Dollhouse notes — answering Jaclyn's Survey

[Spoilers ahead]

After watching “Ghost,” the premiere episode of Joss Whedon’s new series Dollhouse, Jaclyn at Bitch, PhD has some questions:

1) Did you watch? What did you think?

I thought it was disappointing.

Even putting politics aside for a moment, the episode was cheesy. I didn’t buy Echo as an expert hostage negotiator; I didn’t think a real expert negotiator (or someone programmed with a real expert’s personality and knowledge by an expensive, competent agency) would dress like a porn schoolteacher fantasy, or would open negotiations by offering three million more than the kidnappers had asked for.

Bad as that stuff was, the subplot with the world’s most generic rouge cop was even worse. The scene with him talking to his superiors was a tiresome cliche in Dirty Harry movies in the 1970s, and dressing it up with kickboxing seemed desperate. I have a depressing feeling that he’s relevant to the plot later in the series, but is going to be hanging around being a boring B plot for many, many episodes before he actually matters.

(I suspect he’s going to eventually be Echo’s boyfriend before tragically dying at some point. But that’s just a guess.)

I did think it was interesting that Joss is moving outside of his usual show design; this is not a show about a group held together by bonds of friendship and having adventures. I don’t think most Dollhouse characters even like each other; they just share a workplace (or are enslaved by it). I think that’ll make it harder to sustain a show — one of Joss’ great strengths as a show creator has been his ability to parley the characters’ affection for each other, into affection for the characters from the audience — but if he can make it work, it could be great. (Think of how well BSG works, even though many of the characters don’t like each other.)

2) Were you as psyched as I was to see that Mutant Enemy tag at the end?

I’m pretty certain I was.

3) How did you feel about Eliza D as Faith in Buffy? How have you felt about everything she’s done since Buffy? What did you think about her performance as Echo?

I thought she was terrific as Faith. Her performance as Echo was… okay. The show’s premise implies that Joss and Eliza think that Eliza’s actually got much more range as an actor than she’s ever shown. Hopefully that’s true and will pay off.

4) Why the hell did Joss agree to work with Fox again? Or ever?

Because Eliza already had a deal with Fox to produce and star in a new show, and Joss wanted to do this show with Eliza. If it wasn’t Fox, then it wasn’t going to happen.

5) Um… are there still no people of color who want good roles in Hollywood? It’s a real problem, isn’t it? How on earth can we fix it, so that all the producers and directors aren’t forced to only cast white people all the time? (Yes, there’s Harry Lennix as Echo’s handler, but a) that just makes him the token and b) Driving Miss Daisy, anyone?)

I’ve concluded that Joss probably doesn’t care about fighting racism — not enough to make it a priority to cast multiple, visible people of color in solid, nonstereotypical roles in every series he does.

I have no doubt Joss is against racism the way most white liberals are — and that he’s willing to cast people of color. But he’s not willing to do the extra work to make it happen. He’s doesn’t consider a cast without multiple actors of color unacceptable; he’s doesn’t make the effort to consistently cast diverse extras (which is why Buffy mysteriously went to the only University of California campus with virtually no asian or Latina students).

If antiracism genuinely matters to Joss, the way feminism does, he’s failed to make that apparent in his work.

Interestingly, Bianca Lawson (who later played Kendra) was the first actress offered the part of Cordelia in Buffy — or so Wikipedia claims. That would have been a terrific, and not at all stereotypical, casting — and it would have made Buffy’s major cast not entirely white. Oh, well.

6) Ditto fat people, people with physical disabilities, people who aren’t freakishly pretty, etc.?

In an interview, Joss explains that he “respects the rules of TV,” and one of those rules is that the cast should consist of pretty people. Fair enough — I think it’s probably true that no network would pay for a science-fiction adventure show cast with actors from across the range of human looks, rather than everyone being TV-pretty.

But Joss could do better on this score without breaking TV rules. David Kelly, infamous for his sexism and his devotion to casting model-thin women, still cast Camryn Manheim in The Practice. Lost, another show about the problems of buff model-types, also stars Jorge Garcia. Joss could cast one or two actors who are fat, not model-pretty, disabled, or otherwise lacking “perfect” bodies, without getting thrown off TV – but he won’t, because that’s not something he cares about.

Notably, even in the Buffy comics — where Joss isn’t contending with TV rules — he isn’t any more diverse when it comes to his characters’ bodies.

7) Did they really have to start with the girl-is-broken-due-to-sex-abuse-and-requires-the-intervention-of-a-kind-man-to-seek-redemption plotline? Why is that never the secret weak spot for male action stars, huh?

Yup. I hope the idea is that this is going to be a pattern that Echo has to break away from over the course of the series.

8) If Person A is desperate and out of options, and is coerced into fully giving up her agency and identity, and if, after making that one decision, Person A no longer has any meaningful ability to consent to anything, nor does she have the ability to withdraw her consent from the original agreement — under those circumstances, if Person C pays Person B money to have sex with Person A, is that really prostitution, as Joss and Eliza have said it is? Or is that sexual slavery?

Sexual slavery, I’d say. I have faith, however, that the overall arc of the series — if it isn’t canceled first — is going to be Echo escaping from slavery, not implicit approval of slavery.

9) Can someone tell me that Joss is going somewhere good with this? I want to believe…

Me too! I take a back seat to no one in my fanatical love for Buffy, Firefly, and Dr. Horrible… and Joss’ first episodes are often weak. I’m not ready to give up yet.

Aviva didn’t like Dollhouse any better than I did (and was particularly repulsed by Fox’s promos, which happily I mostly avoided seeing) and asks some more questions:

a) Can a disturbing premise be mitigated by the subjugated character developing agency and control over her oppressors? If so, to what degree? Does she need to escape? Seek retribution? Take over?

b) How long can a show like Dollhouse continue on with this same “she can be anything you want her to be” shtick before something has to give?

c) Is it possible to maintain narrative interest if Echo escapes or if Dollhouse (the place, not the show) is shut down? If so, how? If not, then doesn’t the continued need for the Dollhouse as an element of narrative interest necessitate the continued exploitation of the “actives” for our viewing pleasure?

I think a disturbing and (let’s face it) misogynistic premise can definitely be mitigated by having the main characters fight the power. Even if they never win. And I trust they’ve got some ideas for how to keep it going for more than the first couple of years.

For a more positive review, see Petpluto’s post. And for someone who really hated it, see my friend Heron’s review.