[meta] Dawn Summers: Free Will and the Created Girl
I've been planning on posting this for months now - but have (obviously) had RL $h*t getting in my way.
Originally, I had planned on writing about my own fic to begin and discuss how I use Dawn's Key-ness and created-past to renegotiate what an AU might mean for her.... but that seemed beyond bombastic. So none of that. Mostly inspired by half-started conversations with red_satin_doll - thank you a million times over for being such a wonderful interrogator of my thought-process.
Part One: The Created Girl
One of the most problematic elements of Dawn’s character is her tenuous relationship to free will. Generally when speaking about ‘free will’ I will use the term ‘subjectivity’ - although the terms are not necessarily the same at all. However, growing up in a conservative Christian environment, the term ‘free will’ is tinged with baggage. ‘Subjectivity’ has always appealed to me more because of the sheer complexity of the term - one can have what philosophers and theologians refer to as ‘free will’ and yet not be a subject.
In the case of Dawn Summers - however - something really fascinating happens: she is made and written before even becoming human. Generally cases of revisionism and mind-fuckery are just that: revisions - forces and people playing with the mind of a character/person who already has clear personality, motives, history, and mind to play with. We should be horrified by the idea of someone messing around in our memories, changing an essential part of who we are by altering what we know about ourselves.
Science-fiction as a genre has taken on mind manipulation as a source of terror-tactic: the mind is malleable and therefore no longer trustworthy. A new reality in which we can no longer trust our own perceptions, memories, or decisions - Minority Report, Memento, Dark City, The Forgotten… Contemporary media even has made us potential villains of brain-washing ourselves, such as in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Dawn Summers takes all of that paranoia and goes a step further than even the Matrix dared: what if everything you knew and experienced wasn’t real - to the point that you, yourself, are only a figment of someone else’s imagination made flesh. Neo’s world turned out to be fabricated, but he was real. His mind, memories, decisions belong to him and although they are questioned - his Self is not challenged - by a new definition of truth.
Dawn, on the other hand, is a figure placed into existence in medias res with no previous involvement with her current circumstances. Even a person whose every decision has been made for them, still can decide for themselves if they prefer the color green or blue. Even a character whose life and well-being is at the mercy of others, is given the right to disagree, dislike, or love their position.
As far as we know from Buffy, Dawn was a blank slate literally written into existence by a bunch of old monks.
The existence of this previous life/self that the audience was hitherto not privy to is not revealed in a classic cinemagraphic display of flashbacks that catch us up to where Dawn is now. Rather, it is merely represented by Dawn’s journals - a stack of unknowable, (un)written artifacts that reveal time through their mass, rather than through a careful perusal. We - and the Scoobies - are meant to believe that Dawn has always existed because look at how many journal entries her life has filled. Xander refers to them in a later episode as the “Dawnster Chronicles” - journaling being something that is quintessentially Dawn.
Of course, only the entries dating after “The Real Me” were actually written by Dawn.
That stack of pages lined with child-scribble are a mask over a fabrication of something that now is a memory of a child.
Fabricated history, memory, relationships, everything.
She is the very first doll.
Am I suggesting that Joss Whedon is a genius mastermind and he already planned the Dollhouse with the introduction of Dawn?
Certainly not.
First of all, Whedon is an amazing storyteller, but I would never make the claim that he is a mastermind or a genius or anything of the sort.
Secondly, the author is dead.
I’m not going to claim authorial intent.
The texts speak for themselves. Dawn’s brain was mystically written and programmed by monks - much in the same way that Topher will later program dolls.
Unfortunately, Dawn’s presence affects the people around her far more than the dolls. Her presence literally changes the minds and memories of others.
Also unfortunately is just how much a gap there is between Dawn and Echo. Surely a post-Echo Dawn could have benefited from a conversation explicitly focused on the blank state and the underlying personality of Echo. Yet, I also believe that Echo could not have existed if not for Dawn Summers - most theoretical work I have seen on the dolls pinpoints River Tam as being the most obvious predecessor - her mind holding secrets programmed out and in by nefarious, shadowy-government types. Dawn’s creation seems much less problematic in comparison - because would you really think that a group of peaceful monks are really all that bad when placed next to the government or the Rossum Corporation? And yet, Dawn’s brainwashing goes so far and so deep, shouldn't we think critically of this?
Unlike Echo - Dawn can’t even fight to find her ‘original’ identity. There is no original. There was only energy and then there was a story of a girl who was so easily forgotten, who made so little of an impression on the world - that she was inserted without consequence.
Despite the world being re-written, no one seems to have changed much. Defying the logic of The Butterfly Effect, Sliding Doors, or Run, Lola, Run - the presence of Dawn changes very little. She is the Forest Gump, able to stand in the background of scenes and yet be unseen. Seeing, watching, observing history but never actually affecting it or changing it.
And now a slight request for my flist - if you have ever stumbled across fic that deals with Dawn's life pre-human - as in, her life as the "Key" - I'd love to hear about it! It'll be great help for me in my research!
Part Two: Finding a Will, Finding a way (coming soon!)
Originally, I had planned on writing about my own fic to begin and discuss how I use Dawn's Key-ness and created-past to renegotiate what an AU might mean for her.... but that seemed beyond bombastic. So none of that. Mostly inspired by half-started conversations with red_satin_doll - thank you a million times over for being such a wonderful interrogator of my thought-process.
Part One: The Created Girl
One of the most problematic elements of Dawn’s character is her tenuous relationship to free will. Generally when speaking about ‘free will’ I will use the term ‘subjectivity’ - although the terms are not necessarily the same at all. However, growing up in a conservative Christian environment, the term ‘free will’ is tinged with baggage. ‘Subjectivity’ has always appealed to me more because of the sheer complexity of the term - one can have what philosophers and theologians refer to as ‘free will’ and yet not be a subject.
In the case of Dawn Summers - however - something really fascinating happens: she is made and written before even becoming human. Generally cases of revisionism and mind-fuckery are just that: revisions - forces and people playing with the mind of a character/person who already has clear personality, motives, history, and mind to play with. We should be horrified by the idea of someone messing around in our memories, changing an essential part of who we are by altering what we know about ourselves.
Science-fiction as a genre has taken on mind manipulation as a source of terror-tactic: the mind is malleable and therefore no longer trustworthy. A new reality in which we can no longer trust our own perceptions, memories, or decisions - Minority Report, Memento, Dark City, The Forgotten… Contemporary media even has made us potential villains of brain-washing ourselves, such as in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Dawn Summers takes all of that paranoia and goes a step further than even the Matrix dared: what if everything you knew and experienced wasn’t real - to the point that you, yourself, are only a figment of someone else’s imagination made flesh. Neo’s world turned out to be fabricated, but he was real. His mind, memories, decisions belong to him and although they are questioned - his Self is not challenged - by a new definition of truth.
Dawn, on the other hand, is a figure placed into existence in medias res with no previous involvement with her current circumstances. Even a person whose every decision has been made for them, still can decide for themselves if they prefer the color green or blue. Even a character whose life and well-being is at the mercy of others, is given the right to disagree, dislike, or love their position.
As far as we know from Buffy, Dawn was a blank slate literally written into existence by a bunch of old monks.
The existence of this previous life/self that the audience was hitherto not privy to is not revealed in a classic cinemagraphic display of flashbacks that catch us up to where Dawn is now. Rather, it is merely represented by Dawn’s journals - a stack of unknowable, (un)written artifacts that reveal time through their mass, rather than through a careful perusal. We - and the Scoobies - are meant to believe that Dawn has always existed because look at how many journal entries her life has filled. Xander refers to them in a later episode as the “Dawnster Chronicles” - journaling being something that is quintessentially Dawn.
Of course, only the entries dating after “The Real Me” were actually written by Dawn.
That stack of pages lined with child-scribble are a mask over a fabrication of something that now is a memory of a child.
Fabricated history, memory, relationships, everything.
She is the very first doll.
Am I suggesting that Joss Whedon is a genius mastermind and he already planned the Dollhouse with the introduction of Dawn?
Certainly not.
First of all, Whedon is an amazing storyteller, but I would never make the claim that he is a mastermind or a genius or anything of the sort.
Secondly, the author is dead.
I’m not going to claim authorial intent.
The texts speak for themselves. Dawn’s brain was mystically written and programmed by monks - much in the same way that Topher will later program dolls.
Unfortunately, Dawn’s presence affects the people around her far more than the dolls. Her presence literally changes the minds and memories of others.
Also unfortunately is just how much a gap there is between Dawn and Echo. Surely a post-Echo Dawn could have benefited from a conversation explicitly focused on the blank state and the underlying personality of Echo. Yet, I also believe that Echo could not have existed if not for Dawn Summers - most theoretical work I have seen on the dolls pinpoints River Tam as being the most obvious predecessor - her mind holding secrets programmed out and in by nefarious, shadowy-government types. Dawn’s creation seems much less problematic in comparison - because would you really think that a group of peaceful monks are really all that bad when placed next to the government or the Rossum Corporation? And yet, Dawn’s brainwashing goes so far and so deep, shouldn't we think critically of this?
Unlike Echo - Dawn can’t even fight to find her ‘original’ identity. There is no original. There was only energy and then there was a story of a girl who was so easily forgotten, who made so little of an impression on the world - that she was inserted without consequence.
Despite the world being re-written, no one seems to have changed much. Defying the logic of The Butterfly Effect, Sliding Doors, or Run, Lola, Run - the presence of Dawn changes very little. She is the Forest Gump, able to stand in the background of scenes and yet be unseen. Seeing, watching, observing history but never actually affecting it or changing it.
And now a slight request for my flist - if you have ever stumbled across fic that deals with Dawn's life pre-human - as in, her life as the "Key" - I'd love to hear about it! It'll be great help for me in my research!
Part Two: Finding a Will, Finding a way (coming soon!)