Dollhouse
Having now seen the whole season, I think my fundamental issue with this show is that given the setting, the questions I'm interested in are fundamentally ethical and the questions the show's interested in are fundamentally about identity.
( Well, identity and putting Eliza Dushku in short skirts. )
( Well, identity and putting Eliza Dushku in short skirts. )
I think the thing that got me, in the two episodes I watched, was the cinematography. Whatever the show was saying that was subversive about the dolls' situation was totally undercut by the actual viewpoint gaze--the lingering, exploitative shots. Maybe that changed at some point, I don't know, but I was grossed out enough not to stick around. I'm not encouraged to hear that they were trying to position Topher as a sympathetic character. And I think that would also undercut any ethical examination.
And then I tried to think of other shows in which there were Mommy Issues instead of the omnipresent Daddy Issues and all I could come up with was Alias, which I never watched but which must, from the decriptions, have given Sydney Mommy Issues. Any others people can think of?
As people mentioned above, Farscape leaps to mind immediately. In Alias, Sydney Bristow's mother was both evil and awesome; I think Xhalax Sun was a bit more complicated, but still falls in that broad category.
Reply
It was pretty clear that the show was trying to... make the audience complicit by inviting them to empathize with the people running the Dollhouse, and that actually didn't bug me--we got some additional insight into and humanization of Adelle, too, and that didn't bother me. But there were a couple of bits with Topher that made me think the writers wanted me to feel sad for the poor wounded nerdboy, which, if true, NO. NO, I do not feel sad for you, Topher.
Reply
Leave a comment