I’d really been looking forward to this episode. In fact a couple of days before I dreamed that I’d watched it and in my dream I thought “That was good, but not as much Sierra as I was expecting”.¹ As we were sitting down to watch Belonging I said “At this stage my expectations are so high that if this episode doesn’t change my life it’s going to be a let-down.” I’m not saying it changed my life, but it certainly wasn’t a let-down.

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You know how good this episode was? The fact that it contained 0% Paul Ballard isn’t even on my top ten list of awesomeness. But, before we begin, lets have a moment of ‘Yay’ for the absence of Ballard. I don’t even need to choose my favourite character of the episode by who insults him the most.²

Everyone was their best in this episode, including Eliza Dushku. I know some people aren’t interested in the character Echo – but I always have been. From the first episode I have liked both Echo and Eliza’s performance. And this was a very fine episode on both counts. There are real subtleties in the differences in the way Echo interacts with people now. I loved that they drew out Echo’s growing understanding of language with Topher’s ‘they’re in my shirt’ line.

This season she’s been a bit closed off and inaccessible – as Boyd said she’s learned how to lie. How deep a game is she playing? How much is she conscious of what she was doing. Did she just want to help Sierra, or did she also want to change Topher? Is she using the doll persona as an act? It’s a challenge, both acting and directing, to take this path of her development, but at the moment I’m finding it very satisfying.

My favourite aspect of it all is that Echo is doing a great job of organising in the dollhouse – she’s got Boyd and Ballard completely committed to covering for her, Victor and Sierra developing their solidarity,³ and she even seems to be able to get Topher to do what she wants. After her individualism in Echoes and Needs, I’m really appreciating that. Next I’d like to see her actually talk to Sierra – there’s so much potential just sitting there with that friendship – make it happen writers.

Although in this episode, I even appreciated her individual acts of resistance: reading and writing. The leaf as her only book mark, really emphasised how much what is taken from people is the ability to experience time, to grow and to learn – to read one page and then another. The notes that she left herself on the lid of her pod are heart-breaking. Not just because they’re so simple - the ‘Victor loves Sierra’ ‘Sierra loves Victor’ couple could have been written on a school toilet. But because of how hard she’s fighting to retain what was done to her. “Friends help each other”

I finally liked Boyd again – give that character something to do other than punch people and pass moral judgements and I start to enjoy him. Although I felt like he was given a little bit too on the nose dialogue “so she can remember”, “now the lies begin” and “She does [belong in the dollhouse] now”. From an episode of TV point of view all of this felt unnecessary and a little insulting to the audience. As a character trait it makes him pompous – which doesn’t go well with morally judgemental (and completely hypocritical). But I’m so happy he got something to do that I’ll ignore it.

Dr Saunders was being felt in her absence this episode. We learned that she had projected her own feelings on to Sierra. Claire hated Topher so much, that she missed what was happening to Sierra. In turn, Topher was driven, on some level, by proving the absent Claire wrong, and that desire not to be the bad man took him far further than he knew how to deal with.

The whole episode was very well shot (and I don’t usually notice that sort of thing until I’m listening to a DVD commentary and Joss tells me that a scene is a oner and I go ‘oh’ and feel knowledgeable), but the first Topher scene where we saw him through his magnifying lens was particularly brilliant. The dialogue and image worked together to make it clear that he is on the path to Epitaph One. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the events of this week affect him.

And a special shout-out to ‘this is your brain on drugs’⁴ Fran Kranz is just amazing in every way – to deliver such a silly line so perfectly in the same ep as he signalled Topher’s eventual downfall, and his present uncertainty followed by pain, is skill indeed.

I’ve always found the relationships between the staff at the dollhouse fascinating, and I love that they developed Topher by developing his relationships. I was glad that they built on Boyd and Topher’s relationship, it brings out the interesting in both of them. As for Adelle and Topher - I found Adelle’s creepy maternal/sexual vibe with him just as disturbing as it was supposed to be: “You have no morals so I’m going to touch your face.” I can’t wait to see where they take that.

I was unsure, at first, what I felt about our main characters being ignorant about what had happened with Sierra. The end of Needs was obvious Retconned – when Dr Saunders and Boyd talked about the man who took away Sierra’s power, they meant Nolan. And the new interpretation is a bit of a stretch. But that wasn’t my problem – I felt unsure about all of them being so clearly anti-Nolan. It felt a little clean, a little artificial, a little like they couldn’t slip below a certain level on the ‘likeability scale.’

The more I think about it, the more I’m glad the writers did it this way. I think it was stretching credulity a little bit for everyone to be “I know we took dolls from prison, dolls who explicitly said “I have no choice” and dolls so ill that they couldn’t possibly give consent, but we must do something about Sierra.” But (as Joss Whedon says on the DVD commentary to the Serenity pilot) everyone believes their righteous. Not jut in the dollhouse, everyone who is exploiting or abusing someone is a hero in their own life. To be able to tell a story that shows the range of ways people can react when they discover that they were wrong – that their abuse and exploitation is just that – is what makes Dollhouse so great.

Priya’s origin story (as Adelle and Topher saw it originally), also tells us a lot about the Dollhouse’s view of consent. Of the six dolls that we have any idea why and how they came to the dollhouse three (Caroline, Alpha and the guy from Echoes) were facing jail. The other three all appeared to the Dollhouse to be mentally ill, and not coping with that. We don’t know how lucid either Madeline or Victor were, but it’s clear that they took Priya when she was completely unable to give informed consent. Adelle is used to this, she is the one who give Caroline the contract after she says “I don’t have a choice” She is at least partially aware of the lies she is telling herself. That is why she chose not to fight on this one, even if she couldn’t do it sober.

Another interesting aspect of the relationship between the staff and the dolls was in the tiny call-back to Haunted. Topher told Sierra she was allowed beer – on special occasions – the last time we’d seen her with beer was at his birthday – when she was his friend. Like Adelle, Topher seems to protect, to care for, to identify with, the dolls that he’s interacted with. Even interacting with an imprint that has been constructed for their needs, makes the workers in the dollhouse see the dolls as more human.

But this story wasn’t about Echo, or Adelle, it wasn’t even about Topher or Sierra, it was about Priya. We’d only seen snippets of her before, but they’d been very compelling snippets, particularly in Epitaph One. From the very beginning of this episode, with the jewelry selling scene on the beach, Priya seemed so real. When she said to Nolan: “I don’t have a work visa ‘do-do-do’” – it was such a silly, little, normal moment. It made the rest of the episode even harder.

When I mentioned that this episode was going to be about Sierra, my friend was all ‘Does she get to kill Nolan?’⁵ Dollhouse is, among many other things, a story about the nature of fantasy. This episode didn’t have an engagement, but it did have a fantasy –– the fantasy of killing your rapist. Or, in the case of the viewer, watching someone else kill their rapist. Dollhouse has given this before – the fact that Mellie was being controlled by Adelle didn’t make it any less satisfying when she broke Hearn’s neck. But that was the fantasy of killing a rapist – we didn’t watch Mellie dealing with the body, the police, or the effects on her of killing someone.⁶

Belonging wasn’t the fantasy of killing a rapist, there was a body and it traumatised Priya even more. The fight was messy, Priya had a normal person’s strength and was lucky. Although I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who shouted at the screen “Topher couldn’t you have helped by providing her with Kung Fu skills. But it wouldn’t have worked if he had. And after there was blood, a body, and very few options. There were still fantasy elements – Boyd arrived on cue with body disposal skills, but it was the reality, not the fantasy that we were left with. The scene, or story, didn’t end with her stabbing him.

I’m not saying it’s not satisfying to watch women killing rapists, because it is. But it fills an emotional need, an expression of our anger, life doesn’t work that way. I was really glad we saw just a bit more of the picture.

In an episode this brilliant, there was only one moment missing. Why did Priya go back to the Dollhouse? When I think about it, I can see why she would feel as if going back was her only option. But as I was watching it for the first time, I kept get pulling out of the story and asking why?

I think there are lots of answers to that question – actually that’s the problem, there are too many reasons (she was coerced by Topher and Boyd, she didn’t feel able to go on the run, she wanted out of her life). When I first watched the episode, it felt disjointed and unsure. When I thought about it (and rewatched it a fourth or fifth time) I put myself in Priya’s head, and going back made emotional sense to me.

I think conveying to the audience that Sierra was going to go back to the dollhouse in a conversation between Boyd and Topher was a mistake. We should have learned that with Priya – then her reasons would have been our reasons, and I think it would have made more sense. It could have been as simple as Topher telling Priya that she was microchipped – we only needed a beat, but the beat they gave us didn’t work for me.

Which isn’t to say Priya going back was simple, or should have been portrayed as such. The scene between Topher and Sierra at the end was so powerful, because thre was so much going on (and both Fran Kranz and Dichen Lachman kicked their incredible performances up a notch for that scene). She wanted her memories gone, and she didn’t care about the price (‘if you wake me up again’), but there was also determination, and even hope. In the end her story was about the complexity of survival.

It wasn’t ‘empowering’ (how I hate that word). But it was real, which is far more important.

As well as having just the right amount of Paul Ballard, this episode had almost enough Victor and Sierra. I’m obviously on record as a Victor/Sierra Shipper (Vierra? Sictor?). But my one concern has been the way the relationship was set up. It seemed to rinforce men as desiring/women as desired dynamic. I always believed that the relationship was reciprocal, but there was little textual evidence of that. There had been a scene of Sierra enjoying looking at Victor in episode 4, but they cut it out.⁷

Which was what made the art gallery scene so glorious. It became clear that Sierra been attracted to Victor, just as long as Victor had been attracted to Sierra. ⁸ Everything about their interaction was charming, without being ridiculous ‘love-at-first sight’.

But, sweet as it was, that was nothing compared with what followed. As I said during Man on the Street, one of the most powerful aspects of Sierra’s storyline is the portrayal of institutional abuse. Even more importantly, Sierra’s pain would have remained invisible if she didn’t have friends. The role that Echo and Victor played in making Sierra’s experiences public⁹ and supporting her was beautiful.

Echo wasn’t the only one who had a plan; Victor saw the black paint as something he could deal with (and probably his plan was less likely to have negative effects of Sierra than Echo’s). The scene in the shower was lovely in so many ways, his earnestness – their playfulness.¹⁰ Then we saw Victor’s vulnerability as well, and Sierra comforted him.

They have such an equal, reciprocal relationship (particularly now they’ve shown us the origins). I really like that. Just like I was relieved when Victor didn’t ‘invent rape’ I love the idea that in a world that doesn’t use gender as a system of control, relationships would look different.

But what was most powerful about this episode was it’s depiction of love. What I think is so beautiful about Sierra and Victor’s love is it’s simplicity. “I’ll wait here” and he does, and until she comes back every time the camera cuts to him it breaks your heart. They like being together, they want to help each other, they make each other feel better. On some level love (and I don’t just mean romantic love or love paired with sexual attraction here) is that simple.

In real life, the simplicity of love is often only really apparent in times of great stress, or absolute relaxation. All the rest of the time messy life stuff gets in the way. But the feeling is still there. The feeling that you would get the black paint pots of your friends, families and lovers and wash them out if only you knew how, the desire for someone to wait about the bottom of the stairs – those are the reasons Victor and Sierra’s relationship resonates.

The episode is incredibly sad, but the ending is beautiful. The way the dolls walked into their pods at the end of Needs was heartbreaking. They’re not doing that anymore. Their acts of resistance are intimacy and retaining information. It won’t be enough – the dolls won’t bring down the dollhouse this way. Like most institutions they’ve learned if they loosen their control it makes it easier to maintain their power. But in the meantime, it keeps Echo, Sierra and Victor strong enough to keep fighting.

1. I never used to dream about television, but since watching the Joss commentary on Restless where he describes having dreams where you watch movies and they’re weird as, I’ve had dreams like that twice. That Joss is part of not just the content, but the form of my dreams is probably just predictable at this point. (back)
2. If you didn’t know who my favourite character of the episode is you a) haven’t been paying attention to my reviews and b) Didn’t watch that episode. (back)
3. in fact she seemed to be working the Anger-Hope-Action technique with Victor pretty well – not that he needs much proding to any of those things when it comes to Sierra (back)
4. It makes me want to search out the 90210 scene from the Peach Pit where Andrea is explaining this to Brandon. Television gold that was (back)
5. One of the things I’ve loved about this season is the consequences for the Johns. Of the people we know have, or planned to have, sex with an active, we’ve had two stabbings and one jailing. That’s the sort of ratio which is fun to watch, even though it throws the profitability of the whole operation into more than a little bit of doubt. (back)
6. Buffy, of course, was designed around fantasy killing rapists. The bodies went poof – there was no stress no trauma, and when men got really misogynist she cut them in half from the balls up (back)
7. If you ask me it’s worth buying the DVD just to see that scene. I’d have cut the scene of Echo being remote wiped, before I’d have cut that (back)
8. There may have been a call from the cheap seats ‘You can ask me many boring questions. It may have come from me (back)
9. and the fact that that publicity didn’t result in unmitigated improvement for Sierra’s life was very realistic (back)
10. Small quibble the ‘indian chief’ line rang a bit false to me. So far we haven’t seen dolls have any cultural references. So far dolls comprehension seems limited to the idea that Dr Saunders is nice, and they should try and be their best. Victor didn’t understand Echo’s metaphor. The idea of ‘an Indian Chief’ that Victor and Sierra seemed to share was far more specific than that (back)

Sorry for the delay in this week’s dollhouse episode. I’ve been a bit busy, and this was a solid episode. Not so world-changing that I had to spend the next three days searching for superlatives, or so incompetent that I was instantly driven to rant. Just solid. I think in some ways it proves that Dollhouse can have solid Engagement of the week episodes, so I was wrong last week.

So for those who haven’t been following dollhouse ratings from the edge of your seats – the news has been all over the place. The episodes were appalling, they were better but still awful, Fox was going to pull it, Fox was committed to making and airing all 13 episodes, Fox had confirmed airdates for the next 5 episodes

Well four days or so after that good news Fox has announced that they’re not airing Dollhouse during sweeps, but instead they’re airing double episodes through December. This means I’m going to be in withdrawl all through November, and also I’m grumpy. If anyone out there has a Nielson box, the offer is still on for a very small bribe.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is mainly a post addressing New Zealand domestic politics, but I think some of the points I make have a wider relevance. In 1972, New Zealanders gave up their right to sue for personal injury in exchange for a national system of accident compensation. This system has provided counselling for survivors of sexual violence.

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When writing about my analysis of sexual violence and prisons, one of the points I keep coming back to is how centred it is on the perpertrator. It’s not a new or original thought to point out that everything about the way a criminal law system deals with sexual violence is entirely focused on ‘the offender’. The follow-on from this is our society’s way of dealing with sexual violence revolves around the court system.

A few year ago, I wrote about a nursing student, who was raped by a fellow student, after a typical, ridiculous, defence, the rapist got off. She had to drop out of school, because the school wouldn’t do anything to ensure she wouldn’t have to see her rapist regularly. I think it’s important to understand how structural the problems within our justice system are. These systems are not designed to support survivors of sexual abuse, and therefore they will always fail at that task.

But…

But, in New Zealand, we do have a system that is set up to meet, to revolve around, what survivors of sexual violence need. There are many things it cannot provide - ACC will not help student find a way to continue to study without seeing her rapist. But it can provide counselling and income support.

I don’t have any personal experience, or depth of knowledge, of ACCs sensitive claims system. I am sure, as it currently operates, it has flaws, and some people fail to get the help that they need. But, at the moment, it can be centred around what a survivor needs, based on her relationship with her counsellor (or his).

If these changes go through, it will be much harder, maybe impossible for ACC to be survivor-centre. Currently, a survivor can have up to four sessions of counselling to disclose their abuse, but the changes will cut this down to one session (or maybe two, Peter Jensen, the person in charge of the proposal, was unclear on nine to noon).

At the moment a survivor can access up to 50 sessions with a counsellor before they have to obtain a psychological assessment. The changes will require psychological assessments much earlier in the process, and that process will be directed much more by clinicians. In order to get funded counselling, a survivor of sexual abuse will require a DSM IV diagnosis.

This is not a survivor-centred approach to sexual abuse; it is a clinician-centred approach.

ACC has already begun tightening the screws. And in doing so it has turned funded counselling into another area where a survivor has to prove her (or his) experience – maybe not beyond reasonable doubt, but close.

Dr Kim McGregor explained how ACC restricts access to counselling on an interview on 9 to Noon. ACC declined cover for a young boy who had been sexually abused as the behaviour described: mood swings, tearfulness, and sitting alone sucking his thumb, did not necessarily have a clinical link with sexual abuse. They said these behaviours could just as well have been caused by settling into school and a new environment rather than the sexual abuse events.

Imagine the difficulty of someone who has survived sexual abuse will have in proving that the difficulties she (or he) is experiencing are directly and only a result of the abuse. Those who had what insurance companies call ‘pre-existing conditions’, could find support denied – if they had previously been depressed, how can they know that depression after the sexual abuse is a result of that abuse? (not a question that could be asked by anyone who cared about the experiences of survivors of sexual abuse, but a question that is being asked by ACC). While those who do not seek help for a long time, will have to prove the effects the abuse has had on them, and the more complex their survival strategies in the intervening time, the harder it will be for them to access the support they need.

The parallels between the perfect victim of the court system and the perfect survivor of ACC are strong. In both cases the onus of proof falls on those have been abused to prove either that there was abuse, or that that abuse affected them. Just as previous sexual history is used against survivors in the court system, ACC can use previous mental health history against survivors.

My point is not just that the changes to ACC need to be fought (although they do – Monday is a national day of action – come along), but to show how important, and how fragile, a survivor centred approach to sexual violence there is.

As well as pushing against these threats to survivor support, I want us to push further. I want us to imagine what a response to sexual violence which prioritised survivors look like.

The ratings aren’t looking good for Dollhouse, which is making me sad. If you’re not sold on the idea of the show this is a great fanmade site. If you want it to stay on air then they’ve got ideas of what you can here

Sorry, for the advertorial in the beginning. I can’t do anything myself you see (except write ridiculously long reviews), and I’d be really annoyed in they didn’t air episode four.

Read the rest of this entry »

So currently Dollhouse is watched by less people in Fox’s target demo than the total number of followers Felicia Day has on twitter. If you enjoy the show (or even just my reviews), then think about watching in a way that will get measured, because I can’t.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post uses Dollhouse as a way of examining some ideas. If you haven’t watched Dollhouse, but want to, then I recommend avoiding it, since it has some significant spoilers, and the show really will be better if you don’t know. But if you’re never going to watch Dollhouse then read ahead, you don’t need to know anything about the show to understand the post. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t understand my blogging habits anymore. I have thoughts, and half composed posts. Big events, blog-storms, and repulsive media trials come and go, but I just don’t prioritise writing them. But then comes a new episode of a Joss Whedon show and I’ve written thousands of words before I even know.¹

Epitaph One is the mysterious 13th episode of Dollhouse, exclusive to DVD. Why is there a mysterious 13th episode of dollhouse I hear you ask? Because Fox has spectacularly bad taste in TV. Fox didn’t like the original pilot of Dollhouse. They thought interesting might confuse people and the skirts were too long (the unaired pilot was also included on the DVD and I’m going to be reviewing that next). So then Joss wrote a new first episode (the not very good Ghost) and the original first episode was scrapped for parts (many of scenes have been inserted in subsequent episodes). Fox (the network) had ordered 13 episodes of Dollhouse, but they included the scrapped pilot in that 13. Fox (the studio) wanted 13 actual episodes to put on the DVD. They were talking about a clip show, but instead Joss and Jed and Maurissa wrote Epitaph One. It was written to be cheap (it cost half of what a normal episode cost), to use existing sets, but not to rely on the main cast (who were busy shooting the actual series).

It is an exponentially better season finale than Omega, and worth the price of the DVD. Read the rest of this entry »

1. This is one of the reasons why the ‘why do people write about X and not about Y arguments never really work for me. I think writing, and what people have something to have something to say about is a complicated process (back)

The following advertisement aired on Israeli TV:

The following clip was filmed in Palestine:

Fantasy is a strange thing. (via Lenin’s Tomb)

I live in New Zealand, and like so many other countries it gives me a strange view of the USA. I’m familiar with so many things that are alien to my life. As a child I read of twinkies and home room. As a political blogger I read of primaries and supreme court appointments. But there’s much I don’t really understand. Sometimes that ignorance is a hinderence. There are things I’d genuinely like to know¹ But sometimes this difference means I see things that people more immersed may miss.

On Womanist Musings Renee began a post: “The original sin of the United States is undoubtedly slavery.”² It’s not true, the original sin, the origin sin, of the United States is colonisation. I’m not making an argument of primacy, or importance. Just of chronology. Statements such as this render colonialism, and native Americans, invisible. It invokes the idea of the colonial idea of Terra Nullis, where there were no people before colonisation, and no sin before slavery.

I read a lot of American feminist blogs, and I’m always surprised by the silence around colonialism (and I know Renee is Canadian, which makes this even stranger to me). On an intellectual level I understand the factors that tend to mean that American progressives spend less time thinking and talking about colonialism than New Zealand progressives do. But I don’t grok it - I can’t imagine it - I’ve no idea how it changes your political worldview. ³

So I thought I’d ask left-wing commenters from America and Canada, what role colonialism plays in their political analysis and understanding of their country and it’s history and racism.

Edited to Add: Just in case there was any doubt, I fully agree with Renee’s point about reparations for slavery in the post that I linked to. The line I quoted is the only line that I take issue with.

1. like why aren’t the left doing a nut about the law and order-ness of the latest supreme court judge. It seems to me that the right threw a tantram about that female judge who didn’t get nominated and they got someone they liked more. Whereas the left says “Yay she’s a centrist.” Amp has tried to explain this to me, but I don’t understand (back)
2. Personally I’m not sure about the use of ‘original sin’ as a metaphor, not just for theological reasons (I don’t know enough about the theology of original sin), but that I think the personification of nations naturalises them in a way that is unhelpful. (back)
3. I say this not to say I’m a great example on Maori sovereignty, but just that it’s a thread that I can’t imagine politics without. (back)

“If I go to the debate on pornography, I’ll just fume about the fact that everyone’s got stupid analysis but me.” I said that a couple of months ago, and I was joking, but only a little bit.

Feminist discussions on sexually explicit material tend to be heated, and change no-one’s mind. The latest discussions on The Hand Mirror, another blog I write on, have followed this pattern. I want to explore why.

Media that has been created for the purpose of sexual arousal and produced to be bought and sold (which is a mouthful, but I think more precise than ‘pornography’) sits at an intersection: Desire, sex, the construction of men’s sexuality, the construction of women’s sexuality, bodies, work, the role of the state, objectification, the creation of rape culture and commodification (and much more, those are just what’s on top for me).

It only takes small differences in feminists’ analysis, weighting or experience of a couple of these before they’re coming at the issue that we call ‘pornography’ from completely different angles.

As well as making the issue complicated, these many facets also mean that those no such thing as a disinterested party. Everyone has a stake in what is being discussed, but what is most triggering about the discussion about sexually explicit material varies widely.

To simplify one example more than is really justified: discussions of sexually explicit material may trigger some women’s experiences of having their sexuality and desire denied, while the same discussion might trigger other women’s experience of having other people’s sexuality or desire forced on them. (I don’t mean this as a dichotomy, just an example of the sorts of talking past that can happen in these discussions).

I think it’s very difficult even to talk about, or articulate any of this, because the vocabulary we have around sexually explicit media is so limited. The distinctions I think need to be made about are numerous and complex:
Was it made by an individual expressing their personal desires?
Was it made to be bought and sold?
Did everyone involve in making it give genuine consent?
Does it normalise misogynist ideas about women, women’s sexuality, women’s bodies, or sex?
Do they normalise racist ideas about any group of women or men, their bodies or sexuality?
Does it normalise a limited view of human sex or sexuality?
How do the ideas it contains interact with rape culture?
Does it normalise a particular type of body?

Now the answer to most mass-produced mainstream pornography from Ralph to are yes (or no depending on the question). But my point is that these are different questions, and they’re different again from:

What do we do about it all? What do we expect other organisation, or the state to do about it all?

Those are just my questions, I’m sure other people have different ones (I’m sure I’d have different ones if I wrote them on a different day, after reading different material). Unless we are clear about what exactly we’re talking about, unless we actively try and overcome the difficulties I’ve outlined, we’ll never have anything useful to say.

I wrote this post - I decided to continue talking about pornography, despite my cynicism, because I think it’s important. I think untangling these threads, understanding the role of sexually explicit material in women’s oppression is vital. I think the first answer to the question: ‘what is to be done?’ Is that we have to figure out how to talk about this.

The comments on this post are open to feminists, and feminist allies only (I appear to have forgotten how to do the rule).

I wrote this post for my blog. Before you read it there are some basic New Zealand facts you need to know. Our Prime Minister and Cabinet are made up of elected representatives (rather than being a seperate branch of government). John Key is the current Prime Minister of new Zealand and Richard Worth was (until today) the Minister for Internal Affairs (like the secretary of the Interior in America I guess). Richard Worth resigned today supposedly ‘for personal reasons’, but it has been confirmed that the police are investigating for an, as yet unmentioned, serious crime.

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John Key has said that he had received more than one complaint that Richard Worth was “making a nuisance of himself towards women.” He told the media:

All I can say I treated the allegation seriously. I investigated it and I was satisfied with the answers I received.

From the statements John Key has made it seems to be a reasonable supposition that the unknown crime the police are investigating Richard Worth for is an offence that is in some way similar to ‘making a nuisance of himself towards women’.

Now if you want the political point scoring I suggest The Standard or Kiwiblog. They will argue about how this compares with Clark’s actions, and the political management of it all. These are not things I care about.

There’s something very born to rule about the euphemism ‘making a nuisance of himself’. Just the language, unfortunately, not the activity. Like many born to rule terms, it’s quite honest. I can imagine quite a range of activities that Key would refer to in this way: it could refer to language, either abusive or explicitly sexual, or unwanted physical contact, even protracted unwanted physical contact. These are all nuisances, women should put up with them in the same way they might a missed bus.

And what is telling is that John Key ignored the first indications that Richard Worth was nuisance-ing woman (and we can only conjecture what that euphamism covers in John Key’s mind). Or in the language of politicians - John Key was satisfied with the explanation the Minister gave him.

Which, if you think about it, isn’t that different to what happens outside of parliament. A man (say) hears that his friend has been ‘being a nuisance to’ (or the euphemism which is most appropriate to the social circle they belong to) a woman. The man talks to his friend about it. His friends gives a response, which is either “she’s lying” or “she was asking for it” (both these responses will probably be clouded in layers of euphemism as well). And he is satisfied with that response.

And so the friend keeps doing it. Who wouldn’t? Everyone is satisfied.

Except the woman involved, who is, as so often happens, rendered, as usual, with the focus on the man, and his explanations.

While I was watching Omega I enjoyed it quite a lot. The pacing was good, and the dialogue was great – at times it was fantastic. But at the end, with the montage and music, I felt nothing. And when writing this review I’ve had very little interest in watching the episode, or even any of the individual scenes, again. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t like the first part of two-part episodes. It’s fine when you’re watching them on DVD (unless it’s late and you know you shouldn’t watch another one, but you do it anyway and then it turns out to be a cliff-hanger so you have to watch the next one as well), but a week is a long-time between Echo walking out the elevator with Alpha and finding out what the hell is going on.

Or at least I don’t like the first part when I haven’t read spoilers, which has happened to me exactly once (I’ve been spoiled for every show that I was a fan of since 1995). I’m not sure that’s a good sample. But I’m sure I hate it.

But reviewing the first part of a two-parter is particularly difficult. So much of the meaning and point of this episode depends on what happens next. This episode raised far more questions than it answered, and while there is a lot to talk about, there’s a lot I won’t comment on (like who was Echo when Alpha left with her. We’ll all know in a couple of days, and speculating on it wastes precious review time that should be spent laughing at Paul Ballard). So consider this the first part of my review as there are many things that I am reserving judgement on, although my cliff-hanger won’t be as exciting as the show’s. Read the rest of this entry »

At this point, I think the character I feel most engaged with is Mellie. She doesn’t know what’s going on, she doesn’t know that she’s a doll that was programmed not to understand the word left-over. I want her to be happy and free, and she could never be either, let alone both at the same time.

I think they needed to show Paul raping November, and they definitely needed to make it that ugly. I’m glad that they showed that he had a choice, that he made a choice, but I think the story needed to turn him into what he hated, and I think it was that hatred for himself, not the dollhouse, that drove him.

What I found most powerful, about those scenes, was the speech Mellie gave

I like being with you, I love it actually. And you say everything is fine and so I’m going to stop asking if it is. If that means lying next to you while everything is not fine, then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you what you need, and let you take it from me. If you want to give back, give back, but it doesn’t have to mean anything.

I doubt Topher had to work hard when constructing that imprint. To find a woman who believes that love is one way, and her only role is to give. We’ve all been imprinted, after all.

The first time I watched the scenes with Topher/Sierra¹ I was filled with anxiety about where they were going to go. To me having sex with Sierra, knowing that she was forced into the Dollhouse, is a whole level of vileness. I didn’t necessarily mind the show going there; I like hating Topher, but until I knew what they were doing I was anxious.

But instead the story was infinitely more pathetic. Topher wasn’t looking for someone to have sex with, he was looking for someone to play Laser-force and eat cake with (some people never got enough 9 year old birthday parties). All the employees of the dollhouse seem so atomised, some to the point of complete derangement. The abuse they’re carrying out doesn’t make the happy, or fulfilled, or whole, it just gives them power. And power won’t eat birthday cake with you.

The parallels between Topher and Paul were emphasised by the way the scenes were paired together throughout the episode (in the beginning of the episode scenes with Paul directly followed scenes with Topher). By the end of the episode the white night has chosen to rescue. Whereas it becomes clear that the amoral dick doesn’t want to rape and active. Which doesn’t make him virtuous or even sympathetic, but it does make him interesting.

I do have theory I want to share with the world, so I can say ‘I told you so’ if I’m right. I think there are many signs that Topher didn’t just construct a friend, he imprinted Sierra with himself (which just ups the pathetic level). I’ve wondered why Alpha would have been imprinted with the skills to construct imprints, in order to use them in a composite. I think that Alpha was Sierra last year, or the year before, and had been imprinted as Topher to help Topher celebrate his birthday. That’s why he can do remote wipes.

You may notice that I haven’t yet talked about the main plot of this story. There’s a reason for that. The idea of Dollhouse having the capacity to provide eternal life was a fascinating one. But in this episode I felt that they squandered it on un-engaging characters and incredibly cliched jokes (‘she was nothing like mother’). While I appreciated the thematic unity around connection and isolation, it didn’t make the story of the very rich dead woman interesting to watch.

I remain uninterested in the problems of rich people. Particularly as clichéd problems as ‘I’m not sure if my much younger and poorer boyfriend married me for love’ and ‘I never showed any love to my children and now they resent me for it’ (clearly not just a rich person’s problem, but I find the story much less interesting when the origin of the distance is an abundance of money).

I could maintain interest in monsters of the week stories on Buffy (sometimes I’m not going to stand up and defend ‘go fish’), because they always involved with or related to to the characters that I knew. I think actual procedurals, the stories that make an episode of House, or the interminable cop shows, require a different sort of story-telling, one that the people of Mutant Enemy aren’t necessarily very good at. The episodes where we dealt with the woes of a one off character, were never the strongest episodes of Buffy, Angel or Firefly (Inca Mummy Girl, She, or The Message, for examples). How to introduce, make us care about, and resolve a person’s story in 25 minutes or so, is a really big challenge. The Dollhouse one shots I’ve enjoyed so far, I’ve enjoyed because there’s been some glitch in the imprint and we’ve seen Echo or Caroline underneath (The Target, Stage Fright and the Grey Hour). If they can’t do that each week (and they probably can’t) they need to work on making the stories great.

1. Dichen Lachman was, again, fantastic (although she could do with a little more to do). I particularly loved the way she talked about the ‘sleepies’, and the whole sequence was hilarious. (back)

That was Nifty.

So nifty that, for the first time, my review involved a stop watch. Be warned, I’m getting even geekier as time progresses.

It’s so frustrating that just as the show is getting even more mindblowingly awesome Fox is messing it around. For those of you who missed the fan panic (and fans can panic): last week Fox announced they would be airing Omega the season finale of dollhouse, which is episode 12, in May.

However anyone who is even minorly obsessed with the show knows that there were 13 episodes, and the 13th episode is called Epitaph One (and it’s Joss Whedon there’s a lot of obsession for dorks). This led to high confusion about whether the show was cancelled, and Fox decided not to comment, fuelling the panicking tendency. It turns out it’s not cancelled but Fox the production company and Fox the TV network are in arguments about what makes 13 episodes of Dollhouse. The TV network are counting the unaired pilot as an episode, but the production company are, so the production company made 13 and the TV network are only airing 12. The two arms of Fox are still in negotiations for a possible season 2 and nothing has been announced.

Joss had been sounding very dismal about the possibility of renewal, but apparently when Fox heard these dismal noises they contacted him and told him that the show wasn’t cancelled yet and another season was possible.

So I’m still looking for people with Nielsen boxes who accept (very small) bribes.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been meaning to thank everyone for the nice comments on my Dollhouse reviews. Particularly thanks to Felicity, who said:

For some reason I can barely fathom, Alas’s is the only Dollhouse response I like reading. Perhaps it has the perfect mix of Jossmania and critical analysis for me?

I’m thinking of putting ‘the perfect mix of Jossmania and critical analysis on my CV (resume for Americans).

Another brilliant episode that really is much, much better unspoiled. I have learned how to hide the bulk of the post, so from now on I will include a brief spoiler free ramble at the beginning of each review. Don’t click on unless you’ve watched the episode. Read the rest of this entry »

When I watched the preview for ‘Echoes’ the first thing I said was “Oh God, I hope they don’t turn Caroline into an animal rights activist. I liked Caroline.” This clearly says more about my issues than it does about the show. I had assumed that Caroline was an activist who had got into massive legal/other trouble, but I hadn’t actually expected to be right.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have been trying not to use ‘mad’ as a metaphor in my writing, but some posts are harder than others. I found it really challenging to write a post about holocaust deniers without saying “these people are batshit crazy”. There’s been some discussion of this and Donaquixote articulated the reasons for avoiding madness as a metaphor very well:

I also get the insane = disconnected from reality definition you were going with. But there’s a huge difference between an illness that disconnects you from reality as a result of neurochemical processes and the condition of being willfully disconnected from reality because you don’t want to have your opinions challenged. One is an illness, the other is a character flaw, and the two ought never be confused. The problem is a lot of our terminology quite purposefully does confuse the two.

Many of the derogatory metaphors that come most easily to us are about comparing something we don’t like with the powerless.

Metaphoric language is powerful - even as cliched metaphoric language as ‘batshit crazy’. I don’t think we should give up metaphors, I think we should be creative, more precise and more true in the metaphors we do use.

I thought a way of doing that would be to open a thread for discussion so people could post their metaphors, and other derogatory language, that don’t pathologise powerlessness.

I’m not suggesting we start calling everyone we dislike a futures trader, but I think there are lots of smart articulate people who comment on blogs I write on. We can do better than the derogatory terms we do now.

I’m posting this on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty, Alas and The Hand Mirror, for maximum discussion.

Please don’t post in this thread unless you’re actually interested in developing new metaphors. If you’re doubtful about the usefulness of new metaphors then go talk about that somewhere else.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

If you haven’t watched “Man on the Street”, the sixth episode of the Dollhouse, don’t read another word. This episode is available on Hulu and itunes for those in the US (and through less legal means for those outside), go watch it and then come back. You really don’t want to be spoiled. Read the rest of this entry »

I had vaguely heard of Uncensored; I knew they were not my sort of people. But I didn’t realise just how much not my people until Scott Hamilton wrote about them. Here’s his summary:

The January-March issue of Uncensored offers examples of the magazine’s anti-semitism. The cover of the issue shows Barack Obama with a star of David on his sleeve, suggesting he is a tool of Jews. An article inside called ‘The Unspeakable Truth of 9/11′ insists that the Israeli spy agency Mossad orchestrated the attacks on the World Trade Centre, and another article called ‘The Real Agenda behind the Monetary Crisis’ calls the world’s media ‘Jewish-occupied’ and claims that Jews control the American Federal Reserve. Yet another article claims that Monica Lewinsky was a Mossad agent, and calls her ‘President Clinton’s chunky Jewish girlfriend’. The new, April-June issue of Uncensored takes the anti-semitic theme even further - it includes an article alleging that the diary of famous Holocaust victim Anne Frank was a hoax.

I had no idea people like this existed in New Zealand. I knew there were neo-nazis, and I knew there were conspiracy theoriests. But I thought conspiracy theorists were just stupid, not holocaust-denying-evil.

Uncensored have booked the Mt Albert War Memorial Hall for a conference at the end of April, and Scott Hamilton wrote a letter to Cathy Casey (a left-wing Auckland city councillor) asking her to stop Uncensored from using the hall.¹

Scott Hamilton also posted this on indymedia (can anyone guess where this is going? I actually advise against following that link). The comment thread on indymedia is full of holocaust denial, and even more horrific forms of anti-semitism. I’m not quoting any of it, it’s too disgusting. There are a few people attempting to stand against the waves of awfulness. But they’re outnumbered (and once you’re arguing ‘yes the holocaust actually happened’ you’re already disrespecting the dead and the survivors).

It blows my mind that there are people who think and write such vile, hateful, nonsense, but the internet has a lot of everything, so it’s no surprise that includes vile hateful nonsense. That’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post, is that each of those comments are still on indymedia. This is the indymedia mission statement:

The Independent Media centre is a grassroots organization committed to using media production and distribution as a tool for promoting social and economic justice. It is our goal to further the self-determination of people under-represented in media production and content, and to illuminate and analyze local and global issues that impact ecosystems, communities and individuals. We seek to generate alternatives to the biases inherent in the corporate media controlled by profit, and to identify and create positive models for a sustainable and equitable society

. I don’t think providing space for a discussion about whether or not the holocaust happened is creating a positive model for a sustainable and equitable society. Many of the statements on that thread are direct impediments to social and economic justice. One of the moderators of indymedia has posted on that thread, and nothing has been hidden, despite two requests to do so.

The problems with indymedia as an open space is something I’ve written about before. Open spaces replicate all the power imbalances that already exist in society (and also allow space for some that have been festering for some time). I shouldn’t even have to write this, but what happened to Jewish people under the Nazis is not some abstract point of academic argument, it’s an open wound that causes actual people, actual pain. To fail to hide this stuff is to have a huge sign saying “Jews not welcome”. Indymedia is part of the problem, unless it understands that there are many ideas that are directly in opposition to anyone’s liberation, and to host them is to be part of that opposition.

1. What I originally wanted to write about, which is now relegated to a footnote, is my feeling that the way Scott Hamilton wrote about World War 2 in the post is problematic:
   

   The hall is a public asset that is supposed to commemorate the loss of New Zealand life in war, and to serve the needs of the community around it. I don’t believe that our community needs Jew-baiting and Maori-bashing. I think it is particularly inappropriate that Uncensored plans to use the hall on an Anzac weekend, when New Zealanders will be remembering the thousands of their countrymen and women who died opposing the same Nazi ideology that so many of the contributors to Uncensored promote.

   I don’t know if Scott Hamilton actually believes that or if he’s being disingenuous. From what I know of his politics I suspect the latter. I can see why it’s very tempting in circumstances such as these, to play on the popular image of world war two as a great war against fascism, and ‘our brave boys’. However, for anyone with a serious criticism of imperialism it’s important that we acknowledge that that while there may have been many soldiers who saw their participation in the war as part of the fight against fascism in defence of liberty, that’s not what was being prioritised by those who were commanding the armies. I don’t think it’s acceptable to play dumb about these issues, even for a good cause. (back)