Joss Whedon is a feminist! His shows feature complicated female characters as the protagonists!

No, Joss Whedon is a misogynist! He revels in torturing and degrading women!

Feminist! By giving female characters the opportunity to suffer like male characters, he makes the audience identify with women!

Misogynist! His female characters are hyper-sexualized objects of the male viewer’s gaze!

Whedon is sex-positive and allows his female characters to express sexual desire without punishing them!

Whedon blah blah blah…

This could go on for a while. Googling “Joss Whedon feminist” brings up more than 50,000 results. The Geek Feminism Wiki lists several articles debating the issue, including interviews with Whedon in which he explicitly self-identifies as a feminist, and even that listing is grossly incomplete. By far, feminism is the principal discourse in the global overthinking of Whedon’s TV shows, and Whedon is the major contemporary pop cultural focus for the debate on feminism in narrative television. This makes sense, as his series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse (and to a much lesser degree, Firefly) address feminism in their basic premises in a way that no other show on television has.

Strange, then, that the most persistent issue in regards to Whedon’s feminism is its authenticity.

Karl Marx: Even hairier than the Wolfman. Coincidence... OR IS IT!?

[I want to thank Professor David Graeber, whose anthropological dissection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and accompanying lectures) very much forms the basis of this post.]

Let’s begin with two observations. First: the Vampires that inhabit our most recent pop cultural works differ so dramatically from the classic archetype of Golden-Age Hollywood that they are are almost unrecognizable. Second: Werewolves are lame.

Or at least, compared with their undead, blood-sucking, vaguely-Carpathian cohort, werewolves of late have occupied a far less enviable position in the collective pop cultural landscape. These are not the subtle, nuanced, infinitely malleable characters vampires are–the sort capable of carrying their own novels, TV-shows, Movies and crappy Movie-Tie-In Video Games. Rather, lycanthropes end up as the stock types passively added to spice up a Vampire vehicle. Sure, some immortal genius might figure out a way to breathe new life into the old dogs, but for now, Buffy’s Oz remains a werewolf’s best case scenario. In the worst cases it’s… well… I’d rather not say.

However, there is something to be said about the sheer frequency with which werewolves pop up in Vampire works. Is your horror-story turned teen-abstinence-parable getting a bit too stale to survive a sequel? Throw in some werewolves! Is having a psychic heroine dating a vampire proving an insufficient allegory for southern race relations? Make her boss a werewolf! At least…sorta’. The point is, as the length of a Vampire epic approaches infinity, the probability that the spinning “let’s throw in a different kind of monster” wheel will stop on “Werewolf” approaches 1. And it does so far earlier than all of the other forms. As the old aphorism goes: no ghosts, witches, reanimated corpses, mer-people, vengeful pagan gods or giant, radioactive slugs before werewolves. And for heaven’s sake, NO MUMMIES.

The delicious exception that proves the rule.

Yet–and this is important–despite the number of appearances Werewolves (or the equivalent) make in predominantly Vampire (or equivalent) works, the converse is never true, because Werewolves remain lame.

But why? What is it about our culture that causes us to perpetually dwell on one classic occult figure, while paupering the other of such attention?

The answer, of course, lies in the failure of Marxism.

Two things about vampires:

1. They are huge drama queens.

2. Left to their own devices, they never die.

Yes, that’s right, the trailers for New Moon are out, and it looks like these vampires are living forever — taking Twilight to a whole new, aw who the Hell am I kidding.

The best thing about vampires is killing them. Doing battle with the forces of darkness. Facing down the enchanting stalkers of the night, the pale dudes in the funny coats who speak with fictional accents and keep asking for invitations because they can’t do something as simple as walk through a door without making a whole bloody production out of it — and taking them out with the aid of any number of colorful and exciting implements or methods.

Now, you, the readers, tell us, the pedants, what the best one is — with a little bit of help from our stable of overthinkers, and a special (simulated) celebrity judge . . .

What do I need to lay the ol’ Goblet of Fire on Cedric Diggory? I think I left it lying around here somewhere . . .

Over the past few weeks, thousands of students have graduated from college.  It’s a time to look toward the future, to hope and dream of what lies beyond.  The world may suck now, many graduates think, but soon, things will be different.  Things will be better.

Alas, as a pathological cynic, I cannot share their optimism.  It’s not only the broken economy, the faltering environment, and the continual abridgment of civil rights in America and around the world that put me in an apocalyptic mood.  It’s that, last week, Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian was the number one movie on the planet.

This is not to say that pop culture is circling the drain.  In the past month alone, I’ve cheered at the new Star Trek film, cried at the awesome, awesome last episodes of HBO’s In Treatment, and thanked America for having the wherewithal to vote the insufferable Danny Gokey off American Idol in favor of Kris Allen and Adam Lambert.  As soon as possible, I’m going to see Pixar’s latest, Up, and I’m sure I’m going to adore it as much as I adore Wall-E, Ratatouille, and Finding Nemo.   Oh, and soon in theaters there’s going to be a little movie called Harry Potter coming to a theater near me.  Sweet.

So why am I so despondent about the state of popular culture?  I assure you, Night at the Museum alone did not break my spirit.  It wasn’t news of the racist casting of the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender movie that did it, either.  The new “Karate” Kid set in China with Jackie Chan was almost enough to destroy me, but only almost.  The rash of board-game films didn’t help, either.

And then, last week, the final straw was gently placed upon the camel’s back.  And that straw was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Without Willow.  Without Angel.  And without fricking Joss Whedon.

Thanks, Hollywood.  You have finally thought of the Worst Idea of All Time.  No, scratch that.  You did think of making Bazooka Joe into a movie, didn’t you?  I’m positive there are even worse ideas in that collective head of yours…