he’s created, we'd like to pay special tribute to his mother, the late Lee Stearns. It’s nice when children credit their mothers for their success. And, I've heard a lot about Lee, whose radical ideas about women’s strength and independence and passion and empathy inspired Joss to create not only Buffy the Vampire Slayer but many other strong women characters in Firefly, in Serenity and his other work. Lee Sterns also inspired the creation of this organization, Equality Now, which was co-founded by Jessica Neuwirth, one of her -- one of Lee’s, favorite high school students. She would have been very proud of you, Jessica and Joss, for all you’ve done and continue to do, and, her spirit is here with us tonight. Joss also has an extremely energetic and ubiquitous fan base that’s organized fundraisers across the country for Equality Now, his super hero’s favorite charity. So it’s my great, great pleasure to introduce our special honoree, Joss Whedon, the wonderful man who's about to bring us Wonder Woman. We commend him for his outstanding contribution to equality in film and television. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Joss Whedon.

Joss Whedon: Thank you. I -- I didn’t know when I came here tonight that was going to happen. No, I knew I’d be here, the part about my mother, and -- and I just want to thank Meryl Streep and -- and everybody for -- for speaking so eloquently about her. I'm surrounded tonight by people of extraordinary courage, and I know a thing or two about courage myself because I read a book with some courage in it one time. And it sounds really like a lot of work so I’ll just keep writing.

I write. The most courageous thing I've ever done is something called a press junket, which is actually pretty courageous, believe me, because they ask you the same questions over and over and over and over and over and over. I've done as many as 48 in a day, these interviews, and they really -- they don’t come up with the fresh stuff. So, there is one question that I've been asked almost every time I’ve been interviewed. So I thought tonight, briefly, I would share with you one question and a few of my responses. Because, when you're asked something 500 times, you really start to think about the answer. So now, I will become a reporter. It’s going to be amazing, the transformation.

So, Joss, I, a reporter, would like to know, why do you always write these strong women characters?
I think it’s because of my mother. She really was an extraordinary, inspirational, tough, cool, sexy, funny woman and that’s the kind of woman I've always surrounded myself with. It’s my friends, particularly my wife, who is not only smarter and stronger than I am but, occasionally taller too. But, only sometimes, taller. And, I think it -- it all goes back to my mother.

So, why do you write these strong women characters?

Because of my father. My father and my stepfather had a lot to do with it, because they prized wit and resolve in the women they were with above all things. And they were among the rare men who understood that recognizing somebody else’s power does not diminish your own. When I created Buffy, I wanted to create a female icon, but I also wanted to be very careful to surround her with men who not only had no problem with the idea of a female leader, but, were in fact, engaged and even attracted to the idea. That came from my father and stepfather -- the men who created this man, who created those men, if you can follow that.

So, why do you create these strong, how you say, the women -- I’m in Europe now, so, it’s very, it’s international -- these -- I don’t know where though -- these strong women characters?

Well, because these stories give people strength, and I've heard it from a number of people, and I've felt it myself, and its not just women, its men, and I think there is something particular about a female protagonist that allows a man to identify with her that opens up something, that he might -- an aspect of himself -- that he might be unable to express -- hopes and desires -- he might be uncomfortable expressing through a male identification figure. So it really crosses across both and I think it helps people, you know, in -- in that way.

So, why do you create these strong women characters?

Cause they’re hot.

But, these strong women characters…

Why are you even asking me this?! This is like interview number 50 in a row. How is it possible that this is even a question? Honestly, seriously, why are you -- why did you write that down? Why do you -- Why aren’t you asking a hundred other guys why they don’t write strong women characters? I believe that what I am doing should not be remarked upon, let alone honored and there are other people doing it. But, seriously, this question is ridiculous and you just gotta stop.

So, why do you write these strong women characters?

Because equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity, we need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and women who’s confronted with it. We need equality, kinda now.

So, why do you write these strong female characters?

Because you’re still asking me that question. Thank you very much for including me tonight. Thank you all.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

'We both know that there are real monsters. But there's also real heroes that fight monsters. And that's me.'
- Buffy Summers

Whedon has a reputation for writing strong female characters. As he noted in an interview with Darkhorse Comics, the idea for Buffy the Vampire Slayer came from "watching a lot of horror movies with a funny, gregarious, somewhat dim blonde who invariably gets killed, and I always felt bad for her. So I thought it would be funny to have that girl go into a dark alley where we knew she would get killed and actually have her trash the monster. From that came the idea for Buffy."

As Gina Wiker notes in her essay Vampires and School Girls: High School Jinks on the Hellmouth, strong female characters like Buffy Summers have been around for a long time. "Buffy, as vampire slayer, lover of a vampire, teen heroine, is also in a long, interrupted, line of teenage fictional heroines. Late nineteenth- and twentieth-century girls’ novels, and the annuals/comics of the nineteen-fifties and sixties are full of stories which feature young girls with energy and power who use the tactics normally found in male sleuths to track down crime, right wrongs, and return order. They are morally driven avenging angels, but also subversive schoolgirls. In their energetic activities these young women question and trouble the conventional representations of women’s lives in the movies and magazine images of the period. Popular cultural forms such as fifties and sixties films, and magazines for women consistently concentrate on woman as homemaker. Women's magazines contain recipes, patterns for clothes making, and articles about gardening and how to make your husband happy. Younger girls’ magazines often concentrate on looking pretty, makeup, how to find the right boyfriend and keep him. Each peddles a very conservative version of womanhood. In the cinema we see an uneasy mixture of film noir femmes fatales who are punished for their energy and daring, and the light romantic comedy female roles: all Doris Day and singing, Mom, girl next door and domestic bliss. Such conservative representations of women were not surprising given the aftermath of a war which needed to return women to the kitchen so the men could regain their ground in the workplace and the home, in the economy and in the hearts of their families. But the schoolgirl novels, comics and annuals developed a very different kind of version of young womanhood, energetic, adventurous plucky, imaginative—boy-like in fact. Sexuality was not an issue here, and the adventurous young women fought singly or together to re-establish a moral status quo. They did not seek boyfriends."

Since finishing her run on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar has found it difficult to find similarly empowering roles. "I came from a television show that focused on women that were strong and funny and athletic," she said in an interview with Radio Free. "And television is where women really do lead the way. But in films, we're still working our way up the hill, and a lot of times, we're relegated to the girlfriend, the wife, the sister, whatever. I can't do that. It holds no interest to me."