Buffy and male “talent”
Tags: Joss Whedon, Corporate Culture, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Bullying

I’ve written here before about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so you know that I’m, if not a fan, at least a watcher (no, not like that…).

I’m not sure when I first became aware of Joss Whedon’s mistreatment of Charisma Carpenter during her time on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel, but a whole swathe of people on the internet became (re-)aware of it too over the past few weeks, and I thought I’d write something with my consultant/career coach hat on.

Does a TV show have a corporate culture?

Absolutely!

We might think of corporate/workplace/organisational cultures as things that happen when there’s an employer and a bunch of employees, like an office or a shop. But the term(s) aren’t so formal as all that. I’ve worked on reforming organisational cultures before, where there are no employment relationships between a number of the key groups, or even formal client-service provider ones. That makes them a little harder to grapple with, but thinking about organisational culture is no less useful because of that challenge.

Films and TV shows, just like any other major project or production, are organisations. They’re just organisations that treat people in an atomised way. Think of atomisation as the segregation of workers who might otherwise have much in common into different classes and groups with different rights, security and respect, whether it’s tenured, tenure-track and adjunct professors, or writers, production staff and ‘talent’.

What a number of actors from Buffy (and other Whedon projects) have described is a toxic culture. One that treats people with disrespect, reduces their autonomy, and relishes unequal power balances. And I’m not talking just about those who have complained vocally that Whedon’s behaviour was inappropriate; other cast member interviews describe inappropriate behaviour, even if they don’t label it as such. They describe the show’s creator (and often director) giving feedback that veers into unprofessional and inappropriate criticism, maliciously creating difficult tasks or working environments, and purposefully generating a sense of job insecurity.

They’re all behaviours that, if they happened in your office, you’d feel sad, angry and/or anxious about.

What many people are struggling with is the dissonance between Buffy’s espoused values—the ‘feminism’ of its narrative and characters—and the values that clearly prevailed on set, which ran very much in the opposite direction. That sort of dissonance is the definition of an organisational culture that needs to change.

So let’s explore it for a moment through three questions that sceptical/distraught fans might have.

Why didn’t they just quit?

This encapsulates the fundamental power imbalance that enables so much of the poor behaviour described. Let’s remember, actors are insecurely employed. They can be fired pretty much wily nilly (in fact, actors describe Whedon telling them there was no home for them on the show, but then continuing to keep them on, or telling them they wouldn’t be killed off and then immediately doing so).

Charisma Carpenter has described the challenge of being her family’s main breadwinner while trying to navigate this toxic workplace, but the underlying point is: people need jobs. Even people you see on TV. If there’s no clear supporting structure in place to tackle a crappy culture, if you think no one will take your side, it’s very difficult to challenge.

The #TimesUp movement in the film and TV industry has illustrated how pervasive some of the issues were, but as “open secrets” they simply become problems to be navigated and shrugged at, not to be tackled up-front. Simply quitting, even if you can with zero career repercussions (unlikely for almost everyone who’s employed, in any industry) may take you out of the situation, but doesn’t address the underlying problem. It leaves colleagues in that same situation, and that can also be very challenging to manage psychologically. In fact, the conversation about Whedon and Buffy has begun again because Carpenter felt she had to speak out in support of another actor, Ray Fisher.

We can also flip this question on its head. If someone is a poor performer, or not committed, they can be fired or replaced. Why would an organisation keep someone on board who’s “not good enough”? The (hopefully obvious!) fact is, bullying and harassment has nothing to do with performance or ability. It says nothing about the person abused, and everything about the abusers and those who enable them.

But, TV is just different , isn’t it? It’s not like other workplaces.

A corollary of the “why not quit” line of thinking is that this workplace environment is just unique. It’s special, by virtue of the money involved and products it produces, or the “creative genius” that it demands.

Sure, TV is one of the creative industries. There needs to be some creativity and talent to make an effective product. But that’s true of any organisation; there needs to be some skill, some ability involved. And no one’s skill or ability is actually as crucial as you think. After all, graveyards are full of indispensable people!

What’s being described about creative workplaces being “different” because “talent” is just a circular way of justifying/stating the underlying power imbalance. It’s like saying the CEO is more valuable to the company than the PA he sexually assaults because he’s paid more. That’s a description of the power imbalance; it’s not a justification of it, or of it being abused.

What lots of people have commented on, regarding this case and more generally the #TimesUp movement, is that toxic organisational culture crushes talent while claiming to uphold and protect it. The question is, whose creative talent is being valued and protected, and whose is being crushed? This line of thinking suggests that Whedon’s is of the paramount importance. But how many other creative talents are crushed in the process of nurturing one?

It can’t have been that bad because it doesn’t show in the work!

And the issue of nurturing creative talents brings us to the final line of thinking that underpins some of the commentary: the ends justify the means.

I have two answers here. First, no. They don’t. And second, you really don’t see this toxicity in the final product?

Let’s take “no” first. There is no justification for this sort of poor behaviour. How you do a project is important. It’s never just about the end result. This should be particularly true in industries like TV where the “organisation” is loose and project-based. Every project is building a project-specific community and the industry community at the same time. The fact is, like most industries, TV and film is consequences-avoidant when it comes to people with power. But that says nothing about whether the culture those people create is or is not okay.

Some of the public statements from Buffy cast members make it clear that they’re proud of the work but want to be distanced from the experience of making it, and from Whedon specifically.

But, even if you take the “ends justifies the means” arguments on its supposed merits, it doesn’t work. Buffy is in theory a feminist show illustrating the power and abilities of young women. And it could be. But it’s infused with an atmosphere, characterisation and plots that show a callous disregard towards people, especially young women. This is a show in which:

The basic premise is to heap as many pressures and responsibilities onto young women as possible, offer them negligible respect and recognition, and require them to keep enduring the same because of their identity, because that’s “their place in society”.

Young women’s “purity” is an enduring obsession, and sex is men’s greatest priority in the world. Buffy has sex once and unleashes a demon who tries to end the world? Sex is the only “true contentment” for Angel? Yeah, nice.

Older men, especially the “love interests”, are enduringly creepy. From Angel’s “240-year-old love at first sight of a mid-teen girl”, “staring at you from a blacked out car” creepy, and Wesley’s “let’s definitely get it on with this teenage high-school student” creepy, through to Spike’s “building a sex robot of you because I can’t have you” creepy. Oh, yeah, and attempted rapes abound, badly . (James Marsters, who played Spike, has actually talked about how traumatic he found filming an attempted rape scene on Buffy.)

creepy. From Angel’s “240-year-old love at first sight of a mid-teen girl”, “staring at you from a blacked out car” creepy, and Wesley’s “let’s definitely get it on with this teenage high-school student” creepy, through to Spike’s “building a sex robot of you because I can’t have you” creepy. Oh, yeah, and attempted rapes abound, . (James Marsters, who played Spike, has actually talked about how traumatic he found filming an attempted rape scene on Buffy.) Parental abuses are pretty much shrugged off. Remember when Buffy’s mother throws her out (in which “coming out” as the slayer is played like coming out as gay)? Willow and Buffy almost got burned at the stake by their mother? Or the flip remarks about Xander’s unhappy, alcohol-fuelled home-life that just come and go?

If you were given a quick précis of the show and then told about some of the cultural issues on-set, you would absolutely say, “That tracks.” The fact is, a toxic workplace culture always exhibits itself somehow.

What can we do?

Well, Buffy’s over. But we can talk about how toxic cultures destroy talent and generate poorer outcomes, and then keep talking about it.

In this case, denying audiences great stories and performances. Think how much better Buffy might have been if the culture on-set were better. If it had had a culture where concerns about characterisation and arcs and interpersonal experiences were aired and worked through and the whole thing thereby improved.