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shadowkatReceived some invaluable help last weekend regarding allergy medication. Apparently it is a good idea to take more than one allergy med during the day to stave off allergies. Zyrtec and Lortadine (Claritin) are fine together - they tackle completely different antihistimines. Also fine to take phenlypherine as the nasal decogestant, and flonase. Got this from my aunts, who are nurses, and are in contact with pathologists who specialize in this crap. At any rate - I tried the Zyterk/Lortadine bit and it is working miracles.
Cold weekend, actually have a heavy sweater, turtle neck and two pairs of socks on in my apartment - and it is only 68 degrees - hardly freezing. But alas, I've been used to 74 all summer long. Should do all sorts of things, but feeling relatively lazy and just want to read, watch tv, write, draw and clean house. So will most likely do that. Sort of want a people break.
Okay - of two minds regarding Dollhouse. The first is a rant, which I decided to get out of the way so I could actually do the review, after multiple deletions. Read the rant at your own risk - I put it behind a cut-tag for a reason.
The episode was about shifts in personality and perception. It was deftly written in places. In other's a bit, telegraphed. I had problems with the episode and actually preferred the first two episodes more. Serial killers are becoming a bit tired in my opinion. I've seen too many tv films and books with them. After a while, you think oh okay, another serial killer, wake me up when everyone's dead. Also, the whole professor has a power/sex fantasy regarding his student has also been done to death...culminating in the 1990s with the controversial Mamet play Olenna - which turns the professor into the victim and the student into the perpetuator. The classic male view that I've been seeing on tv a lot - where the woman has manipulated him into being sexually attracted to her to the point in which he cannot help himself and therefor it is her fault that he has "forced" himself on her. While I agree that demonizing the male is hardly productive, I'd prefer we didn't demonize the female as a defense. Dollhouse to a degree continues to perpetuate that fiction and I do feel at times as if I am once again looking through the world via the male lense, complete with sexy female lead who kickboxes, dances, and sashsays down a runway better than she delivers dialogue or emotes or exhibits subtle shifts in expression or character definition. It gets tiring. And makes me miss Buffy.
Ugh. Rant over.
Review of Belle Chose, episode 3 of S2 Dollhouse.
Belle Chose starts with a neatly dressed guy who is playing a somewhat twisted version of doll house with living women. Each carefully posed and dressed like life-size versions of the Barbie Dolls you may have had while growing up. All that is missing is their house. He has them in a warehouse of sorts. Standing motionless like store manniquens or life size Barbies on an astroturf lawn, with lawn chairs, and a croquet set. All that is missing is a Ken Doll (which may well be Terry) and Barbie's Dream House. Each has been given a non-descript name of a family member, Sis, Aunt Sheila, Mom...with matching ages. In a way he is acting out a scenario that the real "Dollhouse" provides as a service to its clients all the time. Except Terry, the lead in this twisted rendering, is doing it unseen and with unwilling participants.
When one of the dolls that Terry has positioned loses her ability to stand rock solid still in a somewhat insane position, and falls to the ground. He smashes her head in with the croquet mallet and then wanders off to get another to take her place. "I need a new Aunt Sheila" - he informs his hostages, who fearfully stand motionless, without a blink or a shudder. We later learn this is in part due to the drug he's given them that paralyzes their limbs - so they can be positioned but cannot move of their own volition. Their bodies mere tools of their captor.
Terry gets hit by a car, and ironically ends up comatose in the actual Dollhouse. Where Adelle and Topher decide to play dolls with Terry - switching his mind into Victor's body.
So that Victor (as Terry) can now be interrogated by Ballard, the ex-FBI agent.
While this is going on - Echo is playing the role of "Kiki" - a ditzy, sexy college student who just loves to dance and have a fine old time. It turns out that she has been ordered by a professor who has a wicked student/teacher sex fantasy that he needs to be fulfilled.
Kiki - has no real volition of her own, she is nothing more or less than the professor's sex fantasy. That's her role and she's been created by Topher to play it without fault. She is clearly meant to be nothing more or less than a sex object.
The comparison between the professor/Dollhouse and Terry is I think deliberate. What the Dollhouse is doing to Echo is in a way no different than what Terry has done to the missing women. Granted Echo may have at one point given consent, but was it informed consent?
And to what degree does it matter? Just because you say "yes" to being transformed into a doll - does that make it alright?
At times, Dollhouse reminds me a great deal of The Stepford Wives (the old 1970s film with Kathryn Ross (not the new version) and the novel upon which it was based) -that dealt with the horrors of humans turning into or becoming replace by a superficial world. Surrogates is the latest film in this particular trope. Last week's episode in particular, Instinct - where Echo was imprinted to be the perfect wife and mother, complete with fake friend in the form of Sierra, reminded me of The Stepford Wives. Again, the female nightmare is being replaced by a mindless robot that fulfills every males perfect fantasy. Or rather the female nightmare is in some respects the male fantasy. He fantasies an object that cooks his meals, satisfies his needs, cleans his house, rears his kids and never complains or argues and does what women are "supposed" to do, without demands, complaints, or needs. What he doesn't know is his fantasy is many a woman's nightmare.
This episode made me think of that as well...at the start of the episode, we are clearly in the male fantasy/female nightmare. Ballard is turned on by Echo's transformation into adorable and ditzy Kiki. Her clothes, her hair, her moves. She is his fantasy as well as the professor's. Terry too is living the male fantasy - he controls each of the women in his basement lair - they are little more than objects for play.
Then something goes wrong...Terry's uncle takes Victor/Terry out of the Dollhouse in an attempt to get what he requires from Terry himself. But Terry either knocks him out or kills him - can't remember which and not sure it matters. Then takes off to find his new Aunt Sheila. Before he can find her - Topher in an attempt to isolate and then wipe Terry remotely from Victor's head - inadvertently switchs Terry to Echo and Kiki to Victor. In a flash, Victor becomes gay, airy, Kiki. He comes on to every male in the room, still convinced he is a she. He still acts like a sexy girl - except in a man's body. He is the male's worste nightmare, a sex object, with no needs but to please. It's a tour de force for the actor - who convincingly portrays the body swap. Echo becomes Terry and instead of kissing the professor, shoves a letter opener into his neck. And says, "Goodness, gracious. Look at me." Words that come up again, later.
Terry unlike silly Kiki, figures out that he is now a she. That his body has changed. He also figures out how to use it. In the mirror he writes the words - Whore. Boyd finds the words and the barely breathing, but still living professor. While Ballard tracks down Victor's Kiki and saves him from a potential beating at a club, with Victor/Kiki embracing him as a result.
The fantasy shifting rapidly into heterosexual/straight male nightmare.
Echo/Terry is back at the basement now - no longer worried about getting another Aunt Sheila - since he has one in the body he is currently inhabitating. His female captives seeing Echo, aren't sure how to react. They attempt to escape and are surprised that Echo beats them back and acts like Terry. Echo glitches and tells them in a bit of monotone that they must kill her before Terry comes back. That Terry won't let her - let them go. It's clear from "the dialogue" that Echo is suffering from a multiple personality disorder - she is fractured and has more than one consciousness inside her. Terry has just been added to the mix and is the first male personality to inhabit it. He's also a killer and a misogynistic one at that - one who kills women, after objectifying and playing with them for hours on end, much as a cat may with a mouse or a little girl with her barbie dolls. Terry is a woman's worste nightmare and all the personalities inside Echo are screaming.
But Echo fights Terry off long enough for the Dollhouse handlers to shop up and contain the situation. The hostages are released. And Echo is taken to get a treatment. Ballard asks her if she is okay, she says really not and yes, she definitely needs a treatment.
And she gets one. The Beauty Chooses. Terry is left in a coma. Possibly may even be allowed to die. Happy ending.
Except. Echo goes into Terry's room and looks at him. Her face is blank. Her body the same as always and she says "Goodness Gracious". Revealing to anyone paying close attention, that Terry is still there, along with all the others. Of course he is. They can't just wipe him clean.
They don't really leave Echo tells Ballard in Instinct. I still feel all of them. All the time. Whispering to me. I feel what they felt. Their emotions.
or as Caroline/Echo once told Adelle ages ago, hence her nickname "echo"...
It's like a chalkboard - you can't ever wipe the slate entirely clean. You can always see a faint outline of what was erased.
Claire Sanders remembers Whiskey, she remembers who she played. The roles they fed to her, if just the outlines. Victor...remembers Adelle, when she touches his face and comments on it.
Just as the paralyzed dolls in Terry's make-believe doll house, remember who they are, and their bodies though frozen, protest and move.
The male nightmare is that you can't control the woman. You place her in that neat little role, but she resists. She moves out of it. She's not the life-size doll. She's not willing to be your slave. Make her the fantasy and she stabs you in the neck, much as Olenna stabs the professor in the neck, metaphorically speaking, in David Mamet's play - protesting his treatment of her - even if it is not advert, and merely sexist. Kiki wishes only to dance, to have a good time. The professor wishes to turn her into something else. Her grades a tool for his fantasy. And finally, the comeuppance - the male misogynistic serial killer stuck or at least a portion of him, in the mind of a female doll, with multiple women inside her. Is it punishment or reward? Hard to tell.
Dollhouse leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth after watching. The type of taste that you don't always want to focus too hard on. Just rinse out with Listerine, quickly. It is psychological horror within the same veine as The Stepford Wives, leaving much the same bitter aftertaste. Worth exploring if only because it serves as both a reminder and a exploration of our own twisted societal perspective conveyed time and again through the media that we mindlessly worship and adhere to.
Cold weekend, actually have a heavy sweater, turtle neck and two pairs of socks on in my apartment - and it is only 68 degrees - hardly freezing. But alas, I've been used to 74 all summer long. Should do all sorts of things, but feeling relatively lazy and just want to read, watch tv, write, draw and clean house. So will most likely do that. Sort of want a people break.
Okay - of two minds regarding Dollhouse. The first is a rant, which I decided to get out of the way so I could actually do the review, after multiple deletions. Read the rant at your own risk - I put it behind a cut-tag for a reason.
The episode was about shifts in personality and perception. It was deftly written in places. In other's a bit, telegraphed. I had problems with the episode and actually preferred the first two episodes more. Serial killers are becoming a bit tired in my opinion. I've seen too many tv films and books with them. After a while, you think oh okay, another serial killer, wake me up when everyone's dead. Also, the whole professor has a power/sex fantasy regarding his student has also been done to death...culminating in the 1990s with the controversial Mamet play Olenna - which turns the professor into the victim and the student into the perpetuator. The classic male view that I've been seeing on tv a lot - where the woman has manipulated him into being sexually attracted to her to the point in which he cannot help himself and therefor it is her fault that he has "forced" himself on her. While I agree that demonizing the male is hardly productive, I'd prefer we didn't demonize the female as a defense. Dollhouse to a degree continues to perpetuate that fiction and I do feel at times as if I am once again looking through the world via the male lense, complete with sexy female lead who kickboxes, dances, and sashsays down a runway better than she delivers dialogue or emotes or exhibits subtle shifts in expression or character definition. It gets tiring. And makes me miss Buffy.
Ugh. Rant over.
Review of Belle Chose, episode 3 of S2 Dollhouse.
Belle Chose starts with a neatly dressed guy who is playing a somewhat twisted version of doll house with living women. Each carefully posed and dressed like life-size versions of the Barbie Dolls you may have had while growing up. All that is missing is their house. He has them in a warehouse of sorts. Standing motionless like store manniquens or life size Barbies on an astroturf lawn, with lawn chairs, and a croquet set. All that is missing is a Ken Doll (which may well be Terry) and Barbie's Dream House. Each has been given a non-descript name of a family member, Sis, Aunt Sheila, Mom...with matching ages. In a way he is acting out a scenario that the real "Dollhouse" provides as a service to its clients all the time. Except Terry, the lead in this twisted rendering, is doing it unseen and with unwilling participants.
When one of the dolls that Terry has positioned loses her ability to stand rock solid still in a somewhat insane position, and falls to the ground. He smashes her head in with the croquet mallet and then wanders off to get another to take her place. "I need a new Aunt Sheila" - he informs his hostages, who fearfully stand motionless, without a blink or a shudder. We later learn this is in part due to the drug he's given them that paralyzes their limbs - so they can be positioned but cannot move of their own volition. Their bodies mere tools of their captor.
Terry gets hit by a car, and ironically ends up comatose in the actual Dollhouse. Where Adelle and Topher decide to play dolls with Terry - switching his mind into Victor's body.
So that Victor (as Terry) can now be interrogated by Ballard, the ex-FBI agent.
While this is going on - Echo is playing the role of "Kiki" - a ditzy, sexy college student who just loves to dance and have a fine old time. It turns out that she has been ordered by a professor who has a wicked student/teacher sex fantasy that he needs to be fulfilled.
Kiki - has no real volition of her own, she is nothing more or less than the professor's sex fantasy. That's her role and she's been created by Topher to play it without fault. She is clearly meant to be nothing more or less than a sex object.
The comparison between the professor/Dollhouse and Terry is I think deliberate. What the Dollhouse is doing to Echo is in a way no different than what Terry has done to the missing women. Granted Echo may have at one point given consent, but was it informed consent?
And to what degree does it matter? Just because you say "yes" to being transformed into a doll - does that make it alright?
At times, Dollhouse reminds me a great deal of The Stepford Wives (the old 1970s film with Kathryn Ross (not the new version) and the novel upon which it was based) -that dealt with the horrors of humans turning into or becoming replace by a superficial world. Surrogates is the latest film in this particular trope. Last week's episode in particular, Instinct - where Echo was imprinted to be the perfect wife and mother, complete with fake friend in the form of Sierra, reminded me of The Stepford Wives. Again, the female nightmare is being replaced by a mindless robot that fulfills every males perfect fantasy. Or rather the female nightmare is in some respects the male fantasy. He fantasies an object that cooks his meals, satisfies his needs, cleans his house, rears his kids and never complains or argues and does what women are "supposed" to do, without demands, complaints, or needs. What he doesn't know is his fantasy is many a woman's nightmare.
This episode made me think of that as well...at the start of the episode, we are clearly in the male fantasy/female nightmare. Ballard is turned on by Echo's transformation into adorable and ditzy Kiki. Her clothes, her hair, her moves. She is his fantasy as well as the professor's. Terry too is living the male fantasy - he controls each of the women in his basement lair - they are little more than objects for play.
Then something goes wrong...Terry's uncle takes Victor/Terry out of the Dollhouse in an attempt to get what he requires from Terry himself. But Terry either knocks him out or kills him - can't remember which and not sure it matters. Then takes off to find his new Aunt Sheila. Before he can find her - Topher in an attempt to isolate and then wipe Terry remotely from Victor's head - inadvertently switchs Terry to Echo and Kiki to Victor. In a flash, Victor becomes gay, airy, Kiki. He comes on to every male in the room, still convinced he is a she. He still acts like a sexy girl - except in a man's body. He is the male's worste nightmare, a sex object, with no needs but to please. It's a tour de force for the actor - who convincingly portrays the body swap. Echo becomes Terry and instead of kissing the professor, shoves a letter opener into his neck. And says, "Goodness, gracious. Look at me." Words that come up again, later.
Terry unlike silly Kiki, figures out that he is now a she. That his body has changed. He also figures out how to use it. In the mirror he writes the words - Whore. Boyd finds the words and the barely breathing, but still living professor. While Ballard tracks down Victor's Kiki and saves him from a potential beating at a club, with Victor/Kiki embracing him as a result.
The fantasy shifting rapidly into heterosexual/straight male nightmare.
Echo/Terry is back at the basement now - no longer worried about getting another Aunt Sheila - since he has one in the body he is currently inhabitating. His female captives seeing Echo, aren't sure how to react. They attempt to escape and are surprised that Echo beats them back and acts like Terry. Echo glitches and tells them in a bit of monotone that they must kill her before Terry comes back. That Terry won't let her - let them go. It's clear from "the dialogue" that Echo is suffering from a multiple personality disorder - she is fractured and has more than one consciousness inside her. Terry has just been added to the mix and is the first male personality to inhabit it. He's also a killer and a misogynistic one at that - one who kills women, after objectifying and playing with them for hours on end, much as a cat may with a mouse or a little girl with her barbie dolls. Terry is a woman's worste nightmare and all the personalities inside Echo are screaming.
But Echo fights Terry off long enough for the Dollhouse handlers to shop up and contain the situation. The hostages are released. And Echo is taken to get a treatment. Ballard asks her if she is okay, she says really not and yes, she definitely needs a treatment.
And she gets one. The Beauty Chooses. Terry is left in a coma. Possibly may even be allowed to die. Happy ending.
Except. Echo goes into Terry's room and looks at him. Her face is blank. Her body the same as always and she says "Goodness Gracious". Revealing to anyone paying close attention, that Terry is still there, along with all the others. Of course he is. They can't just wipe him clean.
They don't really leave Echo tells Ballard in Instinct. I still feel all of them. All the time. Whispering to me. I feel what they felt. Their emotions.
or as Caroline/Echo once told Adelle ages ago, hence her nickname "echo"...
It's like a chalkboard - you can't ever wipe the slate entirely clean. You can always see a faint outline of what was erased.
Claire Sanders remembers Whiskey, she remembers who she played. The roles they fed to her, if just the outlines. Victor...remembers Adelle, when she touches his face and comments on it.
Just as the paralyzed dolls in Terry's make-believe doll house, remember who they are, and their bodies though frozen, protest and move.
The male nightmare is that you can't control the woman. You place her in that neat little role, but she resists. She moves out of it. She's not the life-size doll. She's not willing to be your slave. Make her the fantasy and she stabs you in the neck, much as Olenna stabs the professor in the neck, metaphorically speaking, in David Mamet's play - protesting his treatment of her - even if it is not advert, and merely sexist. Kiki wishes only to dance, to have a good time. The professor wishes to turn her into something else. Her grades a tool for his fantasy. And finally, the comeuppance - the male misogynistic serial killer stuck or at least a portion of him, in the mind of a female doll, with multiple women inside her. Is it punishment or reward? Hard to tell.
Dollhouse leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth after watching. The type of taste that you don't always want to focus too hard on. Just rinse out with Listerine, quickly. It is psychological horror within the same veine as The Stepford Wives, leaving much the same bitter aftertaste. Worth exploring if only because it serves as both a reminder and a exploration of our own twisted societal perspective conveyed time and again through the media that we mindlessly worship and adhere to.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-18 12:52 pm (UTC)even though I'm seeing things through different eyes (processing through my own unique brain).
The whole question of Self, and what constitutes who we are, is endlessly rich and I've felt (particularly in those despised first 5 episodes of the first season) the writers have purposely repurposed over-worked/clique plot lines to get us to look for what they are really saying. At any rate I'm not experiencing the bitterness or disconnect, I'm finding this to be an engaging intellectual exercise played out with amazingly layered characters (each of whom seems to have a distinctive POV regardless of wipes and imprints, or position in the hierarchy).
"Worth exploring if only because it serves as both a reminder and a exploration of our own twisted societal perspective conveyed time and again through the media that we mindlessly worship and adhere to."
exactly!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-18 06:58 pm (UTC)I did delete about 85% of the rant. (shrugs). It was about acting. (I know a lot about acting, was an acting/theater nerd in elementary through college - still am to a degree (one of the reasons I no longer do it myself - because a bit of a perfectionist), and am very very critical. I realize mileage differs on this. I remember getting into the same pointless debates time and again with DB fans. After-awhile, I decided it was completely subjective and unwinnable. Sort of like debating politics or religion.)
I like the examination of self in Dollhouse and how one's identity gets lost in the interaction with others. People projecting their opinions/values/definitions/perceptions onto us. What they want or desire. The cliche's exist for a reason - we keep telling the same stories, have the same fantasies, we want different outcomes - but there aren't any. Yet at the same time we find the cliche oddly comforting, something about it - requires us to keep replaying the scenario as one might replay a favorite song or reread a favorite story. Dollhouse may in a way be examining why we are doing it and if by doing it - we are becoming mindless zombies.
I think Dollhouse much like Buffy is a horror tale - except it focuses on "zombies" instead of "vampires". Both deal with
the concept of identity, how we define ourselves within the framework of society. Who we love, who we hate, and the moral quandry of right and wrong, good and evil, god and fate.
I adore Whedon's writing - for the intellectual exercise. I am rarely bored. And Dollhouse may well be the only show, outside of maybe Lost, Torchwood, T:SCC or BSG, that I've felt the need to write about on my lj on a continuous basis. It's not Buffy for me though, it never will be - for a lot of reasons. I know your mileage differs on this. I don't understand. But understanding, I'm learning, is not always required or possible. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-18 09:27 pm (UTC)Echo even at her most blank has this desire to help others... Victor has this constant loving personality which I think comes through... Sierra has a more analytical/cut to the facts thing she does in all (I think) of her personalities....
But Adelle has deluded herself completely into her belief system that they are 'doing good', she lives in denial of the evil they obviously do.... And I had been giving Topher a pass thinking he was a high functioning autistic who had little or no empathy, but I'm coming to think that Joss means him to be a complete egotist who actually believes he can use technology to accomplish anything (blind to how hopelessly screwed up it all really is). They both seem to be in disconnect between their beliefs and their actions.
I'm not ready with a fully developed theory on the subject, but I do find this show intensely engaging. But I often go for the puzzle over the emotional story.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-18 09:52 pm (UTC)See that throws me a bit. Because...I go for the emotion. I'm the opposite. Which is odd, I guess, considering I work in an unemotional field and basically solve complex intellectual puzzles all day long and rather quickly. Maybe that is why? I want/ache for the opposite in my personal/non-working life?
And Whedon is an emotional writer - more so than I think an intellectual one.
The emotional journey of his characters comes before the plot. It's what a lot of fans have troubles with - they see the holes in the logic. But emotion isn't logical. It's also why Whedon goes for serial over episodic - episodic is puzzle, serial is emotion. You need to have time to build up to an emotion, while you can solve a puzzle in less than 30 minutes. With puzzles it is about speed, with emotion - it is not.
On Topher - the character is in a way largely based on a tv show runner/writer and the power that individual weilds on the characters it creates and the actors employed. He's a complex character. Very egotistical, very much the scientist - the computer nerd/video game developer. I've met a lot of Topher's in my lifetime. ;-) He's not autistic so much as just anti-social - too intellectually bright for those around, and too socially immature. Also, Topher feels at times as a bit of the writer's own conception of God. Or man as God. He plays with the dolls much as Whedon himself plays with his characters and audience. I think through Topher - Whedon and his writers may well be examining the moral quandry of what they do?
no subject
Date: 2009-10-24 02:06 am (UTC)All I'm saying is that isn't ALL he is;
he is also very funny/witty and he goes for the huge plot twists (setting up a cliche so that we think we know what is coming next, only to have him pull a switch on us). And those are the things that appeal to me the most.
Not that I don't love brilliant layered characters (I do), but that I need the funny and the surprises. Those are the things that make me happiest.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-24 03:33 pm (UTC)I've seen plots without that - and it is nothing but paint by numbers. You know which color goes where.
The only original thing is the character - the plot comes from the emotion of the character and if built well, the twist is amazing. If you ignore the character, it either makes no sense or does not work.
Or it is predictable.
Where Whedon succeeds over many other writers is he gets that - he sees the need for the emotional journey, that the plot must come from that and not be superimposed on it. When it is...there's no cool plot twist.