Dr Horrible Singalong Blog - Act 3 - SPOILERS
| July 19th, 2008When I say there are spoilers, I mean it. Go and watch Dr Horrible before you read this post.
I’m still very unsure how to read Dr Horrible’s Singalong blog, and the thread at Feministe reveals that there are many ways understanding Dr Horrible’s story.
As an origin story I appreciate it; I’d even say it was well done. Not just that there was a lot of the funny clever stuff that I’d expect (the appearance of Bad Horse was pure genius), but showing villains as having origin stories as well as heroes is a cool way of undercutting many of the tropes of an origin story.
I can also appreciate a straight political reading of the story (which is encouraged within the storyas both Penny and Dr Horrible directly discuss how to create change). I don’t really mind that the wet liberal who gets sucked in by those in power dies (although not necessarily realistic, as a metaphor it shows the likelihood of that strategy working). I also don’t disagree that nihilist, individualists often put their ego before the change they are trying to create and do harm without doing any good. But I don’t think any of that says anything particularly substantial, without an alternative (The Chain, Chosen, Graduation, Anne, Prophecy Girl, Jaynestown - Joss does know the alternative).
One of the big questions for me is the depiction of Penny, as the only substantial female character (and it didn’t pass the Bechedel test). I actually dislike the ‘Joss writes strong female characters’ idea, because it is so often referring solely to the female characters who are capable of beating someone up. As someone who was always more interested in Willow than Buffy and Kaylee than River, I appreciate his ability to write interesting female characters, more than his tendency to write so-called ’strong’ ones. The idea that the most important female characters to depict are those that can beat up the men who are trying to abuse them, comes perilously close to victim blaming. It’s very satisfying to watch Buffy killing Angel at the end of Becoming II, but the death of the robot at the end of I Was Made to Love You, is just as true statement about relationships.
So I have no problem with Penny dying, because women do die when men fight over them (this is from the New Zealand news media today, it’s being called a ‘crime of passion’). I don’t even really have a problem that she is so one dimensional, as we see her through Dr Horrible’s eyes, and it is clear that she is just an object to him.
The one thing I did object to was the shot of her in the laundromat with frozen yoghurt, presumably waiting for Billy. The idea is that Billy could have got what he wanted if only he was prepared to treat Penny like a person. If he’d talked with her, rather than built a freeze ray, she would have returned his affections. I really dislike that aspect of these sorts of geek stories, because sometimes people don’t love you back. As written it plays into Billy’s entitlement over Penny.
I do think that Penny’s death and Dr Horrible becoming actually evil was the only way the story could end, and I can see the importance of it as a story. To take us in through the eyes of a low-rent villain, and have us believe him that he’s actually the hero, until he’s not.
But ultimately, it’s not a story that interests me that much. A death ray may be a substitute for a rocket-launcher, but this story didn’t have any emotional resonance. The only person whose path was real enough to resonate was Dr Horrible. His loneliness in the last shot, and even the hollowness of getting have truth in them, but for me that is undercut because Dr Horrible’s feelings for Penny didn’t resonate, and must be, on some level, creepy.
Even more fundamentally, I come back to Grace Paley - because this story was lacking both blood and money. Now Joss has always been kind of shaky on the material reality of his stories (which was what made Firefly so strong), but he’s always written about family - actual and created. Without blood there is not heart to his story.
July 20th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Excellent points, particularly about how it was obnoxious of the story to assume that Penny would’ve been receptive to Billy. I expected Whedon to work a little harder at escaping the cliches of That Story Where The Protagonist Totally Deserves The Hot Chick Except This Jerk Hooked Up With Her First. It seemed like he was more focused on making fun of comic cliches, and he couldn’t prod at the edges of more than one genre at a time.
The ending came as somewhat of a surprise to me; I was really expecting Penny to reveal herself as a superhero or villain during the climactic fight, so when she died before that happened, I was shocked.
And anyways, didn’t Captain Hammer pull the trigger that resulted (indirectly) in Penny’s death? Dr. Horrible didn’t actually kill anyone himself, he just made a lot of fireworks, so why did he get the credit/blame?
Also: the Evil League of Evil was awesome, and not just for Bad Horse (The Thoroughbred of Sin!). Did you see Fake Thomas Jefferson? Best. Supervillain identity. Ever.
(BTW, you probably want to give the OP another proof-reading; there’s a lot of little editing mistakes or missing words, like “a surprising number of understanding”, and “acknowledge the way , and the idea”, and a there/their swap at the end, etc. Just a friendly heads up.)
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July 20th, 2008 at 8:43 am
For whatever reason, my interpretation of Penny in the laundromat was a little different. I saw her as lonely, which is why she went along with the relationship with Hammer in spite of her obvious discomfort. And Billy was her only friend and the only person she could reasonably expect to talk to about her doubts.
I saw Penny as the only “normal” person in the trio with normal expectations of relationships (both romantic and otherwise). She seemed to be in the process of figuring out that Something Is Wrong Here but died before she had time for the light bulb to go off and she told them both to get stuffed.
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July 20th, 2008 at 10:02 am
My interpretation was a little different.
If we read Billy as the stereotypical Nice Guy, then one of the characteristics of this group is that they generally blame others for their own shortcomings. Time and again, he had the opportunity to talk to her . . . she actually approached him and was friendly in the first episode before she’d met Captain Hammer, and he was a real douchebag to her. He stalked her. He took ’spy’ photos of her.
I think that by showing that Penny was theoretically receptive to Billy, Whedon wasn’t saying “he totally could have gone out with her if it wasn’t for that Captain Hammer dude,” but rather, “he totally could have gone out with her if he realized that Captain Hammer wasn’t the problem, and that he was.” It was his actions that prevented him and Penny from connecting.
At any point, Billy could have owned up to his shit and made an effort to change, but he didn’t, and tragedy ensued.
—Myca
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July 20th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I have to agree with Myca; an important difference between this story and the standard “nice guy (TM)” trope is that in the Nice Guy (TM) narrative, it’s the woman’s fault for wanting the Macho Jerk, instead of realizing what perfect boyfriend material the Nice Guy (TM) is.
In Dr. Horrible, it’s made very clear that Billy, not Penny, is the one at fault. I think it was good that the narrative implied that Penny is attracted to Billy, because it makes it clearer that the reason they aren’t together is that Billy is acting like a jerk.
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July 20th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Because that’s the pattern that was set in Act 1.
In Act 1, Captain Hammer destroys the van’s controller and as a result, the van almost kills Penny. But the narrative that gets remembered (by the Captain and Penny) is that Dr. Horrible endangered Penny and Captain Hammer saved Penny’s life.
So in Act 3, it makes perfect sense that Captain Hammer kills Penny, but it gets interpreted (by everyone but Dr. Horrible) as Dr. Horrible killing Penny.
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July 20th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
You know, I saw this whole thing as a commentary on public perception as much as anything else. It’s all about who’s the most visible, (Horrible and Hammer) not who’s actually doing anything real in the world. (Penny.)
The one’s flailing about ineptly for attention are the one’s who get the notice, praise, blame, etc. and the one person actually getting her hands dirty (so to speak) is remembered only briefly and only in context with the useless but charismatic jerks. “Captain Hammer’s Girlfriend Killed” and “Country Mourns What’s-her-name”.
I also agree with Myca about Penny’s waiting for Billy. She was lonely and she saw him as a friend. She’s finally not alone in the world but it isn’t as she ‘d hoped. She’s got the “Big Man On Campus” and everybody says she should be happy with that, but she isn’t.
I think if this story were really the sexist cliché that some people think it is, we wouldn’t have such a clear image of what jerks both Hammer and Horrible really are. Sure, Horrible says he loves Penny, but it’s clear when he finally talks to her that he has no real idea who she is or what she’s about. Hammer only wants her because Horrible does. For him, it’s all about “I’m touching your stuff.” The media, the public and the groupies only want charismatic drama.
There’s nothing dramatic about quietly doing the right thing, so when things are happening she’s never seen as an individual and when the drama is over, she’s forgotten completely.
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July 20th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
One thing I also loved was how Captain Hammer is defeated - the first time in his life he felt pain. At first it’s like “Yay, macho jackass gets his comeuppance” but then the cleverness hit me - if you are mostly impervious to pain, how do you deal with feeling pain for the first time in your life.
I love the headlines at the end - “Dr. Horrible Worst Villain of All Time” and “Dr. Horrible Kills Whats-Her-Name.”
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July 21st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I wished Penny had a little more going on, too. On the other hand, it’s not like Hammer or Dr. Horrible were paragons of depth…
The trope that actually annoyed me in Dr. Horrible was “The Good Woman Always Dies”. I actually really loved the ending, but it kind of made me go “Really? Again? Seriously?”…
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Okay, sorry to derail and be a total Buffy-geek, but I’ve never really had a problem with the “[physically] strong female characters” trope in Whedon’s work, partly because it’s never all that’s going on– Buffy’s real strength is always eventually shown one way or another to be inner strength: a fair number of storylines revolve around exactly the issue of what Buffy does when she is unable to match her opponent physically (like Glory, fer ex).
I actually do think that when we talk about strong female characters in Joss Whedon’s work, that includes Willow, Kaylee, Zoe, Joyce, Tara and Cordelia (though I have other issues with her portrayal) and others– all of whom are presented as strong women, with physical prowess being sometimes a part of that and sometimes not.
Buffy is the traditional hero with superpowers, fierce loyalty to the people she considers “hers”, and a relatively simple worldview where she defends the good from the evil. But I don’t think that means that other forms of strength are devalued, especially because the way she sees the world and reacts is often a limitation, and requires the strengths of others to help her get it right.
Anyway, I may be oversimplifying because I’m inclined to love these shows, any straightening out of my perspectives will be appreciated :0)
Sorry, end derailment.
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July 21st, 2008 at 5:18 pm
I don’t share all of Maia’s analysis, but this insight intrigues me. I expect authors write this dynamic into stories for very traditional, journeyman reasons: you want to keep your audience guessing, let them think that any outcome is possible. If Joss made it clear that Billy never stood a chance of winning Penny’s affections, then there’d be less drama. There’d be no poignancy when he lose her in the end if he never really had anything to lose.
That said, authors may favor certain story devices for apolitical reasons, yet have political consequence. Thus, most of us will encounter far more homicides in fiction than we do in real life. Authors like homicides because they provide a quick, dramatic way to start and/or end a story. Nevertheless, I cannot help but wonder that human sensibilities are altered by the prevalence of such stories. Similarly, the fact that our society is marinated in stories telling us that every boy or girl next door is on the verge of falling in love with us if we only believe hard enough – this surely can’t help but feed people’s frustrations when it proves not to be true.
Of course, the “Just believe strongly enough and your dreams will come true!” storyline is pretty common with or without romance. And it’s doubtful advice, with or without romance.
Then again, there are also famous stories in which one person sacrifices for the object of their unrequited love (Count of Monte Cristo, Hunchback, Les Miserables, The Night of January 16th). Such stories undermine the idea that everyone will actually receive the love they feel entitled to. But these stories tend to be fewer and further between.
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July 21st, 2008 at 5:56 pm
You agree with that aspect? Really? That part made me wonder if the story had two frozen yogurt scenes and I’d somehow missed one. The only message I see there is that talking to her had more chance of success than killing people or, well, not talking to her.
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July 22nd, 2008 at 7:29 am
Actually, there’s three.
1) Penny & Captain Hammer sharing frozen yogurt on a park bench while Doctor Horrible stalks them in his arboreal disguise, during the latter part of “On the Rise,” the first song from Episode 2.
2) Penny & Billy ‘accidentally’ sharing frozen yogurt at the laundromat. This was somewhere between “On The Rise” and “Keep Your Head Up, Billy Buddy”, but I’m not sure whether it was before or after the phone call from Bad Horse telling him to go kill someone.
3) Penny, waiting alone at the laundromat with 2 frozen yogurts, during “So They Say,” the first song from Episode 3.
—Myca
EDIT: The second yogurt scene was immediately before the failed caper and call from Bad Horse.
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July 23rd, 2008 at 1:48 am
Just came across this in an interview with Joss, and it seemed relevant to post here.
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July 23rd, 2008 at 9:56 am
Well, they could have given her more jokes, but it still would have ended the same way, because Penny really is a prop. But I don’t see it as because she’s female. From a narrative standpoint, she could easily have been a male sidekick, a car, or a ham sandwich and everyone else would have acted the same way.
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August 1st, 2008 at 9:07 pm
“Here’s the story of a girl who grew up lost and lonely, thinking love was only fairytale and and trouble was made only for me… Grief replaced with pity for a city barely coping.”
Penny tells Billy herself that if he stopped looking inwards at his own pain he can find the ‘colour in his darkness’. Penny IS the strong character in this story because she’s the only one who isn’t too self involved to actually make a difference in the world as opposed to the glory seeking, arrogant and largely useless superhero/villians.
PS: Penny did realise captain hammer was a jerk (not the first or last girl to take that tiny bit too long to realise) and most likely would’ve found the same if she and Billy became involved. Remember the only Billy she knew was her friend at the laundromat, she has no idea about how bitter and twisted he is.
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