Joss's Fascination with Crazy Female Characters by kukoo

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Joss's Fascination with Crazy Female Characters

POSTED BY: KUKOO
UPDATED: Monday, September 6, 2004 04:48
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Saturday, September 4, 2004 6:21 PM

In all of Joss's shows, there are all of these crazy women, and I was just curious if there were any theories as to why. For example, on Firefly there is River and on Buffy & Angel there is Drucilla (who out-crazies even River). In addition, several of the female characters have been crazy at some point. Fred, when she was first introduced was crazy wall writing hermit lady, Tara was crazy for a time when Glory sucked out her sanity, Willow went homicidal crazy when Tara died, Faith was borderline homicidal crazy through out Season 3 & 4 of Buffy, Cordelia went crazy at the end of Angel season one when that guy touched her and realesed all of the visions, and in season 6 there was the episode which said that Buffy was a schizo in a sanitarium and that all of Whedonverse was just a part of her paranoid delusions.

Don't get me wrong, I loved just about all of the crazed characters, and having such well developed, but insane characters is one of the things I enjoy in Joss's shows, but it just seems unusual that there are so many.

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Saturday, September 4, 2004 7:11 PM

BIKISDAD

Don't forget Dana, the schizophrenic slayer from the Angel season five episode "Damage"...

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

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Saturday, September 4, 2004 8:10 PM

PIRATEJENNY

Probably because crazy people are fascinating...and also alot of fun.. and well you can really go out on a limb and beyond with a crazy charactor..and it OK because they have an excuse they are crazy...

although I think its to easy to label River as being crazy she's not exactly what I would call crazy... she's so much more

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Saturday, September 4, 2004 9:31 PM

NEEDLESEYE

Just my thoughts...
Joss is an artist, so he is working from a central vision in his head. It comes out on film and writings forming a style that becomes an underlying theme .He works through this idea again and again, subconciously and then not so much. Lot's of artists do this. Creative people have to get "it" out of their system.
I think that's what he's doing and it apparently includes a crazy person. :D

Keeper of Jayne's goggles. 8)

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Sunday, September 5, 2004 1:24 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

...or it could be that Joss sees a common theme in most women. That they're nuts. ( oooooohhh, whoooooh! Did I really say that?

) Or at the very least, appear to be nuts from one perspectivre as in males can't hardly figure 'em out.

That, or it could be that crazy gals are just really entertaining. Fun to write and fun to watch.

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

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Sunday, September 5, 2004 2:55 AM

PURPLEBELLY

In our cultures, Whedon's audience is more likely to be able to find some sympathy for female characters with reality conflicts than male characters with similar attributes. Whedon has Gender Studies in his academic background, of course.

IGNFF: Was that part of your motivation for taking gender studies for a minor?

WHEDON: It's not that I took it for a minor, it's just like I pursued it in everything I did. It's always what interested me

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Sunday, September 5, 2004 3:10 AM

JENDANDY

Crazy chicks are the best!

I liked Fred when she was hiding up in her room, drawing on the walls and pretending it was a cave like back when she was in Pylea. I've always had a soft spot for Dru and Tara...and don't get me started on River! Best use of a crazy female character ever!! I'm fascinated by how complex her mind works, especially after Objects in Space.

Firefly now, Sig Later...

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Sunday, September 5, 2004 1:09 PM

MAUGWAI

Good point. He does love to use crazy women. I know he studied feminist literature pretty heavily in college. It was one of his major studies. That explains his fascination with female characters in general. He certainly likes them strong. Zoe, Buffy, Faith, Cordelia, Willow. Heck, all his main women have strong personalities, except maybe Fred. She's the meekest of his girls, but look what he turned her into.

Spike and Angel have both been insane, but I can't think of any other male characters going nuts. But maybe it all bounces off Whedon's general obsession with female characters. He explores their personalities in far more detail than the men. He just can't get away from his feminist roots.

"Dear diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy."

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Sunday, September 5, 2004 1:36 PM

BIKISDAD

Quote:
Originally posted by maugwai:
Heck, all his main women have strong personalities, except maybe Fred. She's the meekest of his girls, but look what he turned her into.

Even Fred was tough when she really had to be. Angel made a point of that once (I forget which episode) by noting that she had survived alone in Pylea for five years. Also, remember the episode "Billy" where she took out both Gunn and Wesley when she had to. Underneath that meek exterior Fred was yet another example of one of Joss's tough chicks.

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

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Sunday, September 5, 2004 3:12 PM

DIETCOKE

Well, here is my take on it: Joss loves to surprise us, and what vehicle can give you more opportunities to surprise the audience than someone who is crazy? You never know what they will do. Remember: "Jayne looks better in red?"

Aren't most really bright people just a little crazy? Aren't people who are REALLY funny just a little off?

I think Joss loves crazy people because they are just a little like him. Really bright and REALLY funny....

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Sunday, September 5, 2004 8:02 PM

SHINYSEVEN

I've been thinking about this, and even though it's difficult to diagnose the mental state of a fictional character, I'm beginning to think that there are just a lot of people throughout the Jossverse who are at least a mite whimsical in the brainpan.

I'm sure Zoe wasn't serious when she called Mal "psychotic" in "Serenity," but a number of commenters *have* referred to his instability.

If you ask me, both Jayne and Warren (BtVS) are sociopaths, there's definitely *something* seriously wrong with Jonathan and Andrew, Wesley is exactly the sort of person who keeps psychoanalysts in BMWs, Giles had a nervous breakdown after graduation, and I don't think you'd put Ethan on the cover of Sanity Fair either.

And then there was the coach who wanted to turn his swimmers into fish, the kid with the Jekyll-and-Hyde potion, the one who wanted to build his dead brother a girlfriend, the coach who put a kid into a coma for dropping a baseball....

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Monday, September 6, 2004 4:48 AM

CYBERSNARK

Sanity is a big issue in almost every form of fantastic literature, and for very good reason.

See, reality is formed by concensus. How do we know vampires don't exist? Because out of millions of people in our society (and completely ignoring other societies, because they can be culturally dismissed as "wrong"), only a handful actually believe that vampires could exist.

What we call "sanity" or reality is just what most people believe. People who're "insane" are just tapped into something else. In other cultures, they'd be shamans, witches, sorcerers, dream-walkers, whatever. But our culture doesn't allow for anyone to disagree with the Concensus.

So people who see things in a different way must be marginalized. They're just crazy --their view of the world is Wrong (which presupposes that the Concensus view of the world is Right).

Joss' fantasy stories happen in a world that is intended to be as real (i.e., as similar to the audience's own shared world) as possible. It's not "long ago, in a far-away land," it's in Sunnydale, or L.A. People drive cars, have jobs, watch TV, read comics, buy groceries, go to vacation in England, and worry about flunking social studies.

Look at it this way: Buffy is sane, right? But she's a teenaged girl who runs around at night with weapons believing that she's killing undead monsters. We see from her perspective that she's right. Vampires exist and are real, and outsiders (like Xander, Willow, Oz, etc) can be brought into her world and made to see these things --but normal people don't, normal people are still going about their lives, staying inside at night because that's what normal people do, and not noticing the other things because their Concensus tells them that only crazy people notice those things.

Dru, Fred, CrazySpike, and River aren't insane. They're just perceiving and experiencing reality in a way that most others aren't. They just look crazy 'cause we (and the other characters) are on the outside looking in.

Who knows, maybe Blue Sun didn't make River crazy (stripping her amygdala would've made her sensitive, but not outright insane). Maybe River made herself that way to escape from them. And maybe she can teach others to do the same thing.

Maybe River wasn't at the Academy to learn, but to teach. Remember what she said:

Quote:
"Am I dreaming?"
"We all are."

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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