The Left Eats Its Own

Joss Whedon is a talented director and producer of TV and movies, with such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Toy Story, and of most interest to me, Firefly, and its movie sequel Serenity, which takes a rather libertarian outlook on the classic space opera. However, in his politics, he remains a fairly committed (or should that be commit-able) Hollywood liberal:

Endorsing Barack Obama in the 2012 United States presidential election, Whedon satirically equated Mitt Romney's future as president with a zombie apocalypse, "Romney is ready to make the deep rollbacks in health care, education, social services and reproductive rights that will guarantee poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, disease, rioting—all crucial elements in creating a nightmare zombie wasteland".

In 2015, Whedon signed a petition as part of a political campaign calling for Elizabeth Warren to run for President of the United States. In observance of Earth Day, he spoke against climate change denial in a series of tweets, arguing, "The climate IS changing — if we can’t, that makes us dumber than weather ... Policy makers who deny basic scientific truth should also be denied penicillin, horseless carriages, [and] air time on the magic box of shadows".

Therefore, I was amused when the rumor came out that he had "retired" from twitter because of Twitter attacks from feminists unhappy with his treatment of the Black Widow role (played by the luscious Scarlet Johansson) in his newest action movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron”. Via Stacy McCain:

Feminists Chase ‘Avengers’ Director Off Twitter, Because … Gender Theory?

Let me explain something up front: Hollywood blockbusters are not made by conforming to people’s pet political theories. The target audience is 12-year-olds who want to see a lot of explosions and chase scenes and stuff like that. Yet the bottom-line calculations of box-office profit mean nothing to feminists:

Avengers: Age of Ultron director Joss Whedon is officially off the grid, having quit Twitter today (May 4).
The filmmaker signed off from the social media service with two final messages to his 1.15 million followers. . . .

Despite my innate preference for gingers, I like her better blonde.

Whedon has been criticized by some Avengers fans and critics for using Scarlett Johansson’s international spy Black Widow in a typical ‘damsel in distress’ role in a few key scenes late in Age of Ultron.

OMG, a female character getting rescued by a male hero? Oh, we can’t have that kind of stuff in movies in 2015! We must critique the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix!

Ace skips the platitudes about how we should support free expression, and gets straight to the schadenfreude: It Looks Like Social Justice Warriors Chased the Social Justice Warrior Joss Whedon Off Twitter, And That's Just Terrific

I don't really like Joss Whedon, who's had way too much praise for simply being superficially clever.

And I don't like that this asshole was constantly promoting Social Justice Attacks on other people.

So, if he was indeed chased off of twitter by the constant Social Justice Warrior attacks on him -- ridiculous shit, like that he didn't make Black Widow badass enough or whatever nonsense spoiled and useless Western White Women are throwing their hysterical jags about this week -- then I just have to laugh about it and say "Life is good.". . .

Read it all, it's a classic Ace rant.

Now, Joss is denying that this microburst of twitter angst really had nothing to do with his detwittering.

. . . he said, “That is horses__t.”He went on to explain, “Believe me, I have been attacked by militant feminists since I got on Twitter. That’s something I’m used to. Every breed of feminism is attacking every other breed, and every subsection of liberalism is always busy attacking another subsection of liberalism, because god forbid they should all band together and actually fight for the cause. I saw a lot of people say, ‘Well, the social justice warriors destroyed one of their own!’ It’s like, Nope. That didn’t happen. I saw someone tweet it’s because Feminist Frequency pissed on ‘Avengers 2,’ which for all I know they may have. But literally the second person to write me to ask if I was OK when I dropped out was [Feminist Frequency founder] Anita [Sarkeesian].” Maybe Sarkeesian knows exactly what it’s like to be harassed and threatened and online? Maybe because if there’s any group who’d stand in solidarity against the trolls and bullies, it’d be one that knows what they’re capable of? And you’d likely be looking at a whole lot of women.

Whedon says that he took off because “I just thought, Wait a minute, if I’m going to start writing again, I have to go to the quiet place. And this is the least quiet place I’ve ever been in my life.… It’s like taking the bar exam at Coachella.” But he acknowledges that “When you declare yourself politically, you destroy yourself artistically. Because suddenly that’s the litmus test for everything you do — for example, in my case, feminism. If you don’t live up to the litmus test of feminism in this one instance, then you’re a misogynist. It circles directly back upon you.”

Just taking some time off to be with his family and write in the quiet of his den. That sounds like some kind of rationalization to me.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Station To Station" ready at The Other McCain.