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Dollhouse 1x01
Dear Joss,
While it's nice that you have an Actual Asian Person (TM) in your cast, it would be even better if you would stop using things like Asian teapots, hotels, clothes, and geisha (who seem to, like all the others, act as scenery in your world) while populating the surroundings with all white people.
No love,
Another Actual Asian Person (TM)
Spoilers
I will probably keep watching for now, because despite the extremely sketchy premise, the amnesia and the doll bits are right up my manga kink alley.
On the other hand, WOW sketchy racial politics! We have Latino victim/businessmen, threatened by a Latino gang, disembodied Asian artifacts set in a world of white people, and even more white people with all the power and control! And another white person investigating. (see ETA)
And a single black man, who though I like so far as a character, have almost zero faith in his development.
I know I read as very cynical and angry. I love Buffy, but I feel that with each continuing product, Joss gets more and more problematic, like he spent all his feminist cred on Buffy (hello, Angel) and then basically just stopped thinking about anything past what floats his own boat, id-wise. It's lucky for us that some of it involves women with guns, but at this point, I'd like a little less crazy brunette and a little more of something else.
Also, the writing in Dollhouse wasn't so great—clunky As-You-Know-Bob's, not much humor or wit, and characters who I feel I've seen in many other Joss shows before (hello Warren! hello damaged brunette out to get her abuser! hello Lilah! hello Wolfram & Hart! hello police guy who vaguely looks like Nathan Fillion!).
ETA: Wait, FBI guy is Helo? Wow, I am out of it fannishly. OK, another plus for a POC actor, and I am crossing my fingers that they are not doing the "multiracial person coded as white" and actually write the agent as POC.
ETA2: And apparently the Spanish is not so much with the grammatical! Why am I not surprised?
While it's nice that you have an Actual Asian Person (TM) in your cast, it would be even better if you would stop using things like Asian teapots, hotels, clothes, and geisha (who seem to, like all the others, act as scenery in your world) while populating the surroundings with all white people.
No love,
Another Actual Asian Person (TM)
Spoilers
I will probably keep watching for now, because despite the extremely sketchy premise, the amnesia and the doll bits are right up my manga kink alley.
On the other hand, WOW sketchy racial politics! We have Latino victim/businessmen, threatened by a Latino gang, disembodied Asian artifacts set in a world of white people, and even more white people with all the power and control! And another white person investigating. (see ETA)
And a single black man, who though I like so far as a character, have almost zero faith in his development.
I know I read as very cynical and angry. I love Buffy, but I feel that with each continuing product, Joss gets more and more problematic, like he spent all his feminist cred on Buffy (hello, Angel) and then basically just stopped thinking about anything past what floats his own boat, id-wise. It's lucky for us that some of it involves women with guns, but at this point, I'd like a little less crazy brunette and a little more of something else.
Also, the writing in Dollhouse wasn't so great—clunky As-You-Know-Bob's, not much humor or wit, and characters who I feel I've seen in many other Joss shows before (hello Warren! hello damaged brunette out to get her abuser! hello Lilah! hello Wolfram & Hart! hello police guy who vaguely looks like Nathan Fillion!).
ETA: Wait, FBI guy is Helo? Wow, I am out of it fannishly. OK, another plus for a POC actor, and I am crossing my fingers that they are not doing the "multiracial person coded as white" and actually write the agent as POC.
ETA2: And apparently the Spanish is not so much with the grammatical! Why am I not surprised?
no subject
That sounds confusing when it was all typed out.
I think the entire thing is even more skeevtastic in practice than it was on paper. OTOH, there's something weirdly compelling about it. As I mentioned in my post, it's like someone took Claymore, Gunslinger Girls and Rose Hip Zero, put them in a blender, and then downloaded the result into Whedon's brain and so we got a live action manga, especially when you consider that it's a case of weird gender politics resulting in an organization that seems to be "fist of the patriarchy" resulting in an excuse for a series that seems to be centered around female agents, for better or for worse. (People have pointed out to me that there are male agents too, but they can do that once we have them running around in barely legal outfits and taking communal showers.)
I also found wiped!Echo to be creepy.
no subject
And yeah, I think even the premise could be done well and could make a dark and disturbing critique of the patriarchy and the construction of women as objects to be wiped again and again to fit into the structure (and I think Claymore and Gunslinger Girl do so much more successfully), but it feels too much like Joss wants to have his exploitative cake and eat it too by critiquing it, but only sort of.
no subject