By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Few Hollywood creatives have had quite the rise and fall that Joss Whedon did: the Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator was once considered the ultimate feminist ally, but his ex-wife and costars later accused him of callous and misogynistic behavior toward women. Most fans were shocked at the time because they couldn’t imagine that the man who created their favorite strong female characters could treat women so poorly behind the scenes. The allegations against Joss Whedon shouldn’t have been that surprising, though, considering how problematic he made Xander, his own-self insert character.
Joss Whedon & Xander
On the special features for Buffy’s first season, Joss Whedon admitted something unsurprising about the show’s most sarcastic Scooby: “Xander, I’ve always identified as the figure I most was like, ’cause he did have that inability to sort of… talk to the girl and come through in the big moment.” With Whedon’s usual self-deprecation, he noted that Xander being his self-insert is why the character “does make an idiot of himself a lot.” Wryly, the showrunner pointed out that Xander actor Nicholas Brendon is “a lot prettier and more muscular than anybody who acts like that should be but this is television” but encouraged skeptics to “get over it.”
Obviously, Joss Whedon mostly wanted Xander to embody the awkward but funny aspects of his high school self, which is why the character gets, in Nicholas Brendon’s words, “all the good lines.” Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to this self-insert characterization that many fans didn’t clock until the rise of Buffy rewatch podcasts. When closely following the show from episode to episode along with podcasts like Buffering the Vampire Slayer, it’s easy to see that Xander is often a creepy jerk whose misogyny mirrors the allegations against his creator.
While the problematic Xander moments are too numerous to list here, some of his worst offenses include casting a love spell goes wrong that magically roofies an entire town. He also shamelessly cheats on Cordelia and later tries to slut-shame both Anya and Buffy for sleeping with Spike (my dude, have you even seen James Marsters in his prime?). Xander also ditches Anya at the altar and, before that, refuses to tell Buffy that Willow is going to try to restore Angel’s soul, forcing the Slayer to kill the love of her life.
How, then, are the allegations against Joss Whedon mirrored by the actions of Xander? According to his ex-wife, Kai Cole, the Buffy creator is a “hypocrite preaching feminist ideals” who cheated on her with multiple unnamed actors from the show while parading himself as a champion of women.
This caused Cordelia actor Charisma Carpenter to drop her own bombshell allegations that Whedon had a “history of being casually cruel” and that he called her “fat” when she got pregnant during Angel, asking her if she was going to keep the baby. Most alarmingly, Dawn actor Michelle Trachtenberg claimed that Whedon wasn’t allowed to be alone with her on set.
All of these allegations paint a very different view of the Buffy showrunner as someone misogynistic, cruel, and even potentially dangerous. The most explosive allegations were never confirmed, but the damage was done, and this veteran showrunner and MCU director lost his feminist street cred. The fandom was subsequently devastated by the accusations but really shouldn’t have been…after all, Joss Whedon readily admits that he modeled his most misogynistic character after himself.
Interestingly, the upcoming Buffy reboot has the chance to bring Nicholas Brendon back and ultimately redeem Xander’s character once and for all. However, Whedon–or at least, Whedon’s reputation–now seems a bit like his most famous vampiric villains: dead and beyond any hope of redemption.
Source: Vulture
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