Saturday, July 19, 2008
Over-Investment and Fiction
Joss Whedon--best known for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly," is something of a Geek God. Yet I've never watched anything by him! My geek cred has been damaged...
Well, during the last writer's strike, Whedon and some friends got together and produced a little three-part web drama they called "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," just released in three installments last week. The conceit is that it's the video blog of a wannabe villain, Dr. Horrible.
As you can see, Dr. Horrible (he has a PhD...in horribleness) is adorable. He's inept and rather sweet. He wants, more than anything, two things--1. an invitation to the Evil League of Evil and 2. To win the heart of the earnest young women who uses the laundromat next to him. There's singing! And goofiness!
In the course of the first two parts, he gets Penny to notice him, only to lose her to the smarmy and loathesome "hero" Captain Hammer (who has a tendency to beat up and/or give wedgies to Dr. Horrible). The Evil League of Evil invites him to join--but first he must murder someone to prove his villain status. Despite feeling like killing "isn't his style," he decides to make an exception in the case of Captain Hammer and sets out at the end of Act II to kill him.
So far so good! In fact, so far so excellent! It was funny and disarming and adorable, and I was so rooting for Dr. Horrible, although I was pretty sure he'd have a change of heart and maybe stick to petty villainy and win Penny's heart. I'd had a pretty bad couple of days and when I saw Part III up I was like, "Thank goodness, something that will make me happy to see."
And in Part III, he attacks Captain Hammer at a dedication ceremony, Captain Hammer grabs his weapon from him and tries to shoot him with it, the weapon blows up at random and Penny is killed by shrapnel. Now he's killed someone, so he's allowed into the Evil League of Evil and he becomes a full-fledged arch-villain in a montage showing him ruling with an iron fist. The story ends with him singing that now that he has the world in his command, he feels... "...nothing." The last shot is of him staring bleakly, blankly into the camera.
...
Apparently, based on other people's reactions, if I had known Joss Whedon better I could have avoided the worst of the shock. But this kind of bait-and-switch seems fundamentally unfair, somehow. There was no foreshadowing of it, no warning, it was as if Whedon just set out to create a likeable character in a situation that made us root for him--and then laughed and smashed the whole contraption to the ground. It seemed oddly contemptuous from a man supposedly famed for being humane and witty. And it victimized the female character (she dies hoping Captain Hammer will save her, which is pretty damn stupid since she just watched him gloating he was going to murder someone and then running away after getting scratched by shrapnel)--also an odd move for a man known for his feminist sensibility.
All in all, Whedon, I'm not impressed. I'm impressed (if chagrined) by my ability to get into a nicely-told story and empathize with the character, but I end up feeling pretty stupid and used, frankly. I was about ready to swear off all fiction this afternoon--it all seems a rigged game where the author's just mocking you beyond the pages of the book. If you take the characters more seriously than the author does, the message seems to be, you're the idiot when you feel badly that bad things happen. I felt like a real tool, and I'm not really recovered yet. Not really the results I was hoping for from this little Web drama.
*heavy sigh* I am apparently painfully un-hip...
Well, during the last writer's strike, Whedon and some friends got together and produced a little three-part web drama they called "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," just released in three installments last week. The conceit is that it's the video blog of a wannabe villain, Dr. Horrible.
As you can see, Dr. Horrible (he has a PhD...in horribleness) is adorable. He's inept and rather sweet. He wants, more than anything, two things--1. an invitation to the Evil League of Evil and 2. To win the heart of the earnest young women who uses the laundromat next to him. There's singing! And goofiness!
In the course of the first two parts, he gets Penny to notice him, only to lose her to the smarmy and loathesome "hero" Captain Hammer (who has a tendency to beat up and/or give wedgies to Dr. Horrible). The Evil League of Evil invites him to join--but first he must murder someone to prove his villain status. Despite feeling like killing "isn't his style," he decides to make an exception in the case of Captain Hammer and sets out at the end of Act II to kill him.
So far so good! In fact, so far so excellent! It was funny and disarming and adorable, and I was so rooting for Dr. Horrible, although I was pretty sure he'd have a change of heart and maybe stick to petty villainy and win Penny's heart. I'd had a pretty bad couple of days and when I saw Part III up I was like, "Thank goodness, something that will make me happy to see."
And in Part III, he attacks Captain Hammer at a dedication ceremony, Captain Hammer grabs his weapon from him and tries to shoot him with it, the weapon blows up at random and Penny is killed by shrapnel. Now he's killed someone, so he's allowed into the Evil League of Evil and he becomes a full-fledged arch-villain in a montage showing him ruling with an iron fist. The story ends with him singing that now that he has the world in his command, he feels... "...nothing." The last shot is of him staring bleakly, blankly into the camera.
...
Apparently, based on other people's reactions, if I had known Joss Whedon better I could have avoided the worst of the shock. But this kind of bait-and-switch seems fundamentally unfair, somehow. There was no foreshadowing of it, no warning, it was as if Whedon just set out to create a likeable character in a situation that made us root for him--and then laughed and smashed the whole contraption to the ground. It seemed oddly contemptuous from a man supposedly famed for being humane and witty. And it victimized the female character (she dies hoping Captain Hammer will save her, which is pretty damn stupid since she just watched him gloating he was going to murder someone and then running away after getting scratched by shrapnel)--also an odd move for a man known for his feminist sensibility.
All in all, Whedon, I'm not impressed. I'm impressed (if chagrined) by my ability to get into a nicely-told story and empathize with the character, but I end up feeling pretty stupid and used, frankly. I was about ready to swear off all fiction this afternoon--it all seems a rigged game where the author's just mocking you beyond the pages of the book. If you take the characters more seriously than the author does, the message seems to be, you're the idiot when you feel badly that bad things happen. I felt like a real tool, and I'm not really recovered yet. Not really the results I was hoping for from this little Web drama.
*heavy sigh* I am apparently painfully un-hip...
// posted by Jennifer @ 6:49 PM 
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