Brief thoughts on the moral messages I got from Dollhouse

[sqbr]

WARNING: Show is very tiggery, my thoughts on it may be also.

Rape/slavery/sex slavery is sexy. And women enjoy it. And want it.

...but it's still wrong. Because.. it it just is.

Also, all women are whores. Yes, all of them.

But they can't help it. A nice man should come save them from themselves! Or maybe he shouldn't.

See also It depends on what you pay, which is much creepier now I've seen more than the first 2 episodes (I got stuck on episode 3 because it is simply bad, rather than "Has potential which is mostly wasted in skeeviness" like the rest of the show) and Working in the Dollhouse.

Comments

[softestbullet]

AGH I HATE DOLLHOUSE AAHGHHG *RAGE*

But I still read angry meta about it so I don't forget how much Joss Whedon has disappointed us. Ugh. Those morals sound about right.

See also It depends on what you pay, which is much creepier now I've seen more than the first 2 episodes

...Even creepier? I only put myself through the first episode. That vid gets worse? DD:

[havocthecat]

Much worse, sadly. Er, I haven't seen. But I've read lots of spoilers.

[softestbullet]

I've read spoilers too, but I think I've suppressed my memory of the details.

[sqbr]

Yes, once you know the context for the clips, it gets worse :(

[softestbullet]

:(

[ex_pippin880]

Have you read the FerretBrain articles on it?

[sqbr]

*googles*

I have now! I really like the idea of "A very specific level of evil", and it totally applies.

[sanguinity]

Starting around episode... six? There's narrative continuity stuff that kept me watching through the end of the season, but YES, the show is all about pretty, sexy rape, with victims who are utterly helpless to resist, and who gave blanket consent years ago anyhow, so no biggie. The cumulative effect of the show wasn't good for me, either, because I was getting VERY twitchy by season end about anything anywhere that was a justification/prettification/denial of rape, and frankly, living in this society, I get hit with that too much to have a TV show use up all my buffer-space.

BTW, the few episodes where the victims do resist? Where the rape is acknowledged as rape? ARE EVEN WORSE. Most of the time the show ignores that all this is rape, but the few times they don't ignore it made me long for them to go back to them ignoring it.

[sqbr]

Yes, I finished the show and the plot did pick up considerably, and I managed to enjoy some of the clever ideas etc despite the ickiness. But ohh..was it icky.

[rainbow]

I've got friends who raved about how wonderful it was, but the idea of the series made me shudder and I've never seen it (nor will I).

[sqbr]

Bits of it are pretty good, there's some cool playing around with the nature of self. But for me at least this is far outweighed by the icky bad wrongness.

[attentive]

You know, I think these messages must be even more obvious in Dollhouse - which I will never watch - but "hot women under control" has been an obvious theme of Whedon's work since I heard of him.

If Whedon's female characters aren't explicitly degraded and loving it, or explicitly under the control of a third party who forces them to act against their will, they're often subject to a nebulous writer-controlled impulse or seizure syndrome which causes them to "act hot" (see vampire Willow, and the triggerable assassin girl in Serenity).

If Whedon was allowed to film his fantasy I think it'd consist of him in a Giles outfit carrying around a remote control that let him turn all women into his robotic servants, and in his fantasy they'd also be conscious, and secretly loving being under his control.

I really do find his work quite repellent.

[sqbr]

Yeah, it didn't really strike me until I watched a few episodes of Dollhouse, but in retrospect "Hot women who kick ass but have no control over their own power" is definitely a theme in his work. I was even inspired as a result to semi-run a Swancon panel on the fetishisation of "strong" women, though I was half asleep so don't remember what anyone said :)

I still like some of his stuff, but he's definitely lost the benefit of the doubt from me: if something of his looks crap/sexist etc, I will assume that it is, in fact, crap, and not waste any more of my time on it.

[ex_pippin880]

If I have images off on my rlist, the title for this entry reads "Brief thoughts on the moral messages I got sqbr". :D

[sqbr]

Well just in case you didn't get it from context: I do not in fact want you going away with the message that all women are whores :)