spoiler warning for the BSG finale blah blah blah.
Here's last night's episode of Dollhouse, which embraces the kinds of interpretive disputes I tried to stage between myself and Alyssa yesterday, albeit problematically, invoking race and sexual violence in some deeply inadequate ways. That said, I think it continues to raise intriguing questions along the lines I traced yesterday, and beyond. Judge for yourself.
We are all (maybe) dolls, and the dollhouse is a global phenomenon. Unoriginal? Perhaps, but intersting in light of some of the other frames through which the show asks us to understand the world it conjures.
In any event, it's more interesting than the finale of Tahmoh Penikett's other show, Battlestar Galactica, which slid easily back into the show's racist, imperialist Mormon iconography and made me want to smash my laptop in half. It's good that I didn't, because now i need ot get back to work on my paper(s). Sigh.
Showing posts with label galactica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label galactica. Show all posts
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
"Nothing is what it appears to be."
These are the first lines of the pilot of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, the sixth episode of which will largely be ignored tonight, what with Battlestar Galactica ending and stuff, but Alyssa's written an interesting and thoughtful critique of the show for the Atlantic Monthly's website. (Awesomely, she interviews Whedon, who sounds exactly like Joss Whedon, which, as I already noted in this sentence, is awesome.)
I share some of Alyssa's concerns regarding the sexual politics of how Dollhouse represents bodies which are, essentially, trafficked. Particularly in the non-Whedon-penned episodes, there's a very thin line between the revulsion and discomfort we're supposed to feel at the utter commodification not just of the "actives'" labor, or their bodies, but of their very identities, what someone more schooled in late twentieth century philosophical traditions than I would probably caution me against calling their "being." Alyssa's conversation with Whedon highlights these tensions to great effect. That said, I also want to map out some quick points of disagreement.
First, Alyssa says that Whedon and Tim Minear's Firefly " lacks a central conceit that ties it to contemporary American problems." I disagree with this. Firefly, produced in 2001 and 2002 and aired intermittently if at all over the course of 2002 before an abrupt and unjustified cancellation, was a space western, yes, but one which focused heavily (the 2005 follow up film Serenity even more so) on (inter)global corporate capitalism, on empire, on war, on piracy and margins and core-periphery post-wallersteinian world(s)-systems. Through subtle allegory, I want to argue that Firefly spoke and speaks directly to conversations about trade and development, rogue states and corporate power, the rule of experts and the tasking of bodies, which dominated political discourse in the decade before it aired, which recur in Dollhouse, and which remain deeply relevant seven years on.
This may seem like a nitpick, but I hope it also points us at a different way of reading Whedon, taking into account the warning that Olivia Williams' Adelle DeWitt, the Dollhouse's CEO, offers Caroline/Echo/Dushku in the series' opening moments. Alyssa is right to point toward the ways in which Dollhouse fails as an allegory for human trafficking, an important and deeply problematic form of labor arbitrage and migration in 21st century securitized global regimes of trade and work. But I want to argue that we also need to think about what it would mean to take Whedon at his word that he does not intend Dollhouse to be a show about trafficking, that trafficking operates in the show as a red herring for Agent Ballard to pursue in his attempt to discover the "real truth," something which is perhaps more sinister than and certainly altogether different than trafficking (a displacement Alyssa rightly identifies as uncomfortable) or which at least can not be easily represented and allegorized only under the sign of the human trafficking industry. That is not to say that I think it is wrong to consider the trafficking parallels, as Alyssa does very well, and to which Whedon himself admits, but, in light of the more tenuous, subtle ways in which Whedon and company have mobilized allegory in the past - i.e, not in the ripped from the headlines style of Battlestar Galactica (suicide bombers and cylon torture, etc) but instead through setting and how broader questions are framed, a more subtle and sometimes more effective symbolic politics than the law and order spin-off Whedon references in Alyssa's article.
I want, then, to suggest that we try, and hope that the show's writers will invite us (as they did in the pilot but not much since then), to read Dollhouse for the questions it raises about the gendering of digital virtualities, the commodification of life, the sexual politics of subject formation. What work does Whedon want mindwiping to do? What about it interests him as a story to tell, as, presumably, a metaphor for some contemporary cultural or social phenomena? What does this show, with its mindwiped pleasure dolls and action heroes, have to say about labor and knowledge, about how the corporation and the body and the computer are articulated together? And there are the broader questions of what Whedon et al want to achieve by destabilizing selfhood, placing us in a world where identities are in flux, cannot be trusted, are constructed and deconstructed and reconstructed in the most literal of ways. (And then of course, there's the theme, common to so much of Whedon's work, and which I am fascinated by, of the perverse politics of geek masculinities, feminized bodies as action figures, etc.) What if what's radical and important about Dollhouse is how compromised, how impossible "the real girl" is to recover? Wouldn't this radically decenter the kinds of privileged first world femininities Whedon's been criticized for reproducing and valorizing at the expense of, say, Kendra the short-lived mimetic Jamaican Vampire Slayer? I'm sure someone more versed in gender theory than I could rip me to shreds right now, and I have a lot of work I need to do (not sure when I'll even be able to watch either the dollhouse episode or the BSG finale,) but I'll end by saying that I think Alyssa has done us an enormous service by critically engaging Whedon's latest work, and I look forward to seeing what happens both with the series and with the critical dialogue which surrounds it.
EDIT: Further troubling any attempt to define "the real girl," for me, is the extent to which the show, at least in the pilot, frames itself as a direct critique of reality tv - the dollhouse itself as something like a combination of the real world house, with jobs assigned depending on the producers' whims, and the big brother house with constant surveillance and intrigue, etc. The reason the real echo is so elusive is that representations of reality are precisely what the show is trying to tackle.
Thus far, five episodes into the series, escapism has dominated the plotlines. In the premiere, Echo spent a hot weekend racing motorcycles, dancing, and having sex with a good-looking young man who treats her like a treasured girlfriend. In the second episode, she went rock-climbing and hunting with another hunk, who turned out to have a Most Dangerous Game fantasy. That’s a step closer to the risks of violence and coercion in human trafficking and sex work, but it’s not exactly realistic. And in the fourth episode, Echo pretended to be an abused prostitute to gain access to a vault full of valuable art she intends to steal. There’s something disturbing about using sympathy for victims of sexual violence to commit crimes, but the episode doesn’t explore whether we ought to be disgusted with someone—Echo’s client? Her handlers? Echo herself?—for designing and carrying out the con. There is no hint of the grubby realities of human trafficking, or of the intriguing alliance between feminism and evangelical Christianity that drives a great deal of anti-trafficking work in both the government and non-profit sectors.
Dollhouse could be a fascinating exploration of prostitution if Echo was able to consent, if she had a decision-making process we could assess and evaluate. And sex has been so large a part of Dollhouse that it threatens to drown out other facets of what once made Echo a person.
I share some of Alyssa's concerns regarding the sexual politics of how Dollhouse represents bodies which are, essentially, trafficked. Particularly in the non-Whedon-penned episodes, there's a very thin line between the revulsion and discomfort we're supposed to feel at the utter commodification not just of the "actives'" labor, or their bodies, but of their very identities, what someone more schooled in late twentieth century philosophical traditions than I would probably caution me against calling their "being." Alyssa's conversation with Whedon highlights these tensions to great effect. That said, I also want to map out some quick points of disagreement.
First, Alyssa says that Whedon and Tim Minear's Firefly " lacks a central conceit that ties it to contemporary American problems." I disagree with this. Firefly, produced in 2001 and 2002 and aired intermittently if at all over the course of 2002 before an abrupt and unjustified cancellation, was a space western, yes, but one which focused heavily (the 2005 follow up film Serenity even more so) on (inter)global corporate capitalism, on empire, on war, on piracy and margins and core-periphery post-wallersteinian world(s)-systems. Through subtle allegory, I want to argue that Firefly spoke and speaks directly to conversations about trade and development, rogue states and corporate power, the rule of experts and the tasking of bodies, which dominated political discourse in the decade before it aired, which recur in Dollhouse, and which remain deeply relevant seven years on.
This may seem like a nitpick, but I hope it also points us at a different way of reading Whedon, taking into account the warning that Olivia Williams' Adelle DeWitt, the Dollhouse's CEO, offers Caroline/Echo/Dushku in the series' opening moments. Alyssa is right to point toward the ways in which Dollhouse fails as an allegory for human trafficking, an important and deeply problematic form of labor arbitrage and migration in 21st century securitized global regimes of trade and work. But I want to argue that we also need to think about what it would mean to take Whedon at his word that he does not intend Dollhouse to be a show about trafficking, that trafficking operates in the show as a red herring for Agent Ballard to pursue in his attempt to discover the "real truth," something which is perhaps more sinister than and certainly altogether different than trafficking (a displacement Alyssa rightly identifies as uncomfortable) or which at least can not be easily represented and allegorized only under the sign of the human trafficking industry. That is not to say that I think it is wrong to consider the trafficking parallels, as Alyssa does very well, and to which Whedon himself admits, but, in light of the more tenuous, subtle ways in which Whedon and company have mobilized allegory in the past - i.e, not in the ripped from the headlines style of Battlestar Galactica (suicide bombers and cylon torture, etc) but instead through setting and how broader questions are framed, a more subtle and sometimes more effective symbolic politics than the law and order spin-off Whedon references in Alyssa's article.
I want, then, to suggest that we try, and hope that the show's writers will invite us (as they did in the pilot but not much since then), to read Dollhouse for the questions it raises about the gendering of digital virtualities, the commodification of life, the sexual politics of subject formation. What work does Whedon want mindwiping to do? What about it interests him as a story to tell, as, presumably, a metaphor for some contemporary cultural or social phenomena? What does this show, with its mindwiped pleasure dolls and action heroes, have to say about labor and knowledge, about how the corporation and the body and the computer are articulated together? And there are the broader questions of what Whedon et al want to achieve by destabilizing selfhood, placing us in a world where identities are in flux, cannot be trusted, are constructed and deconstructed and reconstructed in the most literal of ways. (And then of course, there's the theme, common to so much of Whedon's work, and which I am fascinated by, of the perverse politics of geek masculinities, feminized bodies as action figures, etc.) What if what's radical and important about Dollhouse is how compromised, how impossible "the real girl" is to recover? Wouldn't this radically decenter the kinds of privileged first world femininities Whedon's been criticized for reproducing and valorizing at the expense of, say, Kendra the short-lived mimetic Jamaican Vampire Slayer? I'm sure someone more versed in gender theory than I could rip me to shreds right now, and I have a lot of work I need to do (not sure when I'll even be able to watch either the dollhouse episode or the BSG finale,) but I'll end by saying that I think Alyssa has done us an enormous service by critically engaging Whedon's latest work, and I look forward to seeing what happens both with the series and with the critical dialogue which surrounds it.
EDIT: Further troubling any attempt to define "the real girl," for me, is the extent to which the show, at least in the pilot, frames itself as a direct critique of reality tv - the dollhouse itself as something like a combination of the real world house, with jobs assigned depending on the producers' whims, and the big brother house with constant surveillance and intrigue, etc. The reason the real echo is so elusive is that representations of reality are precisely what the show is trying to tackle.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
I spent most of the day in the panopticon, reading Thomas Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty instead of grading. Watched the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica on the long subway ride home, and holy fuck (I had to sit down on my couch and not do anything for like five minutes after i finished it to let my heart slow down), and then read the kakistotle (that's a greek joke. aristotle from aristos, best, kakistos=worst, also a demon in buffy season three.) I like the Sugrue book a lot, narrative but also theoretically grounded and both deeply enmeshed in the archive and demonstrating widespread knowledge of recent historiography of the long civil rights movement. I would like to see him engage more directly with some of Nikhil Singh's critiques of a few of the figures and movements he discusses, but maybe that's another book?
The ontario provincial government has ordered striking York U graduate employees in CUPE 3903 to return to work, and the workers are returning without a contract. This is no resolution.
Some folks from the Republic Window Workers' Strike stopped by Judson yesterday and it was inspiring to hear firsthand abotu what went down and what the struggle and the victory meant to the folks who fought and won it. Kudos to jobs with justice for making folks submit questions on index cards to minimize the sectarian rostrum hoggers. I sat behind the folks from DWU and next to the dissident TWU contingent, which was interesting. Ed Ott is pretty awesome as CLC presidents go. Oh, btw, Boycott Stella D'Oro. The factory, oddly enough, is a couple blocks away from where i went to high school. They tried to force the workers to accept some severe cutbacks and workers have been on strike for nearly six months.
The ontario provincial government has ordered striking York U graduate employees in CUPE 3903 to return to work, and the workers are returning without a contract. This is no resolution.
Some folks from the Republic Window Workers' Strike stopped by Judson yesterday and it was inspiring to hear firsthand abotu what went down and what the struggle and the victory meant to the folks who fought and won it. Kudos to jobs with justice for making folks submit questions on index cards to minimize the sectarian rostrum hoggers. I sat behind the folks from DWU and next to the dissident TWU contingent, which was interesting. Ed Ott is pretty awesome as CLC presidents go. Oh, btw, Boycott Stella D'Oro. The factory, oddly enough, is a couple blocks away from where i went to high school. They tried to force the workers to accept some severe cutbacks and workers have been on strike for nearly six months.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
It's been too unproductive a weekend, though mostly enjoyably so. I spent Friday in the great pangatsbycon banging out the latest draft of my proposal, this time with 100% fewer parenthetical phrases and a half assed, if complete, literature review. Hung out with Johana, then saturday read some Autonomia and watched the latest episodes of Battlestar Galactica (OMG Felix) and Damages (not on hulu, and not really very good) and procrastinated more than i should.
More procrastination today. Watched Donnie Brasco, which takes Goodfellas' (failed) attempt to demystify and deflate the mobster several steps further - Pacino's Lefty is a tracksuit-wearing, washed up schlub of a gangster, though Johnny Depp in the starting role sort of impedes this particular project simply by virtue of the fact that Al Pacino! and Johnny Depp! are starring together in a mob movie!. The scene in which the FBI high ups tip off Michael Madsen's character about Brasco/Pistone also makes no sense. Anyway, then I read more autonomia and watched Stepbrothers. concurring with my brother's initial diagnosis after having viewed an advance screening before it hit theaters, that the film is rather bizarre.
Tonight I'll prep for class tomorrow, which means Plato and Aristotle. Neither of whom I've read since high school greek class. This was the most boring blog post ever, so let me refer you to the latest manifesto to have emerged from the New School Occupation. I object to some of the assertions they make about the supposed inherently reactionary or bourgeois nature of meetings and organizing strategy, and the disciplinary chest-beating is similarly a little tiresome, but there's nevertheless much here that's valuable. I particularly appreciate the critique of critique and the elaboration of the university as battleground for a range of social struggles, the refusal to fall prey to exceptionalist, bourgeois accounts of the university's removal from the social, from the "real world." The university is of the real world, is in the real world, and so are the struggles to transform/destroy/replace/your verb here it. The problematization of the university here is eloquently articulated and ably expresses the urgency and necessity of such organizing and such struggles.
Now back to your regularly scheduled commodity fetishism, which should indicate exactly how divorced I, and this blog, have been from anything resembling the political of late.
Nate Evans - "Pardon my innocent heart"
Tony Donne's Hollywood Quintet - "Micaela"
Andrea Williams - "Love Makes Me Do Foolish Things"
King Django - "What's The Use"
Rufus Thomas - "The Dog"
Sonic Youth - "In the mind of the bourgeois reader" lol
kaleidoscope - "holidaymaker"
Smashing Pumpkins - "Luna"
Outkast - "Decatur Psalm"
Manu Dibango - "Aphrodite Shake"
More procrastination today. Watched Donnie Brasco, which takes Goodfellas' (failed) attempt to demystify and deflate the mobster several steps further - Pacino's Lefty is a tracksuit-wearing, washed up schlub of a gangster, though Johnny Depp in the starting role sort of impedes this particular project simply by virtue of the fact that Al Pacino! and Johnny Depp! are starring together in a mob movie!. The scene in which the FBI high ups tip off Michael Madsen's character about Brasco/Pistone also makes no sense. Anyway, then I read more autonomia and watched Stepbrothers. concurring with my brother's initial diagnosis after having viewed an advance screening before it hit theaters, that the film is rather bizarre.
Tonight I'll prep for class tomorrow, which means Plato and Aristotle. Neither of whom I've read since high school greek class. This was the most boring blog post ever, so let me refer you to the latest manifesto to have emerged from the New School Occupation. I object to some of the assertions they make about the supposed inherently reactionary or bourgeois nature of meetings and organizing strategy, and the disciplinary chest-beating is similarly a little tiresome, but there's nevertheless much here that's valuable. I particularly appreciate the critique of critique and the elaboration of the university as battleground for a range of social struggles, the refusal to fall prey to exceptionalist, bourgeois accounts of the university's removal from the social, from the "real world." The university is of the real world, is in the real world, and so are the struggles to transform/destroy/replace/your verb here it. The problematization of the university here is eloquently articulated and ably expresses the urgency and necessity of such organizing and such struggles.
II. The university shall never again be merely the lukewarm appendage to civil society that our (hypo)critical theorists so highly acclaim; rather, as our friends in Greece have shown, the university can also be an appendage to civil war, a space in which impenetrable bodies and inflammable knowledges can conspire towards the dissolution of their very condition, that is, separation. Yet it is exactly that sharing between life and thought that is preemptively banned from the territories marked under the sign “university.” Such territories betray their innocence not only in their concrete unfolding, but in their very name. There is nothing “universal” about the university anymore except the universality of emptiness. Students and professors spend their waking lives covering up this void with paltry declarations and predictable nonactions. The void should no longer be avoided; it should be unleashed.
Seceding from the university is no longer enough. One must bring it down as well.
Now back to your regularly scheduled commodity fetishism, which should indicate exactly how divorced I, and this blog, have been from anything resembling the political of late.
Nate Evans - "Pardon my innocent heart"
Tony Donne's Hollywood Quintet - "Micaela"
Andrea Williams - "Love Makes Me Do Foolish Things"
King Django - "What's The Use"
Rufus Thomas - "The Dog"
Sonic Youth - "In the mind of the bourgeois reader" lol
kaleidoscope - "holidaymaker"
Smashing Pumpkins - "Luna"
Outkast - "Decatur Psalm"
Manu Dibango - "Aphrodite Shake"
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