The curse and the chora

Referring to the work of Julia Kristeva, this article seeks to perform a comparative analysis between Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), as she appears within the remit of Joss Whedon and David Greenwalts’s Angel (1999–2004), and Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) in John Logan’s Penny Dreadful (2014–2016). Taking each character as a case study, this article seeks to elucidate the precarious subject positions of central female leads in a team/ensemble horror television series in order to assess whether or not and how the portrayal and characterisation thereof has changed over two decades. To do so, this article employs a theoretical framing that examines the question of agency and power by assessing both characters as what I will call “Choraic conduits”. As such, both characters’ relation, manipulation of/by, and mediation of the supernatural as envisaged and presented in their respective diegetic worlds are analysed in themselves and comparatively against one another. Key concerns here are the questions and problems surrounding each character’s agency over her powers and the supernatural/spiritual realm(s) from which they emerge, as well as the psycho-physical and symbolic consequences of not only the possession of their respective powers, but the micro and macroscopic consequences of how they are used in their respective diegetic worlds.

Joss Whedon and the Allegedly Feminist Fanboy Auteur

This chapter interrogates the role of being a feminist in Whedon’s branding, arguing that, while he successfully branded himself as feminist for two decades, closer analysis and subsequent revelations demonstrate this to be far more style than substance. Whedon’s branding as a fanboy, by contrast, is more robust and permeates his public persona, from his casual fashion to his texts to actively participating in his own and other fandoms—though the chapter notes that these practices are in tension with his auteur status. Finally, the chapter argues, Whedon actively leverages the illusion of intimacy enabled by Twitter and fan site Whedonesque to extract the unpaid fan labor that has powered his career.

A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy

The past decade or so of media promotion has seen a recurring trope of Fanboy to the Rescue—have no fear, it says, this revered franchise is being taken over by a writer, director, or producer who is a “fanboy.” In this trope—which, following Suzanne Scott, the book discusses in terms of the “fanboy auteur”—the fan credentials of writers, directors, and producers are presented as a guarantee of quality media-making. This is a strategy of marketing and branding; it is a claim, from the auteur himself or industry PR machines, that the presence of an auteur who is also a fan means the product is worth consuming. Such claims that fan credentials guarantee quality are often contested, with fans and critics alike rejecting various auteur figures as the true leader of their respective franchises. That split, between assertions of fan and auteur status and acceptance (or not) of that status, is key to unravelling the fan auteur. A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy examines the contemporary ascendance of the fan auteur through a series of case studies. We consider both thoroughly mainstream fan auteur figures like Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon and more offbeat ones like Kevin Smith. We examine those who explicitly identify as fans of the source material they engage, like Steven Moffat, E L James, and Patty Jenkins, and those who don’t but engage in fannish ways nonetheless, like Taika Waititi and J. K. Rowling.

Hope in Children of Men and Serenity

Building on the melancholia of the films analysed thus far, a comparison between Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 Children of Men, based in a world in mourning for its future, and the space opera Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005), which concludes the story arc of Whedon’s TV series Firefly, gives an opportunity to further the discussion of history through an analysis of two mythic formations of hope, the redeemer and the frontier respectively. The chapter rounds off the theme of personal redemption versus the redemption of the collective, and the theme of obligation to the past necessitating a politics not of a deferred future but of redeeming the present in the name of the numberless dead, by an analysis of what does and does not count as human in the two films.