Jimmy

I’m looking for something, and I’m losing hope of finding it. I’m talking about the new Friday evening Fox show from self-professed feminist Joss Whedon: Dollhouse (some spoilers from the first several episodes below), and what I’m looking for is the strong, in-control, smart and sexy women we’ve come to expect from Joss in such ground-breaking (and cult-follower gathering) shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy, Willow, Faith, Dawn, Anya, Dru, Tara, etc.), Angel (Cordelia, Fred, etc.) and Firefly (who can forget Zoe, River, Kaylee and Inara?)

So far in Dollhouse we’ve seen a great deal of former Faith actress Eliza Dushku being sexy, but not a lot of the other things that Joss’ female characters usually are. Especially in-control. I understand that she begins to become self-aware, and I would be happy to be proved wrong about being disappointed in not seeing ANY strong and/or in-control and/or smart women on the show (OK, the women who runs the “Dollhouse” is probably all of those things, but she’s, well, bad. Where’s our fearless heroine who will save the day in the end?) but my faith is rapidly slipping away that it will happen anytime soon (e.g. in time for it the stick in people’s minds that Joss Whedon has created another show full of strong females). I think I see where the show is going: Echo begins to remember past her mind-wipes and probably takes down the Dollhouse, but…I don’t know. If the show goes the way of Firefly, we’ll never get to see that last part and all we’ll know about the world of Dollhouse is that it was a world where the only moderately strongish females were bad and all the others were helplessly enslaved to their male “handlers,” who show varying levels of concern for their personal well being (ranging from utter disdain to confused pity).

I was hoping I was wrong and that at some point Joss would show exactly why he calls himself (and everyone else calls him to a sometimes sickenly hero-worshiping degree) a feminist. But then I started watching Stage Fright (third episode, I think), in which the visuals were graced with an over-abundance of footage of a very scantily clad pop star performing. This alone did not shock me (anyone who watches CSI or any popular media today is bombarded with such imagery 24/7), no, what annoyed me is that this was coming from the one person I had come to trust wouldn’t do such a thing unless it was really relevant to the story. And I don’t see that in this case it was. It was just sexual objectification of women for the sack of entertainment, and that I don’t think any true feminist can engage in.

I find the Dollhouse story mildly interesting and I intend to probably continue watching the show, but I am very disappointed in Joss and in Eliza. I at times liked Faith better than Buffy while watching BtVS and I think she is one of the most amazingly strong female characters ever to grace our TV sets, and I think Eliza was the perfect actress for the job. What she’s doing playing Echo, I have no idea.

Cheers.

-j

Posted in: Film Reviews, Geeking, Media and Arts by jimmy2 / Tags: dollhouse