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Dollhouse Response So Far, No Spoilers
So, Dollhouse. I haven't seen last night's episode yet--it's TiVoed and ready to be watched when I get the chance (probably Monday), but I feel that I'm ready to put forward my thoughts.
I find the action-adventure plot of the week enjoyable enough to keep me entertained, but not enough to keep me invested in the show. What keeps me watching is the assumption that Joss is going somewhere (awesome) with all this, that the (sadly neglected, as per Fox's orders) serial elements are going somewhere. The relationship between Miracle Laurie and the BSG guy, and I'm looking forward to Echo's construction of a lasting identity, but on the other hand I really don't care who Alpha is and I suspect that me expectations as to how that arc will play out won't nearly be frustrated enough.
I'm not convinced there's enough of Dollhouse to critique on any grounds other than "was that fun to watch?" yet. (Which ignores the way in which for many people the question of whether it's any fun to watch is deeply inseparable from its politics.) But this wouldn't be my journal if I didn't pull out the feminist lens. The question, of course, is how we should approach "those works which skirts the boundaries between being exploitive and being a feminist critique thereof" (I'm quoting from my review of Adam Warren's Empowered here).
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inlovewithnight linked to this review of Watchmen by Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon which actually addresses a lot of the same satiric elements which Dollhouse utilizes. (N.B.: I fully intend on both reading the book of Watchmen and seeing the film, but have not yet done either.) The only thing I'm puzzled by is Marcotte's seeming confusion at the idea of a non-funny satire. In the big scheme of things, how many satires are really funny? The quintessential archetype against which all other satires are judged, Dean Swift's "A Modest Proposal," isn't exactly a laugh a minute. Okay, The Rape of the Lock is admittedly good for a few chuckles, but even it's more clever than funny. And the great 20th-century satirist, George Orwell, produced in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm satires which aren't exactly known for their humor.
I've seen Dollhouse criticized for not being funny enough, and I think one of the reasons for that is that it's self-consciously working in this dark satiric mold, at least when it's not being action-adventure-y.
I do think the show needs to distinguish more between diegetic (Watsonian, that flowing organically from the nature of the Dollhouse) and extra-diegetic (Doylist, that thrown in merely to titillate viewers) instances of objectification. I'm not saying that the show shouldn't engage in the second type of objectification in order to thematically reinforce the first type, but I think it needs to be more thoughtful in the way it approaches doing so. For one thing, I don't think the in-story objectification should be equal opportunity (because that's not how things work in real life), but maybe the extra-diegetic objectification needs to be more equal opportunity, or (better yet) the camera's perspective itself needs to be better problematized as part of the patriarchal system which enables the Dollhouse itself, or whatever. I stick to my (old hat, by now) position that it is not sexual objectification itself which is an intrinsic evil so much as the way it is used to support gendered patterns of oppression.
I don't think the show is shying away from the fact that what it depicts is rape (or at least prostitution--and I think real-world sex work often blurs the boundaries in a similar way, so I think the dubiousness of Caroline's consent is a good example of the show getting it right), even if all the characters don't always seem to recognize this. (Indeed, compared to "A Modest Proposal," Watchmen[?], and Nineteen Eighty-Four, it completely insults our intelligence by giving us a protagonist that we can sympathize with, Ballard, to say what needs to be said about the Dollhouse's evil.) Furthermore, it makes a point of showing that sexual violence as "contextualized as mass gender oppression" (to quote Marcotte, here). I know that some people are afraid that sexual violence can end up being normalized in this way, and that's a reasonable concern (is there a way to empirically test this?), but I don't think that the show is being overly-subtle that rape and/or coerced sex work is a bad thing.
Because of this, although I'm assuming with everyone else there's going to be a pay-off, I don't think there's a rush for it to happen soon. There'll be a place in Dollhouse for the feminist empowerment fantasy to assert itself, but for right now I think there's a value in exploring the gritty reality through a satiric lens.
A slightly different question than whether Dollhouse succeeds in its satire (the answer to which, I guess, would be different for every viewer), is whether the subject is serving the satire or the satire is serving the subject. Does Dollhouse show women being objectified to make a feminist point, or is the feminist point just an excuse to get away with showing women being objectified? This is what troubled me with Empowered (quoting from my LibraryThing review again):
On this spectrum, I think Dollhouse falls somewhere near The Changeling, which honestly I think is a good place to be. (Don Juan is a better play than The Changeling, but that's just because Moliere was a better writer.) It allows for an ambiguity and ambivalence which isn't possible at the extreme ends of the spectrum. And insofar as people (men) find the fantasy that the Dollhouse is selling (and that Dollhouse at once is and is not selling) attractive, I think it's better to face that fact, and then problematize it, then pretend it has no allure.
I find the action-adventure plot of the week enjoyable enough to keep me entertained, but not enough to keep me invested in the show. What keeps me watching is the assumption that Joss is going somewhere (awesome) with all this, that the (sadly neglected, as per Fox's orders) serial elements are going somewhere. The relationship between Miracle Laurie and the BSG guy, and I'm looking forward to Echo's construction of a lasting identity, but on the other hand I really don't care who Alpha is and I suspect that me expectations as to how that arc will play out won't nearly be frustrated enough.
I'm not convinced there's enough of Dollhouse to critique on any grounds other than "was that fun to watch?" yet. (Which ignores the way in which for many people the question of whether it's any fun to watch is deeply inseparable from its politics.) But this wouldn't be my journal if I didn't pull out the feminist lens. The question, of course, is how we should approach "those works which skirts the boundaries between being exploitive and being a feminist critique thereof" (I'm quoting from my review of Adam Warren's Empowered here).
inlovewithnight linked to this review of Watchmen by Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon which actually addresses a lot of the same satiric elements which Dollhouse utilizes. (N.B.: I fully intend on both reading the book of Watchmen and seeing the film, but have not yet done either.) The only thing I'm puzzled by is Marcotte's seeming confusion at the idea of a non-funny satire. In the big scheme of things, how many satires are really funny? The quintessential archetype against which all other satires are judged, Dean Swift's "A Modest Proposal," isn't exactly a laugh a minute. Okay, The Rape of the Lock is admittedly good for a few chuckles, but even it's more clever than funny. And the great 20th-century satirist, George Orwell, produced in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm satires which aren't exactly known for their humor.I've seen Dollhouse criticized for not being funny enough, and I think one of the reasons for that is that it's self-consciously working in this dark satiric mold, at least when it's not being action-adventure-y.
I do think the show needs to distinguish more between diegetic (Watsonian, that flowing organically from the nature of the Dollhouse) and extra-diegetic (Doylist, that thrown in merely to titillate viewers) instances of objectification. I'm not saying that the show shouldn't engage in the second type of objectification in order to thematically reinforce the first type, but I think it needs to be more thoughtful in the way it approaches doing so. For one thing, I don't think the in-story objectification should be equal opportunity (because that's not how things work in real life), but maybe the extra-diegetic objectification needs to be more equal opportunity, or (better yet) the camera's perspective itself needs to be better problematized as part of the patriarchal system which enables the Dollhouse itself, or whatever. I stick to my (old hat, by now) position that it is not sexual objectification itself which is an intrinsic evil so much as the way it is used to support gendered patterns of oppression.
I don't think the show is shying away from the fact that what it depicts is rape (or at least prostitution--and I think real-world sex work often blurs the boundaries in a similar way, so I think the dubiousness of Caroline's consent is a good example of the show getting it right), even if all the characters don't always seem to recognize this. (Indeed, compared to "A Modest Proposal," Watchmen[?], and Nineteen Eighty-Four, it completely insults our intelligence by giving us a protagonist that we can sympathize with, Ballard, to say what needs to be said about the Dollhouse's evil.) Furthermore, it makes a point of showing that sexual violence as "contextualized as mass gender oppression" (to quote Marcotte, here). I know that some people are afraid that sexual violence can end up being normalized in this way, and that's a reasonable concern (is there a way to empirically test this?), but I don't think that the show is being overly-subtle that rape and/or coerced sex work is a bad thing.
Because of this, although I'm assuming with everyone else there's going to be a pay-off, I don't think there's a rush for it to happen soon. There'll be a place in Dollhouse for the feminist empowerment fantasy to assert itself, but for right now I think there's a value in exploring the gritty reality through a satiric lens.
A slightly different question than whether Dollhouse succeeds in its satire (the answer to which, I guess, would be different for every viewer), is whether the subject is serving the satire or the satire is serving the subject. Does Dollhouse show women being objectified to make a feminist point, or is the feminist point just an excuse to get away with showing women being objectified? This is what troubled me with Empowered (quoting from my LibraryThing review again):
I tend to forgive a lot if it's done self-consciously, but I'm not sure if this work's ironic stance is even enough to make up for the fact that, fundamentally, it's about half-naked women getting tied up so that boys and men (and queer women, of course, but I don't get the feeling they really make up the intended audience) can, ahem, enjoy the art. In many ways, this is the epitome of the comic written especially for the fanboys.I always think of the Jacobean play The Changeling when I think of these issues: the female character is punished with death by the end of the play for having a backbone, but the real draw of the play is the thrill of the treachery, intrigue, adultery, and murder leading up to that point; the moralistic coda is simply an excuse to have the blood and sex and still feel sanctimonious at the end. No, not simply--it probably speaks to some deeper ambiguity in the Jacobean moral code; I suspect audiences were thrilled by Beatrice-Joanna's show of autonomy and took a misogynistic relish in her downfall. Don Juan might be a better example of a play where the coda seems almost completely insincere. And, just so we have the entire spectrum fleshed out, Everyman might be an example of a morality play which is too sincere for its own good.
On this spectrum, I think Dollhouse falls somewhere near The Changeling, which honestly I think is a good place to be. (Don Juan is a better play than The Changeling, but that's just because Moliere was a better writer.) It allows for an ambiguity and ambivalence which isn't possible at the extreme ends of the spectrum. And insofar as people (men) find the fantasy that the Dollhouse is selling (and that Dollhouse at once is and is not selling) attractive, I think it's better to face that fact, and then problematize it, then pretend it has no allure.