I appreciate the contextualisation from a Zoomer perspective and I definitely agree that Whedon was using the show to critique tendencies that he knew that he himself embodied. Being on Tumblr at the time, though, I remember it received quite a lot of backlash from feminist spaces. A lot of people definitely found it cringey at the time.
That's interesting. It definitely doesn't come off as feminist in the slightest and in hindsight all the signs that Whedon wasn't what he seemed were there. How polarizing was it, exactly? Apologize if I sound like a virulent zoomer btw, it's just that most millennials I know love it (and every time I saw it come up on Reddit it always received vast praise, which is par for the course for that site).
I remember it being highly polarizing on Tumblr (but probably not especially outside of there!). No need to apologise from your zoomer perspective - it was interesting, especially as I hadn't thought about 'Dr Horrible' in quite some time.
Normally I'd say the Tumblr crowd was irrelevant, but in the 2008 context, they were also the main target audience who'd even watch this, and I definitely remember the feminist critique existing contemporaneously. Oddly enough, watching Dr. Horrible in the present day as per the post's suggestion, I'm surprised it wasn't really that bad in that regard. It's pretty clear that Dr. Horrible is his own worst enemy in terms of his inability to just try to talk to Penny, who's obviously perfectly interested in chatting with him, and that Penny's overlooking Captain Hammer's red flags, to use the modern parlance, because the homeless shelter really is that big a deal to her.
Aesthetically, even beyond those kinds of criticisms, Dr. Horrible's pretty tolerable by Whedonesque standards just because it's short, so there's not really much need for "that just happened" style bloat to justify an artificially long runtime. It would get insufferable fast at feature length though. I don't think there's anything wrong with silly skits on general principle. The problem with stuff like Hamilton isn't that it's a silly skit, but that it's bafflingly pretentious considering how absurd the premise is.
Do you remember how those spaces thought of Buffy at the time?
I wasn't part of that area of internet at the time, but I felt he had a "good reputation" among normal people as a feminist because of Buffy mainly. I don't remember the reaction to Dr Horrible well enough though.
Not OP but: I also remember Whedon had a very strong "male feminist" reputation - and yes, Buffy was the main reason why. I'm just old and Online enough to recall the height of Avengers-mania and his reputation then was almost totally unimpeachable. He was always paraded around as the rare man who "got women" in the same was that Alan Alda was for an older generation (the difference is Alda is actually cool and not an insecure dork). I still know plenty of people who like Buffy btw, mainly because they grew up with it (I didn't)
Also apparently Sarah Michelle Gellar recently expressed interest in starring in a Buffy reboot on Drew Barrymore's talkshow which is odd because she more or less totally disavowed Whedon after the allegations came out; we'll see where this goes. Perhaps the old man will be back in the saddle again
I appreciate the contextualisation from a Zoomer perspective and I definitely agree that Whedon was using the show to critique tendencies that he knew that he himself embodied. Being on Tumblr at the time, though, I remember it received quite a lot of backlash from feminist spaces. A lot of people definitely found it cringey at the time.
That's interesting. It definitely doesn't come off as feminist in the slightest and in hindsight all the signs that Whedon wasn't what he seemed were there. How polarizing was it, exactly? Apologize if I sound like a virulent zoomer btw, it's just that most millennials I know love it (and every time I saw it come up on Reddit it always received vast praise, which is par for the course for that site).
I remember it being highly polarizing on Tumblr (but probably not especially outside of there!). No need to apologise from your zoomer perspective - it was interesting, especially as I hadn't thought about 'Dr Horrible' in quite some time.
Normally I'd say the Tumblr crowd was irrelevant, but in the 2008 context, they were also the main target audience who'd even watch this, and I definitely remember the feminist critique existing contemporaneously. Oddly enough, watching Dr. Horrible in the present day as per the post's suggestion, I'm surprised it wasn't really that bad in that regard. It's pretty clear that Dr. Horrible is his own worst enemy in terms of his inability to just try to talk to Penny, who's obviously perfectly interested in chatting with him, and that Penny's overlooking Captain Hammer's red flags, to use the modern parlance, because the homeless shelter really is that big a deal to her.
Aesthetically, even beyond those kinds of criticisms, Dr. Horrible's pretty tolerable by Whedonesque standards just because it's short, so there's not really much need for "that just happened" style bloat to justify an artificially long runtime. It would get insufferable fast at feature length though. I don't think there's anything wrong with silly skits on general principle. The problem with stuff like Hamilton isn't that it's a silly skit, but that it's bafflingly pretentious considering how absurd the premise is.
Do you remember how those spaces thought of Buffy at the time?
I wasn't part of that area of internet at the time, but I felt he had a "good reputation" among normal people as a feminist because of Buffy mainly. I don't remember the reaction to Dr Horrible well enough though.
Not OP but: I also remember Whedon had a very strong "male feminist" reputation - and yes, Buffy was the main reason why. I'm just old and Online enough to recall the height of Avengers-mania and his reputation then was almost totally unimpeachable. He was always paraded around as the rare man who "got women" in the same was that Alan Alda was for an older generation (the difference is Alda is actually cool and not an insecure dork). I still know plenty of people who like Buffy btw, mainly because they grew up with it (I didn't)
Also apparently Sarah Michelle Gellar recently expressed interest in starring in a Buffy reboot on Drew Barrymore's talkshow which is odd because she more or less totally disavowed Whedon after the allegations came out; we'll see where this goes. Perhaps the old man will be back in the saddle again