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[Got Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter in the mail yesterday - bought it used from Amazon for about $3. Good condition too. But won't be reading it until I finish Kim Harrison's White Witch/Black Curse - which I'm enjoying a great deal, more than anything else I've attempted to read in the last six-eight months.]
As noted in my previous post, Dollhouse as of yet has not engaged my emotions. I watched it twice, partly because the first round was with a friend, and you miss things when you watch tv shows with other people - you can't rewind, and are distracted. You also tend to have your opinion of the episode shadowed a bit by their reactions to it. The friend commented that while Dollhouse engaged him intellectually, it still failed to engage his emotions. He wanted to love it, but just couldn't - he felt oddly detached. I realized that this described my own feelings towards the series, quite well. There are shows that engage only my emotions and not my intellect - such as Grey's Anatomy (which does not hold up under any analysis whatsoever, in fact if you do analyze it - you realize how illogical the story is), or Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, and Ugly Betty - these are tv shows that do not engage my mind. Neither does about 85% of the procedurals on tv for that matter. But I prefer my brain dead tv shows to not include dismembered and tortured bodies in just about every frame, it's a thing. Also, serial killers are so passe. (please imagine a grinning emoticon at the end of that sentence).
That said, Dollhouse does engage my brain, and plays games with it, feels a bit like a puzzle-box. So I find myself intriqued and feeling anticipation based on that intrigue. Sometimes the shows that engage my brain and not my emotions fill me with more anticipation than the opposite. I disagree with people who think that only those cultural items that engage our emotions are worthwhile - this is not true. Sometimes, the ones that engage our brain are the ones that motivate us to do and try different things. It's a bit like the discussions I've had regarding mathmatics. For years, I was, admittedly, negative regarding the study and practice of mathematics. But, within the past few years, I've discovered that math and numbers are not less because they lack the ability to engage emotion. Or resonate emotion. Also, you can actually swear in math, you can get angry with math, you can sing in math, math does have a voice. We hear the sound of numbers in the chords strummed on a guitare or the notes plucked out on a piano. Music is math. Music with lyrics is math put to words. And when math is turned into music it does engage our emotions, just not always our intellect. I write this while listening to my downstairs neighbor pluck out chords below on a guitare - composing a song.
But back to Dollhouse. This week's episode was titled "Echoes" and it is within this episode that we are introduced to Caroline and the Rossum Corporation - the entities behind our lead character, Echo, and the Dollhouse.
From a critical non-spoilery aspect, this episode felt a bit of a hodge-podge of old sci-fi/conspiracy tv and movie tropes. What follows is not really a critical review - I'll leave that to others - so much as a meta. The reason I'm writing about Dollhouse as opposed to Sarah Connor or BSG - is that everyone else is writing about Sarah Connor and BSg, but very few (on my flist) are writing about Dollhouse. I like to write about things that others aren't writing about or at least in a different way, as opposed to just adding more fuel to an already blazing the fire.
( Dollhouse: Echoes. Cut for Spoilers. One Drug Makes you Larger One makes you smaller... )
As noted in my previous post, Dollhouse as of yet has not engaged my emotions. I watched it twice, partly because the first round was with a friend, and you miss things when you watch tv shows with other people - you can't rewind, and are distracted. You also tend to have your opinion of the episode shadowed a bit by their reactions to it. The friend commented that while Dollhouse engaged him intellectually, it still failed to engage his emotions. He wanted to love it, but just couldn't - he felt oddly detached. I realized that this described my own feelings towards the series, quite well. There are shows that engage only my emotions and not my intellect - such as Grey's Anatomy (which does not hold up under any analysis whatsoever, in fact if you do analyze it - you realize how illogical the story is), or Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, and Ugly Betty - these are tv shows that do not engage my mind. Neither does about 85% of the procedurals on tv for that matter. But I prefer my brain dead tv shows to not include dismembered and tortured bodies in just about every frame, it's a thing. Also, serial killers are so passe. (please imagine a grinning emoticon at the end of that sentence).
That said, Dollhouse does engage my brain, and plays games with it, feels a bit like a puzzle-box. So I find myself intriqued and feeling anticipation based on that intrigue. Sometimes the shows that engage my brain and not my emotions fill me with more anticipation than the opposite. I disagree with people who think that only those cultural items that engage our emotions are worthwhile - this is not true. Sometimes, the ones that engage our brain are the ones that motivate us to do and try different things. It's a bit like the discussions I've had regarding mathmatics. For years, I was, admittedly, negative regarding the study and practice of mathematics. But, within the past few years, I've discovered that math and numbers are not less because they lack the ability to engage emotion. Or resonate emotion. Also, you can actually swear in math, you can get angry with math, you can sing in math, math does have a voice. We hear the sound of numbers in the chords strummed on a guitare or the notes plucked out on a piano. Music is math. Music with lyrics is math put to words. And when math is turned into music it does engage our emotions, just not always our intellect. I write this while listening to my downstairs neighbor pluck out chords below on a guitare - composing a song.
But back to Dollhouse. This week's episode was titled "Echoes" and it is within this episode that we are introduced to Caroline and the Rossum Corporation - the entities behind our lead character, Echo, and the Dollhouse.
From a critical non-spoilery aspect, this episode felt a bit of a hodge-podge of old sci-fi/conspiracy tv and movie tropes. What follows is not really a critical review - I'll leave that to others - so much as a meta. The reason I'm writing about Dollhouse as opposed to Sarah Connor or BSG - is that everyone else is writing about Sarah Connor and BSg, but very few (on my flist) are writing about Dollhouse. I like to write about things that others aren't writing about or at least in a different way, as opposed to just adding more fuel to an already blazing the fire.
( Dollhouse: Echoes. Cut for Spoilers. One Drug Makes you Larger One makes you smaller... )
