"For me, a longtime Buffy fan, these allegations feel different from other abuses of power by creators and producers revealed over the past few years, and I’ve been trying to figure out why," says Dan Kois of Charisma Carpenter's allegations that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel creator was abusive, cruel and created a toxic work environment. "I think it’s because at the height of my love for this show, I prized it not only for its wit and excitement but for its progressivism—for the way it shone like a beacon in the doldrums of turn-of-the-millennium TV, the kind of feminist story that no other series was even trying to tell. In a time when a woman writer could have never gotten this kind of show greenlit, we fans said to ourselves, at least there was Joss—an ally. He empowered his actresses and the women who wrote and produced on his show to tell a thrilling story of a strong, complex young woman who subverted the expectations of a sexist culture. (Whedon has not responded to requests for comment on the allegations.) It wasn’t just that we loved Buffy. We believed that, despite its flaws, the show, like its heroine, was a force for good. So it sucks extra hard to learn, from multiple women who were there, that the set wasn’t a particularly nurturing environment, and that actresses on the show felt cruelly treated by the very visionary whom we fans so thoroughly believed in." Kois says he and his wife recently fulfilled a dream of rewatching Buffy and Angel with their now-teenage daughters, and they all loved both shows and found that they held up. He adds: "To come to terms with Buffy, I think, it’s important for me to be more clear with myself about the circumstances and context of its creation. That it can no longer feel so revolutionary as it once did does not mean that it cannot be meaningful to those who discover it now; it’s just meaningful in different ways. And that its founder was not all that we once thought he was does not take away from the small miracle that is this moving, funny, and stirring show; it’s a testament to the many others who made their way through a difficult environment to ensure that the results would be moving, funny, and stirring."
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TOPICS: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Charisma Carpenter, James Marsters, Jose Molina, Joss Whedon, Marti Noxon, Retro TV