tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8468699.post6808011392975982816..comments2017-08-04T09:05:49.536-04:00Comments on "...it just says 'M'...": Dollhouse - Week 5Nicholas Grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12159802575350677365noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8468699.post-63165934318622421932013-02-26T19:16:09.717-05:002013-02-26T19:16:09.717-05:00I think the whole Caroline/Echo debate is similar ...I think the whole Caroline/Echo debate is similar to the Ship of Theseus paradox (for some reason, Barthes' refers to the same idea using the Argo); it's primarily a thought exercise useful not mainly for conclusions but discovering what the thinker's premises of identity are. <br /><br />As for Dollhouse: it's not <i>that evil</i>, its primary goal (at the onset of the series) is not enslavement for malicious purposes; wiping and imprinting is just a means to an end, that end being the satisfaction of clients. By the end of the series, Rossum/Dollhouse is really a big bad slave-robot company but in the first season, it's more like a sophisticated temp agency that can provide any kind of 'worker.'<br /><br />Of course, the fear of Dollhouse springs from that fact (and this was used by marketing) that the technology <i>could</i> be used for robot slavery. <br /><br />The induced observation of Claire having no meaningful family or friends is interesting; I wonder if Whedon even thought about backstories for all the characters? Given the flippancy or nonchalance most Dollhouse staff treated imprinted dolls with, I wonder why/how (though inattentive to her work) they kept up the charade of treating Saunders like a real person, and after she discovered her doll status, they didn't just wipe and reimprint her. Maybe a bit of not entirely thought-out deus ex machina storytelling on Whedon's part. <br /><br />I agree that the assertions of low self-esteem are possible but without evidence. If anything, I detect an element of bitterness or world-weariness. Inconsistent, even - in the episodes that developed Whiskey/Claire's identity before she left, I was stricken by a sense of the bizarre - whether she was trying to seduce Topher, talking down Victor, or being a fastidious doctor, sometimes I was left confused on whether it was a flashback or current, because she was acting uncharacteristically. And isn't that the thing about Dolls - Typically they don't act uncharacteristically?<br /><br />In my personal viewing experience, Saunders' scars were not an enigma. In the early episode that shows a short flashback of Alpha escaping the Dollhouse reference is made to him cutting people with surgical precision - I always thought that Saunders was a victim who survived when he broke out. Turns out I was half-right; the scars were caused by Alpha, but not to Saunders but Whiskey, and that in the breakout he actually murdered the doctor. <br /><br />Whiskey is a tragic and heroic character: she shows the best and worst sides of being a Doll and all places in between. I think her character is one of the most flexible among the Dolls since it is not defined by a certain idiosyncracy as the other main character dolls are (Echo's personality management/flashbacks, Victor and Sierra's love). In this sense, she is the most human. <br /><br /> Phil Wiebehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11255460683986550805noreply@blogger.com