3) As for his male characters? Re-watching Buffy with my daughter a few years ago really brought home some of the truly hair-raising aspects of Xander's character, all wrapped up in this witty, heroic kid that we somehow still really liked despite the fact that he was pretty much a creepo-stalker.
4) Whedon himself has his own problematic content. And yeah, all your faves are problematic, etc. But still.
Yeah, my last season 1-2 rewatch really surprised me with how creepy Xander came across at times. He crosses the line from boy-next-door to something that could have easily turned stalkerish. The problem with it being that he's supposed to be the "heart" of the trio, so moments like trying to take a peek of Buffy undressing in a mirror are normalized because he's "such a great guy." Also they get forgiven, as in where Buffy thanks him for not undressing her when she's under a love spell (that
he had a witch cast, albeit not with Buffy as the intended target). Xander is also one of the most anti-feminist parts of the show, and as Joss has said he's the character he most identifies with...
If you read the letter he wrote his ex-wife about his affairs (which I just read recently), the way he reflected himself in Xander and the way his lust manifests for all these powerful women is really obvious and disturbing.
All good points everybody's raising. I'm still not against it because:
This isn't for us. Who lived with the show while it was on, fondly remembering how much of a game changer it was at the time. (A legacy it hardly lives up to itself if you re-watch it with today's eyes.)
This is for today's kids. Who wouldn't watch a 20+-year old show with cheap CGI and an all-white main cast unless their parents made them. If the new show manages to address today's sentiments and storytelling needs the way the original addressed those of 1997ff, why not. I'd probably prefer if, rather than rebooting the show they continued the old mythology with new characters, but that's okay. It's not for us.
Of course, they'd still have to reconcile Whedon's recent ... image problems.
Yes, it's true enough that Buffy's target audience was teens, and it's been 20 years since its original target audience were teenagers. First season, especially, has some pretty painful special effects, even for those of us who love the show. Things that were novel in the original are not novel to today's audience. And I agree that even for me, looking on the show with today's perceptions of feminism and diversity, I'm not sure that I could take a teen today and show it to them with a "look how feminist it is!" Even with Willow's relationships, teens might wonder why it takes an entire season between when it's spelled out that Willow loves Tara and their first on-screen kiss. It was amazing at the time! Willow and Kennedy's sex scene was the first f/f sex scene on broadcast tv. Will today's teens find that amazing? Does that even mean anything in a world where some people only get tv through Hulu or Netflix or Amazon, rather than watching it live on tv?
My question becomes, is Joss the person to bring the new version of Buffy to life? Not even because of his image problems, but because he was the one who brought us the old version, and I haven't seen evidence that he's grown into someone who can produce something for today's eyes.