james_davis_nicoll | Joss Whedon's Dollhouse Deathwatch: Day One

What little I've heard about it didn't encourage me to want to see it. I liked Buffy (for the first few seasons) and Firefly, but I'm not sure about this one at all.

It sounds really really stupid, yeah. About the only stupider premises I can think of are Confederate-era cowboys in space or SoCal teenagers fighting vampires. So, y'know.

Hey, don't dis Lost Boys.

Or Fright Night.

I'm totally uninteresting in it because if I want shows where women are treated as playthings and tools of men, I could watch most of prime time. Why would I watch a show where that is the *entire premise*?

Is it possible that Joss Whedon will use this setup to explore female empowerment? Would that be in keeping with the guy who wrote Buffy, nearly wrote Wonder Woman, and made Kitty Pryde the hero of his X-Men run?

Shush. Joss Whedon is a horrid misogynist. I read it on the internet.

You mean the guy who created an idiot plot just so Kitty could be "killed" tragically? Yeah, not really seeing the feminism in that.

I give Whedon props for generally creating more than one female character in his stories, thus allowing a range of characterizations -- he's a lot less crappy on that then he is on his skanky race issues. That doesn't mean he doesn't fuck up lots.

You know, I've probably brought this up in the past here on James's LJ, but on race, I will always give Joss mad props for acknowledging on Angel that, you know, there are non-whites in Southern California.

It's better than Sunnydale, which doesn't seem to have any non-whites except when the vamps bus some in, but Angel's big demonstration of LA's human [1] diversity was what, the gang of Blackula killers in the first and second seasons? And their leader Gunn has to choose between being cannon-fodder for Angel or having contact with his buds?

1: Mind you, this could be another example of White People are Oblivious to Supernatural Threats. Maybe most of the blacks and hispanics who would have lived in LA took a look at the local demon population and decided that pretty much any town that didn't have an indigenous population of things that would eat them would be a better place to live.

The magical Los Angeles with no Hispanic people in it gets "mad props?" Really?

If one wants something that reflects the current Southern California, one is going to have to watch Telemundo or Univision.

While I do love Joss Whedon, I feel the need to point out that no matter who the author, your average feminist will probably feel more optimistic about the premises "superpowered girl fights monsters", "Amazon is a superhero", or "mutant girl joins team of superheroes", than the premise "brainwashed girl in mysterious brothel."

Sure, but as I understand it, the actual premise is "hyper-competent woman is being used by an evil organization and secretly organizing resistance" or something?

I dunno, I haven't read too much in the way of spoilers.

Well, it will be nice if you turn out to be right. But then Fox needs to fire whoever's been doing their buzz generation.

To be fair, Fox always misrepresents the show in the marketing. Apparently SCC is about John the hero and Cameron the hottie...

(no subject)

montoya.livejournal.com - 2009-02-13 20:30 (UTC) - Expand

I have heard at second or third hand that not all the 'dolls' are female. If so would that change your opinion?

I think some of the promo shots confirm this.

According to Wikipedia, of the regular characters, there are 2 dolls and both are female. The are several regular male characters, but none of them are dolls. There was supposed to be a male doll main character, but wiki says he was changed to a Russian mobster.

Of course, there could be some minor male dolls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollhouse_(TV_series)#Characters

-dayslongago

There were two male dolls shown in the closing shot.

They are only there so there can be co-ed group showers.

But the Dollhouse is run by a woman. So it's /a woman/ treating women as playthings and tools. That's /totally/ different.

Unless she's a doll running "ruthless madam".

The sad thing is the last non-doll died in an elevator shaft accident back in 2002 and the whole place has been running on automatic ever since.

There's an anime series "Gunslinger Girl" which has girls (nearly prepubescent) treated as mind-controlled tools by some not very nice people who are also the Good Guys. I don't like it but I'm impressed by it as a series in that it exposes a lot of the problems of such a setup unflinchingly. The actual plot is less important, the Bad Guys are pure cardboard but the girls will make you weep for them and the worst of it is they would never understand why.

Warning: this is a very bloody series, if you decide to give it a look.

Your icon is brilliant.