Dollhouse 1.06 "Man on the street"

[hazelk]

The story that first brought Joss Whedon to prominence was the one where the blonde girl meets a monster in the alley. But instead of being killed by him she destroys him. It’s had many different iterations since then. Sometimes the girl turns out to be the monster, sometimes the monster turns out to be an ally. Sometimes she kills the monster but it breaks her heart, sometimes she kills herself and saves her heart. More than once the twist is that she’s not alone.

This time the story starts out already twisted. There’s no alley, the monster breaks into the girl’s home. Where she destroys him and she’s not alone and it breaks her heart. Unlike all the other versions this is not a story about the seemingly powerless finding themselves powerful. This is a story about an already powerful woman using that power to punish a rapist employee. In the woman’s story she’s both playing the role of avenging angel and asserting her own dominance. Hearn knows how these things work. If Mellie killed him (and I think that’s what we’re to assume happened) he will have died at the hands of a potential victim and the last thing he hears will be DeWitt’s voice setting that in motion.

It’s an unsettling story in part because the power Hearn had over his actual victim he had only because Dewitt gave it to him. He was Sierra’s handler, she was imprinted to trust him like a father and he abused that trust as well as physically violating her. Incest on top of rape. Because he could and possibly also to show he could get away with it under the very noses of his bosses. All those fucked up power differentials are still in place.

The most unsettling thing, however, goes beyond the self-contained world of the story. It’s that despite its much darker underpinnings, this version of the girl in the alley still evokes the same emotional response as its predecessors. When Mellie’s eyes open in response to DeWitt’s cryptic words and she turns on Hearn it’s still vicariously thrilling, the sympathetic adrenaline rush still cuts in. But it’s a lie. It’s a lie because it’s not Mellie herself fighting back but an alien (to her) persona that’s been forced into her mind. By the end of the scene she’s been doubly violated. It’s more compromising than cathartic to watch.

The film studies part
The implication that none of us are as innocent as we might hope of the desires fuelling the Dollhouse is explicit in several of the vox pop interviews. The desire to use a Doll - every serviceman deserves an Ida Lupino (and did possess her image) and the desire to become one - to have your sins erased, to be cared for, just sign on the dotted line.

Ballard’s ‘white knight rescues lady fair’ fantasy is so pervasive it probably launched 1000 fics before the episode even aired. Patton Oswald’s internet mogul’s history was more of a ‘be careful what you wish for’ with a hint of Citizen Kane. If Kane had spent one day a year with a replica sled in the mountains of his youth. The rich are different and when pushed Joel Mynor is no longer the lovable dork Rebecca knew and knows that. It seemed to be not just his lost wife he was paying for but his own lost innocence and violating both it and her by very act of recreating it, again and again and again.


The skience part
“Every part of you that makes you more than a walking cluster of neurons dissolved. At someone else’s whim. If that technology exists it’ll be used. It’ll be abused. It’ll be global. And we will be over. As a species. We will cease to matter. Maybe we should.”

Do species need to matter? Not biologically speaking but from a storytelling point of view they do. Let the illusion that people are not socks slip for a moment and the whole edifice of disbelief suspension totters. On thing this episode achieved was to shore up the story by building some world around it giving it the equivalent of a Hellmouth or a Wolfram & Hart where before all it had was a singular Big Bad. The Dollhouse goes global and the technology has a purpose beyond renting out dreams to the highest bidders.

It always was a puzzle that the technology for making programmable people seemed to have no other applications. I can believe in it not revolutionizing brain science - it comes across as being very analogous to cloning in that respect. Cloning was supposed to shed light on how eggs are programmed but although achievable it’s still such an unreliable process there’s little can be learned from it beyond proof of principle. Not clear whether programming people is similarly volatile. If it were stable the rich could use it to live forever in donor bodies instead of just renting them for services. If it weren’t necessary to wipe people before uploading new skills universities could become redundant. My own guess is that Adele and her bosses are after similar goal to that which the Alliance were attempting with River. If unlocking latent superhuman abilities were the game, Alpha would be no accident and Dewitt’s laissez faire attitude to Echo’s signs of exceeding parameters would suddenly make more sense.

The hopeful ending
Victor likes Sierra. She makes him feel better. A different kind of better than any global plans to create a race of superpeople. Sierra reciprocates. They sit together. Echo watches over them. These people have let themselves be razed and their earth be salted but in the ruins small green shoots are beginning to grow.

Comments

[razorsmile.livejournal.com]

Excellent post. Loved it unreservedly. However, re alien (to her) persona, how do you know "Mellie" isn't the alien creation and the ninja killer the real deal? Hell, how are we certain either is real?

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thanks! As to how we know who's real I think we don't. After all if Mellie's a doll none of her personas are 'real' but each of them believes it is and maybe that's what really matters in the end.

[quinara]

It’s an unsettling story in part because the power Hearn had over his actual victim he had only because Dewitt gave it to him.

Good catch. And nice analysis generally - I got lost my review thinking about the conflict of Rebecca’s wants and Echo’s/Caroline’s/everybody else’s and completely missed the part that it is not OK (even) for Mynor to essentially resurrect his own wife for his own gain. The (abuse of) power in this show dissolves into more and more fractals as the weeks go by...

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

And the worst part is, it seems like Rebecca was a nice person. But if she's totally freaking out at the idea that her husband might be a pornographer, imagine how much she'd be freaking out if she knew he was actually a john using a woman who's programmed to think she loves him. Methinks if Rebecca were to magically come back to life at this point, she wouldn't think Joel's "memorial" actions were romantic.

[quinara]

Methinks if Rebecca were to magically come back to life at this point, she wouldn't think Joel's "memorial" actions were romantic.

It's not as if he's playing himself anyway - he pretty much tells Ballard he's moved on to new and brighter things. :/

OMG

[klytaimnestra.livejournal.com]

I completely missed this. When she points at the bed, with roses, and says "see? porn!" I never realised that - wait - she's absolutely right. What the man she thinks is her husband, who has bought her, imprinted her, and is planning to use her on that bed, is going to do is sheerest pornography. It's fulfilling a fantasy with a blank instrument. Rebecca would be appalled.

Ballard catches that, of course. I wasn't sure I liked him, until this episode, but now I do.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I need to find time to read other people's reviews more - work is panic before the storm mode right now. Fractals yes, the jagged kind that predict coastlines.

[quinara]

Don't worry about it - good luck with the storm! :)

[herewiss13.livejournal.com]

I've been looking forward to your analysis since the episode aired. While I can follow the various commentary and analyses of the fan-erati, my own brain never seems to come up with much beyond "That was _cool_!"

And I'm _really_ interested to see what you thought of Terminator, as it seemed like quite a bit of pay-off after several weeks of narrative...constipation.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Hi! Mostly I'm mpre of a lurkerati :-) A little scared to have Terminator thoughts at this point, it feels like it's gathering itself for the final rush and I want my head clear for the ride.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Interesting review. If you don't mind terribly, I'd like to post a link to it in my lj at some point? You actually discussed the whole rape bit in a different way than most of the reviews I've seen to date. And hit upon a few things that had been niggling at my brain regarding it.

You have deftly explained why DeWitt was so compelling in this episode. Especially her interaction with Hern, and how she plays with him - setting him up to have his intended victim kill him - was a stroke of genius.

Also, the girl in the alley analogy is an apt one - since it is in the alley that Echo not only defeats Ballard but tells him about the Dollhouse. It's an interesting scene, because it is a twist on the old guy attacks girl in alley. Here guy only attacks girl to "save" her or save her according to his own fantasy. But he's not pulling the strings here, and the girl is not necessarily a victim nor does she wish to be saved.
So he rushes home to save the other girl, MEllie, who he left alone and vulnerable - yet again, Mellie is hardly a damsel, even if she appears to be one, anymore than Echo/Caroline is.
Echo tells him he is going about it all wrong - and I think he is - because he's playing into his own fantasy - of guy saves damsel, when there aren't any damsels, only dolls.

I'd noticed parrallels to River, but hadn't thought of the fact that they may be hunting latent superhuman abilities. That would make sense and does explain some of Adelle's actions regarding Echo, as well as her attitude towards Alpha.
Dollhouse reminds me a little bit of James Cameron's Dark Angel in this regard, which had an oddly similar back story.

At any rate, you are once again hitting all the reasons why I'm finding this show so compelling. It does play with one's head a bit doesn't it?

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Link away! Sorry to be so slow responding, it's a bad bad time at work and I really shouldn't be here.

since it is in the alley that Echo not only defeats Ballard but tells him about the Dollhouse
Yes and in retrospect it seemed as if the whole point of the fight was to get him into that alley I wonder if they have plans to recruit him - he seems the type to be manipulable into a situation where that might be an offer he couldn't refuse.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

No problemo. Have similar work issues.

I am loving your take on Dollhouse -we appear to be similarily intrigued by this series.

Yes, I wondered much the same thing about Ballard. He reminds me a little of Boyd Langton in both personality and agenda. Langton also has a bit of a savior/hero complex. What is interesting to me about Whedon's stories - and one of things I found intriguing about the Angel series - is the critique on the male hero complex. Saw it in Buffy, and big time in Angel and Firefly. Whedon appears to be critiquing it again here...

wow, I missed this too

[klytaimnestra.livejournal.com]

And after Mynor pointed out to ballard that his fantasy is to save the damsel - but there aren't any damsels; there are dolls who can save themselves, who have been programmed over erased people who apparently couldn't save themselves, and are now too dead to save. But Ballard's desire to be the hero is way too strong for him to accept that.

And then the dolls are so vulnerable, and so innocent; they need saving. Which was the other half of the story, of course. There you have the good father figure defeat the bad father figure while the innocent damsel watches, in the approved manner. But even the male dolls need saving.

Of course the programmed 'dolls' can't save themselves either, from the people who have programmed them. They can only fight where they've been programmed to do so.

Can I persuade you, and aycheb (hi aycheb!) to cut and paste some of this over on TATF for further discussion? It would just be easier to find.

[par-avion.livejournal.com]

If unlocking latent superhuman abilities were the game, Alpha would be no accident and Dewitt’s laissez faire attitude to Echo’s signs of exceeding parameters would suddenly make more sense.

Oh, I like that.

Alpha

[klytaimnestra.livejournal.com]

I've heard foggy casting rumours which I choose to disregard. One of my students thinks Ballard is Alpha - but doesn't know it, since Alpha is practically guaranteed to have serious dissociative disorder. Ballard is Alpha's conscience, which has naturally separated itself off. I kind of like that; Ballard is certainly a mean killing machine, obsessed with Dollhouse and with Echo.

[maeve-rigan.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for this. It's a complicated show, but SO worth digging into. Brilliant reading.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Between this, T:SCC and BSG Friday nights are thinky overload nights. Although the ratings look bad. Curses!

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

Very interesting read. :)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

This is really fascinating. I think the show is developing layers of meanings, and the characters are becoming more and more interesting. DeWitt intrigues me and one suggestion that I find really fascinating is that she might actually be the one behind the warning to Ballard via Echo. I forget where I heard that idea, but it's certainly would have interesting ramifications.
It's fascinating to read all the different reactions to this show; it kind of reminds me of the Buffy season 6 controversies. For my part, I loved season 6, and I'm well on my way to loving this show.

the warning of Ballard

[klytaimnestra.livejournal.com]

Topher sent his assistant away with a calculatedly insulting bring-me-a-sandwich type of request. At the time I thought he was being a jerk. But we now see that was because he needed privacy to imprint the message.

However DeWitt had to be the one that pulled Boyd off the assignment, because nobody could see Echo doing what she was going to do; and Topher passed Boyd's 48 hours off as s.o.p., which however it isn't. And Topher lied about what the assignment was, too.

So I think Topher and deWitt are both plants.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I remember finding DeWitt quite a flat character in the first episode but she has so many layers now. I've no idea if she 's the warning giver or not or if the warning was a double feint but I could believe any of the above. Very like S6 in how polarising it is.

[yourlibrarian]

I like how you bring out DeWitt's role in it, and also Mellie's double violation.

My own guess is that Adele and her bosses are after similar goal to that which the Alliance were attempting with River. If unlocking latent superhuman abilities were the game, Alpha would be no accident and Dewitt’s laissez faire attitude to Echo’s signs of exceeding parameters would suddenly make more sense.

Hmm, yes that would fit nicely.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Looks like there might not be enough show to find out unless they make a comic of it. Chiz :-(

[livrelibre.livejournal.com]

I like these thoughts:) I'd had issues with the way Adele had Mellie do her dirty but seeing your reasoning here it makes more sense (and is even skeevier).

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

There's always a lower place!

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

This is a really terrific analysis of the issues of the show, and the way it is both questioning and reinforcing them. The brain programming being analogous to cloning is a particularly interesting parallel, considering the rich people who clone their pets - it's not (yet) an actually beneficial science, but it has recreational and highly lucrative applications.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I did read that one of the actors compared the premise to Never let me go (aka The remains of the clones) and the comparison does kind of work both tone-wise and science-wise.