Unless he makes an overt move, I don't think I would shoot, otherwise it would feel like I could have done something else than kill him.
Huh. If someone's had sex with me and then started trying to kill me by chasing me with a bow and arrow, my instinct is to stop the fucker, forget the talking.
Admittedly, I have spent a lot of years yelling at people in horror movies, and it's easy to talk big when I'm not the situation.
As soon as I saw that they were rock-climbing, I was waiting for Suela's critique.
I can't reach into a Pringles can without messing up my cuticles.
Okay, that made me guffaw.
I handwave that because she drank the drugged water. In fact my problem is the opposite. She was pretty damned effective for someone druggecd enough to be having hallucinations.
Seriously, that bit bugged me. Nevermind drinking out of a canteen when actual fresh water is available, because...have you ever drunk from a canteen? Ick. Plus, COOTIES. Who knows where that canteen has been?
And then, ability to function while drugged.
I caught myself rationalizing that the adrenaline counter-acted the drug. Then I chastized myself for being a Jossapologist.
[not enough to double-post, though]
But it doesn't make it less rape merely because 18 months >ago Caroline signed a piece of paper. Consent doesn't work >like that.
The whole sci-fi premise of the show makes the topic way more ambiguous than that. You can't sign away your rights but who do these rights protect? What if the personality is just not in the body anymore? Do the rights protect your personality or do they protect your body? Are they separate entities? Should you be allowed to unconditionally sign away the rights to your body if you could remove the personality?
Who is Caroline? Is Caroline stored in a databank? Is Caroline her body? Is X% percent in the computer and Y% in her body? Is the body just a shell?
Are the imprints fully functioning human beings that should be afforded their human rights? Can they consent to what is happening to them? Do they have free will or is their programming completely dominant? If they can consent, are they allowed to do that with a body that doesn't belong to them?
What if Caroline's personality wasn't stored in a database but was transfered to another body, if this was just a bodyswitch? In a Hollywood comedy hijinks would ensue now but who retains which rights? Can I do with my new body as a I please?
Etc., etc.
You can definitely come down on the side of rape after all this but I just don't know.
What's the law on one of several split personalities committing a crime (beyond institutionalizing)? All I know of this I learned from watching Identity (which had "normal, moral, judicious" characters endorsing and instigating the murder of all the other personalities).
...that was going somewhere, but I forget now...
Anastasius, that's pretty much all the questions I've been asking myself and why I find the show fascinating.
I think the issue is more whether you are actively sitting there thinking "FUCK! RAPE IS TERRIBLE! I WANT THAT TO STOP!" Or if the (straight male) viewer is being distracted from that visceral squick by the sight of Eliza's fine ass and the exciting action sequences.
Fay, I don't find Eliza attractive at all. I don't think rape is cool, either. At all. I'm not watching the show for either of those things.
Dollhouse is about objectification, identity, perversion and shame. That's the emotions Eliza and Joss want to put people through as an audience. (The first sentence is Joss's words). I mean, it's also about riding motorbikes (badly) and ignoring your next door neighbour, but that's the wrapping.
Somebody pointed out about how in "Buffy", Buffy stood up to the Watchers Council, who were controlling her, and told them to fuck off. She did - 5 years in. We're two episodes in.
To quote A Doll's House:
"I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you wanted it like that. You and father have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life. our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was father's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls."
The question with Dollhouse, for some, is going to be this - is it going to be Echo getting abused each episode in the name of fun, or is it going to be Echo realising what's going on, and taking the place down? Joss's work tends to be about finding strength - Buffy and Mal, good examples. Angel, not so much. He ended up working for W&H.
That doesn't mean we have to agree with his artistic choices and that doesn't keep us from dissecting things. That's what we do.
Ginger, I absolutely agree. If Dollhouse turns out a) crap or b) like L&O: SVU every week I'll quit watchin'. I wasn't telling ita to sush, because the minute nobody is picking apart "Ghost" and "The Target" is the minute I don't want to live in this world. Because, hello, hired sex shells. At the same time, are some people going to watch Every Single Episode and be offended? Yeah. 'cos of the premise. Are people going to switch off? Yeah. 'cos of the premise. It's a Joss show, he's good at doin' that.
