Entry tags:

tv: dollhouse

Dollhouse 1x01
Links (all with spoilers for 1x01)

• oyceter on Dollhouse's orientalism
  
• mswyrr on Dollhouse and sexual violence
  
• mystickeeper compares Dollhouse to anime
  
• aycheb: "When I first heard of it the premise of Dollhouse sounded like the twisted love child of The Girl Who Was Plugged In and Normal Again."
  
• loligo: Dollhouse vs. The Bionic Woman (reboot)
  

Spoilers sleep in a box
So I think mswyrr and oyceter are completely on-target, and I have no political justification for liking Dollhouse. I am watching it because I love amnesia stories, the more unrealistic the better, and there's something about the setup, passivity and breaking free of passivity, that I find very powerful. So far, though, Dollhouse's execution hasn't been very persuasive; the combination of the gross exploitation (ohmygod, those clothes! the white dress that barely covered her crotch, and the "professional" outfit with nosebleed heels and a jacket that didn't cover her ass) and the heavy finger-wagging makes it impossible to either take seriously or indulge in. I can see how the same setup -- opening with emotional and physical prostitution, closing with child molestation -- could be a powerful, dark episode, but the darks here seemed ... kind of light.

Eliza Dushku as the lead doesn't help. I love Dushku as Faith, but contrary to most of fandom I've never been persuaded she had great range--"Who Are You?" showed me a Sarah Michelle Gellar who was a pitch-perfect Faith and an Eliza Dushku who was an awful Buffy. Her "innocent, childlike" Echo seems entirely fake, and not in a deliberate way.

Interesting but not completely workable sets, sort of Wolfram & Hart, sort of Serenity, sort of panopticon. Lousy security, which is ironic, given the panopticon's origin in prison architecture. And I'm not sure what to make of Whedon's thing for putting girls in boxes. At least River got to come out of hers.

I will give it a few more episodes, but I'm not sold on it.

These were the things I liked:

(1) The geek boy is SO HORRIBLE. I've seen people who think we're supposed to like him because he's Wash/Xander/Joss, but I don't agree with that reading at all. He's Wash/Xander/Joss as a sociopath. He is so clearly creepy. I don't think he will be redeemed at all. I look forward to enjoying his death. He is the one part of the episode that didn't seem glossed over for TV. He's too young, but that amoral arrogance -- he's like white straight male privilege personified. And he thinks he deserves it because he's smarter than everyone else. He doesn't see what upholds that self-definition of smartness.

It does point to larger problems that the most vivid character is the one that I want to see die.

(2) I like the handler, but I also like that he's implicated. Despite his moral qualms, he doesn't step in to save Echo/Caroline from pain; he steps in to extend her pain, to resolve the mission. Maybe what he wants is to save that child, but those aren't the justifications he uses. He justifies it in terms of mission. Despite his moment of connection and partnership with Echo in the van, he treats her like a tool, not like a partner. So far, he's the voice of conscience on the inside -- but when push comes to shove, he doesn't speak for the dolls. He is complicit in their sacrifice (the sacrifice made of them, not a sacrifice they choose to make).

(3) I am intrigued that the show both opens and closes with that voyeuristic view of Caroline. It starts in video tape camera view before going to film, so I think it's the same person with the corpses who was watching pre-Echo Caroline at the end. In both cases, it's our only glimpse of the real Caroline -- and it's a glimpse we see in the context of violence, violation.

I do wonder if that was a network add-on, to lessen confusion, to create attachment. I'm disturbed by what we see of Caroline at the end -- wishing STDs on other women? That doesn't bode well, especially given that the setup seems to mitigate against women being able to make connections with each other (which is actually where Whedon gets most of his feminist cred with me, rather than with the girls kicking ass). The women are isolated by amnesia, power, or lack of power; the men talk to each other. I would feel so much more optimistic about where this was going if either the rogue doll or the FBI agent or both were women. I want to be able to indulge in this as a female id vortex power fantasy, and right now it's feeling too much like a male id vortex violation fantasy. And I get too much of that from pop culture already.

Also, where was the Jossian dialog? If I'm going to sell my soul for bad TV, I want better dialog.