Despite, as BeckySharper often says to me, being “such a huge bonerkiller,” I harbour affections for certain products of patriarchal pop culture. (Even feminists have to succumb to the temptations of hot buttered popcorn and sweatpants every so often.) And so, readers, I must confess: I am among the dorky multitudes who DVR’d Joss Whedon’s new TV series “Dollhouse” on Friday night. I would, of course, have preferred to watch it live, but a houseguest got in the way and insisted I venture out among the buzzing human drones of the East Village. I got hit on by a charming young man who was still wearing cufflinks at 2 a.m. and wanted me to know he found my lips “plush.” Boy, did he have something coming to him…
Anyway! I would have been much happier to spend my evening with Joss. See, my relationship with him goes way, way back to my pre- and proto-feminist days, when I was a twentysomething equivalent of a bored housewife and not sure exactly how I was going to get out of my predicament. I got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer sometime around then, as a means of distraction and escape. So deep was my obsession that still, today, I can usually identify an episode number for you should you quote me a line or a plot point. (History of William the Bloody Awful Poet, also known as Spike? 5×07, Fool for Love. “That’s me as a vampire? I’m so evil, and skanky… and I think I’m kinda gay”? 3×16, Doppelgangland.)
Anyway, Joss and I are gonna be having a bit of a fictional lovers’ quarrel over this new show, methinks, because… well, I don’t get it. Dollhouse is, in short, about a bunch of people who have, for unknown reasons, agreed to have their personalities “wiped” and replaced with new ones that then are used to do “good works.” The vast majority of these “Actives,” I should mention, have hotness (as conferred by eyeliner) and vaginas in common, though at least one penis seems to be in the mix, for good measure. I’m not entirely sure who is supposed to be the protagonist in this scenario, despite the fact that the person who gets the most airtime is the Active “Echo,” played with appropriate vacuity by Eliza Dushku. But Echo, it seems, exists only as a vessel for these personalities – whoever she was before seems to have disappeared – and so she’s a bit difficult to talk about as a character, because she isn’t, herself, much of an individual.
And this is where Joss is gonna get himself in some trouble with me. I am now well on the path to crusty old man-hating cat-ladydom. But I still think of Buffy as a pretty feminist show. One of the things I loved about it was how, unlike much of the ‘90s girl-power culture with which it is associated, Buffy didn’t lie to you about the consequences of being a powerful woman. Buffy was never particularly “happy” or “comfortable” in her efforts to save the world, and more often than not her crusades against evil came at great personal cost. (She never did manage to get that guy, or any other.) Sure those are tropes borrowed from comic book culture, but the self-critical way they were wielded in Buffy, the notion that fashionableness and self-owning were not necessarily one-to-one correlations – well, that was useful. It was useful to know that awesomeness was complicated, and could not be achieved merely by the purchase of a pink “Girl Power!!!” t-shirt (or twenty) at the local mall. (Spice Girls CD optional.) Because Buffy’s (and Willow’s, and Xander’s) complicated awesomeness matched up to a lot of my own experience, of being smacked down when I stood up, of having to hide the good things you do from the people you love to avoid the confrontation,
So how, how, HOW, I cry to The Powers That Be, is Joss now helming a show that has the erasure of female identity and agency as its plot premise? I have deliberately not read any of his own commentary on the work before writing this post because I wanted to write about my pure reaction to the show, and also because I’ve always found his comments on Buffy’s feminism to be a bit wide of the mark. (Women are not awesome because they are pretty whilst kicking demon ass, dude.) And obviously, having written one show with feminist leanings does not mean Joss will or must write all other shows about feminism.
We do, however, know that Joss identifies at least partially as a supporter or ally of women. But unless Dollhouse is some kind of twisted statement about how the patriarchy controls women – and damned if it was as easy to find patriarchy as just finding a bunch of people in an office building who were surreptitiously re-programming my brain to enjoy rape – or Echo wakes up, and fast, to what’s happening to her, I can’t see why any living feminist, male, female, intersexed, whatever, would want their name associated with it. While in the guise of different personalities, for example, Echo has sex with men. Which, you know, would be great if she actually seemed capable of consenting, but since her body is treated as a hollow vessel by the show, I’m not quite sure who it is exactly that’s getting her groove on. Echo? Her pre-Echo self? Her implanted personality? Some combination thereof?
You see where I’m going with this, readers. Echo is what we over here at the No-Fun-According-to-Feminism committee would call raped, repeatedly and onscreen, under the roofie-like guise of having been implanted with a personality that wants the sex. We can talk about layers of consent here, I guess, but I don’t particularly want to, mostly because I’m sort of grossed out that Echo’s “owners” – who, by the by, monitor her every interaction with the outside world – are apparently totally comfortable with this.
Did anyone else watch this? Was anyone else as shocked as I?
whoops, that should have been “overarching absurd male fantasyness”
PilgrimSoul-”First of all, I did note a penis appeared to be present in the dollhouse”
When I read this, I immediately pictured a penis hopping along on a treadmill, taking a communal shower, laying prone in the mind-eraser chair like the inanimate carbon rod from The Simpsons resting in the parade car.
I kind of hate when a male counterpart is thrown in as if it makes everything okay, like the token deluded guy in “He’s Just Not That Into You” I agree with your point that men might just want sexy women. For that reason, too, I was really afraid for Echo at Latindude’s house. He was playing mind games with her and she was completely vulnerable. I doubt her people watching would have stepped in if he made a move on her.
Mac-”Why is a someone “programmed” to be a hostage negotiator somehow better than a real hostage negotiator? Why is someone blonde asian girl (two, two, two fantasies in one) programmed to be a commando better than a real mercenary? Beyond. Dumb. And their expository attempt to explain it in the FBI meeting seem to give up halfway through. “Rich people just want shit” was the basic conclusion.”
I thought for sure he would try to have sex with her, since he bought her and didn’t want to take her seriously as a hostage negotiator. That mission made me more uncomfortable than the previous one, since both actives were placed in so much danger.
John- I forgot about Dr. Fred. As of the first episode she’s still a cipher to me. It’ll be interesting to see if it plays out that way.
hmm….I’m a bit confused by all this “token penis” talk. Now granted, I’ve only watched the premiere ep once, and I wasn’t really thinking consciously of the male/female ratio of the Actives, but I could have swore that there were several men milling around the Dollhouse. There was at least one for sure in the shower, but I thought there was several others, doing things like running on treadmills and just basically roaming around (obviously “Actives” not employees) Was there really only one man?
Yeah, sorry to double post, but I just rewatched a couple of clips from Dollhouse, and there are several men. Echo passes at least three or four men when she’s wandering around in a daze. (And I’m pretty sure they’re dolls b/c they’re exercising and wearing the same yoga type clothes that Eliza wears when she’s in her Echo persona.)
So yeah, I’m among those championing the show and saying give it a chance. Let’s not distort the basic premise of the show by making it seem like it’s solely a man buys woman and manipulates her into having sex with him with a “token penis” thrown in there. It’s obviously more complicated than that. And yes, for those saying it’s disturbing and twisted–well yeah. It’s supposed to be. Let’s wait and see where Joss takes it.
I stand corrected, AprilLayne. I reserve judgment on whether I will be a champion or critic, but it appears there’s enough reader interest for a weekly recap/analysis.
One other note, not that anybody’s going to see this comment and certainly this doesn’t apply to anyone whose comments you already see here. But, as a prophylactic measure that will perhaps prevent me from having to delete so many troll-y comments on future Whedon posts (I am not really into censorship, but seriously, comments containing unironic use of the phrase “lolz”??) I feel the need to state for the record: this blog is not a Whedon fandom blog. It is a feminist blog. And thus, as a radical feminist writer on this feminist blog, I will tend to look at and critique my subjects – including Whedon and the cultural ephemera he produces – via the first principle that women are human beings. I realize that this is a toughie for certain geeky fanboyz who may have stumbled on this here blog with the misbegotten idea that I am interested in their views on how “sexist” and “closed-minded” I am for insisting that Whedon’s dramatization of female characters live up to this first principle. But, life is short, and there are many other fora where you can talk to each other about how hawt Eliza Dushku is.
Carry on, commenters. Nothing to see here.
AprilLayne brings up a good point. There are plenty of Actives to see throughout the massive Dollhouse, but at the end of the day, there seems to be only one ‘bed area’ with five beds. Granted, the assumption is that there is far more, but seriously, this is all based in Los Angeles, how far out do they stretch their resources in order to make money?
PSoul, looks like I missed some silly trolls.
a comment was posted yesterday, of dissenting view and it was deleted. it wasn’t rude, or derisive. it just disagreed and did so with pointedly. why would something like that be deleted? is this a general policy of this blog?
it wasn’t my comment, but it was shared with me when it was posted. i guess i’m just disappointed to see it was not only ignored but flat out erased.
[PilgrimSoul replies: Obviously I don't know which comment you're referring to, or what "with pointedly" means, though it may be different things to you than to me, I suppose.
I did delete three comments yesterday, all of which in some way violated the "boring or offensive" rule. As you can see, other comments "of a dissenting view" were admitted to the discussion - I did not, for example, delete John's comment about Dr. Who, which I dislike almost as much as I dislike Firefly. (I am also admitting your comment, here.)
Anyway, point being, no, it is not a policy of this blog to delete dissenting views. Though it might be a policy of this blog to delete anti-feminist dissenting views, depending on how they are phrased. We are new at this, and we reserve the right to appear arbitrary, but you may be assured we are not trying to be so behind the scenes.]
also, i just saw your comment PS, about the “troll” and am genuinely surprised that you felt it was such.
[Pilgrim Soul replies: Again, posting to show we are not censors: there was more than one troll. Three, in fact. And I still don't know what comment you're speaking of, or if it even answers that description. In any event, I suppose the commenter may re-submit, and we will see what happens.]
I’ll admit I’ve enjoyed Buffy, parts of Angel and Firefly but I am not sold of Joss Whedon’s feminist credentials despite his strong female protagonists and statements on his blog.
I’ve watched Dollhouse and I really hope he is making a show about human trafficking or I will be very disappointed. This is the way I interpreted the show: Dollhouse is a very organized group of human traffickers trapping people who are down on their luck. They are then used as property, sold to people who can afford them. The buyers and these human traffickers all escaping the law because of their wealth and possibly political power. The Actives are infact getting raped on a regular basis like most women and children sold into slavery. The eventual story hopefully is about how one or two of the victims fight for their independence with that one lone law enforcement officer assisting them. The world finds, all actives are somehow saved and justice is served to crazy geeks and all.
This the best I can do regarding putting a somewhat positive and pro-women (I can’t call it feminist) spin on this show.
If, in the end, it simply turns about a cool sci-fi mindwiping program without delving into the issues about using people as property, rape and everything that has been raised above, Joss Whedon will really go on my never watch list.
Also, I agree with Hana Maru on the motivation behind the major plot point: “Why is a someone “programmed” to be a hostage negotiator somehow better than a real hostage negotiator? Why is someone blonde asian girl (two, two, two fantasies in one) programmed to be a commando better than a real mercenary? Beyond. Dumb”