Joss Whedon. Mr. Whedon. Joss. We have such a complicated relationship, Joss. I mean, shows like Buffy and Firefly were
formative to my childhood experience in a way that still affects my tastes and preferences
to this day. Once More With Feeling is a masterclass on
how to do a musical episode, and I still feel little pangs of nostalgia whenever I hear
You Can't Take The Sky From Me. Characters like Zoe or Kaylee or Buffy were
some of my first exposures to complex women with their own unique forms of strength, and despite the pernicious
way their story ended, the relationship between Willow and Tara on Buffy was one of the first
of its kind that I ever saw, and that'll always be meaningful to me. But then, there's everything else. There's the time you fired an actor for becoming
pregnant. There's the allegations that you cheated on
your wife for fifteen years while gaslighting her every step of the way. There's the way you keep slipping dated tropes
into your work, like killing off your only gay couple, implying a woman is a monster
for her infertility, and the use of one-dimensional stereotypes for many of your characters of
colour, like portraying the first slayer as a savage whom Buffy makes fun of for her
dreadlocks. I still don't know how to feel about your
work. It's problematic, sure, but I still love it. A lot of approaches primarily suggest
that we should completely separate the art from the artist, and I get that to an extent. I made an entire video explaining why lending
unconditional credence to authorial intent is often a bad idea. But oftentimes, that kind of context matters
when examining a work. If we know someone's writing a story primarily
about their own experiences, we might take that into account when examining their story
and notice certain nuances that we may have missed otherwise. When we're looking at a Woody Allen film where
a man in his forties dates a teenage girl, it's probably worth being aware that Woody
Allen's a sex creep. Example borrowed from Linsday Ellis, when
we're looking at The Fault In Our Stars, a story about a teenage girl with terminal cancer,
we might be able to better understand it if we know it was written in honour of a real
teenage girl who died of cancer and was friends with the author. Or, in Joss Whedon's case, when he keeps writing
socially awkward nerdy guys who are super attracted to our leading women but are kinda
douchebags in their own nerdy way, we might glean some new insights from examining those
characters through the lens of what we know about Joss Whedon. What that means for me is sometimes I have
trouble reconciling my nostalgic love for his works with my increasing discomfort with
some of what I know about him, both things that show up in the works and outside of them. I mean, on one hand, the mythical morally
pure work that never has any problems and passes every single kind of quality test simply
doesn't exist, and that's not a reasonable standard to which we hold the media we consume. On the other, simply saying "everything is
problematic so who cares" isn't really satisfactory either. Like, yeah, everything's ""problematic"",
but there are different degrees of bad. I'm still gonna love it, and I'm still gonna
criticize it, but I wanna go a bit deeper than that. When it comes to works that can be interpreted
in particularly progressive or particularly regressive ways, I wanna look at these multiple
possible interpretations and see where we stand with that. So what I wanna look at today is one of his
cult classics, the musical miniseries Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. The series came out 11 years ago, and I've
had complex feelings about it for a while. Namely, it's one of those works that could
potentially serve as criticism of harmful attitudes , or could just end up reproducing
those attitudes. I've seen it taken both ways, and so i wanna
go a little bit deeper into it. So, if you haven't seen it before, it's essentially
about this aspiring supervillain named Billy, or Dr Horrible. He's madly in love with a girl named Penny,
who he sees on the regular at the laundromat, but has never actually spoken with. He ends up accidentally introducing her to
his nemesis, the douchey superhero Captain Hammer, and the two start to date. Meanwhile, he learns that in order to get
into his coveted supervillain league, he needs to kill someone, which he really doesn't want
to do. After Captain Hammer figures out Billy's secret
identity and taunts him about the relationship, Billy resolves to kill Captain Hammer. At the last minute, though, his weapon backfires
and kills Penny instead. Hammer is humiliated and Billy gets into the
supervillain league, ending the series feeling lost and numb. Ad the often-repeated fanquote goes, he got
everything he wanted, and it only cost him a Penny. It's an interesting story with some catchy
tunes, and it gave us villain Neil Patrick Harris and hero Nathan Fillion ten years before
A Series of Unfortunate Events did. If you like musicals and have an extra 45
minutes of time, I would definitely recommend checking it out, both to understand this video
better and because it's a pretty solid series on its own. As with any work, it's gonna be interpreted
differently based who's doing the interpreting and from what context are they approaching
the work, and things like that, but I think there are three different readings that I can pull out of this story that might
tell us a little bit more. There's what we can take from it at face value,
there's Dr Horrible Bad, and there's Dr Horrible Good. I wanna go through each of of these readings
and hopefully come out of it with some better answers as to how we're supposed to feel when
it comes to works like this. So let's get started. So, one thing it's important to ask,
putting aside all these questions about whether Dr Horrible was actually super feminist or
super bad, is "what is the story actually about"? Well, it's about a lot of things, and one
theme that consistently pops up throughout this series is this theme of vulnerability. So, there are two formats throughout which
the story is told. There's Billy's Dr Horrible vlogs, where he shares his life updates with
his in-universe followers, and then there's the more traditional storytelling style where
we follow Billy throughout his daily life. With a few notable exceptions, which we'll
talk about in a minute, Billy is in costume as Dr Horrible during his vlogs and Billy
in the outside world. There's definitely a shift in the way he talks
and behaves in each persona; as Dr Horrible, he often engages in a sort of posturing where
he emphasizes how villainous and clever he is, whereas as Billy, he's downright socially
awkward and more honest about his feelings. Even when he admits his faults in costume,
like when he admits he needs a vocal coach to practice his evil laugh or complains to
his viewers about his plan failing, he always quickly recuperates and covers it up with
some kind of bragging. There are, of course, exceptions to this;
there's one particular scene where after a particularly awkward and embarrassing encounter
with Penny before a heist, Billy realizes time is running out and he needs to go through
with the heist, and do it quickly . He changes costume midsong after telling us "a man's
gotta do what a man's gotta do" and his demeanour very quickly changes with it as he gets to
work on stealing the van. Notably, this talk about what man's gotta
do very much ties masculinity to a lack of vulnerability, as him doing what he's gotta
do entails him moving away from it. The most jarring example of this comes at
the end of the story, where Billy has successfully made his way into the supervillain inner circle,
or the "evil league of evil". He's decked out in a brand-new supervillain
costume, showing us what he had to give up and how evil he now is. A few seconds later, the very last lines are
delivered in front of the vlogging camera, with Billy dressed as himself once again as
he admits in this heartbreaking tone that he doesn't feel a thing anymore. The costume serves as a means for Billy to
mask his own emotions and desires, and he's a lot more vulnerable without it. This new heightened costume also represent
a heightened masking of his feelings, and it's only when we we see him as Billy again
that he allows himself to be vulnerable. Contrast that with Captain Hammer, who's very
much portrayed as this stereotype of hypermasculinity. He's only ever in his superhero costume, even
after what we're meant to believe is an intimate moment with Penny. If he has any sense of vulnerability, we never
really get to see it, and he's equally insistent on covering up anything that might break the
illusion of effortless machoness. There's this one moment where he asks Billy
if the two know each other from the gym, before he very quickly corrects himself. Have I seen you at the gym? At the gym. I don't go the gym, I'm just naturally like
this. We never even learn Hammer's real name; in
a sense, he represents his ultimate lack of vulnerability. Once again, this is very much tied to his
masculinity; this is particularly noticeable at the end of the series. After being injured for seemingly the first
time in his life, he starts crying for "someone maternal" and running away; we later see him
sobbing in therapy in a way that's very much meant to emasculate him. His only expression
of vulnerability coincides with him crying for his mother and breaking this hypermasculine
illusion of power. It's also worth noting that this is meant
to be pretty degrading for him, and it's more or less played for laughs. When it comes to Penny, who obviously does
not have a secret identity unless we get a really badass sequel tomorrow where she comes
to life and justifiably murders everyone in the story Vanya-style, Maurissa, please do
this, she's a lot more up-front about being vulnerable. She's unabashedly passionate about her activism,
more than willing to tell Billy about her various struggles in life, and makes no effort
to conceal her feelings for Hammer, which deepen very quickly. She's also very much portrayed as nurturing
and feminine, being an idealistic activist for homeless people, a vegetarian, and an
all-around comforting figure. If Captain Hammer represents someone with
no vulnerability, Penny is full of it. So how do all these pieces fit together? Well, if we view Penny as the series' purest
representation of vulnerability and Captain Hammer as the purest representation of lacking
it, Billy's two identities can definitely be understood in the context of beating Hammer
and losing Penny. Penny's own death is, of course, the catalyst
for Billy joining the Evil League of Evil, and shedding his previous identity. And yet, at the end of the story, where we
see that one last glimpse of Billy as himself, we clearly see that this is not a desirable
thing. He's unbelievably sad and lost behind the
veneer of the costume, and it's clear that joining the Evil League of Evil doesn't bring
him any sense of personal satisfaction any more. As it turns out, he probably would've been
happier just ditching the career in evil altogether and just getting a nice cottage with Penny
somewhere. But his own quest for getting revenge on Hammer
after being challenged by him directly led to Penny's death, and prevented that from
ever being a viable future for him. In short, it's pretty much tragic, and the
story is clearly framing Billy's loss of Penny, and thus, of his vulnerability, as a bad thing. It seems like we're getting kind of contradictory
messages here. When it comes to Captain Hammer, his lack
of vulnerability is directly tied to his strength and masculinity, and we're meant to kind of
laugh at his only showing of it. It emasculates him, and makes him seem silly. But when Billy loses it, there's this tragedy
associated. He's clearly an unhappy person as a direct
result of this loss, so in the story, some degree of vulnerability is a desirable trait
in order to have some base happiness as a person. Strap in, 'cause this story's not gonna get
any less contradictory from here on out! Despite the somewhat confusing way in which
the story frames these topics like vulnerability or masculinity, the primary tragedy of this
story is indeed the loss of Penny's life and what that means for Billy. His actions are the catalyst for her death,
and her death is the catalyst for Billy gaining everything he ever wanted while losing everything
he ever needed. This relationship between Billy and Penny
is really the emotional core of the story, and that's the most important thing most viewers
might take from the story at face value. Billy has caused the death of this very important
person in his life, and has lost himself as a result. This is very very sad. This tragedy is indeed the primary takeaway
of the miniseries. So, there's some spicy analysis for you guys! I could probably end the video here. But I don't wanna. I just got my makeup done at Sephora for filming
this and I want to milk it for all its worth. D'you think I know how to do this? Instead, let's dive a bit deeper. I mean, this was made in 2008, and as a viewer
in 2019, plus as a Real Life Woman, there are definitely a few things in the story that
are a bit ... unfortunate. So let's talk about that. So, one thing you might have noticed about
the previous reading is that it doesn't really take Penny's feelings into account at all. And, on the whole, it really is a story about
Billy, and about how Billy feels about how Penny's effect on his life. And, unfortunately, this is about as much
depth and agency as we get from Penny in canon; her primary purpose really is as a plot device
for most of the story. Before her death, she mostly functions as
a prize to be won, to be fought over by the two men in the story. Her desirability isn't really tied to any
particular traits or values of hers, as Billy thinks he's in love with her before the two
had ever actually spoken and he seemed surprised to learn what she does in her spare time. Even her own death isn't really about her;
we're not sad that she died with goals unfulfilled, or for all the potential she had in life,
or for how she must have felt in her final moments. We're sad because the death made Billy sad,
and we care how Billy feels. So, in this sense, Penny is really reduced
to an object for most of the story, someone who isn't really a fully rounded person with
agency, but moreso just serves to motivate the main character's desires for revenge or
happiness or whatever it is he's suppsoed to want at that moment. I mean, this is pernicious in and of itself,
but when it comes to Billy as the protagonist and the only person we're really encouraged
to empathize with, this relationship with Penny gets a bit stranger. I mean, it's so sad for Billy, right? She didn't date him, and instead went for
that asshole Captain Hammer, even though that nice guy was right there in front of her. And she's essentially punished for this by
the narrative; she doesn't have the sense to date Billy, Billy needs revenge against
Captain Hammer for this relationship, Penny dies instead. There's definitely this theme across Whedon's
work about female characters essentially being punished by the narrative for sleeping with
the wrong people. I mean, this happens to Buffy constantly,
whether it's in the form of her boyfriend tunring into an evil vampire hellbent on killing
her or being trapped in a house filled with vines because she got too intense with her
military boyfriend.. We also see simialr things happening to characters
like Cordelia, Dawn, or Inara on Firefly. It's weird theme that seems to pop up, and
there's definitely a possible avenue of interpretation in terms of Penny's death being the result
of her relationship with Hammer and her failure to see him for what he really is. And narratively speaking, yes. If she had just gone out with Billy instead
of Captain Hammer, she probably wouldn't have died. Which is already kinda yikes when you
think about it for too long. I mean, we're meant to empathize with Billy
in this situation, but he kinda sucks. Like, why would she date him? She's never spoken to him before, and when
they first speak, he's super weird, belittles her petition, and "texts" most of the time. He's so distracted that she ends up walking
away from him wthout getting a goodbye back. On the exact same day, from her perspective,
she's saved by a handsome guy who actually focuses his attention on her. Billy's reponse to this is to be bitter about
it. He stalks her on dates, belittles her boyfriend
in front of her, and never makes any attempts to express romantic feelings towards her or
ask her out. He blames her for his own change in attitude,
with the line "there's a darkness everywhere and Penny doesn't seem to care that soon the
dark in me is all that will remain". He doesn't care that she's happy, as long
as she's not happy with him. It's a pretty shitty, entitled attitude. This lowkey blaming of Penny for not dating
him, even though he's done nothing to make himself apparent as either romantically interested
or romantically appealing is pretty consistent throughout the series. And like... his descent into actual evil isn't
even really motivated by anything particularly awful? He vows to kill Captain Hammmer because Hammer
bragged about how he gets to sleep with Penny and Billy couldn't. This very specific form of anger directed
towards both Penny and the man she chooses to date was definitely a lot more normalized
in 2008 when this was made, but if we look at it in a modern context, the first word
that would come to mind for a lot of people is "incel". I especially wanna thank Maxie Satan Official
for a really good post where she correctly identifies that this narrative very closely
parallels the radicalization that a lot of incel types seem to experience- particularly
in the fact that his desire to kill Captain Hammer really is ego-based and isn't borne
out of any particular desire for social change except to his own position in life. One nowadays might use the term toxic masculinity. So, quick note on this. When people use the term toxic masculinity,
a lot of misconceptions and emotions can be brought up, both from people using the term
and from people reacting to it. We all know that one of these ideas is that
this is an indictment of all masculinity, and that people using the term are saying
men aren't allowed to enjoy chopping wood or fishing or cracking open a cold one with
the boys any more. Of course, this isn't what the term means,
only that there's a version of that masculinity which is harmful. People like Terry Crews or Nick Offerman are
traditionally masculine in non-harmful ways, for instance. But another popular conception is that this
term only refers to a very specific type of person; that, is the hypermasculine jock. This is the kind of character that we see
in Captain Hammer, and the narrative absolutely frames him as a bad person. But we don't really see that same scrutinity
and negative framing applied to Billy and his attitudes towards Penny; rather,
his feelings for her are portrayed as something genuine and wholesome. But again, he kinda sucks and makes no attempt
to romantically pursue her and is kinda a dick to her. Like, at least Hammer actually does stuff
for Penny, like help her get her homeless shelter. I mean, it's certainly not because he cares
about her as a person; he's very clearly only interested in her because he wants to sleep
with her. But based solely on actions, it's no wonder
she prefers him. Related to that, a youtuber named Pop Culture
Detective has a really great video about how harmful ideologies towards women can manifest
in nerd culture in unique ways, specifically talking about The Big Bang Theory. I would definitely recommend giving it a watch,
and I'll link it below. The short version is that there's this very
specific style of toxic masculinity that is present throughout nerd circles. There's still a very specific ideal that it
aspires to; it's not the jock, but instead the hyper-rational renaissance man who can
attract women through his superior understanding of art and culture and science. These things are framed are primarily masculine
traits that women don't or can't possess to the same degree as men. This often leads to a lot of condescenscion
towards women or the idea that these men would be constantly getting girls if these women
were smart enough to see what was right in front of them. And this is definitely something we see in
Billy. Throughout the story, Billy repeatedly expresses
this underlying, very paternalistic belief that Penny is unable to make her own choices
if her choice doesn't result in her ending up with Billy. She's somehow incapable of understanding Hammer's
true nature, and she's overly naive. Him sneering at her in the first act when
she mentions starting a petition is really indicative of his attitude towards Penny. He doesn't see her as a fully developed human
with the same capacity for reasoning and intellectual thought as him; he sees a pretty girl, who
he wants, who he's built up in his head to have specific idealized characteristics. He imagines her going along with whatever
he says, understanding his desires for supervillainry, and blindly falling in love with him, even
when presented with evidence to the contrary. And when Penny doesn't meet the expectations
that Billy has crafted for her in his head, Billy grows bitter. Basically, Billy is the only character we're
really meant to empathize with, and the only person really framed as in the wrong
in terms of how they treat Penny is Hammer. If not an endorsement of Billy's lowkey sexist
attitudes towards Penny, it seems like the work is at the very least turning a blind
eye to it. This is particularly true when taken in concert
with the fact that Penny has virtually no agency in the story, and primarily serves
as a prize to be won for Billy. So, we could stop here. Okay. Dr. Horrible is problematic and contains a
lot of bad attitudes towards women. It's basically just "Nice Guys: The Musical",
and we're rooting for Eliott Roger. You can still like it, but don't take it as
anything more than it is. But, this doesn't quite feel right either. I mean, sure, Penny's character was handled
poorly, and Billy's character is certainly an example
of like, Nice Guy Nerd Masculinity, but does that mean that the series itself necessarily
endorses Billy's behaviour? Are we supposed to be rooting for him, or
is this more of a condemnation of his behaviour? Is the primary purpose of Dr Horrible not
to just serve as an example of these tropes, but instead to take them and turn them on
their head, to point out the harm in them? Was the true hammer in the story not Nathan
Fillion, but the hammer and sickle bestowed upon Comrade Whedon for his super subversive
musical? Actually, before we answer that... Hey. Do you like Dungeons and Dragons? Do you like content with me in it? What if I told you, you could have both those
things at once? Well, you can, because I'm in an actual play
DND podcast called Trials & Trebuchets! Basically, the premise is that we play these
kids at a secretive, elite magical school, and we're makin' friends, having some good good
anime tropes, while also uncovering the school's deepest mysteries. And maybe saving the world? I don't know, we haven't gotten there yet. I assume we're gonna save the world. It's a nice, lighthearted podcast, it's a
good time, I play a bard, we have a Discord server... If you like DND, or me, or you just like one
of those things and you're interested in learning more about the other thing, I would definitely
recommend you check the podcast out. So, I'll going to be leaving links in the
description for our Discord server and for websites where you can listen to the podcast,
see previews, and learn more about us! Back to your regularly scheduled... actual
video essay now. So, is it actually a condemnation of Shitty
Nerd Masculinity? I mean, the fact that a popular interpretation
of the story is "oh, it's so sad that Penny didn't date Billy, the relatable nerdy protagonist",
might lead some people to just say no. I mean, there are a lot of works that try
to serve as a subversion of these shitty ideals- Fight Club, Bojack Horseman, Rick and Morty- In all of these cases, you have guys not viewing
the protagonists as the way the work is trying to portray them; that is, as super flawed people, but instead
as icons whom they should aspire to become like. And so, a lot of people criticize these works
for not being explicit enough in their framing of these characters. Basically, the idea is that if something is
supposed to be a criticism of a bad idea, but then people come out endorsing the idea, it
has failed as a criticism. This is a fair point, but I think there's
a type of person who will see a shitty nerd character and identify with them
no matter how unlikeable an author makes that shitty nerd character? Like, for Heaven's sake, Kylo Ren is like
the most snivelling little weenie, and people still identify with him. So, I think the question is still worth asking,
even if it is telling that we have to ask the question at all. I mean, once again, there's still that question
of authorial intent that I talk about extensively in my JK Rowling video. Should we look at what we think Whedon intended
to portray? Or, should we narrow our scope exclusively
to the film itself, and what a casual viewer, not knowing anything
about Whedon or his other works, might take from it? Y'all already know I don't like examining
things primarily through the lens of authorial intent, mostly
because it lends itself very easily to bad-faith reinterpretations. That being said, if we do try and do that
here, the result is kinda a resounding "eh". I mean, Whedon's works have absolutely been
critical of Nice Guy Nerd Masculinity in the past, particularly with the Trio's presence on Buffy
The Vampire Slayer. The Trio consists of three guys who serve
as the big bads on the show's fifth* season. They're both deeply nerdy: talking in Doctor
Who references, displaying social awkwardness around women, and building spy gadgets, and deeply misogynistic. In particular, the trio's leader, Warren Mears,
views himself as entitled to the women in his life; he tries to brainwash a woman into sleeping with him and
murders her when she rejects him. He ends up building an entire robot solely
for the purpose of simulating a relationship, and then leaves her to die. Basically, he sucks. So, if we are looking at authorial intent,
there's definitely evidence that Whedon is aware of this problem, and is willing to criticize
it. On the other hand, he's also created nerd-type characters with unfortunate attitudes in situations
where this isn't really criticized; in particular, Xander on Buffy begins with a lot of entitlement
to the women in his life, and is never really called out or punished for it. So, Billy's character could be an attempt
to create someone we're not supposed to like, or to create a cute relatable nerd guy. Jaboy Joss has done both. Of course, Whedon wasn't the only person responsible
for creating Dr. Horrible; there's also the influence of his brothers and icon Maurissa
Tancharoen. So, examining the actual content of the story
only through the lens of what Whedon intended creates a limited picture of the overall content. So, let's look at the actual text itself. I'm mostly going to be looking at the end
result of the story; that is, Penny's death and Billy's resulting emotional devastation,
because that is kind of the emotional core of the story here. If we're looking at cause and effect, it's
still true that Penny choosing not to date Billy ended up leading to her death, and we
can certainly view that as the narrative punishing her for
her choices. Indeed, her choice of who to date is really
the only agency we see her express in the story. But, one could just as easily make a case
that the person being primarily punished for their actions is Billy. Once again, the supposed turn to darkness
where he decides he's going to kill Captain Hammer isn't motivated by any real injustice,
but the fact that his ego is bruised. He feels entitled to dating Penny, and feels
anger at Chad- I mean, Captain Hammer- as a result. And, it's this entitlement to Penny, and his
resulting violence, that ends up ultimately killing her, and this entitlement is his fatal
flaw. And it's very important here to remember that
Billy ultimately has a significant amount of agency and placed himself in the majority
of the harmful situations we see him in throughout the narrative. Hammer's a dick, but he didn't force Billy
to try to freeze ray a mayor, or to try and kill Hammer. These are all choices that Billy makes fueled
by his entitlement, and he's experiencing the consequences of his own actions. He did this to himself. Furthermore, even though he's not framed as
being as bad as Hammer, and we're certainly meant to sympathize with him, he's definitely made fun of at certain points. For example, even though he makes fun of Penny
for her naivety in thinking a petition is going to help the LA homeless, he has similarly idealistic and simplistic
beliefs. In his villain song, he has a line talking
about how he's going to create: Anarchy! That I run! "Anarchy that I run". Which is very much not how anarchy works? Or, in his very first monologue, he ends up
getting an email where he's asked if he's ever actually spoken to Penny; if she even knows he exists. And she absolutely doesn't at that point;
the email dude's right! This fantasizing over Penny and projecting
his own ideas of what she'll be like onto her is certainly not a desirable trait. Taken in concert with everything we know about
Billy and his own attitudes, there's definitely a case to be made for this story as a cautionary tale about radicalization
and entitlement. Billy essentially drives himself to these
harmful actions through his own ego, and the story can be viewed as the process of watching
that happen to him step by step. We see how that crush turns into stalking,
which turns into violence against her partner, which turns into (albeit accidental) violence
against her. And Billy experiences real consequences for
those actions in a way that can absolutely be interpreted as a condemnation of this very
toxic way of viewing the world. Here, the story says "no, people aren't your
playthings. They have real thoughts and real feelings,
and attempts to control them and make life go according to your wishes while ignoring
their own will end up hurting both you and them". But what about out-of-universe, Penny's own
lack of agency in the story? Once again, she's definitely portrayed more
as a prize to be won for Billy than as her own person, and we're only really meant to
feel sad about her death as it pertains to affecting Billy. But there's certainly a degree of self-awareness
about this coming from the story itself. I mean, it literally cuts to a news segment
saying Country Mourns What's-Her-Name, and there's an earlier song where a group of fans
were commenting upon Penny's personal life as she becomes increasingly well-known as
"Captain Hammer's Girlfriend". So, perhaps this isn't the fridging trope
played straight so much as an attempt to call it out, to call out the way that women are
often treated as powerless by these popular narratives. Like, she does all this work for the homeless,
and she's still reduced to What's-Her-Name and Captain Hammer's Girlfriend, even though she does more good for the world
than he ever will. And like, this is a really apt observation! Oftentimes, women who do a lot of work still
end up getting sidelined in favour of guys who do very little, and women often have to
do a lot more to prove their contributions and agency! Like, look at the recent news story with the
picture of this black hole, where people were scrambling to find a way to dismiss all the
work this woman put into it, even though she never took sole credit for
the project. Even I've experienced it; I made a joke about
Breadtube once and it prompted like an entire comment war about whether I was Breadtube
enough to count! People won't be satisfied until I've poured
some kind of liquid on my face, which I'm really not inclined to do right now because
I did just get back from Sephora. And like, this is such a minor example. I'm not curing cancer or helping the homeless
here; it's just videos. What happens to Penny, dedicating extreme
amounts of time and attention to this really noble cause, dying at a celebration of that
cause, and then barely being recognized or remembered,
is a really sad and real example of something that happens quite often. Maybe the story here is taking it to the extreme-
having a news segment literally call her What's-Her-Name, to draw attention to how silly this is. There's definitely a fine line between invoking
Thing as satire to point out how ridiculous it is, and just doing Thing and saying it's satire,
and the distinction is often difficult to describe in words. Just doing something shitty and pointing it
out isn't inherently good satire. See: Riverdale calling out Kevin's existence
as the one-dimensional token gay friend, but still continuing to have him be the one-dimensional
token gay friend. It's not really a commentary; they just tried
to use self-awareness as a get out of jail free card. But like, this can be done right! Think about the perennially underrated show
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, whose main character does a lot of stalking and
other generally unsavoury things for the purpose of love. The theme song to one season is a quirky ingenue
song where she sings in a cutesy voice about how she ♪ can't be held responsible for her actions
♪ 'cause she's just a girl in love! And that ends up being really effective, because
it draws attention to how ridiculous it is that we tend to excuse these things when they're
framed as being done for the sake of love. So, which is the "right interpretation" here? Is the entire narrative a cautionary tale
about entitlement and radicalization and how we should all be drinking more Respect Women
Juice? Or, is it just an uncritical portrayal of
that entitlement in a way that doesn't meaningfully challenge those concepts? Well, let's discuss! When we put everything on the table and take
a look at this series eleven years later, it really comes out feeling like a mixed bag. It promotes vulnerability in some men while
using it as a tool of shaming in others, it calls out some creepy attitudes towards women
while drawing less attention to others, and it parodies a lack of female agency in some
situations while just invoking it in others. The whole thing ends up feeling like a mess
of contradictions that it's particularly difficult to decide how to feel about. Fans can, of course, draw their own conclusions
as to where Billy went wrong and what caused Penny's death, but the narrative stops short
of really showing Penny's death as a direct and immediate consequence of either Penny's
actions or Billy's. There's no singular, clear examination of
the root causes, which is why you have some people calling it a love story, some people calling it subversive, and some
people calling it problematic. And, truth be told, there's also no such thing
as a singular, uniquely valid interpretation of the work. Especially when we do away with the idea there's
only one right way to view it, and that's what the author wanted. We can look at how other people react to it
to see how well it fulfilled its purpose, and we can look at the text itself, but at
the end of the day, both of these interpretations can be right or neither of these interpretations
can be right. But if you really wanna know how I feel after
this whole thing, I think the series was a bit of both. I mean, I think there was probably a real
effort there to parody the way women are treated in the public eye, hence "What's-Her-Name" and the entire So They Say
Number. But, it didn't really take the situation to
intense enough lengths to be much of a biting satire, either. Billy is absolutely entitled, and once again,
there's definitely a real effort to make sure we the audience knows that he's naive and has a poor conception
of how the world works. But, the series really stops short of examining
the way those traits led to the consequences, only really driving home that Penny's death
was indeed a tragedy. I absolutely wouldn't call the series a biting
takedown of Nice Guy Nerd Masculinity, but I also wouldn't call it an endorsement of
it either. Ultimately, I think Dr Horrible's Sing-Along
Blog has some bad and some good. Read through a feminist lens, it definitely
functions as an interesting case study about how radicalization and toxic attitudes
lead to violence, but the story itself doesn't quite make those connections enough for me
to justify me calling it subversive. But, there's also enough meaningful criticism
of Billy and his actions that just calling it an ode to Nice Guys isn't really accurate
either. Looking back on the series eleven years later,
I think the most important thing to take from it is that we're not owed other people. Even when we feel those people aren't doing
what we think is best for them. It's a hard pill to swallow, especially when
frozen yoghurt is so much easier to swallow. But it's necessary. Brand New Day slaps, and it's OK to like it. I like it. But, if you're not feeling great about your
choice of media for the day... just watch Megamind. No, seriously, watch Megamind. It has literally all the same commentary about
entitlement and woman as prize, but does it like, ten times better. Plus the soundtrack is almost as good. Oh my god. Rule of threes. I have to do this, don't I? [BreadTube baptism splash] WHY DID I DO THAT, oh my god. In addition to all my patrons, I would like
to specially thank Benjamin Maier for joining my $20+ tier.
