8/6/2023 0 Comments Spike cowboy bebop tired![]() It’s a little like eating cotton candy it’s enjoyable, but it disappears the moment it hits your tongue, and afterward there’s not much to say about it at all. It’s about the audience and its much more distant reaction. But Whedonspeak dialogue isn’t about characters and their reactions. These aren’t jokes for the sake of jokes, quips to get the audience to chuckle, but humorous situations that the characters are put into and react to. My personal favorite joke of the original series is when Spike points out to Jet that he's told him that his three least favorite things in the world are pets, children, and women with attitude, right after all a pet, child, and a woman with attitude join their crew. It’s expressed in things like Jet, Spike, and Faye running around all day looking for information on an elite hacker and getting conflicting information, eventually describing them as a “seven-foot tall ex-basketball pro Hindu guru drag-queen alien.” There were more sight gags than one-liners. It isn’t that the original Bebop was devoid of humor, but the humor came from the characters. Seriously, why is Jet even talking to that guy? Why does he just let that woman say that very racist thing to him? These are things you might put on a graphic T-shirt, not the way that fully defined characters react. These characters aren’t being detached for a reason, but saying quippy things because it is the most clever or writerly way to say them. It’s just that when every character is this detached, all the time, it’s alienating. It isn’t that there aren’t occasions where characters should act detached or sarcastic in Cowboy Bebop. In one episode, when Jet calls out a woman for blackmailing him, she replies, “ damn right it is because, Jet, you are Black and you are male.”Ī pre-release review of the series from Indiewire also highlighted Faye Valentine’s line, “Welcome to the ouch, motherfuckers.” A screenshot of this review went viral on Twitter. Some examples of this bad dialogue have gained ubiquity online. “You know what I was doing? Buying a churro.” “Do you know what I got the last time I was on TJ?” Spike says. While investigating a bounty, Spike objects to going to New Tijuana. One scene between Jet and Spike on the ship has them quip at each other simultaneously in a way that makes the audience feel like they’re not even having a conversation. “While you were throwing her your own bone, I bet,” Jet replies. “Personally, I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on you if you were on fire, but your ex-wife asked me to throw you a bone every once in a while,” he says. When Jet Black goes to turn in a bounty, he speaks to a police officer who apparently slept with his ex-wife. Other scenes are also plagued by Whedonspeak. “Hey dick-hole!” Faye says, “Super cool accommodations, but do you think you could handcuff me to an even bigger, more disgusting toilet? Cause that would be great.” The tone of this is pretty “wink wink, nudge nudge,” as if the writers are speaking through the characters to the audience, rather than the characters commenting on the situation they are in. Often these characters metatextually comment on their surroundings or the environments they’re in, usually in a sarcastic or snarky way. They say “thing” or “thingy” or “stuff” in place of more descriptive terms. They turn nouns into verbs and vice versa. ![]() Characters are often imprecise in their language, letting sentences trail off as they struggle to articulate themselves. It’s difficult to overstate how influential that show has been, not just in terms of its portrayal of women in science fiction, but also because of the particular quirks of Whedon’s dialogue.Ĭharacters in Whedon’s shows talk a lot, and they talk in very particular ways. The show is a cult classic whose reputation precedes it, inspiring not only burgeoning young people to become feminists but also inspiring future television writers to get into the business. Before Joss Whedon was given the keys to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as director of The Avengers, long before his now ex-wife wrote a story calling him a “ hypocrite preaching feminist ideals” and cast members spoke out about his abusive behavior on set, he was the showrunner for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ![]()
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