The Philosophy of Joss Whedon

Every generation produces a counterculture icon. Joss Whedon, creater of the long-running television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is famed for his subversive wit, rich characters, and extraordinary plotlines. His renown has only grown with subsequent creations, including Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, and the innovative online series Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Through premises as unusual as a supernatural detective agency run by a vampire and a Western set in outer space, Whedon weaves stories about characters forced to make commonplace moral decisions under the most bizarre of circumstances. The Philosophy of Joss Whedon examines Whedon's plots and characterizations to reveal their philosophical takes on the limits of personal freedom, sexual morality, radical evil, and Daoism.

Foreword	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
"You Can't Take the Sky from Me": Freedom and Its Limits
Firefly and Freedom	p. 9
"Just Get Us a Little Further": Liberty and the Frontier in Firefly and Serenity	p. 24
The State of Nature and Social Contracts on Spaceship Serenity	p. 39
Dollhouse and Consensual Slavery	p. 55
"Live as Though the World Were as It Should Be": Ethics and Virtue
Plato, Aristotle, and Joss on Being Horrible	p. 71
Aristotle, Kant, Spike, and Jayne: Ethics and Character in the Whedonverse	p. 88
Companions, Dolls, and Whores: Joss Whedon on Sex and Prostitution	p. 103
Fashioning Feminism: Whedon, Women, and Wardrobe	p. 117
Heroes and Villains: Morality, the Will to Power, and the Overman in the Work of Joss Whedon	p. 133
"I'm AU of Them, but None of Them Is Me": The Human Condition
Seeking Authenticity in the Whedonverse	p. 151
"Look What Free Will Has Gotten You": Isolation, Individuality, and Choice in Angel	p. 168
Aiming to Misbehave at the Boundary between the Human and the Machine: The Queer Steampunk Ecology of Joss Whedon's Firefly and Serenity	p. 182
Shepherd Book, Malcolm Reynolds, and the Dao of Firefly	p. 194
Acknowledgments	p. 208
Appendix: A History of the Whedonverse	p. 211
List of Contributors	p. 223
Index	p. 227
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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The Philosophy of Joss Whedon

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