Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

1. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon Dr. David Lavery Fall 2014 PH 308, M 600-900

2. Introduction: From the Mind of Joss Whedon • An overview of the book’s approach, like Whedon’s work a hybrid, a fusion of Howard Gruber’s case study method for understanding the nature of the creative process with a neo-auteurism. • Each creative person is unique in a unique way. • —Howard Gruber (“From Epistemic Subject” 177) Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

3. The Genius of Joss Whedon • You could never hope to grasp the source of our power. • Über Buffy to Adam in “Primeval” • But Joss just keeps saying, “Don’t worry. I have it right here.” • Sarah Michelle Gellar on the filming of “Restless” (Udovitch 62) Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

4. Describing Joss Whedon as a “genius” has, of course, become commonplace: Candace Havens uses it in the subtitle of her Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy*; cityofangel.com, Kristy _______ * Although Havens’ “biography”does offer some valuable insights (the interview with Jeanine Basinger, for example, is most welcome), it is, as a piece of scholarship, inexcusably rushed, unreliable, and dishonest. Any attentive reader can spot scores of errors both careless (Joss [sic—Joe] Reinkemeyer) and ungrammatical (“Essential to Joss’s concept for Buffy was to take all of the misery of his high school years and put them [sic] into the series” [33]) and will no doubt wonder, too, why no documentation of sources, none, is provided. Quotation after quotation, most from Whedon’s many interviews (important sources for this book as well), fill Havens’ pages—all uncredited, creating the erroneous impression that the book is the author’s continuous conversation with its subject. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

5. Bratton’s useful (if ungrammatical) comprehensive Angel website, calls him “a creative force of unimaginable genius”; Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, described her boss as a “mad genius” (Gellar, “An Interview”); key collaborator David Greenwalt applies the term to his colleague (Watcher’s Guide I, 244); adherents of the Whedon grocery list use the term; the epilogue to one of the first academic books on Buffy speaks of “The Genius of Joss Whedon.” That last one, of course, is my own, authored just after Buffy’s Season Four finale, written and directed by Whedon, and I am not here to dispute use of the designation in describing the subject of this book. Such characterizations, including my own, are in keeping with a long tradition, going back to the word’s Latin origin. In Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

6. Speaker’s Meaning, Owen Barfield offers a concise summary of its history: “The Romans . . . would never have said of a man that he is a genius. They would have said that he had, or was accompanied or inspired by, a genius. We prefer to say that he is one” (78). To say Whedon is one is thus to identify him as in possession of (I am quoting the Oxford English Dictionary)“that particular kind of intellectual power which has the Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

7. appearance of proceeding from a supernatural inspiration or possession, and which seems to arrive at its results in an inexplicable and miraculous manner” (OED Online, 1989 Edition). The particular example which inspired my use of the term in 2002 was “Restless.” When MimUdovitch visited the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that year while writing a cover story on the show for Rolling Stone, she learned that the final episode of Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

8. Season 4, then only days away from production,* was not yet written. “Like, in a couple of days we start shooting the last episode of the season,” Gellar would observe, “and no one has any idea what happens. But Joss just keeps saying, ‘Don’t worry. I have it right here’” (62). Whedon, we learn later in the article, had an emergency appendectomy earlier in the week, delaying his completion of the script for the season finale. ___________ * Udovitch’s piece was published in the May 11, 2000 issue of the magazine, but we know from several references (she refers in the article to Gellar’s on-set visible scar, acquired in Buffy’s flight from Adam in “The Yoko Factor” [4.20]; she watches the filming of a scene in which Buffy regrets having studied French instead of Sumerian) that her visit took place during the filming of “Primeval” (4.21), the next to the last episode of season four. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

9. A few days later Whedon had evidently completed the script for “Restless,” and he would also direct, for the fourth consecutive year, the season’s final episode, which would air on May 23. Confirming his injunction to his star not to worry, “Restless” turned out to be a truly extraordinary hour of television, a kind of TV 8½,* or Eliot’s Wasteland (Wilcox, Why 162-73), a postmodern, self-referential, diegesis-bending, hour that would succeed in summing up BtVS’s first four seasons and pointing to its future. _____ * During the filming of Fellini’s masterpiece, the Italian director had also deflected the concerns of everyone from his producer to his star, Marcello Mastroianni, as to whether or not “the maestro” actually knew what 8½ was about. Fellini would, of course, incorporate these doubts into the film itself, making it in large part a movie about the inability of Guido Anselmi (Mastroianni—Fellini’s alter ego) to make a movie. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

10. Beyond the sense of high expectation that having the Whedon stamp on it naturally inspired, neither I nor anyone else in BtVS’s audience knew what we were in for beyond an Internet rumor, correct as it turned out, that it would be a dream sequence. Whedon had himself disclosed that much (in a Fanforum interview): • The last episode is all dreams, and it’s just about as strange as it needs to be. It was a very fun and beautiful way to sort of sum up everything everyone had gone through, what it meant to them and where they are. It’s divided into four acts that are four dreams: Giles, Willow, Xander and Buffy. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

11. We did not know, however, that each of these dreams would in fact be equal in style, strangeness, and oneiric suggestiveness to the famous “dancing dwarf” dream of Dale Cooper in the third episode of Twin Peaks, a series Whedon has often cited as among his all time favorites. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

12. Exhausted from their final battle with Adam and from the enjoining spell that made their victory possible, the Gang gathers at Buffy’s house to unwind and watch videos. Before they have finished even the coming attractions on the first tape, they are, however, all sound asleep. Their dreams, however, are anything but sweet, as we learn by entering the mindscreen (as Bruce Kawin calls it) of first Willow, then Xander, Giles, and Buffy. Each of the four is stalked in turn by the spirit of the First Slayer. As the Scooby Gang wanders through their respective dream worlds—as Willow struggles with her stage freight, fear of opera, and doubts about her evolution beyond nerd status during a surreal performance of Death of a Salesman, worrying all along that her secret will be discovered; Xander dreams of assignations with not only Willow and Tara but Buffy’s mother and worries about his future while finding himself in the midst of an Apocalypse Now reddux Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

13. (Principal Snyder as Kurtz); Giles becomes Buffy’s dream dad and frets about the clash between Watcher duties and his “own gig,” merging the two as he bursts into song at The Bronze (which has merged with his own living room); and Buffy finds herself perplexed by a purely-bureaucratic Riley and a human Adam who accuses her of being a demon (planting questions that would not be answered until Season 7’s ”Get It Done” [7.15]), before her own final struggle with, and vanquishing of, the First Slayer, the dream diegesis merges with the real set of the Santa Monica studio where BtVS was filmed. In one captivating tracking shot a fleeing Xander runs from the First Slayer; the camera, in one continuous steadicam take, follows him into Giles’ apartment, through a hallway and out into Buffy’s dorm, into Buffy and Willow’s room, through a closet into his own dank Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

14. basement apartment, where his stepfather/the First Slayer plucks out his heart. The textual geography of the shot makes perfect dream sense—for in dreams, after all, are not all places and times contiguous? But the dream contiguity of the diegesis of “Restless” is in reality the equally surreal contiguity of the extra-diegetic actual television shooting set. Whedon has simultaneously taken us inside the unconscious minds of the Scooby Gang and behind the scenes of a television show’s production. In Xander’s “Restless” dream, Buffy and Giles express their disappointment with Apocalypse Now, and Xander finds himself defending it. Then a popcorn-chomping Giles reverses his critical opinion, announcing his sudden realization: “I'm beginning to understand this now. It's all about the journey, isn't it?” Giles’ “this,” we may say, refers not to Coppola’s film but to Whedon’s creation. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

15. The line is not the only one in “Restless” that takes on self-referential meaning.* Even the twice repeated, first by Tara, then, in “Restless’” last shot, in Buffy’s own mind— • “You think you know . . . what's to come . . . what you are. You haven't even begun.” ** • —seemed to speak not just to the destiny of Buffy the Vampire Slayer but of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, over a decade later, ____________ • * Another example: in the scene at the Bronze in Giles’ dream, we find the following exchange: • Willow: Something is trying to kill us. It's like some primal . . . some animal force. • Giles: That used to be us. • Xander: Don't get linear on me now, man. • Of course there seems little danger of “Restless” itself becoming linear, even in straight-arrow Giles’ dream segment. • ** In the first episode of Season Five, “Buffy vs. Dracula,” written by Marti Noxon, Dracula, seeking to convince Buffy that her power is very near his own, intones the same line to her. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

16. the admonition seems even more relevant, with “you” becoming not Buffy or Buffy but Joss Whedon himself. • It is not my intent here to dispute Whedon’s “genius,” but I do want to follow a different tack. • From the Mind . . . • Here’s how something like this happens. We all sit around scratching our heads. Then Joss says something to the effect of “Can Holland come back all dead and take Angel on an elevator ride to hell but end up right back where he started?” then I just try to work out the details. Bush burning, and its name is Joss. • —Tim Minear, posting to the Bronze after “Reprise” (Angel 2.15) • "And the bush was not consumed" (Exodus) is a perfect metaphor of the life of a creative person. • —Howard Gruber (“And the Bush was not Consumed” 269) Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

17. In a Universal Pictures trailer seen in theatres prior to the release of Serenity (2005) viewers were greeted by an opening title that reads: “From the Mind of Joss Whedon.”* The phrasing, intended for both _________________ *At the time of writing, the trailer remains viewable on YouTube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=0BvP99-Ci6k. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

18. experienced visitors and newcomers to the Whedonverses alike, is telling. Serenity—a big screen manifestation of a failed television series—we are being promised, will not be just any work of popular culture; it will not be written by a committee, or rewritten and reshaped according to the findings of focus groups. It will be the product of a particular mind, a unique imagination—the same intelligence, we learn in a subsequent title, that brought Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel into the world. This book makes a similar assumption. Its subject is not what has come out of that mind—the film scripts (both doctored and original), the television episodes and series, the comic books, song lyrics, the movies. Over thirty scholarly/critical books on that work, well over 200 essays and articles (including over thirty issues of the scholarly journal Slayage which I co-edit), and a dozen conferences (in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, France, Turkey) have more than satisfactorily examined, and continue to examine, those. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

19. Nor is this a biography in any traditional sense. As my title suggests, I want to paint a “portrait” of Joss Whedon’s creative life. Nicholas Hilliard once proclaimed his desire to paint not just the physical form of his contemporary Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) but his extraordinary mind (Eiseley 23). Out of Bacon’s mind came the modern scientific world view; out of Whedon has come the ‘verses that bear his signature, but I understand Hilliard’s desire, though my medium is words and not paint. In a book called Waking Dreams, psychologist Mary Watkins, with the nature of creativity in mind, once observed that the reason we are shocked Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

20. when magicians pull rabbits out of hats is because we were not around when they inserted them in the first place (137). This book will investigate the creative achievement of Joss Whedon by tracking his rabbits to their source. (A warning to the dearly departed Anya would be necessary here if she were not, well, dearly departed.) Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

21. 1927 Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

22. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. (lines 1–5) Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

23. Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

24. In order to undertake this task I will be adopting an approach every bit as much a hybrid as Whedon’s work itself—a critical “combo Buffy,”* if you will—which fuses psychologist Howard Gruber’s case-study approach to understanding the creative process, applied here for the first time to a pop culture creator, with a grounded-in-television neo-auteurism. Allow me to explain as briefly as possible. Fast forward through the remainder of this chapter if you like (I have placed Whedon’s Gruber’s key insights in bold for the speed reader); implement, if you will, the “revolutionary new ‘page turning’ process” (Whedon, “Introduction,” “Once More with Feeling” Script Book, ix): it won’t hurt my feelings if you move directly to Chapter 1: Television Son. The remainder of this book will not have as much resonance or intellectual depth for readers who zap the next few pages, but it will remain meaningful nonetheless. __________________ * Xander in “Primeval” (BtVS4.21): “So no problem, all we need is combo Buffy—her with Slayer strength, Giles' multi-lingual know how, and Willow's witchy power.” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

25. Howard Gruber’s Approach to the Study of Creative Work • I proceeded like an explorer in a new territory, reading the notebooks [of Darwin] through, over and over again, figuring out what he was focusing on, what his cryptic notes meant, trying to recreate his thought processes from one day to the next. I tried to freeze the current of his thinking at crucial points. • —Howard Gruber • Simply put, the approach of the late Howard E. Gruber (1922-2005) is "To start with an individual whose creativity is beyond dispute . . . [a]nd then . . . to map, as carefully as I can, what is going on in that person's mind over a period in which creative breakthroughs were occurring" (“Breakaway Minds” 69).* What interested Gruber was not the “Aha” experiences so often focused on in the history of creativity. Such moments, he was convinced, are always "part of a longer creative process, which in its turn is part of a creative life.” “How are such lives lived?”—that was what Howard Gruber wanted to know.* Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

26. Howard Gruber’s Approach to the Study of Creative Work • I proceeded like an explorer in a new territory, reading the notebooks [of Darwin] through, over and over again, figuring out what he was focusing on, what his cryptic notes meant, trying to recreate his thought processes from one day to the next. I tried to freeze the current of his thinking at crucial points. • —Howard Gruber “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

27. Simply put, the approach of the late Howard E. Gruber (1922-2005) is "To start with an individual whose creativity is beyond dispute . . . [a]nd then . . . to map, as carefully as I can, what is going on in that person's mind over a period in which creative breakthroughs were occurring" (“Breakaway Minds” 69).* ____________ * Gruber’s own magnum opus was a study of Darwin—Darwin on Man (1981). “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

28. What interested Gruber was not the “Aha” experiences so often focused on in the history of creativity. Such moments, he was convinced, are always "part of a longer creative process, which in its turn is part of a creative life.” “How are such lives lived?”—that was what Howard Gruber wanted to know.* ______________ * For more on Gruber, see my essay “Creative Work: The Method of Howard Gruber,” from which much of my overview here is drawn. “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

29. “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

30. "There is no need,” Gruber was convinced, “to think of the individual as solving problems in a mysterious way called 'genius'" (“The Emergence of a Sense of Purpose” 6). Creativity, in fact, is not “a set of properties that a person has in a certain moment and carries around with him. . . . The question is really not the 'ivity' of it—the property list—but how people go about doing it when they do it" (“From Epistemic Subject” 175). Historically speaking, creative individuals often "leave better traces." Indeed, "the making and leaving of tracks . . . is part and parcel of the process itself . . . a kind of activity characteristic of people doing creative work." "Wittingly or not," he notes, they "create the conditions under which we can study their development" ("Which Way is Up?" 119). What sort of traces are to be discovered? “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

31. [N]otions that seemed too absurd to be written down, transient thoughts still too fleeting or awkward for written expression, taboo ideas that can expressed only when muted or transformed. And there is another sort of thinking that leaves very little trace, although it is not rejected or suppressed: the personal imagery ones uses to carry a thought along, the personal knowledge one gains of a situation only by actually being in it—seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling it. Doing, enjoying, remembering, imagining it. This is the fine-structure of experience, well nigh invisible except to the person himself. (“On Creative Thought” 253) For creative people "a long and well-worked through apprenticeship is vital to the development of a creative life." The particular circumstances vary: "Teachers and mentors may be imposed upon the young person, or sought out, or discovered in a lucky accident. They may be physically present or far away, living or dead models." But the end result is the same: "models and mentors there must be, as well as the disciplined work necessary to profit from them" ("Foreword to Notebooks of the Mind" x). Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

32. Early in their life's work, creative individuals make "good moves"—strategies, "first stroke[s] of the brush [which] transform the canvas"—that "set the stage for the protracted creative work of which it is only a part" ("From Epistemic Subject" 172). (These moves are often recorded in an "initial sketch": a "rough draft or early notebook to which the worker can repair from time to time—that serves as a sort of gyroscope for the oeuvre" ["Inching" 265-66].) Though "delays, tangents, and false starts" are equally as common and "almost inevitable," creative individuals find ways of managing their work "so that these inconclusive moves become fruitful and enriching, and at the same time so that a sense of direction is maintained." "Without such a sense of direction," in fact, as Gruber shows, "the would-be creator may produce a number of fine strokes, but they will not accumulate toward a great work" ("Inching" 265). “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

33. Creative people, Gruber found, are not as isolated as once believed: they are, in fact, extremely good at collaborating, at interacting with peers. They often devote their skills and a surprising amount of time to establish environments and peer groups ("personal allegiances") capable of nurturing their work ("Breakaway Minds" 72; "And the Bush" 294-95). Creative people are willing to work hard for a very long time, even if such work does not produce immediate results or rewards, and this work remains enjoyable for them. "Perhaps the single most reliable finding in our studies," Gruber observes, "is that creative work takes a long time. With all due apologies to thunderbolts, creative work is not a matter of milliseconds, minutes, or even hours—but of months, years, and decades" ("Inching" 265). Creative individuals should not be thought of as obsessed or fanatic: "the creative person cannot simply be driven," Gruber writes. "He must be drawn to his work by visions, hopes, joy of discovery, love of truth, and sensuous pleasure in the creative activity itself" ("And the Bush" 294). “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

34. Creative individuals, Gruber discovers, "need to know a lot and cultivate special skills" ("Breakaway Minds" 71): Darwin, for example, knew a tremendous amount about such esoteric subjects as barnacles and animal breeding, knowledge which shaped his discoveries about evolution; Leonardo's precise knowledge of anatomy informed his art; Newton's hands-on experience as the maker of scientific instruments was "instrumental" to his theory-making ("Foreword to Notebooks of the Mind" x). Creative individuals sometimes acquire this knowledge through a "special kind of narcissism" ("And the Bush" 280) such as that exhibited by Darwin when he used himself as his subject in order to study man's higher faculties. “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

35. Creative individuals possess a "network of enterprises.” "In the course of a single day or week," Gruber notes, "the activities of the person may appear, from the outside, as a bewildering miscellany. But the person is not disoriented or dazzled. He or she can readily map each activity onto one or another enterprise" ("The Evolving Systems Approach" 13). That creative work is often "spread out over months and years has consequences for the organization of purpose." For "in order to make grand goals attainable, the creator must invent and pursue subgoals." Individuals must find ways of managing their tasks through a network of enterprises ("Inching" 265). "The creative person must develop a sense of identity as a creative person, a sense of his or her own specialness" ("And the Bush" 294-95). Creative people possess, and seek to possess, unique points of view, special perspectives on the world. Such points of view, in fact, are likely to distinguish the creative person more than any particular problem solving ability. “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

36. The ongoing work of creation is often guided by what Gruber calls "images of wide scope." "There is probably a place," Gruber writes, "for a special term such as 'image of wide scope,' distinct from metaphor, to refer to the potential vehicle of a metaphor that has not yet been formulated or to refer to supple schematization . . . that might enter into a number of metaphors" ("Inching" 256). Darwin's notebook sketches of the tree of evolution, Einstein's "thought experiment" of a voyage on a beam of light in order to understand reality from its perspective—these are classic examples of images of wide scope, Freud's numerous drawings, his rendering of neurons in the brain, which recently inspired an entire art exhibition at the SUNY Binghamton. “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

37. Creative individuals . . . "have at [their] disposal a number of modalities of representation. Systems of laws, taxonomic systems, and thematic repertoires [the term is Gerald Holton's] . . .—are all pertinent" ("Cognitive Psychology" 315). Various thinkers develop direct, special ways of thinking: Wordsworth in iambic pentameter, von Neumann in mathematical equations, Dr. Johnson in prose ("Aha Experiences" 48). These "private languages and modes of thought" must be translated, however, into public discourse.“ “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

38. Ordinarily, an "overriding project [emerges] that unites all the enterprises," though this is not always the case ("History and Creative Work" 9). Each enterprise is governed by plans and intentions, but, due to the nature of the coupling, the frustration of one plan does not bring the whole system to a halt. Rather the individual overcomes obstacles through new procedures: he or she may, for example, turn to a related enterprise which had been placed on the "back burner." "How the individual decides whether to struggle with . . . difficulties or to shift to some other activity," Gruber notes, "is regulated by the organization of purposes as a whole" ("Cognitive Psychology" 315). “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

39. The pages ahead will plot the conformity of Whedon’s life and work through application of Gruber’s scheme. Think of the epigraphs highlighting key Gruber ideas that serve to presage each of the book’s two parts and every chapter as roadmarkers intended to “place” the stages of Whedon’s creative development across his career. My subject, however, is not a great figure in the history of science or a canonical writer. Joss Whedon’s creative achievements have been in popular culture, most significantly in television and film, so it is my intent to enhance Gruber’s method by melding it with a medium-specific approach. “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

40. Neo-Auteurism It may well be that the early development of art forms and/or new media of communication exhibits a natural tendency to anonymity. Poetry, for example, is authored by "anonymous" before Homer or Chaucer or Dante appear on the scene; Gilgamesh and Beowulf precede The Iliad or The Canterbury Tales. In architecture, the Gothic cathedral, the anonymous work of thousands, comes before the acknowledged creations of a Christopher Wren or Frank Lloyd Wright. “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

41. In the first four decades of the movies, authorship was seldom at issue. Though directors like D. W. Griffith, Erich von Stroheim, Sergei Eisenstein, and Charlie Chaplin were recognized as artists of the medium, in the normal course of things it was more customary to credit a producer or even a studio as the true origin of a work of movie art. It was only after World War II, when French "cinéastes" associated with the journal Cahiers du Cinema—chief among them François Truffaut, a future important director of the New Wave, in his essay on the "politques des auteurs" (1954), began to speak of movie auteurs: the French word for "author." François Truffaut, "UneCertaineTendance du CinémaFrançais" ("A Certain Tendency in French Cinema"), Cahiers du Cinéma (1954) “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

42. Andrew Sarris (US): Auteurism’s American champion The America Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968 Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

43. “In its more extreme incarnations auteurism can be seen as an anthropomorphic form of ‘love’ for the cinema. The same love that had formerly been lavished on stars, or that formalists lavished on artistic devices, the auteurists now lavished on the men—and they largely were men—who incarnated the auteurists’ idea of cinema. Film was resurrected as secular religion; the ‘aura’ was back in force thanks to the cult of the auteur.” --Robert Stam “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

44. Foucault Barthes “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

45. William H. Gass, "The Death of the Author.” Habitations of the Word: Essays. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. 265‑88. • “[W]hen, in 1968, Roland Barthes announced the death of the author, he was actually calling for it.” • The death of the author is comic, not tragic; it "signifies a decline in authority, in theological power, as if Zeus were stripped of his thunderbolts and swans, perhaps residing on Olympus still, but now living in a camper and cooking with propane. He is, but he is no longer a god.” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

46. Anti-television scholars like Todd Gitlin have insisted (in 1994) that “There is still virtually no place in American television, commercial or public, for a serious writer or director to make a career” (xiii) in a medium in which all artistic purposes are “subordinated to the larger design of keeping a sufficient number of people tuned in” (56). “In headlong pursuit of the logic of safety,” Gitlin writes, “the networks ordinarily intervene at every step of the development process. It is as if there were not only too many cooks planning the broth, but the landlord kept interfering as well” (85). “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

47. John Caughie, “Authors and Auteurs: The Uses of Theory.” In Donald, J. and Renov, M. (Eds) Handbook of Film Studies. Sage (2007). After Barthes, the search for the author “was driven underground for a fairly brief period to the place where unfashionable ideas regroup.” (Caughie 18-19) “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

48. Only now, half a century into the medium’s existence, have we come to recognize that television as well might have authors. First, television was thought of as a producer’s medium: talk of Steven Bochco’s Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981-1987) became a critical commonplace. Soon after, both industry and fans found themselves all abuzz over movie auteur David Lynch’s role in the creation and directing of Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990-91). By the end of the century, David Kelley (Picket Fences, CBS, 1992-1996), David Milch (NYPD Blue, ABC, 1993-2002), Joshua Brand and John Falsey (St. Elsewhere, NBC, 1982-88; Northern Exposure, ABC, 1990-1995) were, if not household words, at least known television authors. “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon

49. Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny The Parallel Courses of Cinema & TV Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon “From the Mind of Joss Whedon”

50. But in this century, in an era which Jason Mittell detects a growing interest in television’s “operational aesthetic,” a foregrounding of “the constructed nature of the narration,” and new audience interest in how favorite shows gets made (Mittell 35), such figures as Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, NBC, 1999-2003), David Chase (The Sopranos, HBO, 1999-2007), Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, HBO, 2001-2005), Amy Sherman-Paladino (Gilmore Girls, WB, 2000-2006; CW, 2006-2007); J. J. Abrams (Alias, ABC, 2001-2006), Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (Lost, ABC, 2004-2010), and Joss Whedon have emerged as television auteurs. The original auteur theory’s appeal, the critic Peter Wollen has noted, was obvious: it "implie[d] an operation of decipherment . . . reveal[ing] authors where none had been seen before" (77). Television scholars, myself included, were struck anew by that appeal. Jason Mittell “From the Mind of Joss Whedon” Special Topics in Film Studies: Joss Whedon