Joss Whedon Abandons His Values To Attack Nicole Kidman

I love Joss Whedon and his work. He’s also a man rightly celebrated for his track record of creating strong, complex female characters. This has earned him the status of ‘feminist icon’.

This is what makes his recent tweets about Nicole Kidman particularly surprising and disappointing.

In a recent interview with the BBC, Nicole Kidman responded to a question about Donald Trump by saying “I would just say he’s now elected,”… “and we as a country need to support whoever the president is, because that’s what the country’s based on.”

This strikes me as a particularly tepid and middle of the ground attempt at political analysis, but others did not share my approximation, leading to a sizeable backlash to her comments.

Amongst that backlash was this Joss Whedon tweet:

Kidman is dehumanised as (and has her appearance compared to) a puppet and labelled a ‘blunderturd’. Incisive, intelligent political engagement this is not.

Furthermore, why is shaming of women with reference to their appearance suddenly acceptable to Joss Whedon simply because they have a different perspective on how to proceed in a Trump USA?

It’s especially hypocritical when you consider Whedon retweeted this sentiment just days earlier:

It’s clear that what Whedon means is that he doesn’t much care for celebrities being shamed for speaking up in favour of politics that he is also in favour of.

It’s interesting that you can purport to be for strong, opinionated, independent women then throw those values out of the window the moment they express a view you do not agree with.

Had this type of thing been tweeted by a right-wing conservative, you can be sure that it would have been rounded on by the left as an example of ‘misogyny’.

I think it’s worth reminding Joss Whedon that Barack Obama made similar comments when Trump won the election, yet I cannot seem to locate any puppet-based invectives hurled in Obama’s direction from Joss’s Twitter feed.

A lot of people have a ‘let’s just get on with it’ attitude to the American election. Which is understandable. This is not the same thing as being a fan of Donald Trump.

‘I was trying to stress that I believe in democracy and the American Constitution, and it was that simple,' said Nicole Kidman in response to this bizarre outrage over her comments.

If, like me, you loathe Donald Trump, then you need to help challenge this sort of thing from the mainstream left. The ‘they’re evil/stupid and we’re the good guys’ mentality was part of what helped Trump to get elected in the first place. And the continuation of this infantile, lazy tactic will only serve to make the same people vote for him again.

Let’s hope Joss remembers the principles he’s so vocally advocated for over the years and recognises this attack on Nicole Kidman for the wrongheaded approach that it is.

Oh, and bring back Firefly.

Stephen Knight is host of The #GSPodcast. You can listen to The Godless Spellchecker Podcast here, and support it by becoming a patron here.