Meta: This Isn't My Feminist Hat

[chasingtides]

I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves. ~Mary Wollstonecraft

To me, "sexual freedom" means freedom from having to have sex. ~Lily Tomlin

Sexism is a social disease. ~Author Unknown

If you don't watch Dollhouse, please read this, so you can see what's on TV. If you do watch Dollhouse, please read this so that you can share your thoughts.

I'm going to make myself hugely unpopular with both my real life friends and a lot of people on my flist by making this post, but I'm also going to stand by everything I'm saying here. I also think it really, truly, honestly needs to be said. And I'm pondering how to put it into a letter to the FOX network.

I hate Dollhouse and think it's a terrible show in a moral sense. I might throw a mini-party if it went off air this season.

I will be upfront and honest: I have only seen four out of seven episodes: 1,2,3, and 7. I only half watched episode seven this past Friday because I was focusing on other things. I have, however, given a great deal of attention to the first three episodes and cannot bring myself to watch further ones.

I admit, I come to this show with issues with Joss Whedon. I do not see him as the great feminist liberator that many do. I remember being a teenager watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my brother and father. My father made a point about talking to me about what we saw as the mixed messages toward women in the show. I am in the Firefly fandom, but I also have issues with both Firefly and Serenity. I have issues with Dr. Horrible. I was prepared to have issues with Dollhouse. I was not prepared for the length nor the breadth.

I suppose a primary issue I should get out of the way is that I think Dollhouse fetishizes rape. These women, as far as I can tell, are not consenting partners. They are, instead, "programmed" to be agreeable to sex. While I am sure that devoted fans will disagree with me, I cannot see this as all that different from slipping a girl a mickey so she won't say no. It's the same principle. You guarantee that she won't say no and she doesn't have a choice. It's magical. And it's rape.

I admit that it is personal to me. One of the times I was assaulted, I had been drinking with my assaulter. It was a college party. I was told - by him, by some friends, by classmates - that I must have said yes. It is part of our culture.

Beyond the rape issue - which isn't something I am going to drop, isn't something that will stop bothering me, doesn't appear to be something that will go away - is the treatment of the women in the episode. It's part and parcel with the rape issue. In the second episode, Adelle says, to the client, "Everything you want, everything you need, she will be, honestly and completely," and Boyd says, "She's not a girl. She's not even a person. She's just an empty hat until you stuff a rabbit in it."

Women as objects isn't a new issue in our culture. It's really part of Feminism 101. It does bother me a great deal that there is a show about making women objects. We see Echo as Caroline when she's a person. And then, magically, the Dollhouse turns her into Echo and makes her an object. In the first episode, we see through Sierra that it is pain and suffering that turn them from women to object. Suddenly, they aren't people. They are "dolls."

It is ironic that in the show, they are called Actives. The "dolls" are anything but active. They are the passive-woman. They aren't even that. They are the objects acted upon. It is the men - it is Boyd and Laurence Dominic and Topher who act. They control and design, along with the always male clients.

There is also the issue of the fact that the "dolls" are repeatedly and regularly compared to children. In the second episode, Adelle tells a client, ""In their resting state, our actives are as innocent and vulnerable as children." This concept is fairly regular. What does it mean that the women are somehow children? What does it mean that the clients are paying to have sex with people who can't consent - children?

The clients themselves and how they are portrayed bother me. It is considered and presented as normal and acceptable for a man to "order" a woman to be his sex toy, his "perfect woman," his magical ideal. As the tagline for the show says, "They can be anyone you want..." They are at the whim of the always-male client - they never have choices of their own; their desires and consent and will do not matter. The psyche and problems of the "dolls" does not appear to be a problem or an issue for those who run the Dollhouse.

In the first episode, Echo first is having a wild sex weekend with a client. (Again, prostitute without the hope of consent, in my book.) Then, her second imprint includes the memories of a women who was kidnapped and raped as a child. This... combining these two? In a series premiere? It's sickening and bothersome. It doesn't even occur to the people running the Dollhouse that it could be problematic for a woman to have such memories. Nothing indicates that this will happen - which can be seriously problematic for viewers.

The second episode, if anything, was worse. Echo is bought by a client who after taking her out into the woods and sexing her up, decides to hunt her down like a game animal. She is literally hunted by her lover who appears to be either a serial killer or mass murderer. He laughs at her and tells she needs to prove that she's worthy to live. She experiences, quite literally, flashbacks to a time when another "doll" - this one male - went on a mass killing rampage in the Dollhouse, leaving Echo surrounded by the bloodied bodies of her fellows.

The third episode is where I drew my line. I can't move on from that - I can't force myself to watch more of this show. It didn't get better. It got worse.

Here, Echo is bought by a man to be a friend and bodyguard to a female singer, Raina. The fetishization of stalking bothered me a lot here. It's really problematic and deeply creepy. It also bothers me that everyone was happy when Sierra, a "doll" played by Dichen Lachman, an actress of Tibetan descent, was kidnapped by the murderous stalker.

But what bothered me more was the treatment of Raina. Raina expressed clear suicidal thoughts. She wanted to die. She said that everyone would be happier if she died. She says, ""I don't exist. I'm not a real person... Can't feel anything for a long while, but I know he's out there, the Reaper, any minute now, boom, freedom, there's your rush, there's your joy. I can hear it, I can hear myself."

And Echo's reply is this: "I think hear yourself just fine. Maybe you want to listen to someone else, like, say, ever. You don't like your life so change it... You know the last think I ever thought you'd be was weak."

Later, Adelle says, "And by quite literally dangling the threat of death in front of her, she prevented Raina from ever being a danger to herself in the future."

Whoa. Full stop.

Mental illness - suicidal thoughts, feelings of depersonalisation, complete lack of feeling, these are prime symptoms of mental illness - is a weakness on the part of the patient? The way to cure suicidal thoughts is to pretend to try to kill the patient?

Yeah. I don't need to put up with that. Near rape and fetishisation and objectification and blatant and powerful prejudice against the mentally ill? Fuck that. I'll go find random porn sites on the internet and I'll feel better about the state of feminism.

I feel dirty watching this. I want to scrub myself down. This is no feminism. This is no equality. This is gross. This is hurtful. This is wrong. This should come with warning labels.

Comments

[glorify.livejournal.com]

jw, what was your problem with Dr Horrible?

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Action was in the male sphere while Penny is the passive and acted upon female who does laundry and dies.

It was funny. I watched it and enjoyed it. I also had issues with it.

[siyahsaclikiz.livejournal.com]

I adored NPH in it, and I did enjoy it quite a bit as well - but yeah. So much male oriented action, and such a passive female lead. If it weren't for that, it would have been a definite favorite.

[darkelegies.livejournal.com]

This show sounds awful. I hadn't heard of it before. Ugh.

[skye-princess.livejournal.com]

Thank you for giving me even more reasons not to watch this show. It's hard to believe that Joss Whedon, the creator of shows like "Buffy" and "Firefly", would create something as horrible as this. As I was reading this, I found myself thinking of parallels to the movie "The Stepford Wives" - the idea of actually creating a robotic "perfect" wife. *shudder* If you need help drafting a letter to Fox Network or would like some other signatures - a petition, say - to help encourage to not keep this show on the air, let me know. I'll be glad to help.

Just wondering, what made you continue to watch "Dollhouse" after the horror of the premiere?

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Everyone - and I really mean everyone - was telling me how wonderful it is. Everyone was telling me how I need to watch it, how I need to see how awesome it was, how it's great that Joss Whedon has another show on TV.

I might try to tap you to help with looking over a letter to the network, if you didn't mind?

[skye-princess.livejournal.com]

Nope, I don't mind. You can just e-mail it to me, and I can read it over. I think a petition would also help as well. Seeing the signatures of actual people might help send a clear message, along with the letter, that this show needs to get off the air ASAP.

Everyone - and I really mean everyone - was telling me how wonderful it is. Everyone was telling me how I need to watch it, how I need to see how awesome it was, how it's great that Joss Whedon has another show on TV.

I'm so sorry you were disappointed.

creepiest show I've ever watched

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

I watch the show, and I agree with your points to some extent, although I'm hoping that these plot points are intended to be disturbing rather than sensational, to make viewers question the ethics of The Dollhouse. Some of what you've mentioned are triggers for rape survivors, and I feel that there should have been a warning label for the first episode, much like "24" mentions graphic violence. As a survivor, I felt pretty raw after watching certain scenes because they were very familiar. Yet, I do like the show; I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt that all of this is leading up to Boyd seeing the actives as real people, and Echo breaking everyone out after she begins to piece together the fragments of her personae. I was upset about the way the actives are treated, and I desperately hoped that Whedon was trying to make viewers feel outrage over what happened. I've been patient. Then I watched episode 6, and [without spoiling it for you] I was pleased to see that some of the issues of power, subjugation, and ethics were touched upon, although I would like to see this explored further. I will say one thing, though: I was not satisfied with the Dollhouse's handling of the situation. When you see the episode, you will know exactly why this bothers me. Suppressing memories and feelings does not make the problem go away, and I know this from experience. It's why years after I was raped, I began exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Left untreated, this led to suicidal thoughts.

Which brings me to the next item of discussion:

Regarding Raina, I was disgusted by the message this sent to viewers. She came off like an attention whore and not a person in so much pain that she cannot think of a way out. I can't tell you how many times people have tried the scare tactics, and it doesn't end pretty. If someone is suicidal, they need professional help. Pointing out reasons to live or scaring them is not going to dissuade them if their mind is set on it. It merely delays the attempt. They will just find another way and another day to do it. If the show were to follow-up continuity and state that Raina had admitted herself to a mental hospital for observation after this event, I think it would sit better with me.

Re: creepiest show I've ever watched

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I feel like... It is possible to write a show that would deal with this and show how horrible it is.

However, when we've got exactly one character - Paul Ballard - who is anti-Dollhouse and he is routinely mocked and made fun of and told that what he does is pointless. And even he doesn't ever deal with the absolute horror of what the Dollhouse is doing, turning people into objects.

Re: creepiest show I've ever watched

[oregano42.livejournal.com]

This.
And for some reason, maybe how they treated the end, I got that Raina was not actually suicidal, but more attracted to the idea of having the power over her own death via a fan- since she's always had to do what the fans demand of her etc. etc. with the whole "trapped" speech (and possibly the stardom translating to perceived immortality). Thus, when she was faced with death, she realized that she was not immortal and just a person, emotionally unbalanced albeit. There were a lot of mixed messages with dialogue vs. action in that episode so I just decided to read it in a way that made some form of sense.
Mostly, though, I just keep waiting for Dollhouse to get better and less clumsy, and it's not really doing it.

[erda-3.livejournal.com]

I really dislike the show also. I kept watching (kind of watching, as it was so sickening at times that I wasn't paying very close attention)in hopes that it might go somewhere interesting, and during ep 6 I thought it did, but then 7 was so bad again, that I decided not to waste any more attention on this show. I get that supposedly Joss is trying to make some kind of statement about how wrong this all is, but, imho, he isn't getting that across at all. And that episode about the singer, omg, that made me so angry.

[siyahsaclikiz.livejournal.com]

Re: most issues of rape, I think we're meant to be disgusted by it. Dollhouse is an illegal and evil institution, after all, and we're told that it is more or less in the exact words. I do doubt that I would be able to comfortably watch it, or watch it at all, though, if I were a rape survivor myself. However, I did have huge issues with this: It doesn't even occur to the people running the Dollhouse that it could be problematic for a woman to have such memories.

(Btw, I had no idea - I admit that it is personal to me. One of the times I was assaulted, I had been drinking with my assaulter. It was a college party. I was told - by him, by some friends, by classmates - that I must have said yes. happened at college. I'm so sorry I couldn't be/wasn't there for you during the time. *hugs*

The episode with Raina, however, was really, truly bad. For all the reasons you cited. No redeeming qualities whatsoever.

I'm only watching for Tahmoh Penikett, because of my eternal love for BSG and anyone associated with it. If it weren't for him, I definitely would have stopped watching. One thing I actually like about the show is: the actress playing Mellie is not a size two, has actual hips, and still has the part of a gorgeous woman on TV. I mean, she really is gorgeous, but it is rare to find women who are larger than the "ideal size" playing these kind of roles.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

It doesn't even occur to the people running the Dollhouse that it could be problematic for a woman to have such memories.

It wasn't an issue until it became a problem with the engagement. And that's... problematic for me. The memories of such events? That is, to my eyes, essentially, for all intents and purposes, raping her. They're making her think she was raped - from the context within the episode, brutally, repeatedly - and I don't see a whole lot of difference between "making something think she was raped to the point of knowing and having what appear to be flashbacks" and "raping someone."

[siyahsaclikiz.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. (Rereading my comment, it's not too clear that I'm actually agreeing with you on that point. I totally am.)

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

To the one experiencing it, there can be no difference between the perception or memory of being raped and the physical act itself. Some people experience phantom pain long after the incident; even if the psyche suppresses the rape, the muscles may retain memory. Which is why so many survivors suffer from PTSD.

I know how traumatic flashbacks can be, especially when I'd blocked out the events at the time. To my knowledge, there was no alcohol or drugs involved; my mind just sort of shut down because I couldn't handle the shock of rape at the time. I couldn't reconcile the images of someone I'd trusted with the crime. It made reporting the incident difficult, since I did not know what to believe and could not accept that he'd intentionally hurt me. Later on, when bits and pieces of memory started to invade my dreams and waking moments, I was extremely confused and terrified of people touching me or coming within close proximity. I had nightmares, sleepwalked, and flinched whenever people raised their voices. I was hesitant to stand up for myself. I avoided large groups of people, even my family, because accidental skin contact was extremely painful. All without really knowing why I was reacting this way. I thought that I was going crazy, hallucinating. It wasn't until I started seeing a psychologist for post-partum depression that I was able to come to terms with what had happened to me and to make sense of my Swiss-cheesed, resurfaced memories.

So I say with heartfelt sincerity that I'd rather have these painful memories than to have them taken away and brushed under the carpet as if they never happened. They are MY memories and I do not ever want to doubt my sanity like that again.

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

About Mellie:
I really like the character. The actress is beautiful and plump. I hope to see more of her.

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

I know Whedon wanted to play with concepts of consent and all that, but I don't think he's the person to do it-- he doesn't seem, hmmm, self-aware enough. I mean, he is, don't get me wrong, but he also isn't. Of course, this show isn't his brainchild, really. Dushku wanted to do a show with him.

My problem is, it's supposed to be gross and disturbing or fetishizing but it's not. Dollhouse is sad and bland. I can't find myself getting bothered about it in any way other than the abstract-- I think about the themes and the poor handling of them, and then I can go "and that's bad" but in watching the show, it's just... bad as a TV show. It fails to make me think, it fails to make me angry, and it just falls flat on its face. This is a show that needs a really careful guiding hand, and Whedon's isn't the right one for it. Mainstream media isn't the proper venue, either.

The worst part is how Fox advertises a show about consent issues with half-naked, breathy Dushku being teasing.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I think you've actually hit the problem on the head.

It's "let's write a show that has issues with consent and show you just how totally hot it is." My issue isn't necessarily that characters within the show are fetishizing rape. It's that the show is fetishizing rape for the viewer. Sure, Echo can't consent, but in episode, she's so breatheless and sexy in her impossibly short skirt and thigh high lace stockings and high heels while she's getting kinky with her client.

(I myself enjoy wearing socks because I like socks. However, I am also full aware that for many people - most people? - wearing thigh high lacy socks and a skirt short enough that you can see bare skin is titillating. Adding the heels adds to the image.)

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

There's also that. Someone once said "how can you criticism voyeurism while being a voyeur?" which is exactly what the show is.

"There's a problem with you, viewer, being titillated by this. Now back to the scheduled titillation." It's a really hard line to walk because to show it as horrifying is preachy and misses the point, since we all know rape is bad, but Dollhouse falls on the other side pretty often. Sure, those of us who analyze can see it for the consent issues, but the average viewer? I doubt it. Honestly, I'm not sure it can be done even for a more discerning viewer, at least not in this context.

[morningwind.livejournal.com]

What you said. I don't need a "rape is bad, kids" sermon, but I'd hoped that the writers would do more to problematize the total lack of consent on the part of the dolls, and really grapple with these issues on more than a surface level. But the show loses me with its attempts to titillate the viewers with the very things which it ostensibly intends to be disturbing -- which are rightfully disturbing. I actually expected much better from Dollhouse, but then again, I'm not familiar with most of Whedon's work.

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

I'm not happy about the advertising, that the show fetishizes rape. This is exactly what has been bothering me. Thank you for putting it into words.

[rugbybaby.livejournal.com]

This is kind of why I'm glad I don't have the time for television, because I'd be watching Dollhouse. I heard it had gotten better, and I like the idea of looking at this obviously very twisted moral issue(s) and the evil whatever of supply and demand society. But from what I've seen so far, you have all of... two or three characters going 'wtf mate' about things, and two of them say it and stay involved anyway. If we're all for sending messages in this show, and particularly ones about consent, what does that say?

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

To my eyes, it says something along the lines of, "Oh, rape is the kind of thing that makes you vaguely uncomfortable, but it's not like it's wrong or anything."

[rugbybaby.livejournal.com]

And if you think something is wrong, you should... just keep doing it, and maybe the feeling will go away. OR you go halfsies. You tell yourself that you are different, that you're doing what you're doing to protect someone from harm. Or certain kinds of harm. But all the blame will still fall on the higher-ups.

That icon is so... punchy, is the word I'm coming up with.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

In any case, it's a bad message all around.

It's my new default icon. I | it lots.

[rugbybaby.livejournal.com]

In addition to all the other ones in the show. But I've only watched the first three episodes, so eh. Kind of a disappointment from Whedon. Maybe these things are supposed to frustrate us, and they well do, but I think he sort of handled that better when maybe he wasn't concentrating on it so much.

I like it! It's psychedelic. I feel like I need a record player.