[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.

As soon as I saw that they were rock-climbing, I was waiting for Suela's critique.

I was watching that episode with a neurologist who rock climbs on the weekends. Commentary flowed. At length.

I'm letting three episodes build up on my DVR before I even try it. It will take two hours and some change for me to watch them, and I'll decide from there. Meanwhile, I'm reading this thread like crazy, trying to prepare myself, because my gut reaction is: Ew.

Tonight's dialogue feels more Joss-like. Though I missed the writer's name.

The writer's credit was DeKnight.

Oh well then, Joss punched it up. (What? I'm kidding. Probably. Mainly. Hi tiggy.)

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.

She stood up to the Council from the beginning -- from the moment Giles slammed the Vampyr book on the library counter, told him she was "way sure" that wasn't what she was looking for, and walked out on him. They couldn't, didn't (and wouldn't have been able to; at least without magic) control her mind. When Sunnydalians started getting killed by vampires, she went to the CoW (i.e. Giles), but on her own terms. And there were contstant reminders that she was working with them on her own terms (regardless of how the CoW saw it), from at least the that she said, "I'm 16 and I don't want to die," and more probably from the moment she chose to get actively involved, once Willow left the Bronze with "DeBarge."

Buffy nearly always had agency (except for in episodes such as "Helpless" which was about lack of same). That was part of the point. It took time for the CoW to acknowledge it, is all. And? She actually told them to f'off halfway through season 3 (which, since season 1 was only 12 episodes long means it was two seasons in). She told them again in season 5. And she and her crew seemed to be destined to become a new CoW, with agency for the slayers at the finale. From what little I read of the comics, that seems to have continued.

And of course, because her particular and personal watcher (for most of the time) was Giles, who soon recognized her agency and respected her humanity, it was much less of an immediate issue for Buffy. In the beginning her biggest fights with him were whether or not she could go out on dates with people like Owen, and she did, handed him a pager, and named our "Beep me!" thread.

The Council had a good-enough mission from its outset -- kill monsters before they kill us. Their initial means were undeniably bad (they had a demon rape the girl who became the primal slayer, which gave her the strength and skill to hunt the vampires to stop the spread of their evil blah blah) and their view/treatment of her as tool was rather morally bankrupt, but to give them their due (which I usually don't like to), they were in a battle situation. The Dollhouse keepers are not.

Kristen never would have writtern her otherwise. Um.

(Sorry. Buffy's still my girl. It's a button.)

Prepare me for what? For getting kicked out of school? Losing all my friends? Having to spend all my time fighting for my life and never getting to tell anyone because it might ‘endanger’ them? Go ahead. Prepare me.

Buffy had free will, though - Echo does not, at least in theory. Granted, Buff's reaction to the council was never great, but I still think it took years for her to really tell them to stuff it and make clear who had the power/control.

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.

I can see that I might try to stand someone down if they'd only been threatening my life but not actually made an attempt on it. But after getting hit by that arrow, dude's first inkling that I had a gun would have been looking down and wondering where his shiny new exit wound came from. Or possibly hearing the report from the shot that missed—no idea if I'd still have decent aim while hopped up on the wacky juice (though my coordination does get better 3 shots of tequila in). But I'd at least have let the first shot do the announcing of gun possession for me.

There's a great bit of research done by David Grossman, an expert on the psychology of killing. During World War II, the US army did a research study on their soldiers - they found only between 15-20% of riflemen would fire on an exposed enemy, for example. That's on a battlefield. People were willing to die, but most of them were not willing to kill.

They fixed it, of course - they now do conditioning processes to debase soldiers, then they rebuild them without the typical societal mores, by rewarding desired behaviours and by dehumanising the enemy. It's now over 95% are willing to fire. However, there's incredible levels of mental troubles in soldiers as a result - in fact, recently more soldiers who had returned from battle committed suicide than died in Iraq and Afghanistan in battle.