Do dolls dream of electric sheep?

C and I have been watching Joss Whedon's (Buffy, Firefly, the bat episode of The Office) Dollhouse all season. It was slow to take hold, but the most recent episode was so unabashedly brilliant that if you haven't been watching, I can only urge you to spend this weekend catching up. It's the best show on television*.

Dollhouse is . . . a show about consent. It's built around an organization - the titular Dollhouse - which erases volunteers' personalities and memories and renders them childlike and passive, in order to implant them with new, built-to-order personalities custom made for wealthy clients who wish to order the "perfect" person for a specific job.

Dollhouse is available on Hulu and, if you don't act soon, it'll likely be canceled. Smart science fiction, doomed to air on Friday evenings? Go figure.

Once you've watched a little bit, read this analysis of the show. The author has put a great deal of thought into their post, and does an excellent job delving into the depths of the metaphor.

Also, several Dolls have been used for sex by Dollhouse employees, sometimes with the illusion of consent in place and sometimes not.

So, at this point, people were like, "um, is noted feminist auteur Joss Whedon aware that he is making a show about forced prostitution and rape?" Whedon's politics have repeatedly been called into question, and usually for damn good reason. (Here is the thing about doing stuff that appeals to politically engaged audiences: you cannot fuck up politically and have people fail to notice or just go, "oh well, par for the course, ha ha ha!" You get yelled at. Sorry. Deal.) Dollhouse, in particular, had the potential to be hugely offensive. Here is the thing: Whedon, unlike most folks and many feminist or progressive-identified dudes, seems to actually listen when he is called out and to improve his work accordingly. In the case of Dollhouse, I think he is doing smarter work than he ever was. Getting smarter about oppression, I would submit to you, requires making the visible manifestations of it or metaphors for it much, much uglier.

The answer to whether Joss Whedon and his showrunners know how rape-culturey the entire Dollhouse concept is would seem to be, at this point, a big huge Yes. The Dollhouse is a giant metaphor, not only for rape culture, but for patriarchy and oppression at large: even the boy dolls are girls, stripped of agency or access to power and cast in pre-defined roles to fulfill the fantasies of the folks who are actually in charge. When they have sex, they aren't consenting - they've been made to think that they are consenting, by being made to think that they are the people who would consent to such things. They exist either in a state of infantilization and non-personhood (in which they are "cared for" by people who have a vested interest in continuing to use them) or implanted with false consciousness in which they are not aware of what's being done to them. I mean, false consciousness: Whedon's metaphors, they are rarely subtle. Their reactions to learning this, when they "wake up" (which Whedon has shown them doing, albeit briefly) are horror, disgust, and rage at how deeply they've been violated.

What else can I say? The special effects are smart, subtle takes on what will likely be available in the next few years. If you liked Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, BSG, Twilight Blade Runner or Harry Potter, you'll like Dollhouse.

It's not for kids but if you're looking for smart entertainment, this is the show for you.

* Battlestar Galactica and Friday Night Lights are over. LOST is fun, but is so far from it's conclusion that it's level of commentary, it's meaning, are still unknown variables. The Daily Show and Colbert don't count -- they're news.

Via robot wisdom.