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So, at this point, people were like, "um, is noted feminist auteur Joss Whedon aware that he is making a show about forced prostitution and rape?" Whedon's politics have repeatedly been called into question, and usually for damn good reason. (Here is the thing about doing stuff that appeals to politically engaged audiences: you cannot fuck up politically and have people fail to notice or just go, "oh well, par for the course, ha ha ha!" You get yelled at. Sorry. Deal.) Dollhouse, in particular, had the potential to be hugely offensive. Here is the thing: Whedon, unlike most folks and many feminist or progressive-identified dudes, seems to actually listen when he is called out and to improve his work accordingly. In the case of Dollhouse, I think he is doing smarter work than he ever was. Getting smarter about oppression, I would submit to you, requires making the visible manifestations of it or metaphors for it much, much uglier.

The answer to whether Joss Whedon and his showrunners know how rape-culturey the entire Dollhouse concept is would seem to be, at this point, a big huge Yes.

The answer to whether Joss Whedon and his showrunners know how rape-culturey the entire Dollhouse concept is would seem to be, at this point, a big huge Yes.

Uh huh, and then what?

What was that post's last line:

Which, as I found out while writing this piece, has pretty much been cancelled.

in reference to?

Brenda:

The enemy surrounds you and controls you and is much, much bigger than any one person. The enemy is in your head: it controls what you're allowed to think, what you're allowed to know, who you're allowed to be. Resistance, this time, isn't about throwing punches. It's about getting your mind back. It's about reclaiming your right to define who you are - your right to be a person.

It does go on from there.

I was just really being snippy about what exactly their being aware of it is supposed to prove, if they're not taking the concept and doing something with it. Which, maybe they're headed somewhere but I think there's a lot still on faith here.

I was just really being snippy about what exactly their being aware of it is supposed to prove

Well, up until "Man On The Street" apparently we didn't know they were aware of it. I can't imagine an entire production not having realised there were consent issues inherent in their premise, but there you go.

They're less than half a season in. I think they have done things with it, and hopefully they're not finished yet.

It's about getting your mind back. It's about reclaiming your right to define who you are - your right to be a person.

Which is one of the things I've appreciated about the show. What's occurred to me, over the last couple of episodes, is this is a show that really needs to have a proper ending, to redeem what's happened to the characters. Echo, Victor, Sierra, November and the rest need to be able to get their minds back, and ultimately, that needs to be enacted through Echo. (It is, after all, her show.)

But for the rest of the main characters, it's a fundamentally different journey: It's about, when it all comes down, whether or not they make a stand against the evil they've perpetrated, or whether they remain consumed by it. (Perhaps it's all this pandemic talk these days. I've got Stephen King's "The Stand" on my mind.)

And then there's poor Ballard, who's been set up as the masculine action hero, and who will probably die before the story's resolution. Assuming the show

Yeah this is pretty much a rape based brothel. Don't see how the dollhouse (as presented) could NOT be evil. It could have had a fundamentally different "Molly Millions" style premise where people have their own personality in between assignments and consent to imprints on a case by case basis - with full right to refuse an assignment, though maybe with serious financial penalties for refusing too often. But that would be a different show than (from what I can tell ) was ever contemplated. It was always about consent (at best) being given one time, and then personality erased so there was no chance of withdrawing consent. And from some of the interviews given, it seems like the idea of people like Sierra who were kidnapped into it, who did NOT accept was there from the beginning.

Anyway, in fairness to JOss, I got the impressiont that the dollhouse being "good" was never contemplated. At the beginning it was supposed to be the seamy evil secret underside of an otherwise good corporation. Don't know if that would have been particularly interesting or not. So the dollhouse itself was supposed to always be evil.

What was that post's last line...in reference to?

The usual misinformation, I presume.

Better can be a short term thing.

And it can be a bandaid on a severed artery.