My thoughts on the Dollhouse

So I woke up this morning, realized that tonight would be the season finale of Dollhouse, and actually started to feel a little excited. So many people have such conflicting feelings about this show, so I thought it would be a good moment for me to analyze mine, which I really haven't done before.

A lot of people are really wierded out by the premise, and they seem to be focusing on the sexual aspects of the show to the exclusion of all else, thinking of the Dolls as nothing but very expensive sex slaves. I don't share this view. First of all, fiction is different than real life, and this is something that all science fiction fans should realize but I think a lot have forgotten. In the 1960's and 70's (and even earlier, I guess, with the likes of George Orwell), science fiction was a way for people to explore social problems in a less-threatening way than talking about them in real life. Does anybody seriously think that George Orwell was advocating that we would all like to live like they do in 1984 or Animal Farm? I certainly hope not! Instead, he was just pointing out what might happen if we did live in societies like those. In the same way, Joss Whedon is pointing out what probably would happen if we could control people as utterly as the Dollhouse controls the Dolls. That isn't the same as saying that he'd like it! And if it makes you feel a little icky inside sometimes, maybe that's the point.

Second, usually when people are focusing on sex to the exclusion of all else, it reflects something in their own mind rather than in the actual work they're studying, and I think I see that happening here with the people who criticize Dollhouse for its sexual content. We haven't really seen that much, and most of it was in the early episodes when we know Fox was meddling with the show and probably trying to make it sexier than it really is. So if you imagine that tons and tons of sex is going on in all the moments that we don't see, that says more about your dirty mind than it does about the show. And as far as Sierra's abuse by her handler goes, see the above paragraph. Sometimes you have to take your characters to bad places before you can save them, capiche?

Another criticism of the show is that nothing much happened at first. It seems like everybody expects instant gratification these days. But watching a Whedon show is more like watching a time-lapse photograph of a flower blossoming. At first it looks like nothing is happening at all, and then you notice things moving very slowly, and then all of a sudden, wham! It opens up in the blink of an eye. I think the first season of Dollhouse has been like that. Lots of things happened at first that seemed like they were meaningless, but now we're getting the payoff for a lot of those things all at once.

So I'm very excited to watch the finale tonight and see where we've been being led all this time. I hope you will join me!