14 DAY TRIAL // Joss Whedon, the writer and director behind both “Avengers” movies, left Twitter on Monday, with rumors saying that feminist trolls had chased him away by attacking him about his portrayal of Black Widow in the latest Marvel film, “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”
He’s had more than his fair share of hatred online, Whedon explains to BuzzFeed, but it wasn’t that which turned him off social media. It was his own need for peace and quiet so he could focus on writing, on getting back to work now that he’s done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Whedon is over the distraction of Twitter
Wasting time on Twitter and hearing back from the comic book and the MCU fans was fun for a while, just like it was educational to hear what “the haters” had to say, the director explains.
However, the fun must end somewhere: he long decided he would not return to write and direct the last 2 “Avengers” installments, because he wanted to get back to basics. He needs to work on something that feels less familiar, something that is challenging by being completely new.
Being part of MCU or of any other huge tentpole franchise is a wonderful opportunity for any actor or director, but it’s also grueling and can become tiresome. Whedon reached that point once he was done with “Ultron,” so the next day after the film was named box office gold on its opening weekend, he deleted his Twitter.
He tells BuzzFeed that he wanted to mute the chaos that is Twitter, so he could focus on his next project, whatever it might be. He says his compulsive nature made him check his feed too many times a day, to the point where he can compare working on his next project to “taking the bar exam at Coachella.”
Expressing political beliefs limits creativity
Whedon says he didn’t leave Twitter because he was attacked by feminists or feminist trolls for his depiction of Black Widow in “Age of Ultron,” but he stops short of denying that this had nothing to do with his decision.
As he puts it, once you “express yourself politically, you destroy yourself artistically.” Whedon is an outspoken feminist, who campaigns for the inclusion of more strong female characters in film, including in comic book-based movies.
Now, if you’ve seen “Age of Ultron,” you probably know that there’s nothing about Black Widow that stands out from a feminist perspective: she’s still relegated to the status of eyecandy and is deemed a “monster” and a failure because she can’t have babies, after being sterilized in Russia.
That was probably not Whedon’s but Marvel’s doing, but the director did paint himself into a target when he labeled himself a feminist. It allowed people everywhere the chance to project their own feminist expectations on him, he believes.
“Believe me, I have been attacked by militant feminists since I got on Twitter. That’s something I’m used to. Every breed of feminism is attacking every other breed, and every subsection of liberalism is always busy attacking another subsection of liberalism, because god forbid they should all band together and actually fight for the cause,” Whedon says.
He doesn’t mind it all that much these days, though it’s clear that it used to bother him. For the time being, it seems that he just wants to be left alone, if possible, so he could get to writing in peace.
Yep. There is a "Tea Party" equivalent of progressivism/liberalism. And they just chased Joss Whedon off Twitter. Good job, guys. Ugh.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 4, 2015