More Dr. Horrible Thoughts
I've been mulling over my reaction to Dr. Horrible, and in particular the viscerality of my disagreement with those who claim they liked the first two acts but not the ending. Since "there's no other way it could have ended!" isn't really an argument, I have to think about what exactly it is for me that makes the proposed endings--for example, that Penny turns out to be Bad Horse--deeply wrong and unsatisfying to me given Acts One and Two.
And, unsurprising, it all revolves around Penny. Because yes, she's fairly one-dimensional, yes, she arguably lacks agency (I agreed with this right away at first but the more I think about it the less I'm sure what it means), definitely yes, she's an object for the male heroes to fight over (over which for the male heroes to fight?). And sure, it would be a suitably Jossian twist to change all that in the third act--but there's no set up for that which I can see (or, prior to the release of Act 3, could see)--not in the thematic touches, not in Felicia's performance, and not in the underlying logic of the narrative.
I've always thought that having characters lie or being deceitful is a little cheap, because television characters have the rather unfair advantage of being played by professional actors who could, if they wanted to, play the doubly-fictional role with as much believability as they do the singularly-fictional one since to them, hey, they're both equally made up. Of course, a good actor will probably turn in a nuanced enough performance that the "true" characterization will shine through even when that character is playing a role in-universe, but the sad fact is not all actors are good. --and while I love Felicia and everything she's been in, she's not established enough that we can assume everything about her performance is perfect. (Indeed, no one is.) And sometimes other things intervene--I'm thinking of Cruel Intentions 2, where Sarah Thompson played her role straight (literally!), only to have everything suddenly retconned when the Manchester Prep television series was cancelled and the footage was re-edited to make a movie.
The end result is that it is difficult to know what is deliberate and what isn't, what is a slip by the character and what is a slip by the actor. Every time I watch the Lindsay Lohan remake of the Parent Trap, I try to figure out whether Lohan uses a different accent for Halley-pretending-to-be-Annie then she does for Annie, and I still have no clue. I'm fairly certain that at least two-thirds of what I do notice is my imagination. All I know for certain is that a) as an American, Lohan's British accent is fake (and probably noticeably so to someone who can notice those things) no matter which character she's playing, and b) in-universe, Halley's fake British accent is close enough to Annie's "real" one to be able to impersonate her. But when is suspension of disbelief called for, and when is disbelief an appropriate response to something actually in the text? In the best of cases it's difficult to know the answers; if the actors and writers aren't on the ball and things end up happening more through directorial fiat than through any real narrative logic, it's downright impossible.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that having a character turn out not be what she seemed is a perfectly valid and legitimate, if at times frustrating, choice. Then why was I so resolute that could not, should not happen in Dr. Horrible? Part of it no doubt that I did trust Joss's writing and direction and I did trust Felicia's performance, so the fact that there was never even so much a hint (that I saw) that Penny wasn't what she seemed could be taken as evidence that she was exactly what she seemed. But there's more to it I think: the genre. Felicia didn't just act Penny in such a way as to make her seem innocent, she sang her that way. And while there's isn't anything intrinsic about her spoken performance that requires her to be sincere, if Penny was other than she seemed that meant her duet with Billy at the opening of Act 2, and her laundromat song in the middle of that act, wouldn't be sung from the heart, which I think a) would be a violations of the conventions of the genre Joss was working in, conventions he gave no sign of trying to subvert (because he wasn't), and b) would undercut the power of those songs as works of art.
. . .
None of the above can be taken as a defense of the ending without being bingo-cardy, for while there was a time for us when Acts 1 and 2 were out but Schrodinger's cat was still in the box as to 3, it was never that way to Joss. He and Zach and Jed and Maurissa wrote Acts 1 and 2 knowing full well how Act 3 would end; if they wanted Penny to end up being Bad Horse (or whatever) they could have written Acts 1 and 2 in such a way as to make that resolution natural and more satisfying. Here are two defenses I will make, though.
It doesn't pass the Bechdel test. The idea that, in the feminist utopia, every movie will be one that Alison Bechdel (or the character from her comic strip, I guess) will want to see is kind of silly. Now, the Bechdel test is really useful to me, because it does do a fairly good job of predicting which movies I would want to see and which ones I wouldn't. And it's very possible that if Dr. Horrible hadn't been written by Joss or starred Felicia, I wouldn't have felt any need to see it, just as I'd have no interest in seeing a movie about the trenches of World War II unless someone assured me it that X (insert whatever reason I might watch a movie here). To me the logic of the Bechdel test (and it's a logic I agree with--let me make it clear right now that the people who use these moments to write off the usefulness of considering the Bechdel test or the Women in Refrigerators trope in general, e.g. in some--certainly not all--of the comments here, make me much more deeply uncomfortable than those people making feminist criticisms I don't think apply to a text I enjoyed) as a political instrument (as opposed to a tool for Alison Bechdel to decide what movie to go see) is that--and I'd hope this is uncontroversial--there are a disproportionate number of films which fail the Bechdel test when compared to the movies that have at least two male characters who have a conversation with each other about something other than a woman? For every Dr. Horrible, there should be a Welcome to the Hellmouth (which now that I think about it, is a good comparison; we don't really get into the POV of a character other than Buffy until later in the season). If we look at Joss, though, I think his ouvre since 1997 (by which I mean Buffy, Angel, Fray, Firefly, Serenity, Sugarshock, Astonishing X-Men, Runaways, and Dr. Horrible--have I missed something?) actually as a whole privileges female POVs to a much greater extent than male POVs.
The only logic that I can think of which says that no work should be produced which fails the Bechdel test and which makes sense to me is to say that since under patriarchy Bechdel-passing texts are so rare, that as a feminist it is incumbent upon Joss to produce only works which pass the text. I'm not unsympathetic to the sentiment; I do think that we can't just live our lives as if we already lived in the feminist utopia, but must sometimes go strongly (but temporarily) to the other extreme to counterbalance the evils of systemic injustice in today's world; that's what affirmative action is about. And I don't think art is excepted from that; that is, it is incumbent upon an ethical artist to write her texts in ways which may go beyond what her (patriarchally-influenced) narrative instincts might otherwise tell her for political reasons. But (and admittedly I say this from my position of privilege) when art becomes completely subject to politics, then--well, first off I think it's not just bad art but also a lousy apologetical tool. One must use the master's tools to tear down the master's house; one has to keep some of the conventional narrative structures in place while deconstructing others, or else one isn't going to be able to speak to one's audience at all. (Joss is really good at that, I think, but it does earn him a decent amount of feminist criticism.) But mostly, I think when the rallying cry becomes "You can't tell that type of story" instead of "These sorts of stories need to be told, too," then something is profoundly broken.
Why did he have to write Macbeth when he could have written As You Like It, or at least Cymbeline? This is the criticism I have the least respect for, especially since the people making always for some reason seem to bend over backwards to fire potshots at the BSG reboot (and a few other shows, I think? but mostly BSG) at the same time, complaining TV in general has gotten too dark and it's all Joss's fault, and that unhappy endings are not intrinsically better than happy ones, and anyone who thinks they are is an elitist snob, so there. Which, I mean, I love happy endings--this is the guy who just last week was absolutely bawling over the end of The Princess Diaries 2. But I also respect the worldview that Joss' narrative kinks come out of, and think it's right in a lot of ways--that the meaning of life is what we make of it, and that if nothing matters but what we do then . . . however it goes. Help me load the truck. I sort of want to kill that dragon. And at the end of the day, I'd take the inspiration and hope I take out of an episode like "Not Fade Away" over the artificial illusion offered by most happy endings anyday. Well, some days. If I'm not already in a bad mood, I guess. Artificial illusions are good too. They make me cry.
It doesn't bother me that some people don't enjoy what Joss has to say. That's fine. But that they seem to take that as license to disrespect it. . . . well, that does bother me.
And, unsurprising, it all revolves around Penny. Because yes, she's fairly one-dimensional, yes, she arguably lacks agency (I agreed with this right away at first but the more I think about it the less I'm sure what it means), definitely yes, she's an object for the male heroes to fight over (over which for the male heroes to fight?). And sure, it would be a suitably Jossian twist to change all that in the third act--but there's no set up for that which I can see (or, prior to the release of Act 3, could see)--not in the thematic touches, not in Felicia's performance, and not in the underlying logic of the narrative.
I've always thought that having characters lie or being deceitful is a little cheap, because television characters have the rather unfair advantage of being played by professional actors who could, if they wanted to, play the doubly-fictional role with as much believability as they do the singularly-fictional one since to them, hey, they're both equally made up. Of course, a good actor will probably turn in a nuanced enough performance that the "true" characterization will shine through even when that character is playing a role in-universe, but the sad fact is not all actors are good. --and while I love Felicia and everything she's been in, she's not established enough that we can assume everything about her performance is perfect. (Indeed, no one is.) And sometimes other things intervene--I'm thinking of Cruel Intentions 2, where Sarah Thompson played her role straight (literally!), only to have everything suddenly retconned when the Manchester Prep television series was cancelled and the footage was re-edited to make a movie.
The end result is that it is difficult to know what is deliberate and what isn't, what is a slip by the character and what is a slip by the actor. Every time I watch the Lindsay Lohan remake of the Parent Trap, I try to figure out whether Lohan uses a different accent for Halley-pretending-to-be-Annie then she does for Annie, and I still have no clue. I'm fairly certain that at least two-thirds of what I do notice is my imagination. All I know for certain is that a) as an American, Lohan's British accent is fake (and probably noticeably so to someone who can notice those things) no matter which character she's playing, and b) in-universe, Halley's fake British accent is close enough to Annie's "real" one to be able to impersonate her. But when is suspension of disbelief called for, and when is disbelief an appropriate response to something actually in the text? In the best of cases it's difficult to know the answers; if the actors and writers aren't on the ball and things end up happening more through directorial fiat than through any real narrative logic, it's downright impossible.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that having a character turn out not be what she seemed is a perfectly valid and legitimate, if at times frustrating, choice. Then why was I so resolute that could not, should not happen in Dr. Horrible? Part of it no doubt that I did trust Joss's writing and direction and I did trust Felicia's performance, so the fact that there was never even so much a hint (that I saw) that Penny wasn't what she seemed could be taken as evidence that she was exactly what she seemed. But there's more to it I think: the genre. Felicia didn't just act Penny in such a way as to make her seem innocent, she sang her that way. And while there's isn't anything intrinsic about her spoken performance that requires her to be sincere, if Penny was other than she seemed that meant her duet with Billy at the opening of Act 2, and her laundromat song in the middle of that act, wouldn't be sung from the heart, which I think a) would be a violations of the conventions of the genre Joss was working in, conventions he gave no sign of trying to subvert (because he wasn't), and b) would undercut the power of those songs as works of art.
. . .
None of the above can be taken as a defense of the ending without being bingo-cardy, for while there was a time for us when Acts 1 and 2 were out but Schrodinger's cat was still in the box as to 3, it was never that way to Joss. He and Zach and Jed and Maurissa wrote Acts 1 and 2 knowing full well how Act 3 would end; if they wanted Penny to end up being Bad Horse (or whatever) they could have written Acts 1 and 2 in such a way as to make that resolution natural and more satisfying. Here are two defenses I will make, though.
It doesn't pass the Bechdel test. The idea that, in the feminist utopia, every movie will be one that Alison Bechdel (or the character from her comic strip, I guess) will want to see is kind of silly. Now, the Bechdel test is really useful to me, because it does do a fairly good job of predicting which movies I would want to see and which ones I wouldn't. And it's very possible that if Dr. Horrible hadn't been written by Joss or starred Felicia, I wouldn't have felt any need to see it, just as I'd have no interest in seeing a movie about the trenches of World War II unless someone assured me it that X (insert whatever reason I might watch a movie here). To me the logic of the Bechdel test (and it's a logic I agree with--let me make it clear right now that the people who use these moments to write off the usefulness of considering the Bechdel test or the Women in Refrigerators trope in general, e.g. in some--certainly not all--of the comments here, make me much more deeply uncomfortable than those people making feminist criticisms I don't think apply to a text I enjoyed) as a political instrument (as opposed to a tool for Alison Bechdel to decide what movie to go see) is that--and I'd hope this is uncontroversial--there are a disproportionate number of films which fail the Bechdel test when compared to the movies that have at least two male characters who have a conversation with each other about something other than a woman? For every Dr. Horrible, there should be a Welcome to the Hellmouth (which now that I think about it, is a good comparison; we don't really get into the POV of a character other than Buffy until later in the season). If we look at Joss, though, I think his ouvre since 1997 (by which I mean Buffy, Angel, Fray, Firefly, Serenity, Sugarshock, Astonishing X-Men, Runaways, and Dr. Horrible--have I missed something?) actually as a whole privileges female POVs to a much greater extent than male POVs.
The only logic that I can think of which says that no work should be produced which fails the Bechdel test and which makes sense to me is to say that since under patriarchy Bechdel-passing texts are so rare, that as a feminist it is incumbent upon Joss to produce only works which pass the text. I'm not unsympathetic to the sentiment; I do think that we can't just live our lives as if we already lived in the feminist utopia, but must sometimes go strongly (but temporarily) to the other extreme to counterbalance the evils of systemic injustice in today's world; that's what affirmative action is about. And I don't think art is excepted from that; that is, it is incumbent upon an ethical artist to write her texts in ways which may go beyond what her (patriarchally-influenced) narrative instincts might otherwise tell her for political reasons. But (and admittedly I say this from my position of privilege) when art becomes completely subject to politics, then--well, first off I think it's not just bad art but also a lousy apologetical tool. One must use the master's tools to tear down the master's house; one has to keep some of the conventional narrative structures in place while deconstructing others, or else one isn't going to be able to speak to one's audience at all. (Joss is really good at that, I think, but it does earn him a decent amount of feminist criticism.) But mostly, I think when the rallying cry becomes "You can't tell that type of story" instead of "These sorts of stories need to be told, too," then something is profoundly broken.
Why did he have to write Macbeth when he could have written As You Like It, or at least Cymbeline? This is the criticism I have the least respect for, especially since the people making always for some reason seem to bend over backwards to fire potshots at the BSG reboot (and a few other shows, I think? but mostly BSG) at the same time, complaining TV in general has gotten too dark and it's all Joss's fault, and that unhappy endings are not intrinsically better than happy ones, and anyone who thinks they are is an elitist snob, so there. Which, I mean, I love happy endings--this is the guy who just last week was absolutely bawling over the end of The Princess Diaries 2. But I also respect the worldview that Joss' narrative kinks come out of, and think it's right in a lot of ways--that the meaning of life is what we make of it, and that if nothing matters but what we do then . . . however it goes. Help me load the truck. I sort of want to kill that dragon. And at the end of the day, I'd take the inspiration and hope I take out of an episode like "Not Fade Away" over the artificial illusion offered by most happy endings anyday. Well, some days. If I'm not already in a bad mood, I guess. Artificial illusions are good too. They make me cry.
It doesn't bother me that some people don't enjoy what Joss has to say. That's fine. But that they seem to take that as license to disrespect it. . . . well, that does bother me.