In Ryan’s previous post, we talked about Joss Whedon and his recent online series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. At first I was hesitant to watch it, because there’s a heavy amount of Whedon’s work I find aggravating. But since there’s a lot I really like as well, I watched it anyway. Of course, my reaction was split, but not in the way I was expecting. As a result, I began exploring why I have this dichotomous perspective with Whedon’s storytelling.

Probably what I like most about Joss Whedon’s stuff, and probably why he’s so popular, is that central to his stories are relatively simple and pure social/moral/ethical/human dilemmas. He gives us a lot to think about in an almost empirical way. It’s easy to compare and contrast characters and events in a kind of mental experiment. He makes simple, iconic characters, which are very approachable and thus endearing to the audience. These characters are based on everyday presumptions and expectations people make about life, and so his characters become his control group. Then, like any good researcher, he systematically alters those characters by running them through the plots he creates. In other words, the characters are absolutes put into formulas that are his plots, and the outcomes of his equations become very revealing about ourselves.
But, I believe this is also why I don’t like Whedon’s stuff as a whole. His observational/experimental approach, in a scientific sense, to storytelling is more important than the story itself. This isn’t as bad as just throwing random and shocking events into a story for effect, but on the surface, that’s how it comes across. He also seems to want to raise questions, but isn’t as concerned with what the answers are. Maybe he doesn’t know what the answers are, and designs his stories, in his very acute way, so people (including himself) will find the answers themselves.
Another possibility is he’s not actually throwing curveballs at us for the purpose casting the audience into deep thought. He could merely be demonstrating the randomness in life. Of this I’m still critical, because what he’s doing is much more like a poetic chaos, albeit inaccurate. The randomness is not really random. It’s his idea of where to best demonstrate randomness, and it comes across unauthentic and odd.
Now, I haven’t provided examples demonstrating the ideas I presented here, mainly to avoid potential spoilers, so I encourage whoever reads this post to hurl what I have written at the works of Joss Whedon, see if it sticks, and then let me know if I need to remove this post. Regardless, Joss Whedon gives us a lot to ponder, which is immensely fun, and why I really do like like his stories afterall. (Oh yeah, check out the official fan site of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.)