Dollhouse 1x01

[oyceter]

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?

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I think it could have been very interesting with more male Actives and with an examination of the way gender informs who we are

tanaise and I had a conversation tonight about how the imprints could work and about how appearance plays into the way people view themselves, which I think would link up really nicely with how-gender-informs and how-race-informs and all kinds of other stuff. I'd be, potentially, Really Interested if the show would Go There.

But man oh man, the fact that the father's comment about why-didn't-they-send-someone-more-fatherly? was apparently just an in-joke? Not exactly inspiring of confidence. Especially since it made me wonder, why didn't they? If they can impose any personality on anyone, and if they have a variety of bodies in which those personalities can be placed, there must be a compelling reason for them to have chosen this body, right?

But no. Just a stupid joke.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

Was it just me, or did you read his reaction to Echo as "They've been together before for some (likely sexual) reason"?

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Not just you!

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

I had that too.