I was a huge fan of the TV show Firefly, which I think was Joss Whedon’s best work — perhaps more so because it was cancelled before any of his typical tics and quirks took the show in overtly progressive directions. On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Devon Eriksen responds to a comment on yesterday’s post about writers needing empathy to fully portray the characters they create:
Koko (literal gorilla) @Mark68002312
I think Joss Whedon did great at writing characters in the Joss Whedon universe. At least through Firefly.
I don’t understand how people — even people who don’t write for a living — think the character and the context/universe they live in are independent
Joss Whedon wrote the characters in Firefly the way he did because they were:
1. Rebels and iconoclasts, thus irreverent.
2. Broken people, thus inclined to hide deep pain behind shallow humor.
3. Familiar with each other already, thus more likely to banter.The style worked in Firefly because it created a sense of character and setting, which it was appropriate to.
Joss was no master of individualizing character voice, but he at least managed to get the group dynamics right.
However, Hollywood, sack of narcissistic overfunded retards that they are, managed to learn the wrong lesson from the show’s resonance with audiences.
“Oh, the people want light, quippy dialogue with a joke to interrupt every tense moment with a laugh. They are not interested in drama, pathos, gravitas, or emotional weight”, they concluded, and proceeded to pack every damn film with snark for the next twenty years, like Pacific islanders making landing strips and control towers out bamboo, enacting rituals to bring the “cargo” back.
The lesson they should have learned is that audience want, will always want, dialogue that illustrates and enhances character and setting.
Banter is a good tool, sometimes, but it is one good tool in a toolbox of many, and an author must select the right one to do character voice correctly.
“He will run. A vampire can run throughout the night, untiring. Verdammnis, is there no metal in this room larger than the buckles on braces? Were we women, at least we would have corset stays …”
“Here.” Asher sat suddenly on the lid of the coffin and pulled off one of his shoes with his good hand. He tossed it to the startled vampire, who plucked it out of the air without seeming to move. “Is your strength of ten men up to ripping apart the sole leather? Because there should be a three-inch shank of tempered steel supporting the instep. It’s how men’s shoes are made.”
“Thus I am served,” Ysidro muttered through his teeth, as his long white fingers ripped apart the leather with terrifying ease, “for scorning the arts of mechanics.”
Don Simon Ysidro doesn’t say “Well excuuuuuse me for not knowing all about shoes”, because Don Simon Ysidro is a three hundred year old Spanish nobleman turned vampire, not a homosexual Las Vegas nightclub DJ.
And when he remarks upon his own deficiency in knowledge, he says “mechanics”, not “tradesmen”, or “blue-collar workers”, because to a nobleman of the renaissance, a “rude mechanical” is not an impolite robot, he is an uncultured man who works at physical labor or crafts, rather than social or intellectual pursuits.
