Vid rec and Dollhouse thoughts
giandujakiss’s new Dollhouse vid It depends on what you pay combines biting critique with a dark infectious wit perfectly matching that of the song. I particularly love what she does with the hand gestures.
I do part company with the argument made by the vid even though it's a strong argument and eloquently made. However, to me the show feels like it’s coming from the same place as the show tune. More or less
Dollhouse = rapehouse is a comparison that was made before the show even aired and airing has, if anything, made the equation even more explicit. Which it needn’t have done. It’s interesting, for example, to compare Mellie the sleeper active with Boomer the sleeper agent on BSG. Boomer’s story was a tragedy but a tragedy of the constructed personality who believed herself human and then found out she wasn’t. The idea that the original Eight was in some way violated was never really addressed nor was the implication that her S1 affair with Tyrol (when she still thought she was human) was, in effect, rape of that Eight. The Eight are robots and immortal clones who reproduce by downloading into identical bodies so it makes sense within the story that they not be regarded as having distinct (and therefore violable) identities. Mellie (the imprint) and November (the doll) both have human origins and we’ve already been given some specific back-story for November.
From the very first engagement Dollhouse has been absolutely explicit about the fact the actives are programmed to satisfy the fantasies of the clients. To be sexually attracted to them, to have sex with them. Equally it’s been clear that if any consent was involved it was to the general principle and not to any specific engagement. As long as you accept that what happens to the dolls on their missions happens to the person the doll used to be (and if their contract is fulfilled will become again) then sex with an active is rape or necrophilia or both. So the questions are twofold. Whether a show built around serial rape is watchable and if it is, whether it’s actually making rape a spectator sport while claiming to be a serious drama.
I think the first point is ultimately about personal reactions and people vary. For whatever reason I have enough of an emotional disconnect from sex not to find the sexual engagements particularly triggering. It’s a privilege, maybe not of gender but there are others. Possibly of luck. Whatever the causes, the two missions I found viscerally horrific were not sexual. In Haunted the horror came from the possibility for rich imprints to propagate themselves in perpetuity in doll after doll. Prior to that, cultist Echo was modestly dressed but her function was to serve as the flesh wrapping for a CCTV camera and my assumption was that the reason they needed a doll was because a doll would have no choice about submitting herself to that kind of experimental surgery.
The serious drama/spectator sport issue is more complex. My gut feeling is that as the series progresses, the talk of the species becoming reduced to walking clusters of neurons in Man on the Street is being proved more and more justified. The ability to create imprints is philosophically different from simply being able to wipe or suppress memories/consciousness. Knowing that whole personalities can be built in a machine changes something fundamental. The myth of identity unravels and with it all relationships. The Dollhouse is being presented as an inherently corruptive thing - in this week’s episode both murderer and victim were clients. Joel Mynor was a decent enough man once. Ballard too, at the beginning of the series. A little righteous, a little obsessive, something of an angry romantic. Following the Mellie reveal, by his own definition he’s having sex with a dead woman. I think the season is going to end with him signing papers in Adele’s office, he’s going to be drawn into acts he’ll hate himself for even more. Sam was already in with the parent company when he got recruited. Caroline was still innocent enough when she raided the lab but two years of cat and mouse on who knows what else she might have done?
The series has begun to flesh out the motivations and characters of the people who work in the Dollhouse. Adele has some scruples as her using Mellie to eliminate Hearn revealed. But she programmes Victor and doesn’t call that rape. Adele is very disciplined. She can probably convince herself that Roger and Victor and whoever Victor was are all separate people who cannot coexist. There is no Victor for as long as the Roger imprint is active, the only person whose consent is relevant is Roger’s. She doesn’t let herself question the ethics of making Roger in the first place but it’s that which is the fundamental violation and would be so even if she only made him to play checkers with. She knows about how Sierra came to be recruited but passes it off as an exception proving the rule, a broken egg to make an omelet. Adele and Topher and Co are becoming more understandable but that’s not the same as more sympathetic. I don’t read the show as saying that because these people are like us therefore what they do must be all right. It’s saying that insofar as we recognize ourselves in these people that’s not all right.
ETA: The vid was linked on whedonesque to much defensiveness and being nothing if not counter-suggestible I wanted to add the major criticism I have of the show in its current form. Which is that since it’s found its feet it’s largely switched focus from the actives as victims/future heroes to their possible complicitness in their fate and to the people who work there. Why they do what they do, what keeps them there. If things stay that way the show will be essentially telling a “white man’s guilt/burden” story, which sits very uneasily with any claims to have things to say about human trafficking as the people being trafficked will have no voice.
I do part company with the argument made by the vid even though it's a strong argument and eloquently made. However, to me the show feels like it’s coming from the same place as the show tune. More or less
Dollhouse = rapehouse is a comparison that was made before the show even aired and airing has, if anything, made the equation even more explicit. Which it needn’t have done. It’s interesting, for example, to compare Mellie the sleeper active with Boomer the sleeper agent on BSG. Boomer’s story was a tragedy but a tragedy of the constructed personality who believed herself human and then found out she wasn’t. The idea that the original Eight was in some way violated was never really addressed nor was the implication that her S1 affair with Tyrol (when she still thought she was human) was, in effect, rape of that Eight. The Eight are robots and immortal clones who reproduce by downloading into identical bodies so it makes sense within the story that they not be regarded as having distinct (and therefore violable) identities. Mellie (the imprint) and November (the doll) both have human origins and we’ve already been given some specific back-story for November.
From the very first engagement Dollhouse has been absolutely explicit about the fact the actives are programmed to satisfy the fantasies of the clients. To be sexually attracted to them, to have sex with them. Equally it’s been clear that if any consent was involved it was to the general principle and not to any specific engagement. As long as you accept that what happens to the dolls on their missions happens to the person the doll used to be (and if their contract is fulfilled will become again) then sex with an active is rape or necrophilia or both. So the questions are twofold. Whether a show built around serial rape is watchable and if it is, whether it’s actually making rape a spectator sport while claiming to be a serious drama.
I think the first point is ultimately about personal reactions and people vary. For whatever reason I have enough of an emotional disconnect from sex not to find the sexual engagements particularly triggering. It’s a privilege, maybe not of gender but there are others. Possibly of luck. Whatever the causes, the two missions I found viscerally horrific were not sexual. In Haunted the horror came from the possibility for rich imprints to propagate themselves in perpetuity in doll after doll. Prior to that, cultist Echo was modestly dressed but her function was to serve as the flesh wrapping for a CCTV camera and my assumption was that the reason they needed a doll was because a doll would have no choice about submitting herself to that kind of experimental surgery.
The serious drama/spectator sport issue is more complex. My gut feeling is that as the series progresses, the talk of the species becoming reduced to walking clusters of neurons in Man on the Street is being proved more and more justified. The ability to create imprints is philosophically different from simply being able to wipe or suppress memories/consciousness. Knowing that whole personalities can be built in a machine changes something fundamental. The myth of identity unravels and with it all relationships. The Dollhouse is being presented as an inherently corruptive thing - in this week’s episode both murderer and victim were clients. Joel Mynor was a decent enough man once. Ballard too, at the beginning of the series. A little righteous, a little obsessive, something of an angry romantic. Following the Mellie reveal, by his own definition he’s having sex with a dead woman. I think the season is going to end with him signing papers in Adele’s office, he’s going to be drawn into acts he’ll hate himself for even more. Sam was already in with the parent company when he got recruited. Caroline was still innocent enough when she raided the lab but two years of cat and mouse on who knows what else she might have done?
The series has begun to flesh out the motivations and characters of the people who work in the Dollhouse. Adele has some scruples as her using Mellie to eliminate Hearn revealed. But she programmes Victor and doesn’t call that rape. Adele is very disciplined. She can probably convince herself that Roger and Victor and whoever Victor was are all separate people who cannot coexist. There is no Victor for as long as the Roger imprint is active, the only person whose consent is relevant is Roger’s. She doesn’t let herself question the ethics of making Roger in the first place but it’s that which is the fundamental violation and would be so even if she only made him to play checkers with. She knows about how Sierra came to be recruited but passes it off as an exception proving the rule, a broken egg to make an omelet. Adele and Topher and Co are becoming more understandable but that’s not the same as more sympathetic. I don’t read the show as saying that because these people are like us therefore what they do must be all right. It’s saying that insofar as we recognize ourselves in these people that’s not all right.
ETA: The vid was linked on whedonesque to much defensiveness and being nothing if not counter-suggestible I wanted to add the major criticism I have of the show in its current form. Which is that since it’s found its feet it’s largely switched focus from the actives as victims/future heroes to their possible complicitness in their fate and to the people who work there. Why they do what they do, what keeps them there. If things stay that way the show will be essentially telling a “white man’s guilt/burden” story, which sits very uneasily with any claims to have things to say about human trafficking as the people being trafficked will have no voice.