[meta + gif set] Dollhouse - Priya Tsetsang
For 
thefandomzoo's 'A song about...' challenge.
WARNINGS: triggers for sexual assault.
Non-plot spoilers for Dollhouse.
When I hear a song about sexual assault, abortion, miscarriages, or abusive relationships, I always pay twice as much attention because these are the songs made by women, about women, and for women. Sadly, that just doesn’t happen very often. Most songs are written so that you can just swap a pronoun here & there (or choose not to do so), and the gender of the singer becomes inconsequential. But that’s not the case in songs with themes like the above. For example, you simply can’t have a song about an abortion without a woman being involved; further, there is no desire to do so. Men don’t have to worry about the possibility of getting an abortion, so why bother thinking about it at all?
One male writer that breaks out of this paradigm is Joss Whedon. Not only are his characters fully realized people, whether male or female, he has made it a point to write female characters a certain way because no one else is. Buffy Summers and River Tam could not exist as male characters, because their stories exist as statements about what society expects from women, and how society treats women.
I believe Priya Tsetsang is another such character. You couldn’t just flip the pronouns in the script and cast a male actor. Priya is forced to accept the attentions of a male suitor, because it’s the polite thing to do. Her friends tell her she should be glad to have him. This is what society expects of a woman. To “sit nice and be quiet”, to be grateful if a man deigns to pay her attention.
There is a particularly disturbing scene in the Dollhouse season 2 episode, Belonging, in which a party is being held in Priya’s honor, and entire room full of people watches on in silence as the host physically accosts Priya, barring her from leaving the building and making unwanted sexual advances. He “could not keep [his] pretty hands off [her]”.
And when Priya has the audacity to say no, to tell her abuser that nothing he can do could ever make her love him, he utilizes his position of power to have her drugged, diagnosed as schitzophrenic, and detained at a mental institution. It only gets worse from there. He has her brainwashed into believing she is in love with him, and thus is able to sexually assault her over and over and over again. Because this is what society claims is due to him for all his efforts to woo her.
Fortunately, not everyone agrees with this, and eventually someone discovers the abuse and tries to rectify the mistake by restoring Priya’s memories. Now that her “image of love [has been] shattered,” Priya is able to confront her abuser about his crimes.
He tries to rape her again, and in the ensuing struggle, she stabs him to death. “When [she] bit, it was for blood.”
“Shattered” is a song by The Trucks that I have quoted in several places in the above paragraphs. While it is a song about sexual assault, it is not about the rape itself; it is about the aftermath. The narrator chooses a path that involves fighting back and becoming stronger as a result. This is a mirror of Priya’s story arc during the entire series of Dollhouse. When finally able to confront her abuser, Priya begins to learn that she is capable of things she never would have dreamed.
Priya in Dollhouse episode 2.04 - Belonging:
thefandomzoo's 'A song about...' challenge.
WARNINGS: triggers for sexual assault.
Non-plot spoilers for Dollhouse.
When I hear a song about sexual assault, abortion, miscarriages, or abusive relationships, I always pay twice as much attention because these are the songs made by women, about women, and for women. Sadly, that just doesn’t happen very often. Most songs are written so that you can just swap a pronoun here & there (or choose not to do so), and the gender of the singer becomes inconsequential. But that’s not the case in songs with themes like the above. For example, you simply can’t have a song about an abortion without a woman being involved; further, there is no desire to do so. Men don’t have to worry about the possibility of getting an abortion, so why bother thinking about it at all?
One male writer that breaks out of this paradigm is Joss Whedon. Not only are his characters fully realized people, whether male or female, he has made it a point to write female characters a certain way because no one else is. Buffy Summers and River Tam could not exist as male characters, because their stories exist as statements about what society expects from women, and how society treats women.
I believe Priya Tsetsang is another such character. You couldn’t just flip the pronouns in the script and cast a male actor. Priya is forced to accept the attentions of a male suitor, because it’s the polite thing to do. Her friends tell her she should be glad to have him. This is what society expects of a woman. To “sit nice and be quiet”, to be grateful if a man deigns to pay her attention.
There is a particularly disturbing scene in the Dollhouse season 2 episode, Belonging, in which a party is being held in Priya’s honor, and entire room full of people watches on in silence as the host physically accosts Priya, barring her from leaving the building and making unwanted sexual advances. He “could not keep [his] pretty hands off [her]”.
And when Priya has the audacity to say no, to tell her abuser that nothing he can do could ever make her love him, he utilizes his position of power to have her drugged, diagnosed as schitzophrenic, and detained at a mental institution. It only gets worse from there. He has her brainwashed into believing she is in love with him, and thus is able to sexually assault her over and over and over again. Because this is what society claims is due to him for all his efforts to woo her.
Fortunately, not everyone agrees with this, and eventually someone discovers the abuse and tries to rectify the mistake by restoring Priya’s memories. Now that her “image of love [has been] shattered,” Priya is able to confront her abuser about his crimes.
He tries to rape her again, and in the ensuing struggle, she stabs him to death. “When [she] bit, it was for blood.”
“Shattered” is a song by The Trucks that I have quoted in several places in the above paragraphs. While it is a song about sexual assault, it is not about the rape itself; it is about the aftermath. The narrator chooses a path that involves fighting back and becoming stronger as a result. This is a mirror of Priya’s story arc during the entire series of Dollhouse. When finally able to confront her abuser, Priya begins to learn that she is capable of things she never would have dreamed.
Priya in Dollhouse episode 2.04 - Belonging:
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