Echo seems to remember she wants to swim, doesn't she? There's probably a default of home.

I'd like to return to the issue of why the rape of Echo in Dollhouse is so problematic.

Suppose she was being raped with the use of normal roofies. And the first two shows had scenes of Echo posed unconcious, nude, with as much of her showing as you can get away with on TV. And they play chicka-chicka-boom music, and she sighed happily in her sleep while being raped. And the angles are chosen to make sure the whole rape scene is as titillating as possible. I don't think anyone would be defending it - even if the point of the show was about how bad rape was.

Well in the actual Dollhouse they've taken advantage of it being fiction to make the roofies more sophisticated. Echo actually falls into lust or love or limerance with the client, and enjoys the sex. But by most definitions she is being raped. And there are ways to make that happen without being titillating. But the show chooses not to do that. In the imaginary show with a plot built around real roofies there are all sorts of ways to handle in NOT make it titillating. If titillation was not the object, the actual rape scenes would probably be shorter, but if the plot neccesitated an extended scene there are still ways not to make it titillating and exploitive. Hell, movies-of-the-week about rape, often very badly written, usually can manage that much. Dollhous has deliberately chosen a form of rape that is harder to handle non-exploitively, but seems to put less effort than an after-school special into making it non-exploitive and instead makes in as titillating as possible. Yes having the guy trying to kill her immediately after sex is good after-school special type anvil. But it is not like they dont make it totally exploitive until then. And even after, a lot of the shots of Faith-I-mean-echo running are monsters point of view in the bad sense: they are still finding excuses to emphasize her hotness while running for her life. The she-has-agency ending where she saves herself and her handler is all well and good, but does not really make up for the fact that a lot of the prior part of the episode was designed to give 14 year old boys stiffies.

Also, I'm not really reassured by the Joss interview where he seems to think that what is problemaic about show is that it deals with prostitution, without showing any understanding that rape is involved.

One day Eliza Dushku might surprise me by doing something she didn't intend to look sexy doing onscreen, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

As much as I hate to throw myself into this -- and let me be clear that I have no desire to argue personal squick or button/trigger-pushing -- I'm not sure that the situation is that clear-cut. What if we hypothesize old-school (by which I mean, I know that this is not necessarily how DID(?) actually works, but since we're talking fiction...) multiple personality disorder -- if one of the personalities has consensual sex, has another personality been raped?

I don't follow TV online other places (although I will occasionally read stuff if it's linked here) but have others drawn the same rape connection that we have? Because I came to that conclusion all by myself, but I'm sort of surprised that Joss hasn't commented on it or that the few linked things I've read haven't mentioned it.

Dollhouse has deliberately chosen a form of rape that is harder to handle non-exploitively, but seems to put less effort than an after-school special into making it non-exploitive and instead makes it as titillating as possible.

I understand the general rape-related arguments about the show, but I'm not sure how your post furthers them, Typo. Was there even a sex scene in the first episode? And in the second episode, while there was sex, I thought it was really brief. I won't say it wasn't shot to be titillating, but I see WAY more explicit and titillating stuff on network TV all the time. If anything, I thought it was restrained.

Emily, that's an interesting take I sure hadn't thought of.

Was there even a sex scene in the first episode?

Yes - during the mindwipe sequence there's a brief flashback to sex with her date/client.

(And just to be completely honest here, I found the first ep offensive enough that I did not watch it again when it aired nor have I seen the second ep. So it's possible that the sex was cut out of the broadcast version of the pilot.)

Let me clarify that the answer may well be yes, actually. There may be a victim of rape without an intentional act of rape, and indeed the Dollhouse clients know perfectly well what they're getting into. But the identity issue surely complicates it a little.

The sex was still there, Jessica. I thought I read in one of interviews that sex part was something he wanted to explore.