Caution: Spoilers ahead! (More specifically, after the blockquote.)

Firstly, I’m extremely happy to report that, as promised by Ms. Dushku, Dollhouse has improved by leaps and bounds since last I blogged about it. Not only have we gotten to know Echo – our hero – a bit better, but more importantly, the show has addressed “the consent issue” head-on.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. For those who haven’t seen the show, here’s a brief summary via Wiki:

Eliza Dushku plays a young woman called Echo, a member of a group of people known as “Actives” or “Dolls”. The Dolls have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments (referred to as engagements). The new persona is not an original creation, however, but an amalgam of different, existing personalities. The end result incorporates some of the flaws, not just the strengths, of the people used as templates. The Actives are then hired out for particular jobs – crimes, fantasies, and the occasional good deed. On engagements, Actives are monitored internally (and remotely) by Handlers. In between tasks, they are mind-wiped into a child-like state and live in a futuristic dormitory/laboratory, a hidden facility nicknamed “The Dollhouse”. The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.

As I noted before, the Dolls’ lack of agency in both their “wiped” and “programmed” states makes it impossible for them to give meaningful consent – for any of their actions, including sexual relations. When a doll “has sex,” she (or he) is actually being raped. Usually the rapist knows full well that he (or she) is “having sex” with a programmable “doll” – so it’s rape with intent. Occasionally, however, the “doll” is sent on a covert/undercover mission – for example, to seduce a certain FBI agent – and sex becomes a tool she (or he) uses to that end. Such cases still constitute rape, but…well, it’s hard to say who the rapist is when the “doll’s” partner believes that the encounter is consensual. The Rossum Corporation, perhaps?

Dollhouse begins to tackle this issue in later episodes, most interestingly through a series of “(wo)man on the street” interview clips aired on an Los Angeles tv station (Season 1, Episode 6 – “Man on the Street”). A local journalist, reporting on the Dollhouse “urban legend,” asks passerby whether they believe that the Dollhouse is real, what they think of “programmable humans,” etc. The responses, I think, are both humorous and quite realistic: you’ve got your skeptics and conspiracy nuts, outraged social justice advocates and potential johns, and so on. Oftentimes, one extreme response is juxtaposed with another.

My favorite pairing is the conflicting answers offered by a teenage-ish, bubble-gum snapping, seemingly bored and indifferent white woman and a slightly older African American woman when asked if they would “volunteer” as “dolls.” The white woman jumped at the chance to live a new, supposedly exciting and glamorous life, while the black woman properly identified the Dollhouse for what it is: a system of slavery. When pressed, she elaborated: even the most beautifully gilded cage is still just that – a cage.

Being a silly Joss Whedon fangirl, I’m ecstatic that the show – which might have gone either way – takes a feminist bent, clearly identifying the “dolls” as trafficked humans and victims of rape. This theme carries on to the next two episodes (Season 1, Episode 7, “Echoes” and Season 1, Episode 8, “Needs”), during which we learn the back stories of the “dolls,” including how they came to the Dollhouse.

Sierra’s story – in which a spurned admirer “pulls some strings” to have her “admitted” to the Dollhouse against her will, so that he could program, purchase and rape her at will – is the most stunning example of how the “dolls,” who the Rossum Corporation insists are volunteers, are actually recruited against their will. With even this most basic, initial crumb of “consent” set aside, it’s clear that the “dolls” are all victims. (Though, again, they’d still be victims even if they did willingly enter the program; their initial consent is meaningless if they’re never able to revoke it.)

We also learn how Echo – Caroline – was “recruited.”

The Rossum Corporation – the evil megacorp behind the Dollhouse (or rather Dollhouses, plural, as there are multiple such branches located across the globe) – has a research laboratory located at Freemont College…which is the same college Caroline attended. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Caroline was a bit of a social justice activist in her pre-Dollhouse days. She suspected that the scientists camped out in the heavily-guarded and highly secretive Rossum Building were up to no good – and was outraged at the idea that they might be engaged in vivisection. After weeks (months?) of research and recon, Caroline finds a way into the building via an underground duct and, with the help of her reluctant boyfriend Matt, the two sneak into the lab late one night in order to shoot some undercover video.

Rossum’s research is more horrific than they expected. In the lab, they discover caged animals – dogs, primates, etc. – but also pickled fetuses and images of human brain scans displayed on the desktop PCs. Before they’re able to complete their mission, however, the two are discovered by a security guard. A chase ensues, during which Matt is fatally shot. Caroline winds up in the hospital, but escapes when she realizes that Rossum has her under surveillance. We’re left to fill in the rest of the blanks; eventually, Rossum captures Caroline a strikes a “deal” of sorts. Caroline “gives” them five years of her life as a “doll,” and Rossum “gives” her the rest of her life “back.” In other words, volunteer as a doll, allow us to wipe all memory of the Rossum Corp. from your memory, and then go on your way…or we’ll kill you. Some “deal.”

The flashbacks of Caroline’s flirtation with “animal rights terrorism” are fairly predictable, similar to what you might see on a cop drama like Law & Order. (All the cop shows seem obligated to include at least one eco- or animal rights- “terrorism” plotline post-2000, am I right?) The lab is predictably industrial and sterile, the kids are predictably idealistic, the dialogue is predictably cheesy, etc. But.

Dollhouse’s storyline differs in one important regard: the animal rights terra-ist isn’t just some stupid but well-meaning college kid, or an evil, science-hating criminal. The animal rights terra-ist is the series’ hero. (Or one of them, anyway.) And her good intentions vis-à-vis non-human animals are the reason why she’s stuck in the Dollhouse to begin with.*

Additionally, Caroline’s animal rights (welfare?) sensibilities are presented as one part of her overall sense of morality and justice. Caroline rescues non-human animals; when given the chance, Echo rescues humans.

In the next episode, “Needs,” Echo’s handlers program her and some of her fellow “problem dolls” to “suddenly” develop a sense of awareness and of their former selves – to remember. The “dolls” (and the audience) don’t know it at the time, of course, but this self-awareness is part of a plan to help the “dolls’” subconscious minds fulfill pressing “needs,” needs which are threatening to break through to their conscious awareness (and “ruin” them as “dolls”). Once the needs are met, a sedative planted within their brains will be triggered (by hormones?) and knock the “dolls” out, so that they may be safely retrieved by Rossum.

Echo’s need isn’t to find love, exact revenge, or grieve her lost love – no. In fact, Echo’s need isn’t selfish or self-centered at all. When given an opportunity to “escape,” Echo chooses to go back to the Dollhouse.

Echo’s greatest need, you see, is to save the other “dolls.”
 
 
Additional Resources

If you’d like to learn more about the show, check out…

The official Fox site, where you can view full episodes

www.fox.com/dollhouse/

The Dollhouse Wiki site, which appears (for the time being) to be plugged into Fox’s site

dollhousewiki.fox.com/

Dollhouse‘s Wiki page

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollhouse_(TV_series)

Dollhouse episode summaries

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dollhouse_episodes

Finally, for a discussion of race and racism in Whedon’s work, see joss whedon and the blurry line between homage and appropriation at Racialicious. While Wedon does an excellent job of addressing (most) gender issues, I agree that he doesn’t appear to devote the same attention to racial politics and representation. Re: Dollhouse, most of the “dolls” are white (with the exception of Victor, who’s Russian), and, while the Dollhouse is decorated in a “midcentury modern motif with a Japanese aesthetic,” East Asian characters have indeed remained “firmly in the background,” as predicted by Thea Lim.
 
 
Notes

* Updated to add: Actually, allow me to rephrase that: “her good intentions vis-à-vis non-human animals are the reason why Rossum discovers Echo and imprisons her in the Dollhouse to begin with.”

Due to sloppy/lazy word choice, I inadvertently blamed the victim in the original sentence. I apologize.

Caution: Major spoiler warning below the jump!

I’ve been a Joss Whedon fan since his Firefly days, so when I heard that he was working on a new project, Dollhouse, I immediately got all giddy like a schoolgirl. That is, until I hear that Eliza Dushku would be starring. Ugh.

Even before the hunting flap, I disliked Dushku. Perhaps it’s because she came off like an entitled snot in a very early episode of Punk’d; even before she was faux “arrested” for “shoplifting” in a local retail boutique, she copped a huge ‘tude over all the free swag she was obviously owed for being a celebrity. That, and Tru Calling looked absolutely dreadful. Well, and I’m also weird like that; Dushku isn’t the only celebrity I have an irrational, knee-jerk dislike for. Take Ben Affleck, for example: clearly, he’s a funny, charming, altruistic guy, but there’s just something about him that I want to hate. He’s smarmy, but not. Did I also mention that I have a crazy aversion to feet? So maybe it’s just me, after all.

Anyway, the aforementioned hunting flap gave me a reason to dislike her – a good one, actually. In an August appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Show, Dushku discussed her love of hunting – you know, that sadistic leisure activity which involves murdering innocent animals for “fun”:

Here’s the gist of the interview (via ecorazzi), in case you don’t want to sit through the whole video:

A couple night ago on Jimmy Kimmel Live Dushku revealed that she loves to hunt elk and deer. Not only did she brag about it, but she also showed off her bow and arrow skills and boasted about killing a deer in Oklahoma last Christmas. WTF, Eliza? Why are you such a jerk?

Even the studio audience turned on Dushku forcing her to joke, “My mother called me herself and said, ‘You’re a liberal from New England, what the ‘f’ are you doing in Oklahoma shooting things.” Backpeddling later she said, “When you’re in a relationship with somebody you have to, like, experience things that they do. A lot of people eat meat… and I eat what I kill.”

Dushku’s hunting isn’t so much the point, though, as it is a set-up for the rest of this post. Despite my ambivalence, I started watching Dollhouse on my DVR last week. It’s alright, certainly no Firefly, but also not the complete stinker I was afraid it’d be. The second episode, “The Target,” is of particular interest from an animal rights standpoint.

For those who haven’t yet seen it, let’s start with a brief outline of the show (courtesy Wiki), shall we?

Eliza Dushku plays a young woman called Echo, a member of a group of people known as “Actives” or “Dolls”. The Dolls have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments (referred to as engagements). The new persona is not an original creation, however, but an amalgam of different, existing personalities. The end result incorporates some of the flaws, not just the strengths, of the people used as templates. The Actives are then hired out for particular jobs – crimes, fantasies, and the occasional good deed. On engagements, Actives are monitored internally (and remotely) by Handlers. In between tasks, they are mind-wiped into a child-like state and live in a futuristic dormitory/laboratory, a hidden facility nicknamed “The Dollhouse”. The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.

In the second episode, Echo is rented out for the weekend as a “fantasy date” for an “outdoorsman”; frankly, story lines aside, “dating” seems to be the women’s primary form of “engagement” (two of three of the episodes aired so far have revolved around spy-type situations, however, “dates” are commonly alluded to). Certainly, engagements which involve sex are ethically problematic (well, the whole concept is ethically problematic, but the dolls-as-prostitutes, especially so) – without explicit and continual consent, what we’re really talking about is rape. Undoubtedly so when it appears that many of the “dolls” have been coerced into volunteering at the Dollhouse (similar to the set-up in La Femme Nikita).*

With this in mind, let’s turn to the second episode, “The Target”:

Echo’s latest imprint has her as the perfect date for Richard, an outdoorsman, who takes her on a romantic wilderness adventure. The experience takes a turn for the worse when Richard indicates he will conclude the “date” by hunting her for sport. Although Echo is imprinted with absolute trust in Boyd [her handler], he is unable to do more than deliver a weapon to her, and she must kill Richard on her own. Afterward the Dollhouse team discovers the handiwork of Alpha, a rogue doll, on the corpse of an unknown assassin. It was Alpha who had maimed Dr. Saunders and butchered the handler Boyd was hired to replace. Agent Ballard receives an anonymous package concerning Echo’s previous identity as a woman named Caroline, and continues his search.

We first glimpse Echo and Richard in the middle of their date; the two are white water rafting in a state park. After coming to calmer waters, they pull their raft to the shore. Richard then announces that it’s time for lunch. Instead of pb&j, he pulls a bow and arrow out of his backpack: they’re going to hunt their meal, he announces! Echo, unsure at first, slowly warms to the idea. She (read: her programmed personality) has never bow hunted before, so Richard offers an impromptu lesson. Echo takes the weapon into her hands, grabbing the bow with her left and drawing the arrow back with her right; Richard positions himself behind her, instructing her in proper form. As he wraps himself around her, the lesson quickly turns from educational to sexual: both Richard and Echo are clearly getting off on this. Momentarily distracted, a deer suddenly appears before them. Instantly all business, Echo draws the arrow back, as if it shoot the deer -

- and the camera cuts to a shot of a very naked and sweaty Echo, rolling off an equally naked and sweaty Richard.

So what we have here is murder as a sort of foreplay – literally. Beautiful. Gag, rinse, repeat. Fear not, dear veg*ns: here’s where it gets good. Well, not so much “good” as “interesting.”

After they’ve finished, Richard abruptly hops up and out of the sleeping bag, and starts dressing, quickly. He then gives an obviously hurt and confused (and then panicked and horrified) Echo a five minute warning – a head start. Grabbing his bow and setting his watch, Richard reiterates: he’ll wait five minutes, and then he’s coming after Echo. With the same bow the two just used to slaughter Bambi’s mother.

The rest of the show, of course, consists of a cat and mouse chase between Richard and Echo. Because she’s the show’s star, Echo triumphs, shooting and killing Richard with a gun her handler Boyd manages to bring her – before he takes an arrow to the leg, courtesy of Richard. Throughout the “hunt,” Richard derives a creepy, sadistic – and, yes, sexual – satisfaction from hunting Echo. Rather than chase Echo, he stalks her, slowly, surely, taking great pleasure in the process – and in her fear. To him, she’s just another piece of tail, not much different from the deer they slaughtered together.

Here, three forms of objectification and consumption are linked:

- Firstly, Richard “hired” Echo as a prostitute (at worst, rented and raped her like a trafficked woman). However, not any prostitute would do; instead of hiring an ordinary sex worker, Richard shelled out gobs of money so that a woman could be “made” – programmed – to his specifications. “Woman as consumer good,” indeed;

- As part of Richard’s “dream date,” the two then killed and consumed a sentient being, quite literally reveling in the murder, to the point where it led to sexual activity – in essence, rape, as Echo is incapable of giving consent in her brainwashed state;

- Finally, not satisfied with merely slaughtering non-human animals and raping women, Richard then hunted Echo as if she were “mere” wildlife, a resource to be consumed and exploited. As with the deer, Richard savored the hunt, clearly aroused by his domination of Echo. Her (seemingly immanent) destruction became further proof of his superiority.

Whedon and Dushku may both self-identify as feminists, but I don’t think either of the two are veg*ns or even animal welfarists; Dushku most certainly isn’t.** So I don’t know whether the Dollhouse crew was intentionally making a statement about the linking of violence with sex, or the relationship between animal cruelty and interpersonal violence. Nevertheless, I quite like how the episode led from one evil to another, in an almost seamless fashion: Richard begins by “buying” a woman, as if she were an object; then makes that woman complicit in the needless murder and consumption of another sentient beings; and progresses on to raping and hunting the woman herself. Echo is at once the victim and a co-conspirator of the patriarchy. And the brutal slaughter of a innocent non-human animal foretells future violence against a human woman, as well.

Plus, it’s a fine example of a hunter being portrayed in a less-than-flattering light – as a sadistic shithead, one might say.

Interestingly, I also encountered the sex-as-violence (or violence-as-sex) phenomenon while I was researching this post. For example, in searching for a transcript of Dushku’s Jimmy Kimmel Live interview, I found more than a few conservative, pro-hunting and/or misogynist websites which, unsurprisingly, applauded Dushku’s defense of hunting – while simultaneously commenting on her physical appearance, sometimes with objectifying results.

Take, for example, the following commentary***:

Eliza Dushku has one more reason for men to want to see her naked: she kills animals. Her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live had her admitting to the public that while she enjoys girlie things like shopping and exchanging lip gloss, she also has a carnal side that involves slaughtering innocent, yet beefy, animals. [...]

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I personally would have enjoyed her also mentioning the part where she then commences gnawing and ripping through the poor thing’s flesh with her bare hands and teeth, smearing blood all over, and then following off the ritual with a lovely photo shoot, I can live with just the image of her roaming through foliage in a neon bikini.

Here’s some pics of her at the Comic Con to keep your appetite quelled.

(Emphasis mine.)

So it seems as though the writers of Dollhouse tapped into a sick, sad cultural meme with the whole “murder as foreplay” plot line.

Now for the disclaimer: at the end of the episode, it’s implied that Richard is actually a contract killer, hired to kill Echo by an unknown third party. Even if this is revealed to be true, I still don’t think it negates the above observations – primarily because, whether he was contracted to kill Echo or not, Richard obviously took great joy in hunting both the deer and her. Additionally, if this was just a “job” for him, I think it makes his rape and subsequent stalking of Echo that much more significant: he didn’t have to do either, in fact neither was actually paid work (and giving Echo a head start is risky from a business standpoint) – and yet he did so anyway, mixing “work” with “pleasure.” A sadist through and through, even while on the clock.

Notes

* Naturally, this leads to concerns that Whedon and Co. may be glamorizing rape and using it as source of entertainment. However, the owners of the Dollhouse have thus far been portrayed as greedy, morally bankrupt criminals. If the plot continues to play out as hinted, this angle will probably become even more prominent (e.g., with Echo becoming self-aware – and aware of what the Dollhouse has done to her – and working to expose it, SD-6 styley).

** Though, while discussing the whole “hunting flap,” the husband recounted a recent appearance by Dushku on the Howard Stern Show (don’t ask; co-host Robin Quivers is reportedly a vegan, so that gets him a pass); he swears that she claimed to have been a vegetarian up until the day she started hunting at a boyfriend’s behest. I cannot confirm or deny either way.

*** I refuse to link, but you can find it at derekhail-dot-com.

**** FYI: I didn’t include them here, but there are a number of video clips available at imdb, here.