Regarding my last post
I had several comments about my last post. They were largely along a similar line. It’s a line I’ve heard before. Essentially, people are bothered by what they see as an anti-feminist message where women are portrayed as blank slates that can, or perhaps need to be, programmed to do various kinds of dangerous or skeevy things. This is precisely what I was talking about when I said that I see Joss Whedon doing things here that other people don’t seem to be seeing. I would say Dollhouse is every bit as subversive of those notions as Buffy was subversive of the notion of the helpless blonde cheerleader who either falls victim to the scary forces in the world or who needs a man to save her. Every bit as subversive. It’s not as over the top. It’s far more subtle. It should be. Thanks to Joss Whedon and a lot of other folks, the TV viewing audience (or at least the right segments of it) are a lot more sophisticated than it was a dozen years ago. The thing about Dollhouse–the problem with Dollhouse from a marketing perspective–is that it doesn’t give away its secrets in the first episode or two. We’re used to getting the hook for a show early and then seeing how it builds over time. I think it’ll take a full season to even get the hook for this thing, though I’m feeling out more and more bits of it over time. What you may have seen as the gimmick behind this show as revealed in the first episode or two isn’t the gimmick behind this show.
If you’ve only seen an episode or two of this show, decided that you knew what it was about, and then quit watching on the grounds listed above, you should reconsider. This is a darker show than what he’s done before. That’s for sure. Whedon himself has said that the premise makes him uncomfortable and, therefore, he’s not surprised when it makes other people uncomfortable.
