Joss's politics

POSTED BY: doublethink84
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 13:09
VIEWED: 14982
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DOUBLETHINK84

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 2:11 AM

I know that joss is a liberal(yay), and i wonder if you guys have joss quotes relating to his political stance.

TIGER

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 2:20 AM

I'm curious about his politics. How do you know he's a liberal? I've never run across anything where he expressed his opinion one way or the other.

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...The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.

DOUBLETHINK84

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 2:27 AM

for one, in the social sense, he is pro-gay. he also, when people were comparing season 7 of buffy to the bush admin, said this

"The last thing I ever wanted in the world was for any of Buffy's rhetoric to be compared to anything [President Bush] was saying,' Whedon said. "None of us advocates the idea of war and I certainly didn't support the decision to go in during this particular action [in Iraq]"

on religion, he said "I have nothing against religion as a concept, or as people practice it. Religious institutions on the other hand, I believe cause people to fly planes into buildings. It's very dangerous."

i was just wondering if people had any more qoutes besides these

TIGER

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 2:46 AM

Cool, thanks.

Not necessarily liberal-speak there, but he's probably not voting for Bush in Novemeber...

I'd like to see those quotes you asked for too.

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...The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.

THUNDAR

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 2:49 AM

It's a good thing I put political ideals aside when I look for Entertainment. Otherwise I'd never watch anything. IMHO, Entertainers should entertain, not make political statements.

I'm still waiting for Alec Baldwin and his ilk to leave the country as they promised they would if Bush won the election.

DOUBLETHINK84

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 2:59 AM

he also said, "If I made 'Buffy the Lesbian Separatist,' a series of lectures on PBS on why there should be feminism, no one would be coming to the party, and it would be boring. The idea of changing culture is important to me, and it can only be done in a popular medium." There's also this more concise quote from the Bronze Beta: "Horror is reactionary. I'm a liberal. But we get along."

KERNELM

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 3:00 AM

He has said that he is an "angry atheist" which of course isn't strictly a left/right issue, but generally tends to skew left. In his DVD commentaries, he has mentioned more than once that he doesn't like guns (but of course respects the genre trappings of a Western). On Angel there was an episode where a character recovered from amnesia and says, "oh, and I remember who the president is. But I sort of wish I didn't," or something to that effect. People also got in a big uproar when one of the Angel characters put up a Dixie Chicks poster.

I know he's made other (liberal-leaning) political references both in-show and in interviews and stuff too, but I can't recall anything more specific offhand.

Anyway, all of that is fairly circumstantial. I think the big keys are (as someone mentioned above) his gay-friendliness and attitude towards organized religion.

DOUBLETHINK84

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 3:07 AM

oh, i just found that he also said, "My visions of the future are always pretty much standard issue. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and there are flying cars."

it isnt explicitely liberal, but it does reflect his look on politics

STANDING8

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 3:26 AM

i dont care about his politcs. as long as his art is top notch, he could worship satan for all i care.

-Soul Rebel-

http://www.livejournal.com/users/standing8

updated: 7/12/04!

SIGNYM

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 3:40 AM

'Mal's politics are very reactionary and 'Big government is bad' and 'Don't interfere with my life,''' Whedon explains. ''And sometimes he's wrong -- because sometimes the Alliance is America, this beautiful shining light of democracy. But sometimes the Alliance is America in Vietnam: we have a lot of petty politics, we are way out of our league and we have no right to control these people. And yet! Sometimes the Alliance is America in Nazi Germany. And Mal can't see that, because he was a Vietnamese.''

The show's other central concern diverges intriguingly from Buffy's universe, where fate and destiny loom large. ''I'm a very hard-line, angry atheist,'' Whedon says. ''Yet I am fascinated by the concept of devotion. And I want to explore that.'' (His existential revelation arrived during an adolescent viewing of ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' -- an experience soon followed by a reading of Sartre's ''Nausea.'') Mal tells the preacher who is a passenger on his ship, ''You're welcome on my boat; God ain't.'' If Buffy is the chosen one, forced to struggle with a responsibility that comes from outside, Mal is defiant in his belief that his fate is meaningless. ''This is a man who has learned that when he believed in something it destroyed him,'' Whedon explains. ''So what he believes in is the next job, the next paycheck and keeping his crew safe.'' It is a typical Whedonian inversion: much the way Buffy is a demon-killer obsessed with the morality of killing, Mal is a man of action frozen by his conviction that nothing really matters, a man forced to choose his morality at each juncture. ''Whatever I may think of him politically, he's a guy who looks into the void and sees nothing but the void -- and says there is no moral structure, there is no help, no one's coming, no one gets it, I have to do it.''

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