...am I a Joss fan or aren't I?

[kattahj]

I was wondering to myself, how is it that I can be a fan of some of Joss Whedon's things, while other stuff he does just makes me want to punch him in the face? (And no, not just the killing characters

Comments

[sarcasticwriter]

Why did you hate Cabin in the Woods?

[kattahj]

Well, basically I felt that it had an air of cynical superiority to both audience and characters. I ranted longer about it back when I saw it.

[sarcasticwriter]

Ah, I think I missed your original rant.

I absolutely loved the movie, in fact considered it one of the best of the year, but that's because it appeals to my sense of cynical superiority as an educated audience member.

Not mocking your phraseology - I'm absolutely sincere. As an audience member, I have WAY more in common with film critics than I do with the general public, because there was a period of about seven years where I saw every single movie released in driving-distance theaters.

Every single brainless horror movie, every sci-fi, every "art house" film, every mediocre drama, every stupid comedy. I saw Battlefield Earth, in the theater. I didn't give myself a choice about whether or not to see a movie, I saw all of them (well, I skipped the Barney movie). Even at 120-150 movies a year, student tickets were $4.25 (less than most espresso-based drinks), so I could afford it. I became perfectly fluent in the language of movies, and because I could usually predict what was coming, very difficult to move emotionally

[kattahj]

I can see your point, but it's not the way I work, at all. There's an anecdote about Alexandre Dumas pere, that his son saw him crying and asked why, and he replied: "I have just killed Porthos!" That, I can respect. That's sharing something with the world.

With Joss, whenever anything he writes evokes an emotional reaction, I feel like he's one of those brats who toss balls at your face and go: "Ha ha, made you flinch!"

But yeah, I'm not a sophisticated viewer. I don't want to be - the joy of fiction, for me, lies entirely in making the characters part of my life. That's why I unironically love quite a few stories I think are pretty shite, while several well-done stories just make me shrug and move on. If I don't love the people, I don't love the story, and if I feel I'm being actively mocked for trying to reach out, I just end up resenting the writer.

(For the record, that's also why I mostly avoid comedies. A lot of them just feel like bullying.)

[sarcasticwriter]

I should say that I still love art. I can't handle bad or even mediocre movies now - it hurts. I watched as many movies as I did to give myself an education in modern film because I thought I was going into the film industry (I don't have the temperament for it, as you might recall). And it no doubt helped with my fiction writing, but I eventually quit my self-imposed film-critic schedule and now I try to carefully select only the movies I'm reasonably certain I'll enjoy.

And usually that enjoyment would come from getting involved with the characters and being emotionally moved by their journey. That's why I watch a lot more television than movies; in that format, character is king.

I like The Cabin in the Woods as writers' performance art, but I don't want to see performance art all the time. Not even most of the time. In that particular movie's case, though, I feel it legitimately earned its right to be performance art, rather than storytelling.

There are a lot of lazy, boring conventions in horror movies, and if The Cabin in