tablesaw | Late Thoughts on Dollhouse

Late Thoughts on Dollhouse

I've been meaning to write about Dollhouse all week, but I haven't had the chance. This is probably good for you, since anything I'll say is going to be shorter.

TV or DVD?

A lot of folks have been wondering why Whedon would work with Fox and/or vice versa after the fiasco that was Firefly. But the fact that they are—and especially the fact that they offered Whedon backing without a traditional pilot—show that they've learned at least some lessons from the past. Firefly may not have done anything useful on the airwaves, but it was blockbuster on DVD, and in T-shirts and other merchandising, and in driving the early usage of Hulu (Firefly and another Fox-troubled show, Arrested Development, have remained popular on the site since its beginning).

Partly because of this, I don't expect Dollhouse to be a very static show. While I imagine there's going to be a "~~mission~~ engagement of the week" format, I also expect that there's going to be progress in term of revealing the backstory of the Dollhouse, as well as changing up the nature of the Dollhouse, throught this thirteen-episode block (and future ones, if that happens). In fact, if Fox is expecting this show to be carried by a fanbase that will be more interested in Tivo, Hulu, and DVDs than in watching the show live as it happens, then we can expect the kind of show that we seem to be getting. A show where later episodes will cast earlier ones in a different light (so that fans will save them on DVRs and rewatch them online). A show where over-the-air advertising is less important than product placement (look at those vans!) and controlling ad viewing online (Fox announced that the show, like Fringe would have fewer commercials last spring). A show with clearly defined "half-seasons" stories (so that they can package the DVD sets like the Battlestar ones).

So I don't think it's too crazy to expect major changes from the show, not just an acceptance that everything is exactly what it appears to be.

Nothing Is What It Appears to Be

Dollhouse is a Joss Whedon show which starts with the words "Nothing is what it appears to be." It's hard to imagine a writer doing that without intending to send a metatextual symbol; it's impossible to imagine Joss Whedon doing it. The line is even set apart from the opening scene (which stands apart from the main episode) by setting it as part of surveillance footage (the reason for which is never explained). When I heard that line, I said to Joss Whedon, in my empty house, "So that's how it's going to be, huh?"

So when I said, above, that I expect the first 13 episodes to have a pretty clear arc, and when I heard that line, with writerly and directorly neon signs flashing toward it, it colored my view of the episode pretty strongly. It's creepy in lots and lots of ways. There are charcters that are clearly unlikeable. There are holes and contradictions. But nothing's what it appears to be, so I have to wonder what it will actually turn out to be.

That Strange Little Scene
Even after that first line, the first scene is bizarre. Lots of lines that could potentially have critical exposition are never finished (they cut off or trail off), leaving us to fill in the gaps based on what we already know. But if nothing is what it appears to be, how accurate are those fill-ins. The surface scene is: Caroline is "recruited" to the Dollhouse, apprently under some extreme external pressure. But there's a lot we don't know, as well. Caroline and Adelle seem to have a relationship of some sort, possibly related to Mrs. Dundee (whose name is mentioned at the end of the episode). It seems like Caroline may know about the Dollhouse and what happens there, but seems more concerned with what's just happened (leaving her looking extremely haggard). Caroline apprently volunteers for something, we assume it's service in the Dollhouse, but could it be something else?

There are more holes in the scene than just dialogue. We're led to believe elsewhere in the show that the Dollhouse uses human trafficking to "recruit" its members. So why does Adelle need to "recruit" Caroline? Why "recruit" someone she seems to already know? And incidentally, how come the scene doesn't take place in Adelle's office, which is much larger and has slightly different artwork (yes, I checked in a second viewing)? Why have a contract if the entire project is illegal?

The story of how and why Caroline/Echo entered the Dollhouse is critical to the show, and I don't think we've heard any part of that story yet. I expect this scene to be revisited at least once.

Inside Tim Minear

There's another strange metatextual level in the main story of the episode. The main "character" played by Echo is a hostage negotiator who is "the best" because she was once kidnapped (and molested) herself. This is eerily similar to the character of Rebecca Locke from the shortlived Fox series The Inside, co-created by Tim Minear. Minear worked with Whedon on his previous shows and is a producer on Dollhouse. A description of Locke from Wikipedia:

Rebecca Locke (Rachel Nichols) is the rookie field agent brought in by Web, who wishes to use her gift to his advantage. She is able to put herself in the shoes of the victims, since she was one herself. This makes her excellent at getting inside the mind of a killer. Series creator Minear described her as a "character with no inside," hence the show's title. With clear trust issues and a lack of a social life, she slowly grows to like her colleagues more as the series progressed.

Topher to Bottom

I think special attention has to be paid to Topher, the mad scientist of the Dollhouse, who is currently positioned as the villain of the show. At the moment there doesn't appear to be any way to redeem him, other than by a revelation that he has been mindwiped himself, and that his current mad-scientist persona was given so that the person in charge of the important mind-wiping device would be someoen who believes, heart and soul, that mind wiping is the most awesome thing in the universe. With this show, that could happen. But right now, Topher seems destined for a bad end, even if that bad end takes a very long time coming. (We thought we killed him but now he's back! With his own UnDollhouse!)

Questions I'll Be Keeping in Mind

Who else has been "brainwashed"? Presumably everyone in the Dollhouse could be. Boyd and Topher seem like prime candidates, along with the more obvious Dr. Saunders (Amy Acker).
How "blank" are the blank personalities?
Was "Caroline" just another amalgam character for Echo?
Are Adelle and Caroline somehow working together on their own side (with Mrs. Dundee)?

Benefit of the Doubt

I do want to disclaim that giving Dollhouse the benefit of the doubt in some ways, on feminism and racism and probably some other things, is influenced by white, male, etc. privilege. It's a bit easier for me to say that the show is intentionally creepy when it's creeping me out in a somewhat distanced way. As

mswyrr pointed out, the first episode alone "mined rape, molestation, and human trafficking for good dramatic material," and that's a whole fist full of triggers.

If It Gets Really Awesome, We'll Let You Know

In light of that, I can see why lots of folks are giving the show a pass. But I've listed some of the reasons I'm sticking with it. If it gets really awesome, you'll hear about it. And the old episodes will be waiting on Hulu.

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you've managed to put some of my thoughts about it into much more coherent strings. :)

I have hope for it, yet.

I'm waiting to see if he kills off a main female character, as per his M.O.

Now, now -- sometimes he kills main male characters instead.

Wash doesn't count since in his relationship, which was a reversal of the stereotypical gender roles in pop entertainment, he was considered the female.

Heh.

I should have added, "for shock value!" Since that's usually the reason for it.

*shakes fist*

Now justify Book as female :)

He had a ponytail?

;p

Book was black. It's okay to kill black males. In Whedon's world, it's almost required.

In Whedon's world, it's almost required.

Is it now. Because, y'know, I only recall the one example, at least among characters that lasted long enough to have names, rather than Vampire #4 or whatever. Care to back up that statement, or just like throwing around accusations of racism?

The body count I come up with is:
Mr. Trick: staked.
Forrest Gates: killed, resurrected, killed again.
Jubal Early: left for dead.
Derrial Book: killed.

Of the survivors, both Robin Wood and Charles Good appeared to have been critically injured at the ends of their respective seasons. Their experience in the post-TV comic books appear (from Wikipedia spoilering) to have been vastly different. The only character who appears unscathed out of the lot is the Operative, suffering the loss, only, of his pride.

If there are other "named" black men in the Whedonverses, I can't think of them, or find them with an easy moment of research. That I don't even have to take off my shoes in order to count them may be more telling.

(Incidentally, Gary Dourdan's character in Alien: Resurrection also bites it, along with one played by Latino Raymond Cruz.)

For exact details I'll have to refer to people more well-versed in Whedon's exploits than I. But there's a reason why DeadBroWalking was created. (That Robin Wood survived was a surprise, not a given. That there were black people in Sunnydale at all? Also a surprise, given the seasons before that.)

Beyond that, if the majority of POC characters one saw in, say, Buffy, weren't around long enough to have names before they were dusted, that's a problem. I stopped watching Buffy in the 3rd or 4th season, and I don't recall a noticeable # of POC even as window-dressing, and they certainly didn't get to survive ep to ep. Except Kendra. And she died!

The issues with Joss and race are well documented by, as I said, others more well-versed with his shows than I am. So, if you want to know more about it instead of just clutching you pearls because of perceived accusations of "racism", then I suggest you hit the internet, where such knowledge and discussion can be found.

Sexism, I'll give you, no arguments -- he clearly kills women about 2x as often as men.

But I just don't see a clear color pattern in his character deaths -- he seems like a pretty equal-opportunity character killer in that regard. Even if you count "green" as PoC.

For the record, I don't have pearls to clutch.

I'm going to make an assumption here: you're white. You also appear to be female. So the fact that you're well aware of the sexism but not the racism is completely unsurprising to me. I suggest you go educate yourself on this score. DeadBro is a place to start. From there you'll probably be able to find other resources. I am not personally interested in doing this work for you, so don't ask..

I am not personally interested in doing this work for you, so don't ask.

Wouldn't dream of it.

Some starter links re

ktempest's response:

Thanks, but I'm done with this. I have more pleasant ways to spend my time than looking for any little thing that could possibly be imagined to be a slight on someone, especially when none of it has any direct impact on daily life.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Racism affects everyone's daily life, even if those effects sometimes appear transparent. And I have generally found that looking at racism through the lens of fantasy and other media that I enjoy is a good way to get a handle on the issues of representation and influence in real life.

And that's why I've been involved in both physical fights and verbal battle when I objected to other people's racist language. But I do not have the time or energy to do the level of research and statistical analysis necessary to show whether or not someone I"ll probably never meet had bias in the casting, deaths, and killer proportions in shows that have been off the air for years. I don't even have the time to research whether or not someone else has done a real analysis, and I'm not interested in bad analyses.

Trying to explain to a former coworker why referring to a certain company as "a bunch of gypsies" is, in fact, racist, and that his engagement to a mixed-race woman did not give him a "get out of racism free" card is potentially constructive. "Joss Whedon killed 80% of the black actors, but only 70% of the white ones!" (or whatever the actual numbers are) isn't.

Exploring these issues isn't IMHO about whether someone I'll never meet has bias- but that the product that person has produced both reflects and affects our culture (be that reinforcing bias, or challenging it). Also, if it was as close as 70 and 80 percent, I don't think people would see that as evidence of racism (sexism, etc etc as the case may be)

Other people are free to spend their time and energy on it. I don't have enough spoons to go around as is.

If you don't have the spoons to spend on listen to what others have to say and be aware of the issues, why are you spending a spoon arguing why the issue isn't that important or how you haven't the spoons to spend on it?

Try spending some of yours on reading comprehension.

May I remind you that you started this branch of the conversation. So if you're not interested in actually knowing whether my offhand comment is based on anything real or not, then it's just as easy to not ask. It's lovely that you get upset over racism sometimes somewhere. But if you're going to pull out the "slightest little offense" defense, then you're obviously not all THAT involved in anti-racist work.

Our host is right, racism affects us all in daily life. But as you're one of the people who gets to ignore it when she chooses, I don't expect you to understand that. Your responses prove that the sketchy and problematic race stuff in media has a real impact on real people in real life.

No, you started it by jumping into light banter with a serious accusation, while providing no support whatsoever for it. You don't know me, you don't know my background, you don't know my history, and you don't get to determine my priorities for use of time, which include making my deadlines at work so I can continue to have health insurance and thus almost-sane medication costs and getting enough sleep to get through each day without falling over -- and I do mean that literally. Spending hours figuring out whether the %age of non-white chacters Joss Whedon killed off is differs from the %age of white characters killed in a statistically meaningful degree, whether and how the overall casting varies significantly from the demographics of the implied setting (gut instinct say not enough characters with Mexican, Asian, or Indian ancestry), and how the aggressor/victim ratios compare across all these categories -- and doing similar analysis for gender -- well, those are hours that I simply do not have.

I'm going to be shutting down this thread, I'm going to take the opportunity to have a last word to offer my own perspective.

When

ktempest made her first comment, it was also in the spirit of light banter. While it did implicate the serious issues of race and Whedon's problems in presenting race in his work, that doesn't preclude it from being as "light" as, say, other needling comments about Whedon's checkered relationship with sexism. It was you,

nolly, who both framed

ktempest's comment as an "accusation[] of racism" and encouraged her to "back up that statement." It was at that point that the issues changed from banter to a serious discussion of racism.

Several attempts to "back up that statement" were made, but you dismissed them saying, generally, that they weren't worth your time. The way in which you dismissed them raised their own problems, which

ktempest and

alchemia have addressed.

If you choose not to dedicate time to considering the racist aspects of the Whedonverse, that's your choice. But please trust the people who have and do when they tell you what's there.

Holy crap...after bringing this up, I googled and found a guy compiling all the deaths of Joss Whedon's characters. He's only up to 8 (and you have to skip through some unrelated posts), but I thought I'd share: http://wilftonville.blogspot.com/search/label/Death

He hasn't gotten to Fred yet. I guess he's going chronologically, starting with Jenny Calendar.

Now I feel obsessed. I found the complete and up-to-date list of his murdered characters for shock value: http://fandomania.com/joss-whedons-16-most-painful-character-deaths/

Even has Kitty Pryde...

I will stop now.

:D

Twice, that I can remember.

6 of the 16 on the list

thefreak found.

Wash, Book, Angel, Spike, Doyle, and Wesley.

I don't consider Spike and Angel as permanent deaths, and since death is *traditionally* a rather permanent thing...

So make it 4 out of 12, then, since Buffy didn't stay dead, and it's fairly safe to assume Kitty Pryde won't, either. (I don't follow comics much; for all I know she's already back.)

If we're talking about the beginning of the series, there's usually a male decoy who dies/turns evil really quick.

Buffy: Jesse (turns into a vampire and gets killed)
Angel: Doyle (dies a few episodes into the first season)
Firefly: Dobson (turns out to be an Alliance agent)

Touche

"If it gets really awesome, you'll hear about it."

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Every time Joss Whedon comes out with something new I have to wade through excited gushing about it for weeks. At least this time people are posting thoughtful reviews and not just, "OMG did you see the new Dr. Horrible! I can't stop laughing!" and "Just 5 more days to Serenity!!!" so I'm dreading the moment when people start forming definite opinions.

(And there's no way to ask people to stop gushing without sounding like a curmudgeon! Thanks for providing me with an opening to vent, hope I didn't derail things too much. For the record, I don't dislike Whedon, I'm just indifferent and have too much of a backlog of things to watch and read to try getting into him.)

I'm torn- I don't have the time to follow the show right now, and my partner would find it terribly triggering... yet... does it show promise (compared to the other crap that's out there at least)? Should I be flipping on the TV just to give it our 'vote' for ratings? *ponders*

You should probably consider watiching it online for now (at Fox.com or Hulu). It'll still get a few ad hits for the show.

(deleted comment)

Oh, wow.

Um . . . yes?

And to think, as of a few months ago, I hadn't watched tv for 5 years (although I'm still afraid to turn on anything but PBS unless I first thoroughly research it) One can never take 'voting', even for tv shows, too seriously! :D

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Late Thoughts on Dollhouse

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