alixtii | Episode Reactions in Brief

I was highly metamused when Keith Carradine disappeared from Dexter only to show up on Dollhouse...and then in the same episode, in the last ten minutes, Dollhouse turned into Dexter.

So, do you think that Adele really saw a moral distinction between taking a crazy person and making them a sex-robot, and turning a sane person crazy for the purpose of making them a sex-robot? Or was she just reacting to Keith Carradine's power play? If there was a distinction in her mind (because to me there's really not -- the first one is already so horrible that I don't think there's a line left to cross -- what do you think it was based on? I have a theory but I'm curious what yours is.

Between this ep and "Epitaph One," I really can't read Adelle as having anything other than an ironclad set of ethics . . . which just happens to be a bit looser than most people's. So yeah, I really think she does. That much as an extrapolation of her character seems to me pretty certain. (Also, I just plain prefer that interpretation: I think right-angles-morality Adelle is much more interesting than amoral Adelle).

If the task is to try and construct an ethic by which the one action is okay but the other isn't (and I do think the latter is worse and not morally equivalent at all even if I think both are too morally problematic to undertake), then we're on much less firm ground: well, then, Topher got as much consent from Priya as, to his and to his Adelle's knowledge at that point, she was able to give, and would ever be able to give (at least without a level of intervention that only Topher would be able to provide?). Insane!Priya was who Priya was.

While you and I would not consider that sufficient to justify making her an active (although it seems to me there are plenty of Dollhouse watchers who don't seem to think any set of circumstances would be sufficient to allow one to consent to becoming an Active--obviously not a perspective shared by Topher or Adelle), it is something--and the fact remains that while Priya's ability to consent is problematized, this too diminishes Priya's ability to refuse treatment; the only way that Adelle and Topher can provide her with what they truly believe is something she would rationally want is to take insane!Priya's yes as a yes. Insane!Priya is who Priya is.

Whereas Nolan's fundamental eradication of her ability to consent--well, as I said, while I don't think the choice Adelle and Topher made is okay, it's intuitively obvious to me that what Nolan did was infinitely worse, so I'm not sure how good I'll be at articulating the argument to someone who doesn't share that intuition. But Nolan knows that there's an accessible sane!Priya available if he simply stops her medication, and thus that insane!Priya is a diminishment of her mind's default state. He's actively taking away her ability to consent, which is unequivocally a case of rape. To me, what he did was a deep betrayal of Priya's personhood, and thus the worst kind of moral evil, and what Topher and Adelle did wasn't despite still being very morally dicey.

Whereas Adelle's use of Victor isn't, or at least isn't any more so than any use of an Active is--it's simply stealing company property--which made the Rossum representative bringing it up seem deeply weird. Being willing to steal but not be an accomplice to rape doesn't strike me as a particularly incoherent set of values--especially since Adelle has to be okay with theft since part of her job is turning Actives into thieves. It makes me wonder what she has done in her past, especially since I was surprised that Adelle gave into Rossum so easily (when we know from "Epitaph One" that she eventually turns against them for similar reasons, although then it was on a greater scale and here it's just one Active); I would have expected her to much more actively conspire with Topher and/or Boyd.

Which reminds me that I thought Nolan's comment that he never imagined acting out a scenario in which Sierra resisted as deeply odd since he had to know that Adelle would never have authorized such an engagement without extraordinary pressure (of the sort shown in this episode) applied.

It's possible I don't understand what Topher is supposed to have done to Priya. He was acting as though he had cured her schizophrenia, but then, how does that lead to her being a doll?

I'm not quite sure where the episode implied Topher did anything at all to Priya, although of course he would have had to have made sure that Sierra wasn't suffering from Priya's affliction.

So from what I can tell, they were just going to use a crazy girl's doll as a body forever, and keep the 'real' Priya in a box. That's less like rape and more like murder.

As I was watching the episode, I assumed they were planning to do something at the end of five years--although I can't really say what I was thinking they would do at the end of it.

If Topher can make it so that Sierra doesn't suffer from paranoia (which we don't really know that he can, since Priya didn't really), then he should be able to manufacture a paranoia-less facsimile of Priya (whether that would "really" be Priya could be up for debate), I think.

Agreed that forever keeping Priya in a box would be murder, at least under the assumption that the Dollhouse works the way it's supposed to (which of course it doesn't, but Topher and Adelle don't know that).

I wasn't sure if he was only able to 'fix' her after realizing that the original brainscan was manufactured. But anyway, if he could have cured her in five years, why not cure her as soon as she came in and then get her consent? Adele refers to her before Topher even meets her as 'the new Sierra.' So basically she was totally okay with abducting a mental patient, keeping her mind in a box for an indefinite period of time, and renting out her body to anybody who wanted it. How, in Adele's eyes, is that justifiable, but what Sierra's stalker did isn't? (My theory on it is that, to Adele, exploiting people for science is justifiable, but exploiting people for your own pleasure/gain is reprehensible. So that's why I think the comment about her use of Victor hit a mark with her -- she genuinely feels guilty about using the Dollhouse to enjoy herself.)

I don't think Adelle and Topher see curing Priya and having her be an Active as separate actions; things have prices and actions have consequences--that's Adelle's creed, after all. Although I suppose there'd be the option of curing her, asking her, and then replacing the original, paranoid imprint if she doesn't consent. (Clearly, that's not what happened.) But they might view that as a waste of resources if Topher has to devote time and effort to something not guaranteed to result in a new Active.

And I suppose that the last possibility is that Adelle just doesn't see insane!Priya as a person, anymore than she sees Sierra as a person. Although at some point ("Epitaph One," probably) I remember Adelle invoking talk of souls, and if souls exist it'd be hard to claim the insane don't have them.

Because mentally ill people aren't people and can be used however we want to use them? In other circumstances it's seemed like Adelle put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the actives give consent -- even if the consent is very dubious at times. (Topher, truly, probably doesn't care). I'm just trying to figure out why Adelle's behavior is different here, and whether that's deliberate or an oversight on the part of the show.

Because mentally ill people aren't people and can be used however we want to use them

It's an abhorrent world view, but it doesn't strike me as obviously incoherent. But I agree that as an explanation, it still doesn't feel to fit Adelle very well. It seems much more likely that she sees insane!Priya as having given sufficient consent prior to understanding how that consent was coerced.

Although, of course, it's not the actives who give consent.

I don't understand what you mean by that.

Adelle isn't interested in the least in what Sierra wants; indeed, if she realized the degree to which Sierra can experience want she'd send the doll to the Attic. Neither does she care about the desires of the imprinted personalities, for that matter (except that being in distress seems to endanger the dolls in some way). (Nobody consulted Melly about giving Madeleine her body back.) The only people whose consent Adelle is interested in procuring are the personalities who match up with the "soul" of the body, so to speak.

I do think there'd be some question as to whether, if Topher imprinted a truly mentally ill Priya with a manufactured version of herself sans that illness, whether that personality would count as an ensouled person are just be equivalent to another imprint. That'd be on top of the question of how meaningful consent could be when gotten out of an imprint that was, in part, manufactured by Topher in the first place.

It's possible, but not likely, that Adelle could see Priya's illness as a diminishment of her soulfullness.

But again, I think the main reason why asking cured!Priya for consent never occurs to Adelle and Topher is because they firmly see curing her and her becoming a doll as a single act. So the question becomes, is insane!Priya able to consent to her cure (with her becoming a doll a necessary result of being cured). If not, then she's condemned to being insane forever, as far as Adelle and Topher know. So they might see that, in that backwards morality sort of way of theirs, as a humanitarian imperative to loosen the rules somewhat.

All right, you're using 'active' to refer to the quasi-blank personality that replaces the original personality. I wasn't sure about your terminology.

Otherwise, I'm not sure we're getting anywhere. I'm sticking with my original, "Adelle thinks stalker's behavior is worse than hers because he's getting something out of it." And maybe also because he conned her into doing something to Priya that she wouldn't have done to a healthy person, and Adelle doesn't like being conned. But as far as turning someone into an active without their consent, the actions are identical.

Well, the discussion was never about what the actions are--only what Adelle could plausibly perceive them to be without being wildly out of whack with reality. I'm not really up to discussing what any of the actions in Dollhouse really are in themselves--I end up trying to check my own privilege so much that I end up dizzy second-guessing myself.

Okay. . .

I really can't fathom how your own privilege could have anything to do with how you perceive the act of forcing a mentally ill woman's body into sexual slavery, but I guess I'm not intellectual enough.

Well, I think that's one of the ways--my privilege allows me to view it dispassionately as a philosophical problem in the abstract, and lose track of what's important and visceral, so that I get caught up in strange hypotheticals and lose track of the reality of women's bodies at stake if I'm not constantly checking myself (and even if I am, I'm not always doing a good enough job).

If you think that privilege checking requires you to refrain from making any kind of moral evaluation of a situation involving bad things happening women -- well, that's certainly your prerogative.

Well, things don't happen in a vacuum. You're female and I'm male. You're more upset than I am by what you saw in the episode. I can either assume you're being hysterical and overly emotional, or I re-examine my premises and figure out what I'm missing.

So no, I wouldn't say it requires me to refrain from making any kind of moral evaluation (nobody gets off that easy)--but like I said before, it does lead me to second-guess myself (which is extra work that isn't anybody responsibility but my own), and I don't think that's a bad thing.

And while I'm uncertain, it makes sense to me I shouldn't invest too much energy into a position that I might eventually decide to be anti-feminist.

I feel like you're using this privilege babble to avoid responding to what I'm talking about, honestly.

I have to admit that I feel like I have lost track of what you're talking about, ever since the conversation left discussing what Adelle's thought processes were.

Yeah, Alix, this is my fault.

I was afraid I ended up sounding like that.

I'm perfectly willing to accept responsibility for not understanding.

And you're really still not trying to understand what you're saying, you're still talking about yourself.

Episode Reactions in Brief

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