ARGH DOLLHOUSE

[sqbr]

BEING FORCED INTO SEX SLAVERY IS NOT BETTER THAN BEING SCHIZOPHRENIC
GOING BACK INTO SAID SEX SLAVERY IS NOT BETTER THAN REMEMBERING YOU KILLED A GUY (no not even if you have a vaguely remembered boyfriend in the bordello)

I just ARGH. Why can't I quit you Dollhouse? I mean Supernatural has the straighforward moral women are sexy evil demon sluts. And you know, I'm not a fan of that moral, but I can keep it in mind and wait to watch the show until I'm in a mood to put up with it.

But Dollhouse, Dollhouse says "I have a moral! That moral is that rape is.." and then I sit there going "..bad?" and sometimes yes! The answer is that rape is bad. But sometimes, the moral is that rape is sexy! Or better than being crazy! Or ok as long as you don't remember it and are happy at the end! And..just..ARGH.

And seriously. Schizophrenics are people! With feelings! Who are able to give consent, or not! Warching Batman: Arkham Ayslum over Cam's shoulder has not helped me deal with my constant burning rage at the inability of popular culture to realise that mentally ill people are people. But I went in expecting for this episode to make me angry and it was even worse.

See also Dollhouse 2x04 by coffeeandink.

Less capslockuy thoughts now I'm feeling vented:
Boyd is irritatingly muddled. He was interestingly ambiguous at the start, but I am begining to feel the writers just have him take whatever tack suits the plot. Better than Ballard though, who wasn't there, yay. I miss Saunders :(
Lol at Adele taking a moral stand. I always find those scenes so bizarre, like in her head she's on some different show where she's a halfway decent person.
Topher's growth is more interesting since he went from "I don't care" to "Wtf am I doing??" which makes some sense. I must admit I ship the creepy wrongness of Adele/Topher, but not in a romantic/sexy way. They're just..interesting to watch drag each other down to the murky bottom.
Eh, Mary Sue super Echo. Kind of interesting, kind of not.

But mostly: ARGH. A person does not become broken! No! Bad! Argh!

Comments

[dingsi]

Yeah, I... mostly I read other people's entries who pointed out the flaws and the fucked-up-ness of it all and then I stared blankly at the screen with a "The show did WHAT?!" expression. From the start I've been reluctant to watch Dollhouse because (I suppose) I didn't trust the writers to not write creepy, no-good, male-gaze-pandering, possibly triggering stuff. And, uh, this. Does not help with the mistrust.

Seriously, the show did WHAT. D:

[sqbr]

DO NOT TRUST THIS SHOW. Do not trust this show as far as you can throw it (and by "it" I mean the entire production cast and all the sets, and by you I mean me, because I am small and weak and not very good at throwing things and for all I know you are a champion discus thrower or something)

Talking about the goddamn Batman

[gretel]

You know, given Batman is mostly all about mental illness and inability to cope (particularly when facing off against the Joker and TwoFace)... I'm really not sure you should read or watch anymore of it. :P

And this is from someone that loves Batman, though I don't know if you mean the game or the GN or a movie or what.

Re: Talking about the goddamn Batman

[sqbr]

I can deal with it most of the time, it's just the stuff that's set entirely inside a mental asylum that heavily emphasises the mentally ill people=bad guys thing that gets to me (this was the game, but I didn't get very far into the graphic novel. Though as I recall the unnecessary unpleasantness got to me before anything else)

Re: Talking about the goddamn Batman

[gretel]

I really liked Arkham Asylum the graphic novel, though admittedly I can't remember all that much of it now.

I think it helps to remember that the asylum is usually set as being for the criminally insane, not just the mentally ill, if that makes sense. I have more to say about it, now that I'm thinking about it, but I will reread the novel first to make sure my point is actually correct (so this will probably have to wait awhile, I don't own it).

Re: Talking about the goddamn Batman

[sqbr]

Oh, and that makes a big difference, but you still have a "crazy dangerous freaks" vs "nice safe sane people" dichotomy (with the constant ambiguity about which group Batman is in :)) I do like that most of the goons in the game are non-mentally-ill criminals the joker brought in especially, that cuts down on it a bit, but there still aren't any non-evil mentally ill people (as far as I know?). I mean afaict most criminally insane people are not evil masterminds trying to destroy the city, you know?

Re: Talking about the goddamn Batman

[gretel]

Ohhhhhh this got LONG.

Batman is not sane. That's why he has so many fights against mentally ill, he is mentally ill himself. That was the entire point of The Killing Joke. There is no ambiguity about which group he is in, at least in modern comics (yay, Frank Miller :/).

Two Face spent a year looking after Gotham City for Batman and co in One Year Later (as far as I remember), helped out in No Man's Land, and is a good guy a fair chunk of the time. The Riddler is currently a detective good(ish) guy, from memory.

The Question (the first at least) was definitely a little mentally troubled (haven't read his story though) and most definitely a good guy. I don't know what the deal with Renee currently is, other than feeding the 'let's have a superhero Batwoman can get it on with! Comic readers like lesbians, right!'*

Chris and I have just had a massive argument over what field Catwoman belongs too. I mean sometimes she's good, sometimes she's evil, sometimes she's shown as mentally ill (eg Batman Returns) sometimes she's shown as quite stable (the Catwomen comic series).

The thing I liked about the GN if I remember it correctly was Batman while being given the tour of Arkham Asylum being absolutely horrified at the treatment. Even helping TwoFace knowing he would become 'evil' again.

My point, it can be taken that Batman comics tend not just to be a simple dichotomy, depending on the writer of course. There's a lot of pretty dreadful writers for DC... but the sheer amount of Batman media means you can't make any judgement on just one isolated piece. So yeah. I think your argument is pretty poor and just a little lazy.

Sorry. I've spent most of today chewing out some college chick about her lazy approach to a survey and analysis of the WiF stuff for a research project. So I'm a little harsh about lazy assumptions in research today. She was making me angry :P

Also, afaict making criminals mentally ill, is more about making it easy to make them sympathetic (I can't think of any evil genius/bad guy that isn't a madman), so having a good guy mentally ill could be argued to be an improvement.

I should point out that none of the above makes Batman any of a less disturbing comic to be interested/analyse. And it doesn't always work, but it doesn't always fail.

*Not that I'm bitter.

Re: Talking about the goddamn Batman

[sqbr]

I make no claims to understanding general Batman continuity, so shall not argue with you on that point. Certainly I didn't get dodgy anti-mentally-ill subtext from every Batman work I've consumed.

I was kind of figuring out what I meant while I was typing, and still haven't entirely. Basically: the game rubs me the wrong way for reasons I can't quite articulate.

[tree]

I must admit I ship the creepy wrongness of Adele/Topher

oh hells yeah.

and apart from everything else, no more aisha hines now that stupid mulder wannabe isn't in the fbi anymore.

but Enver Gjokaj is a brilliant actor and needs his own show, stat.

[sqbr]

That's true, I liked her. She was a woman, yet in no way a prostitute! No surprise she had to go I guess. *waits for Alexis Denisof's character's wife to turn out to be a doll or die or both*

&hearts Enver Gjokaj

It annoys me we they totally gloss over the "he is a male prostitute and thus presumably has sex with men" thing, though. Shows the gaze they're aiming at.

[elaran]

mmm i read the premise of dollhouse and went "nope, no interest. i don't care how awesome it's meant to be but even i can't really stomach something like that"

Re: Talking about the goddamn Batman

[sqbr]

Good plan.

[ex_pippin880]

You've become so self-deprecating, hee hee.

[sanguinity]

Having now caught up: yes. I... am kinda without words. I got to the credits, and my brain had just... given up. The frame of reference had gotten so screwy that... I just kinda waved my hands for a little while, wordless, and then shut it down and walked away.

Whedon keeps talking about this show as if it's about moral issues, but the only moral frame of reference that makes any sense at all is if you read this as men discussing with each other the incredibly perplexing question of how to be against rape. Then all the murky weird false confusion and non-dilemmas kinda make sense. Kinda. But only in that "our frame of reference is so fucked we can't even figure out what the right question is" sort of way.

[sqbr]

Yes! It's like "This is not a complex moral dilemma! How is it even a question?"