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How I Learned to Kill Robots
While Fox is touting Friday nights as hot hot chicks with guns, the geek DVR block is showing itself to be a contrast in women's stories on TV. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been doing by far the better job, and the last three episodes have been incredible. Dollhouse has . Since these shows started airing together, I've been thinking about an interview with playwright Paula Vogel that I read years ago:
That's the part I remembered, but this part had something to say about both series as well:
The two characters that have undergone the most stress in this season are Sarah and Riley, and they're also the people who have been denied the space to process what's been happening. John escapes into his normal (to him) relationship with Riley. Derek and Jesse escape into their relationships with each other. For the those two, being able to make contact with someone from the future, as horrible as it was, is also a release, a reminder that those things were truly real. But Riley can't take any comfort from her relationship with John because it is a lie; it's a source of stress. And Jesse's refusals to connect with her have caused her to crack up completely.
Sarah has refused to take the time to step outside of herself and process what's been happening. She hasn't found an opportunity to since just before the series started. (Even Cameron, who probably doesn't need it, has been decompressing in the library.) And we see the fruits of it in the most recent episode, where she seems to be hallucinating during a kidnapping. And yet, while Sarah seems to recognize the dangers of not "taking control of what's in her mind," at the end of the episode, she adds a new trauma that has to be dealt with.
I think this applies especially to Dollhouse, which has been very heavy on the dark and disturbing and very light on the catharsis. In the premiere, there was hardly any catharsis in any form. There wasn't even any humor to speak of, which is the most common cathartic grease in the wheels of a serious piece. The plot that gets "resolved" is in unsatisfying for many reasons. Others have written about the way "Ghost" exploits victimhood (in a way that's touched on in the first Vogel quote), and Echo's standing up to the abuser in that victim's place doesn't adequately resolve the tension, especially when that victimhood is being exploited, and the original woman committed suicide as a result. The aspects of Caroline's and Echo's story presented in the pilot have no progress at all.
The subsequent episodes have varied. "Target" seemed to be doing better, Echo transcends her specific situation and her general one, and the end of the episode makes it clear that her victory was not wiped away. And it felt good to see that. "Stage Fright" seems to slide back toward the premiere. The moment that seems to be intended as catharsis—when Echo and Sierra seem to remember their friendship and know that it must be kept hidden from those watching—is simply a revelation of what was hidden; it's not a moving forward. And it's not enough to purge what we've been subjected to so far.
On the plus side, the two major locations shown in Friday's Dollhouse were walking distance from my house, which was fun.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ojouchan (who doesn't watch the show, but is often in the room when I do) was impressed at the way the art department did up the Avalon.
SatNYTX: 18:30.
[Arthur Holmberg]: [How I Learned to Drive] dramatizes in a disturbing way how we receive great harm from the people who love us.Which, I think, stands without comment.
[Paula Vogel]: I would reverse that. I would say that we can receive great love from the people who harm us.
AH: Why is it significant to reverse it?
PV: We are now living in a culture of victimization, and great harm can be inflicted by well-intentioned therapists, social workers, and talk show hosts who encourage people to dwell in their identity as victim. Without denying or forgetting the original pain, I wanted to write about the great gifts that can also be inside that box of abuse. My play dramatizes the gifts we receive from the people who hurt us.
AH: So what does Li'l Bit receive?
PV: She received the gift of how to survive.
That's the part I remembered, but this part had something to say about both series as well:
AH: In Drive, Li'l Bit looks at her painful memories, processes the experiences, and then moves on. Why is it important to forgive the harm?Recently the arc of Sarah in The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been about the processing of the past—or the lack of it. Since the beginning of the season, everyone has been under constant pressure, and not everyone's been able to handle it.
PV: Many people stay rooted in anger against transgressions that occurred in childhood, and this rage will be directed to other people in their adult lives and toward themselves. Whether we call it forgiveness or understanding, there comes a moment when the past has to be processed, and we have to find some control. There are two forgivenesses in the play. One forgiveness for Peck, but the most crucial forgiveness would be Li'l Bit's forgiving Li'l Bit. Li'l Bit as an adult looking at and understanding her complicity . . .
AH: her destructiveness.
The two characters that have undergone the most stress in this season are Sarah and Riley, and they're also the people who have been denied the space to process what's been happening. John escapes into his normal (to him) relationship with Riley. Derek and Jesse escape into their relationships with each other. For the those two, being able to make contact with someone from the future, as horrible as it was, is also a release, a reminder that those things were truly real. But Riley can't take any comfort from her relationship with John because it is a lie; it's a source of stress. And Jesse's refusals to connect with her have caused her to crack up completely.
Sarah has refused to take the time to step outside of herself and process what's been happening. She hasn't found an opportunity to since just before the series started. (Even Cameron, who probably doesn't need it, has been decompressing in the library.) And we see the fruits of it in the most recent episode, where she seems to be hallucinating during a kidnapping. And yet, while Sarah seems to recognize the dangers of not "taking control of what's in her mind," at the end of the episode, she adds a new trauma that has to be dealt with.
[AH:] You once said that it was important to give the audience a catharsis.In a talk that Vogel gave at UCSB, she elaborated on this. Talking about her play Hot 'n Throbbing, she said had been considering revising the play. As it stood, she said, the play was (or was almost) an abuse on the audience, not because it dealt with so many dark, dangerous, and harmful themes and images, but because it did so while denying the audience a catharsis.
PV: Catharsis purges the pity and the terror and enables the audience to transcend them. So you have her memories of the final confrontation with Peck in the hotel room and afterwards the flashback to the first driving lesson. And then the last scene, which brings us up to the present. This is a movement forward. For me, purgation means a forward movement.
I think this applies especially to Dollhouse, which has been very heavy on the dark and disturbing and very light on the catharsis. In the premiere, there was hardly any catharsis in any form. There wasn't even any humor to speak of, which is the most common cathartic grease in the wheels of a serious piece. The plot that gets "resolved" is in unsatisfying for many reasons. Others have written about the way "Ghost" exploits victimhood (in a way that's touched on in the first Vogel quote), and Echo's standing up to the abuser in that victim's place doesn't adequately resolve the tension, especially when that victimhood is being exploited, and the original woman committed suicide as a result. The aspects of Caroline's and Echo's story presented in the pilot have no progress at all.
The subsequent episodes have varied. "Target" seemed to be doing better, Echo transcends her specific situation and her general one, and the end of the episode makes it clear that her victory was not wiped away. And it felt good to see that. "Stage Fright" seems to slide back toward the premiere. The moment that seems to be intended as catharsis—when Echo and Sierra seem to remember their friendship and know that it must be kept hidden from those watching—is simply a revelation of what was hidden; it's not a moving forward. And it's not enough to purge what we've been subjected to so far.
On the plus side, the two major locations shown in Friday's Dollhouse were walking distance from my house, which was fun.
ojouchan (who doesn't watch the show, but is often in the room when I do) was impressed at the way the art department did up the Avalon.SatNYTX: 18:30.
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