Dollhouse Quotes and Whedon's Writing Process

[shadowkat]

Tomorrow, after work, I look at apartments again with realtor. Trying to not dread it. Will admit it is easier to do with realtor. Less nerve-wracking. So there's that.

Here's a quote that struck me as...informative (in - that "explains A LOT" sort of way), by Joss Whedon on Dollhouse from his recent SciFi Now interview on the Avengers. Which I'm admittedly posting against my better judgment, which means it may be gone tomorrow because I'll think damn, why did I post that? But I really want to know what people think and discuss it - in particular people who are NOT necessarily fans of the writer and/or Dollhouse and/or the Buffy comics.

Dollhouse in retrospect.

I never concieved of a more pure journey from helplessness to power, which is what I always write about, and in that sense, I feel we accomplished a lot of it. I do feel that part of what we tried to get at kind of got taken out at the beginning and it really was more important to how the show would work than I even realized when they took it out- which was sex. The show was supposed to be, on some level, a celebration of perversion, as something that makes us unique. Sort of our hidden selves. You can talk about your hidden selves and identity, but when you have to shoot each other every week, you get a bit limited. The show was supposed to flop genres every episode, and the moment we did that, they shut us down and said, 'Quickly, have someone shoot at someone.' I feel when we had to take sex out of the equation, it became kind of a joke or almost unsettling. Because we couldn't hit it head on - and so much of our identity is wrapped up in our sexuality, and this is something Eliza (Dusku) was talking to me about, as something she wanted to examine before I even came up with the idea, and to have that sort of excised and marginalized and santised and not to be able to hit on the head what they were doing made the show a little bit limited and a little bit creepy at times, I think we still did some fairly out-there stuff, and I'm proud of what we did, given the circumstances, but with those circumstances, it was never really going to happen the way it should have.

Regarding why Dollhouse didn't work:

The situation with Dollhouse was that Fox was trying to get it, but we had come at two different shows (Yeah, Fox wanted Nikita, you wanted...) we had done that accidentally, and it got to a point where I didn't know what I was trying to accomplish, and you can't go into a story room with that feeling, because it's already really hard. I remember thinking this is the difference between this and Firefly, because with Firefly, I knew, and here, now I'm not even sure. I was just thinking..I'm writing a shoot-out on a dock- I'm a whore. They're like - No, that doesn't make you a whore, and I'm like, I'm fairly certain it does! They explained that, actually having sex for money makes you a whore. But I also did that.

[In consideration of my blood-pressure, please refrain from the following while commenting: praising, personal insults, degrading, bashing, or expressing sympathy for Whedon. Also no Joss Whedon icons. Thank you. All other comments and icons, within reason of course, are welcome.]

Comments

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree with most of this. I feel like Firefly is sort of equivalent to BtVS' first few seasons, or Angel's first season--it is meant as the setup for what was to come later. There's been some criticism directed at Firefly for embracing problematic Western archetypes, but even very early on, there are hints he was going to take these down (for example, Jaynestown is n early commentary on the lies in storytelling, sort of a The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance story). I actually prefer Firefly greatly to BtVS' or AtS' first seasons--because the characters are more complex and better drawn, I think, than the other shows' first seasons--but there's the same sense that the world is presented as somewhat simple, so that it might be complicated later. How well he would have succeeded is up for debate I suppose. Anyway, I've felt for a while that Firefly marked a big change in the way Whedon operated; everything afterward, from AtS season 5 to Dr. Horrible to Dollhouse to season eight to some extent, is very much centred on taking down the system, being a villain, disliking the socioeconomic studio system, etc. Some of these themes were in his work before, certainly, but it does feel like his being burned by the cancellation has changed his fundamental focus in some ways. And that has probably also resulted in some of the sloppier writing. I do like Dollhouse and I like season eight, but they're certainly not tightly written, even by Whedon's standards.

At any rate Dollhouse is by far the most ambitious project he tried. And he does state in the part of the quote I did not transcribe - "Dollhouse accomplished some of the things I wanted to accomplish. The questions of identity and humanity I thought were out there front and centre (interesting in US it is center), and I've heard people respond really well to that, and I've heard people say the show even helped them. "

I agree that Dollhouse is the most ambitious thing he's ever done--which is why it's so frustrating, because as you say, parts of it work beautifully. It's nice to see someone else who agrees generally that the first season is superior to the second.