A small thought about Dollhouse... and a confession about The Wire

[ffutures]

It occurs to me that one of the reason why I'm dissatisfied with Dollhouse is an area of dishonesty - it's claimed, repeatedly, that male and female Dolls are given the same sort of assignments, but so far we've never see any evidence whatever that the male Dolls are being used for prostitution, whereas we repeatedly see Echo in this role.

And The Wire. Well, I really tried, for three nights this week, but I'm afraid I really don't find this show engaging my attention at all. Part of it is that I have trouble understanding a lot of what the characters are saying, most of it is that my memory for character names and faces is REALLY bad, and I have major problems following the story at all. Add to that that the BBC are showing it after 11 PM, when my attention span is not at its best, and non-comprehension is near total. Sorry, but I think I'm going to have to sit this one out.

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

We've known he's a doll since the second episode. I agree that there are reasons why we are more likely to see Echo than a male character in this role, but it's too one sided.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I had lost track of when he was revealed. Given that, showing him being sent out to see the woman in question would have been a good setup . . . just a couple of minutes in each episode would have done it.

The thing is, though, that Joss Whedon has limitations on this gender equality thing. Note, for example, that we had lots of story about Willow and Tara, and then Willow and Kennedy, and we had a scene with Inara and a female client (and Jayne's line "I'll be in my bunk") . . . but we really haven't had anything close to a comparable treatment of male homosexuality. We have Inara as a romanticized figure, but no romanticized gigolo character. This has been consistently true. Whedon gives us the sexual liberation content that's appealing to a straight male audience; and he mostly gives us empowered women who are appealing to a straight male audience. This puts him way ahead of most of what's in the media, but if we lived in a genuinely sexually egalitarian society, he'd look awfully retrograde.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes, the homosexual side of it had occurred to me too. So far no female clients for Echo, unless they did that last night, no male ones for any of the male dolls.