Happy Birthday, Darryl Strawberry!

In the course of my lifetime, I've been to many, many major league baseball games. I've been to many stadiums before they were torn down. Because my parents are sports nuts and love baseball. This love hadn't truly transferred to me, though I did want a "Don't Whack My Wiener" Milwaukee Brewers tee shirt when we were out at the stadium a couple of years ago. For anyone who doesn't know, the Brewers' mascot(s) are various sausages, and one of them got knocked down at a game during the Sausage Race. By the way, the Sausage Race is well worth the admission to the baseball game.

That isn't to say that I don't like baseball. I like it, and I like it all the more now that I'm older and don't get quite so antsy. But when I was younger, there were only so many peanuts I could shell before coming a bit undone. At least, there were only so many peanuts I could shell unless I was in Shea Stadium. Because Shea had the Home Run Apple:

The apple is less red than pink now, so that photo is a bit dated.

The Home Run Apple would appear out of the top hat, appropriately enough, when someone hit a home run. That someone, from about the time I was two on, was Darryl Strawberry. Because of that, he was my favorite player. Ever. Yes, he's had a lot of problems, drugs and the like. But he's also a major part of my childhood. And so, happy birthday, Darryl.

A Post In Which I Review Dollhouse's "Gray Hour"

I'm going to start this review in a weird place; I'm going to start it with why I don't like Jane Eyre. Well, there are a lot of reasons why I don't like Jane Eyre, actually. Much of the book left a bitter taste in my mouth, and because of that I was surprised that I loved Wide Sargasso Sea as much as I do. I'm definitely an Austen girl. But back to the topic at hand. If you haven't read Jane Eyre, and are interested in doing so, skip this part. I'll let you know when to come back:

I hate Jane Eyre because of the ending. Yes, I hate how Jane ends up with Rochester again, because I'm forced to ask, "Why is she with him?" just like I do when I watch crappy romantic comedies like 27 Dresses or Knocked Up. And that sucks, but the real reason I hate it is because Charlotte Bronte tries to make both Jane and Rochester equal in the end. She gives Jane an inheritance so she isn't in a subordinate economic position to Rochester. And Rochester? Well, he loses a hand and his eyesight in a fire caused by his insane wife. In order to make the characters equals, Bronte gives Jane money, and cripples Rochester. For me, that isn't really a twist that supports gender equality. And here's where I'm starting to develop a bit of a problem with Dollhouse. In "The Target", it is only after Boyd is shot and out of the save-the-day picture that Echo-Jenny is able to step up and take care of business. And for that one episode, I was more than alright with that; it flew completely in the face of Jacki Lyden's assertion that Echo-Jenny needed a man to save her, because she didn't. All she needed was a gun, and she was able to save herself, and the man. However, this same sort of situation played out in "Gray Hour" as well. Walton gets skewered, and only after he gives Echo the means to escape does she rescue herself - and him.

Now, I'm down with this sort of thing happening once, but twice in two episodes is a little much for me. Especially when Whedon's never needed to do it before. Buffy didn't need any of her guys to be knocked down before she was able to kick ass - and before anyone says "vampire slayer", think "Helpless". She's able to rescue herself and her mother with just her wits about her, and Giles remains unharmed. Hell, he even gets a bit of the credit by dusting a surprise vampire. Zoe didn't require Mal to be hurt before she was able to take up arms and shoot some people dead. And by doing it that way, by having both men and women able to save each other and save themselves without the traditional rescuer being incapacitated, there was a much stronger message of gender equality. Women could rescue men, even when the men were at their full and manliest of strengths. Much better than the Jane Eyre way of male-female power relations.

***If anyone actually stopped reading, it's safe now. After ranking the episodes for John, I'm kind of forced to conclude I was a bit off. I had them ranked "The Target", "Gray Hour", "Stage Fright", and then "The Ghost". I think "Grey Hour" may have fallen a bit in my second watching, and my excitement over the plot overrode my ability to judge the episode on its other merits (or lack thereof). I also caught about the last 10 or 15 minutes (probably closer to 10, but felt more like 15) of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and although I love Summer Glau muchly, it was still pretty painful. Thus, the comparison between "Gray Hour" and what came before made "Gray Hour" seem brilliant by comparison.

The script was lacking; there are no other words for it. There were no cool twists of dialogue like there were in "Stage Fright". There were no truly rememberable lines, sans "You are a talking cucumber"; and I think that line was really made by the delivery instead of the actual writing. And there was very little Boyd-Echo connection. The midwife scene in the beginning didn't resemble reality. And as Lauredhel says,

There are fields of endeavour in which the vast majority of experts are women. those women possess knowledge gained through years of study and experience, and they bring something very worthwhile to the world. One of those fields of endeavour is midwifery.

It seems exponentially problematic that a male feminist would not recognize this and either consult with a midwife about proper procedure, or just research the thing. I mean, if we can get that there is no noise in space right for Firefly (ignoring the many other sciencey issues), then could we get a good birth scene? Apparently not.

This isn't to pick on Joss. Well, not entirely. And the bloom is not off the Dollhouse rose. I still really enjoyed the episode. It just wasn't as good as I first thought, and that realization was a bit disappointing. I'm going to mention two other aspects of this episode that bugged me, and then move on to what I did like. First, there is Whedon's notorious time issue. There have been write ups about the time issues in otherwise excellent episodes like "Passion"; I'm not saying he's as bad as the Sherman-Palladinos having multiple fridays in their weeks on Gilmore Girls, but it does sometimes throw me. Like last week, when Crazy Stalker Dude first constructs his crutch-gun. What stopped him from firing it at that show? Why did we see him construct the entire thing, and then not see him try to use it until the next concert? And this week, with the 45 seconds it would take the guards to breech the vault once the alarm had been sounded. I don't care how fast he moved, if Vitas isn't secretly Superman, there's no way he would be able to construct a barricade out of that much art in 45 seconds - and still have time to remind Echo of his breaking-broken people theory.

The second of these two issues is Ivy. I liked Ivy as a character, and I appreciate Joss (slowly) becoming more multicultural in his casting. However, I would have liked Ivy all the more if she hadn't been like Chuck's Anna with her funky-cool clothing. As much as I coveted her tights, I would have preferred Ivy being more Willow and less Buffy. Barring that, I would have liked a slightly longer skirt because hers was far from "serious". And yes, Topher wearing crazy "Xander" outfits and drinking out of juice boxes isn't very professional either, but my issue is less with the lack of professionalism than it is with the sexualization of the character. It all goes back to girls can be anything, even nerds/geeks, as long as they are beautiful and dress like they know it. I expect better from the guy who gave me Willow and Fred and Kaylee, even though all of whom were beautiful. They were all allowed to be beautiful, and be sexy and sexual, and yet still not always dress the part of the sex kitten.

What I did like, I liked a lot. I think an episode like "Gray Hour" was necessary to fully introduce Echo, who she is and what she has to offer even as a "blank slate". Echo's evolution from "Shall I go now?" to someone with a bit more range of emotion than her normal Dollhouse Active persona was interesting to watch, as was her interactions with the two different philosophies in the room. While Topher was probably right to be concerned about sensory overload being dangerous for a newly wiped Active, that florescent lights and forceps would be jarring, there also seems to be an undercurrent here; without conflict, without things that challenge us and people who make us think, we don't grow - or at least, we don't grow as quickly. Echo developed more of a personality in the course of 31 minutes than she does during her routine in the Dollhouse. Part of it is probably that she was interacting with other people who had a full range of emotions at their disposal in a way that the other Actives do not. But part of it had to be the lack of throw pillows and crunchy lettuce. Part of it had to be that Echo had to evolve, because to not evolve when confronted wouldn't be the way to survive. And yet, at the same time this trauma of being wiped and rewiped is on display as a fairly bad thing. If it is so traumatizing, it cannot be good to do over and over again to a person. In this way, Echo's declaration, "I'm not broken" is both a clarion call of strength, and yet also an implicit demonstration of what Echo and the other Actives lack, what they have stolen from them time after time. They aren't broken, and that is part of what disrupts their evolution. It is so much more tragic than "I'm Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and you are?" is, than "No more running; I aim to misbehave is", than "My turn" is. This is a show without the truly triumphant moment.

I also liked the mystery. Why would Alpha wipe Echo in the middle of an incredibly dangerous assignment? Why would Adelle DeWitt so readily believe Topher after he kept screwing up by doing things like calling the Active and her Handler?

The other thing, the actual mythos, seems to be solidifying. "Michelangelo believed his sculptures already existed, inside the marble. Waiting to be freed" could be describing the Actives themselves, existing in these blank slate states, just waiting to actually be allowed to develop. Instead of having the Actives be an actual example of tabula rasa, Whedon seems to be going more toward his Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Tabula Rasa" way; in other words, people aren't blank slates. You can wipe away their memories, the traumas and conflicts and joys that work to refine each person into who they are; but in many ways, the essence of the person remains. This is a little more extreme than BtVS' "Tabula Rasa" in the wiping of everything, but it seems clear that there are minute yet important differences between the Actives, even in their programed state. Lurker said, "Eliza Dushku and Dichen Lachman even sounded alike when they portrayed Taffy. Insanely awesome acting!" I don't disagree. But I still found myself thinking of their Taffys as two different people. Echo-Taffy was, and it could have just been a product of the atmosphere, more hyped up. She was more impassioned, wilder. Sierra-Taffy was cooler, just as confident, but seemed to have a different sort of edge. She was calmer, and exuded more control than Echo-Taffy, even though Echo-Taffy was the on with Taffy Standard Time. Still excellent acting, and the two did create very nearly the same character. But the people underneath still influenced - I think - the formation of that character; because you can never truly clean a slate, and there is still something present underneath.

Grade: B-/B

Look Who's The Big East Champs

That's right, the UConn Women Huskies. They beat Louisville, secured their #1 seed in the NCAA tournament, and they are the remaining undefeated Division 1 team. In other words, a good night.

Nonreligious Block Growing

I'm kind of excited about this news story, not because I dislike religion but because I'm for anything that makes not being religious less suspect:

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Also:

"No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said.

Women, Rip Van Winkle, & Domestic Violence

A good friend of mine had up a link on his Facebook feed, advising people to read the fourth panel:Which reads: "Well, I wrote a little song about women, called 'Women are Special (They will not stop until we are dead". I had a problem with it at this point, and in the course of calling him for other reasons, pretty much expressed my distaste with the sentiment expressed in that one box. Because, hey, women are half of the population and if you seriously think maligning 50% of the population is a good idea, then there's a bit of an issue. He responded that most of the women in his life had wronged him at some point in some way, and I told him that most of the people in his life had wronged him at some point in some way - that's what happens when you have an insane amount of friends; some of them are going to not be so great, and sometimes even the great people screw up. He also mentioned the "Boys Are Stupid" Flair permeating Facebook as a reason why his link wasn't so bad. And here's where the "equal opportunity" insult falls flat on its face. Because the "Boys Are Stupid" flair is bad:

But it doesn't take into account certain inequities in life. There is a Gavin de Becker quote that says, "At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them". Now, I'm not saying every woman is afraid of men, or that every man is afraid of being laughed at by women, or that some women aren't afraid of looking foolish in front of men or that some men will not experience the very real fear that a woman in their life is not only capable of killing or abusing them, but that it is also a probable outcome of their situation. What de Becker's quote does highlight, though, is the patently ridiculous and hurtful sentiment expressed in the above comic strip. Because domestic abuse is a very real, very large issue. Because:

Battering on women is the most under reported crime in America.

Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States; more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. "Violence Against Women, A Majority Staff Report," Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 102nd Congress, October 1992, p.3.

Three to four million women in the United States are beaten in their homes each year by their husbands, ex-husbands, or male lovers. "Women and Violence," Hearings before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, August 29 and December 11, 1990, Senate Hearing 101-939, pt. 1, p. 12.

One woman is beaten by her husband or partner every 15 seconds in the United States. Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1991.

About 1 out of 4 women are likely to be abused by a partner in her lifetime. Sara Glazer, "Violence, Against Women" CO Researcher, Congressional Quarterly, Inc., Volume 3, Number 8, February, 1993, p. 171.

Approximately 95% of the victims of domestic violence are women. Statistics, National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, Ruth Peachey, M.D. 1988.
...
Domestic violence is not only physical and sexual violence but also psychological. Psychological violence means intense and repetitive degradation, creating isolation, and controlling the actions or behaviors of the spouse through intimidation or manipulation to the detriment of the individual. "Five Year State Master Plan for the Prevention of and Service for Domestic Violence." Utah State Department of Human Services, January 1994.

Those statistics and figures make the assertion that it is women who will not stop until the men are dead laughable. And yet, the image of women sucking out the souls of men, as the comic continues on:

is a cultural staple. The shrewish woman is a staple on sit-coms, and in movies and in how we frame relationships. And it has been, for years and years, and centuries upon centuries. In stories like Rip Van Winkle, our sympathies are directed toward Rip:

I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstances might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

Certain it is that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle."

It isn't until we have been assured of the Dame's shrewish ways and Rip's goodliness that we are told in sympathetic terms what may account for Dame Van Winkle's irritability - though it isn't framed as such. According to Hawthorne, "The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable work", and his children looked ragged and like beggar children. And yet, still, we are told that he would do all the odd chores around the other wives' homes their "less obliging husbands would not do for them", possibly because those less obliging husbands were actually making the money necessary for their wives and children to not have to scrimp and save. And at the end of the tale, Rip awakens from his twenty year nap and finds his wife has died in his absence; this is seen as a major plus for Rip, as "he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle." Published in 1819, the perceived dynamic between men and women seems to have changed very little. Men endure wifely 'nagging', with little attention paid to whether or not that wife has a valid concern or not.

And what makes this even more insidious is that the same cultural norms play out when we are discussing the other, distorted aspects of male-female relationships. It comes down to the women. In domestic violence cases, one of the questions that invariably gets asked is "What did she do?", the implication being that if only the woman in question was a little less shrewish, a little less demonic, a little less harpish, she wouldn't have gotten hit. Again, this isn't the question that comes up for everyone; not everyone asks this question. Not everyone thinks this thought. But it is still a prevalent thought, in articles and message boards - especially in high profile cases. This same thing can be found when we discuss rape victims, when we tell women that to wear certain outfits and to go certain places and to act in certain ways is to open the door to sexual assault.

To assert that men are in general the victims of women and their soul-sucking ways is ludicrous. To assert that 'women', as a monolithic group, are threats to men and want them dead is also ludicrous. Because it just reinforces the notion of that mean woman married to the harried man. It attempts to give men, all men, regardless of whether or not they are married to nice, non-soul-sucking women, victim-status. It attempts to strip all women, whether or not they are nice, non-soul-sucking women, of their very humanity - literally, by turning them into demons. And it also reinforces the notion of men and women not as partners, not working in tandem, but as being in a constant struggle, as a war. I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm in a relationship, I prefer not to categorize that relationship as being a tug-of-war, a constant battle, a situation in which I am the perpetual victim. I would prefer to think of it - and portray it as - a give-and-take, a loving and dynamic duo. And for those who would categorize their relationships the other way, well, maybe they should just not be in a relationship.

When Spelling Errors Go Horribly Awry

"DEAR ABBY: I am being marred in the fall."

I must admit that I'm enough of an asshole to think, "You can schedule that?"

Saturday Sesame Street

This video isn't of the highest quality, but it is one of my favorite segments of Sesame Street ever:

I was always really amazed by the double dutch jump ropers, probably because I couldn't even master the one rope.

Depression Cooking With Clara

This woman is adorable:

She is 91 years old, and her grandson started taping her for the family and decided to turn those into webisodes. She's also got a blog, a facebook page, a website, and there's a DVD and a cookbook coming. I love her.

The Highs and Lows of Keith Olbermann

Keith Olbermann has a lot of highs and a lot (like, a lot) of lows as well. These two are really just from last night's broadcast, because I was particularly struck by them as I drove into work this morning. First, Olbermann talks about the part contraceptives play in President Obama's budget:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The relevant part for me being:

And yes, all ye puritans among us, America will pay for contraceptives. Taxpayer dollars for evil condoms and horrible birth control pills. Contraceptives that states already have the option of providing for low-income fornicators. Fornication that would otherwise lead to untold, unwanted pregnancies, unwanted babies, unwanted abortions, unwanted drains on families, unwanted drains on, yes, the national economy. The congressional budget office estimates that $200 million saved in 5 years thanks to, yup, contraceptives and family planning.

I kind of feel like he should have been talking to Chris Matthews about how the government helping to prevent unwanted pregnancies (and diseases) is so completely different than a government working to "regulate the amount of kids people might be in the mood for".

And yet, on the top of this rather concise illustration for why contraceptives aren't completely out of place in a government concerned about budgetary issues and the quality of life for its citizens, Olbermann was just off the friggin' wall with this:

[Limbaugh] apologizes - or analogizes - the 'I want Obama to fail' to rooting for the Steelers in the Super Bowl, except - and you would think that a self-professed football expert would know - that the Steelers' coach and the Steelers' owner campaigned for Obama and they did so to such an extent that the second person the team owner, who was a Republican, thanked after they won the Super Bowl was Barack Obama. Does this suggest that this internecine battle is rattling Limbaugh to some degree?

This insane ramblings interrupt a segment of Chris Hayes:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

This sort of eyerollingly ridiculous explanation of a pretty simplistic analogy is one of the things that makes Keith Olbermann seem unhinged. Instead of recognizing the analogy for what it is, rooting for the winner instead of the loser, Olbermann makes it about which football team supported which candidate.

A Review of Dollhouse's "Stage Fright", Part 2

This is Part 2 of an extremely long post. Part one is here.

Perhaps one of the more intriguing aspects of this episode was something mzbitca foreshadowed when she said, "What I think will become clear is that we are not going to truly know who's operating on their own free will and who is truly a doll which I believe will turn the show completely upside down at one point". The Lubov/Victor reveal completely blew my mind, because I'm pathetic and couldn't see the signs a-coming. Like, Adelle DeWitt telling Dominic, "All the appropriate measures have been taken"; that one should have sent off warning bells upon warning bells. And yet, I remain completely oblivious to the twists and turns. At the same time, this whole Lubov/Victor thing opens up a whole new host of questions. Questions like, Does Victor/Lubov genuinely want to help Ballard in his quest, or does he know the information he gave Ballard was meant to get him killed? Has Lubov always been Victor? If so, how was he programmed to talk about Dollhouse without becoming disoriented, like we saw Echo become in "Ghost"?

For the record, I think Victor/Lubov didn't know about the death in the basement; my assessment comes purely from the "Watch your back" line, though, so it may be what I want to read in that more than what is actually there. And I tend to think, though I could be wrong, that Lubov has always been Victor and has been sent specifically to mess with Ballard. The other, almost more upsetting, way to read this is that Ballard's own dogged pursuit of the Dollhouse mystery ended up with the Borodins sending Lubov to the Dollhouse to get wiped - giving a whole new meaning to him not getting the "nice" death. Which, in a way, is better in terms of the actual story, the idea that no one is above implication in a system that is as widespread and as insidious as the Dollhouse is. It makes Ballard less the white knight, since he would be principally responsible for Lubov's wiping; it would also go toward demonstrating how Ballard has to this point treated Lubov as someone to be used as well, though for an ostensibly greater good. And by using Lubov, he has condemned Lubov to be used. Actually, I kind of hope that it is the second one. It makes the primary message of the show all the more potent, that using people as objects is a no-no, no matter how you do it or why.

And yet, Whedon (or at least one of the Whedons and Maurissa Tancharoen) also seem to suggest that this is rooted in who we are, and that we must struggle to overcome it:

PAUL: The technology exists.
LUBOV: Somebody made a monkey tango, right? It doesn't mean it's being used on people.
PAUL: It does. It does mean that.
LUBOV: How do you know?
PAUL: We split the atom, we make a bomb. We come up with anything new, the first thing we do is destroy, manipulate, control. It's human nature.
LUBOV: Yeah, people are mostly crap.

Aside from making me really like Lubov (and so, kind of sad to see him be Dollified), it is yet another strong, in-episode criticism of the very idea of a Dollhouse. It is yet another, poetically downer, message that this is a really bad thing that is happening and that we should recognize it as being a destructive force that deserves to be confronted and shuttered. It also demonstrates the dark side of Special Agent Paul Ballard; this is not a happy philosophy to live by. Neither is Lubov's "people are mostly crap", but he just sounds less affected by it than Ballard does. And yet, even with this pessimistic view of the world and humanity, Ballard still seems to feel that we can become better; it is not nihilistic, because he pursues a goal of the destruction of a destructive force.

This episode also deepens the audience's understanding of the Dollhouse's operation, and who are the more moralistic forces of the Dollhouse:

DR. SAUNDERS: I have her flagged for romantic or altruistic engagements only. Does anybody read these?

TOPHER: Her last romantic engagement turned out to be extremely high risk; maybe her engagement with Rayna will turn romantic. Ooh.

DR. SAUNDERS: She's a bodyguard?

TOPHER: She's a singer. Persona and parameter. Two separate elements. Persona: She's a struggling singer who just got her first break, yay. Parameter: She must protect Rayna. Which she will do instinctively and unconsciously at all times.

DR. SAUNDERS: So, she doesn't even know she's a bodyguard. And this makes what better?

With this, we see Dr. Saunders as an okay force; not a good force, just a better force than Topher. As Do Lurkers Dream of Electric Peeps? says, "Boyd Is Better Than The Rest. Better Doesn't Mean Good", the same can be said for Dr. Claire Saunders. She may not approve of unconscious bodyguarding, but she still approves of creating unconscious romantic attachments. It seems like Dr. Saunders and Boyd have incomplete moral codes, Adelle DeWitt and Lawrence Dominic have skewed moral codes, and Topher is just amoral. No one is morally righteous here, and no one has the high ground.

The progression of Echo, the bleeding of the CEOP (Current Echo Occupying Persona) into Echo, and the bleeding of Echo into the CEOP continues apace. Although I hated the beginning, the imprint of the importance of friendship upon Echo bled into her Jordan persona; that could have been because she was meant to be Rayna's friend, but Echo/Jordan also reacted to the fact that Sierra/Audre was in danger. When she said, "I have to help her", Echo/Jordan was looking at Sierra on the computer screen. She repeats Sierra's "Friends help each other out", and stretches the parameters of her assignment to reacquire Sierra as well as knock some sense into Rayna. She is special, because she makes her whole more than the sum of the parts the Dollhouse deigns to give her. But as Dr. Saunders tells Boyd, "Special isn't always a good thing", and that "sometimes the best thing to hope for, is good enough". There will probably come a time when Dominic's suggestion of sending Echo to the Attic will be more plausible, and harder for DeWitt to override.

Speaking of "The Attic", Dominic mentioned it last week, but I didn't delve into it. At the same time, the amount of references to feminist and prefeminist literature are piling up. The Attic plays a key function in Emily Bronte's Jane Eyre, housing Rochester's first wife Bertha; she is the madwoman housed in the attic, and she is the primary player in Wide Sargasso Sea (which, in my estimation, is heads and tails above the work it was inspired by). The nameless protagonist of "The Yellow Wallpaper" was confined to an upstairs bedroom, possibly in an attic. And, of course, there is The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, the 700+ work by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. As a feminist, I would imagine Whedon would be well aware of this tendency to put uppity women away and in an attic - especially in literature. Along with the Attic, there is the name, Dollhouse. Since those who are wiped are called Actives and not Dolls, there is more than a possible allusion to the Henrik Ibsen play "A Doll's House"; in fact, the first conversation I had with my father about Dollhouse went something like this:

ME: Jess is coming over friday to watch Dollhouse.

DAD: Oh?

ME: Yeah, because we have the big screen.

DAD: Oh. Right. Well, we'll probably be out at a basketball game.

ME: I could tape it for you.

DAD: Tape?! Ibsen?!

ME: What? No! Whedon! His new show?

DAD: Oh. I was wondering why you'd need to watch Ibsen on the big screen.

They made it back in time to see the show, by the way. 

Perhaps even more compelling is the fact that Nora was without agency until she discovered that there was more to life than being her husband's "little bird". She had to go on a journey of self-discovery, a discovery that had not ended when the play did. So who will Echo most emulate as a character? The unfairly maligned and destroyed and eventually dead Bertha? The broken and insane protagonist of "The Yellow Wallpaper"? Or will her story be the more hopeful one of Nora, a journey in which she leaves behind a life of being many someone else's plaything and aims to discover who she is and what to make of her life? The tension of Dollhouse may be the tension between these two divergent feminist story trajectories, between the destruction of woman by her society or the woman who escapes those bonds and works to create her own person. Based on Whedon's previous work, I think it will probably be more of the latter than the former but with bits of the former mixed in liberally.

A Review of Dollhouse's "Stage Fright", Part 1

This review, having gotten way too long, has been split. Enjoy.

First things first: I think one of the main problems with Dollhouse are the Actives themselves, by themselves, with little or no personality. The dialogue there is stilted and forced, and kind of eye-rollingly bad. I know they're adults, so they can't get away with cute little kidisms. I know that they are wiped, so there can't be any pop culture references or any emotionality other than being extremely docile. But there has got to be something to save moments like this one:

Because it just isn't working and it detracts from the rest of what is a pretty good episode.

The beginning, with Rayna in a cage, is particularly symbolic. Even as she steps out of her fake cage, she's still trapped in the cage created by her own celebrity; and she reflects the Actives' experience. In this episode, written by Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon, there is the clearest indication of what Dollhouse is trying to say through its use of the Actives. First, Rayna is manipulated by Biz into accepting Echo/Jordan as a background singer; Biz is the one who warns Rayna that Echo/Jordan seems to have "attitude", Biz is the one who motions for Rayna to discuss the decision, and we are left with the impression that Biz is the one who had Echo/Jordan sing the song that Rayna loves. Rayna's position in her pop world is also highly constructed, something she herself notes when she admits that she is a "factory girl" after confessing that she's miserable:

"I gotta be happy, I gotta be grateful. I gotta be rebellious, but just enough to give me cred so that people know I'm not a Factory Girl. But I am. I don't exist. I'm not a real person. I'm everybody's fantasy. God help me if I try not to be. You weren't grown in a lab, but I was. Been singing for my supper since when, and for when, and for everybody else. God put this voice in me, and forgot to make it mine."

There is so much crammed in that one monologue the head reels. First, it is an indictment of celebrity culture. But it indicts celebrity culture for the same reason Whedon seems to want to explore "what we want from each other sexually, how much power we wanna have over each other". Rayna is just another type of Active; she is just yet another person treated as an object. She doesn't feel like "a real person", and she doesn't have ownership over the talent that has catapulted her to stardom. At some point in her life, probably quite young since Biz mentioned 'the Mouse', she lost her autonomy and her ability to be herself for herself - and do what she wanted to do without thinking about the affect it would have on her career and how it would distract from the fantasy image her fans at large saw and demanded. We as a culture feel a right to celebrities; we feel like we know them, or that we are owed some of what makes them 'them' - because we buy their CDs and tickets to their movies. The whole reason there are magazines like the National Enquirer and Star and shows like Entertainment Tonight is because we want access to the lives of people we think we know, and who we feel should be more than happy to open up to us because we "made" them who and what they are. And then we wonder why they crumble, why they have "'shave your head, flash your junk' whacky phase[s]", and we gawk all the more. Because they exist dually as both people and products in our society, and neither are very much respected.

The second part of it all that lends to the strange vertigo that partially makes this show so uncomfortably compelling. For the first time, the client engaging in double entendres doesn't know she's engaging in any such thing, or that she is a client. Rayna may not know that Jordan is a Factory Girl, grown in a lab, but we do. And that makes both of their stories all the sadder; they're interconnected in this life without knowing it, both are being manipulated without knowing it, and their friendship is as false as any other relationship Echo is programmed to have. It makes Rayna all the more tragic a figure, even as she becomes one of the less than savory people of the piece. She is ultimately alone.

The other aspect of Rayna is that even as she is that tragic figure made into an object by her handlers, she is not a good person. One could theorize that her position as an object has been one that has dulled what she sees as her obligation to others, has left her cold, miserable, and unable to feel. This same story has played out in Whedon's works before, first with Dushku's own Faith and later with Firefly's Saffron (or, Yo-Saf-Bridge). These three women operate under the assumption that they are alone and that everyone else in the world merely wants something from them. Yo-Saf-Bridge sums up this philosophy best when she says, "Everybody plays each other. That's all anybody ever does". And though she is not outrightly evil as the first two are, that is what Rayna does, because that is life as she experiences it. She is played by Biz, so she in turn plays her stalker, and her fan. She plays so many people and has been played by so many people, she doesn't know what to do when a (falsely created) genuine friend doesn't play the game. What she wants is for the game to stop and for the cage to open, to be free. She just doesn't know how to go about getting it, because without the realization that there is a world in which genuine relationships can thrive, she doesn't know there is any other escape from the game other than freedom from life itself.

Along with Rayna's predicament come two ideas consistently present in Whedon's work, and those are self-determination and strength in living. Echo/Jordan brings up both, telling Rayna, "You don't like your life? Change it"; and when Rayna responds pitifully with, "They won't let me", Echo/Jordan drives it home with "You make them let you." This is an idea that Whedon has explore before, both with Buffy Summers doing things like breaking away from the Watcher's Council to restructuring that same Council when she needed them to changing the very nature of what slayerdom means; and with Malcolm Reynolds, who couldn't live under Alliance rule and so bought a ship and just kept flying in the spaces the Alliance hadn't yet reached. Life, Whedon seems to postulate, is what you make of it; and his other postulation is that you'd better damn well make something of it. When Rayna would rather die than fight, Echo/Jordan tells her, "You know, the last thing I thought you'd be was weak". Maybe it is Whedon's atheism, but the idea of not living, of taking the easy road off of this mortal coil, seems to not be a real option in his world. To want to die is weak, like Rayna is described as and like Angel claims that he is in the BtVS episode "Amends". Buffy herself puts it best when she says, "The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live." At the end of the episode, faced with real and everlasting death that doesn't create a grand finale, Rayna rediscovers this will to be brave and to remake her life.

Illustrating The Wage Gap

Here's something really, really cool from the New York Times: an interactive scatter plot graph demonstrating the wage gap between women and men. Being a graph, it doesn't delve too deeply into the hows or whys except for in a few broad cases (like the differences in salaries for professors), but it is still educational - and fun to use. I personally like the "putting the mouse over the dot" feature, and the fact that you can clear all but one category from the screen for easier analysis. Overall, I'm thinking this goes down as an awesome.

h/t to Feministing

Ideology And Change

Something occurred to me after I responded to a friend's comments (and this friend is probably sick of his comments being turned into blog posts, but he's the most incendiary commenter I've got, so to him I say, "Tough"), and that is that no matter how good a friend you are with someone, no matter how many conversations you have with them, assumptions about their reactions to things or their beliefs can go horribly awry. This friend wrote,

"What if John McCain had come into power and his remedy for the country was continued deregulation of the private sector and broad-based cuts in entitlement spending?

I'm sure you wouldn't think this plan would help our country out of the financial crisis. But I'd imagine you also wouldn't want it to work because it would justify further deregulation and encourage the government to make fewer transfer payments in the future. That doesn't mean you wouldn't want the economy to improve necessarily. You simply wouldn't want our recovery to be connected with policies you believe are ultimately bad for the country."

Here's where he's right: I wouldn't believe that McCain's plan would work. Here's where he's wrong: if the plan was put in place to lift us out of an economic recession and the economic community had reached a broad (though not unanimous) consensus that this is what it would take to do it, I wouldn't hope for its failure. Because although I have an ideology, it has one strong basis and that is what is ultimately good for the people. If something that goes against the grain of my ideology actually is ultimately good for the people, if something that goes against the core of what I think is right and good saves jobs and homes and makes our world better, then it is my ideology that needs to change to reflect that. If this plan worked, then I would have to reassess whether or not those policies I disagree with were ultimately bad for the country, or if I was wrong about them and their application. I would be remiss not to; I would be foolhardy to cling desperately to a belief system meant to make America better if an alternate system proved to do the same thing.

Here's also where my friend is wrong: I may have an ideology, but on economic matters I'm not to the far left; I'm more of a slightly-left-of-center person than anything else on economic fronts. I am a capitalist. I believe in markets. And although I'm more of a Keynesian than anything else, that has more to do with the negative impact a truly self-correcting market economy would have on the "little" people (and some bigger ones) than a hard and fast ideology about economic theory. I tend to think we do economics wrong in America; I tend to think that our regulatory practices are too influenced by lawmakers' interests in terms of making the lobbyists and the campaign contributers happy. I tend to think that doesn't work so well. But then, although I'm mostly ambivalent, I do still think that in many ways, our economic system - like our political system - is the worst, except all of the others that have been tried. For my part, my economic ideology is driven by the more pragmatic "will it work?" than anything else. For my part, I don't think that what we've been doing lo these past 8 years (and if you really want to think about it, more) really has. For my part, I think it means something, something bad, when the disparity between the wealthy and the really not is as large as it is; as Bill Moyers points out, "In 1960, the gap in wealth between the top 20% of our country and the bottom 20% was thirty fold. Now it is 75 fold." For my part, I'm outraged by the amount of Americans living below the poverty line. For my part, I'm dismayed by the amount of Americans who don't have access to quality and affordable health insurance. My belief in economic theory and what is best for the economy is somewhat mitigated by my worry over the average American. So if deregulation worked, then I would have to rethink my casual faith in Keynes' work and go more for Milton Friedman.

Those people being crushed by the economic downturn right now are why I'm not willing to give those who hope for Obama's failure any leeway. Because ideology comes second to making those people's lives better; because an ideological win means less when American citizens are jobless and homeless and feeling hopeless. On a strictly ideological level, I'm not really for bailing out banks, or the auto industry. Those people make a lot of money, and they've squandered a lot of capital - both monetary and political. But on the other side of that is that if the banks fail, then a whole mess of people who haven't squandered a lot of capital - who don't have a lot of capital to squander - end up pretty royally screwed by the system they bought into. So, from a pragmatic standpoint, I'd rather save the banks because to do anything else would be to cut off my nose to spite my country's face. And above it all, above political ideology and economic ideology and social ideology, I'm really very patriotic. Seriously. I tear up when I hear the Star Spangled Banner, and the reason why I give money to political organizations and the reason I write letters and the reason why I am interested in following the political scene and talking about the political scene and writing about the political scene is that not only do I love my country but I think my country can do better. I think we can reach higher and accomplish more and do better by our citizens, especially those who are too often left on the side of the road during public discourse. And because of that, my ideology in some regards is fairly flexible. And this is one of those times when my beliefs are.

My Craziness (Or Why John May Never Get His Post)

NOTE: This post is nothing more than naval gazing. If that doesn't interest you in the slightest, then it is probably best not to read it. Except for John. Whether it interests him or not, he'd probably better read it, since it was written mostly as an explanation/response to him and his own post.

John's been on my case now for a while to post something I've written about women in comic books, going so far as to threaten my life and go on strike. Now, there are a couple of reasons why these aren't compelling enough for me to post something I'm not comfortable with, starting with the fact that John is (a) a nice guy (not a Nice Guy™), (b) is a moral guy, and (c) has a super cute girlfriend he'll probably want to be hanging out with for the rest of his life instead of hanging out with a whole bunch of other men in jail - because not only have I been telling our friends and my friends of these threats but he's now posted them on the internet. As a side note, I have to say, John, you'd better hope I don't turn up dead in the next couple of years. In fact, you may want to invest in a giant bubble for me.

But even if John were someone who could kill me or hire someone to kill me over something as minor as not getting a blog post, there's an even bigger thing stopping me. I have an actual disorder, an anxiety disorder - Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Being generalized, my anxiety doesn't affect one aspect of my life, but it does affect a couple areas more significantly than others. Those areas are generally writing, and phone calls - making them and receiving them.It made my two-week job as a telemarketer horrific. And it made the last half of my senior year in high school hell, because I couldn't write, and I couldn't make myself turn in anything I did write. It made college interesting, because I could often spend days at my computer writing papers I wouldn't end up turning in. Luckily for me, I amassed a couple of professors who could handle my idiosyncratic way of handing in many of the papers that had been due during the semester right at the very end. Oftentimes, though, I would just neglect to hand in the papers that were assigned and hand in the papers I was able to write and turn in. This blog started, in point of fact, partially in an attempt to get over the sometimes paralyzing fear of someone aside from me reading what I've written.

I've gotten better at that particular aspect, but there are still some rules I have to follow in order to post. One rule is that even if I say I'm going to post on a certain topic, if I find that I absolutely cannot make myself hit the "Publish Post" button, I put that post aside and simply work on one that I can. If I try to post something that aggravates my anxiety, I can - and have and will in all probability become again - paralyzed and not be able to write at all. Another rule is that I can't labor too long on any given topic or post. I can sometimes give what I write a once-over, but if I spend too long reading and rereading, I'm likely to become ever more unsatisfied with it. This means that some of my posts have stupid grammatical or organizational errors, but the other side of that is that I have a post without grammatical or organizational errors that no one is allowed to read. I end up, again, paralyzed. Why is this important? Well, because I've violated the second rule of not intensively rereading what I write in regard to the post John wants, and I refuse to violate the first rule by posting something I'm not comfortable with. I like writing, I like my blog, and I'm not ready at this point in time to suffer from writing paralysis and I'm definitely not ready to overcome this particular problem by just muscling through it.

This isn't something that is just a petty little thing. This isn't something that I can make better just by willing it to be better. I've walked that path, and it hasn't worked. I can improve in increments, not in Herculean steps. And while for for others who don't have this issue with writing and posting, this doesn't seem like any Big Issue, for me it is. And I'm a selfish asshole who really is more concerned with making my life better. Posting that particular post at this time, when I'm in the throes of anxiety-created panic attacks, will not make my life better. I'm not getting graded, or paid, and my life - no matter what John wants me to believe - does not depend on getting this thing done. And even if I was getting graded, I've proven amply in the past that doesn't really matter to me; and since I walked out of my telemarketing gig when I had no other source of income, I've also proven that pay doesn't really act as much of a motivator either. I've made progress; my life isn't controlled by this. But parts of it continue to be, and while I recognize that as a bad, it also isn't something I can do a hell of a lot about right now. I can do a little something about it, and I continue to do so. I continue to push myself past my comfort level in small ways; and some days and weeks and months are better than others. This is not that time.

"Do You Wanna Go Count Our Gold?"

This, in my humble opinion, may be the funniest Sarah Haskins video, ever. Even better than the one about vampires - or yogurt!

I gasped too when they cut to Angelina Jolie during Jennifer Aniston's presentation, but it wasn't for the "OHMYGOD" emotional fireworks of it so much as it was that I just thought it was (a) completely unnecessary and (b) diminished these two accomplished and, I suspect, three-dimensional women - one presenting an Oscar and one who had already won an Oscar and was nominated for another - to one lone characteristic, that being two women in a perpetual Cold War over a guy. And yes, that guy is Brad Pitt, but really now. It has been I don't know how many years, but at least a couple; I would think the story over these two would die down. But then, I guess I'm ignoring the impulse to think of women in relation to men, and both Jolie and Aniston seem to always be connected due to their relationship with one man in particular.

I find this particularly odd because nothing ever extremely exciting has ever truly gone down. I mean, if Jennifer Aniston went insane one day early on and tried to take out Angelina Jolie, I could see everyone waiting with bated breath for the continued bloodbath. But aside from the somewhat sensationalist way Jolie's relationship with Brad began, there is seemingly no "there" there. Of course, maybe I'm ignoring the main component of this whole thing, that being that this particular strain of media really and truly can't imagine 3 adults actually not having Jerry Springeresque moments when they are *gasp* in the same room. After all, these are people who have regularly seen celebrities assault paparazzi with fists and canned food. Maybe the reason why there is still so much blasted attention on this whole nonissue is the fact that Aniston never went after Pitt or Jolie with a steak knife, and Jolie never drop kicked Aniston into a wall. Perhaps what the Access Hollywoods and the Entertainment Tonights are waiting for is a release from what they see as an unbearable tension. The fact that Aniston and Jolie may actually not really give that much of a damn about it all anymore, or at the very least actually having other aspects of their lives that are more important, doesn't even seem to cross any of these people's minds. Which is why it is important that we have people like Sarah Haskins to highlight the truly ridiculousness of it all.

Saturday Sesame Street

This is my mother's favorite Sesame Street clip, ever. Even higher on her list than The 39 Stairs, or "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ". She wants it for her phone's ringtone, and I'm hoping someday soon we'll be able to get it for her. I love it a lot too, partially because I have fond memories of my mother being so happy when it came on randomly in the middle of my show, partially because it is a really fun song, partially because the ladybugs are really cute with their bonnets, and partially because now that I'm older I actually get what some of the lyrics are referring to, like "They talked about the high price of furniture and rugs, and fire insurance for lady bugs". So, this goes down as yet another example of Sesame Street being great for kids, and adults too! And so, "Lady Bug Picnic":


Apparently the animation and singing was done by Pixar's Bud Luckey! He was an animator on Toy Story, and wrote and composed and directed and narrated my mother's favorite Pixar short, Boundin'!

Chris Hayes Is A Dork

I love the guy, and look forward to his editorials in The Nation with glee, but he is also totally a dork:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I actually think his dorkatude works to his advantage. It may just be that he fails to use contractions when he says, "I am obviously being sarcastic". It may have been more annoying had he'd said "I'm obviously being sarcastic", but the combination of that statement when it was indeed obvious and the lack of contraction really makes it.

Now, onto more important things; I'm starting to believe that what Chris Hayes says is correct, that many of the Republicans who have reached the upper echelons of their party's leadership have decided that the best way to win back some power in America would be to stymie Democratic attempts to fix America. If they obstruct many pieces of legislation, or, you know, the sitting of a senator, then they are playing on the hopes that it fails and that they can point out its failure in 2010 or 2012 without mentioning the part their obstruction could have potentially played in that failure. I have no doubt that Norm Coleman really wants to be Minnesota's senator. But really, at a certain point in time it is more than appropriate to throw in the old towel; and this, along with Republicans voting against the stimulus bill and then bragging about all the goodies they got in it, along with continued Republican lies about organizations like ACORN and what was actually in that stimulus bill, makes me a might bit suspicious.

The game many Republicans are now playing seems directly related to the game they play in regard to national security. I live in a blue state - not a blue dog state, just a true blue one. Our Republicans are for things like gun control laws and abortion rights (not that we have any more on the national scene), that's how blue we are. And even I have heard and seen plenty of talk about how Bush kept us safe for 8 years, because after 9/11 there hadn't been another terrorist attack. The problem with that is two-fold; it is trying to prove a negative in that it is trying to create a correlation between the policies that have ostensibly proven to create more terrorists with the fact that we have not had a terrorist attack, and it is playing the numbers game. There is no way to keep America perfectly safe, especially now that we've (we've) destabilized a nation in an already tumultuous region and tortured people; we can keep America fairly safe, even very safe. But what the Bush administration and those who have fixed upon their talking points have done is to ensure a climate where any hint of terrorism under Obama equals a fail for him, even if those engaged in terrorism had turned to terrorism because of Bush era policies. And that is as intellectually disingenuous as it is politically savvy. 

A less politically savvy aspect of this "My country when it thinks I'm right, but I hope it fails when it thinks I'm wrong" are things like Sean Hannity's poll asking what kind of rebellion his followers would prefer against the country, and Rush Limbaugh hoping out loud and often that President Obama fails; but the presence of such ideas in the overall dialogue lends credence to the thought that the other obstructionist stuff may be less based on principles and more on politics. It doesn't prove anything, but it sure does leave a bad taste in my mouth.

But back to Chris Hayes. Chris makes a point that "the town remains wired for Republicans. It still listens to Republican talking points. We saw this in the stimulus and when you had all these Republicans on the cable networks talking all the time about, you know, their objection to this part of the stimulus. That still permeates the institutional structure of elite consensus opinion in Washington despite the massive change in public opinion about how people feel about conservative ideas and the Republican party. The smaller, kind of insular, beltway establishment still is far more willing to cut Republicans slack than actual voters at large are." This is an echo, though less tinfoil hat extreme, of someone I thought was just insane on Bill Moyers' The Journal on February 6th. Says Glenn Greenwald:

I think it raises an interesting dilemma. Which is, if you look at what the media were saying about Obama favorably, both around the time of his election and subsequent as well, they kept insisting that he could continue Bush's counterterrorism policies that were so controversial.

They were praising him for leaving in place all sorts of Bush officials that the media wants to see is continuity, that he's not threatening to their way of life and to their establishment, for the reason that we talked about before. That's how he wins praise from them, is by showing that he isn't going to change things fundamentally, and therefore, isn't a threat to their system.

At the same time, as Jay said, what he needs to do more than anything to fulfill the commitments that he made, is demonstrate that he's a true change agent. And I think these objectives are very much in conflict, because the more he threatens the Washington system, I think the more hostility the press will feel towards him, and therefore, project to the public about him. And that, too, can undermine his political popularity.

And while Nancy Pelosi may have schooled Rachel Maddow about how effective the Republicans dominating the talking points during the stimulus debate was, I think at some point the dominance will affect American perception of the presidency and the legitimacy of the Democratic rule and liberalism in general. Liberal is already a damned dirty word, and I would like that to change. But as long as the Republicans can play keep away without being seriously called on it, that isn't likely to.

A Moment in Basketball

I think LeBron James is a cutie and always have, though I will admit that I had thought Carmelo Anthony was going to be the breakout star when both joined the NBA in 2003; I mean, Carmelo had that awesome Syracuse championship game and LeBron didn't even have one year of college hoops under his belt. Obviously, I was wrong about that one. Anyway, LeBron is one of the people I actually unmute television commercials for. All of this leads up to this spectacular shot:


I've seen a lot of basketball in my life; I've been to a lot of games, and in following UConn basketball (both men's and women's, though mainly women's) I've seen some pretty outstanding shots - buzzer shots, shots that looked like they should never even get anywhere near the basket. But that one? Blows them all away. The only thing that would possibly make it better would be if he had made that shot actually during a game.

Gendered Sinning

Last week, Feministe had a post about a report by the Vatican saying that men and women sin in different ways, with the most prevalent sin for men being lust, followed by gluttony, sloth, angry, pride, envy and greed, and the most prevalent for women being pride - followed by envy, anger, lust, and then sloth. I rolled my eyes and moved on. Yes, it is horribly gendered, and it reinforces gender norms and beliefs about the differences among the sexes. But, as Cara wrote, "the answer should surprise none of us". I would have been floored had the Vatican actually offered a different explanation for the differences in what men and women confessed than the trite idea that men and women must just sin differently. But then I was actually knocked off of my feet.

Some background. NPR have little programs that focus on a particular topic combine several of the stories they have done on their various programs throughout the week that fall under the umbrella of that topic. I don't know how many there are; I generally listen to the Political Rewind, NPR: Music, and NPR: Religion. On one of the programs making up the NPR: Religion podcast (normally they're news shows like All Things Considered or Morning Edition or Weekend Edition), Jesuit priest Father James Martin first commented on what the survey actually measured, saying, "You read the survey, and you could also interpret it as those are the sins they confess more. Which may not mean that they're actually sinning in that way, but those are the sins they confess most often to confessors". That is an important distinction; I remember talking to some of my friends who actually went to confession after their confirmations and made up some plausible sins because they couldn't remember any of their real ones. Measuring what people confess could be just a measure of what they generally feel expected to confess and not what they actually feel like they've done.

Father Martin also brings up the sociological aspect of who sees what as sinful, remarking, "Women may be more encouraged when they're young not to be proud and be more self-effacing. They actually may be more attentive to the sin of pride than men would be. But that may not mean that they are any more proud than men are but that they may confess it more." That was what almost laid me flat, because it acknowledged societal gender roles as playing a part in how people interpret their actions and how what may be different is not the type of sinning but what men and women consider to be sinful. "That's very similar to my thinking. I wondered if what women would identify as the sin of pride men would identify as just, you know, a bit of swaggering self confidence," agreed host Scott Simon.

Something not really addressed in the conversation but that occurred to me was the philosophical question of sin. I wondered, while listening to the podcast, whether or not men and women may not truly sin differently simply by virtue of experiencing sin differently. Or, are women, by acknowledging their pride, actually sinning where men experiencing the exact same emotions or going through the exact same actions are not, simply because they don't perceive what they're doing as sinful? Not being religious, I can't really see sin as being something existing independently of those sinning. But at the same time, I would imagine for the religious it is. Otherwise, it would simply come down to perception - and if sin is just about perception then the person who inhales a carton of ice cream could not be gluttonous and the person who had that extra piece of bread could be. And if sin is simply about the sinner's perception of sin, then men and women would sin differently - and the question would then become why a particular action or emotional response would be a sin when attributed to women but not when attributed to men. But I don't really think that's how the Vatican and the 94 year old who documented these confessions are approaching the gendered sin question; I think they really just stop short of really getting what this report could actually be saying to them. 

A Post in Which I Review Dollhouse's "The Target"

I kind of thought that the review of "The Ghost", along with my haphazard posting about Whedon and his various themes in his works, would be the end of my need to write about individual Dollhouse episodes. Themes, sure; but I thought that what could be found within taking the episodes as individual entities would get a bit repetitious. And who knows, maybe it will. Maybe it already has. But (a) I was kind of impressed (read: very impressed) with "The Target", and I've been very not in a writing mood, along with generally just tired and apathetic lately. So, I figured I might as well write about something I'm actually interested in writing about; and for right now, that is Dollhouse.

I am slowly coming around to Eliza Dushku. I still don't think she's all that great, but I'm recognizing the potential truth in what mzbitca wrote, that "in the long run it may help Dushku that, even when she's playing other characters, she's always slightly similar". Those similar personalities through various people may even be enough to understand how one Active could be more requested than another, something Adelle DeWitt claimed Echo is.

Overall, I am impressed with Steven DeKnight's writing; he wrote one of my favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes (that being season 5's Blood Ties), and so he already had a bit of good grace built up but I was amazed at some of the skill "The Target" encompassed. There have always been stories - mostly stemming from Jane Espenson - that no script that reached the screen was without Joss Whedon's finger prints being all over it (she is quick to remark that the whole last half of BtVS' season four episode "Pangs" was almost completely reworked by Whedon), and I'm sure that's true. But the overall structure of the episode, with lines that reflected other lines, scenes that reflected other scenes, and lines and scenes that foreshadowed the action of the episode, was just cool. And I'm willing to give at least some of that to Steven DeKnight. When Richard Connell, the episode's baddie, remarked, "I thought everything was good with the background check", it wasn't played deviously enough to ring any alarms or even go noticed until my second watching. And yet we learn at the end that Richard Connell's entire background, including his name, was a fabrication; and so the line and its very innocuousness within the scene becomes, for me, a cool little treat. As was this:

TOPHER: What's the magic word?

BOYD: Please?

TOPHER: I was actually looking for 'abracadabra', but that'll do.

with a flashback revealing:

BOYD: ...Just an empty hat. Till you stuff a rabbit in it.

TOPHER: Abracadabra.

That's just the little stuff, though. The word play is great, but it is the thematic workings that are truly of interest. I loved the juxtaposition between Boyd and Echo, with Boyd asking during the handler imprinting "Do you trust me?" and Echo's programed response of "With my life" and Echo's Jenny asking Boyd, "Do you trust me?" and Boyd's voluntary, considered answer of "With my life". It demonstrated the entire episode was working toward, and that was Boyd's own progression of thought.

Boyd begins the current assignment in the woods, asking Topher about Echo's state, asking specifically, "What about her adrenaline?" and when Topher offers the evaluation that it is "within engagement parameters", questions him further by asking, "Are you sure? She's elevating toward redline". Now, aside from giving Topher the set up for an excellent next line ("I've been reading the squigglies long enough to 'cern the dif between excitement and 'Sweet mother, I'm gonna die'"), it also reinforces the notion that Boyd actually cares for and about Echo, whoever she may be imprinted with and whatever she may be imprinted to do. However, the episode in its entirety is meant to show how far Boyd has come; unlike Buffy and Giles, we are dropped into this odd relationship already in progress, so these flashbacks are probably the best way to show us Boyd's transition from seeing Echo as an object to be used by others and looked after in a professional manner to seeing Echo as a person. By the time we meet him, Boyd has come a long way from saying things like, "She's not a girl. She's not even a person". He's come a long way from the disengaged man who cared not about the girl who excitedly got out of the van, who reacted as if he were merely in the presence of a robot. It seems clear by the end, when he takes Echo's hand after she's been wiped, that Echo has become more to him than simply his assigned Active, even if she does not have a consistency in who she is. She is, by way of being human, of value. And Boyd seems to be coming along to that conclusion - or has already reached it. Also, I stand by my original assessment of the Boyd-Echo relationship. Echo doesn't have to develop a true and independent personality any time soon for me to remain engaged in the show; Boyd's interest in her as a person is enough for me right now. His emotional connection allows me to forge my own with the girl assumed to be a blank slate.

What I also found interesting was the man who called himself Richard Connell; we don't know who hired him or why he wanted to kill Echo. We don't know who falsified his records. Obviously, it was someone who knows something of the Dollhouse operation. I can't quite believe that it was Alpha, because there would be easier ways and there would be no real reason to send Ballard Caroline's photograph. That being said, I think there are some interesting things about Richard Connell and what he and his guy in the woods represent. One practical matter is that Richard Connell squelched the run of nice guys hiring Actives; some of the complaints last week that I heard were about that very fact. But perhaps even more interesting is the idea that a person should have to fight to survive, that a person alone isn't deserving of life, that the person has to 'prove' that right somehow. That sort of thinking seems to justify the whole of Dollhouse; if people had intrinsic worth and being a person alone freed one from the threat of violation, there would be no Dollhouse - and no Actives. Only when a society (even a secret organizational one) believes otherwise and commodifies humanity does this become possible. The psychopathic Connell is only a couple of steps removed from those like Adelle DeWitt; after all, Connell would have been erasing Jenny (and Echo) from existence by killing her; DeWitt erases Jenny in an almost more insidious fashion. And treating humanity as nothing more or less than a commodity is what allows people like the man who came after Boyd to do what they are paid to do; there can be a price at which it is morally okay to kill people only if humans are not invaluable in and of themselves. When the hired killer tells Boyd "Hey, it's business. Don't take it personal, dude", he is summing up the whole of Dollhouse's operation. It is a business, and the Actives are not to take what happens to them personally. And that works well, because the organization ensures they cannot.

I am also both enamored with and repulsed by the dual meanings of conversations that fly right over the Current-Echo-Occupying-Persona's head. Last week, there was "Yesterday you weren't a nurse or a clown in the circus." This week, there was, "You know how much trouble I'd be in if you went splat?" Jenny thinking it was merely a reference to her brothers made it disturbing and sad, because the audience had not-Connell's previous interaction with Adelle - complete with "Make sure you return her safe and sound. Otherwise, there will be additional costs" - to draw upon. That along with "Prove you're not just an echo" is part of why I'm trusting Joss Whedon knows what he's doing. Because those are lines highlighting and emphasizing Echo's lack of control and lack of autonomy and lack of consent. Even if the C-E-O-P (shorthand for Current-Echo-Occupying-Persona) is a fully autonomous being who has free thought and free will and who has just been created to be compatible with the person paying for her company, she is still at a distinct disadvantage because she doesn't have all of the information. She meets the men under false pretenses; she is programed with a personality amenable to things like whitewater rafting and tent sex. And even if we should examine whether or not the CEOP has full body autonomy even though she occupies someone else's body, any action taken by the CEOP is still a coerced action due to the very nature of her unusual creation.

That being said, there were a few aspects of "The Target" I wasn't completely cool with. Ellie in apartment 205 left a lot to be desired. Maybe she's going to be a good character, but at the moment she's sitting passively in her apartment waiting for Ballard to get home so she can offer him a bit of home-made food. And while I liked the indication that Echo is keeping more within her than anyone (aside from now Boyd) recognizes, that there is, in point of fact, someone in there, the shoulder-to-the-wheel movement there was just awkward. Some of the moments were a bit jumpy; but overall, I'm feeling like my optimism and belief in Whedon is still well placed.

Overall Grade: B+/A-

Life as an Atheist Bones Viewer

I'm an avid viewer of Bones. I really, really like it, even when it isn't good and even when it doesn't make sense. I didn't get into it when it first premiered because although I like David Boreanaz from his days on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I've never really felt the need to follow actors from project to project (the lone exception to this rule is Shia LaBeouf, for no actual quantifiable reason). I'm more of a writer girl; I follow my favorite writers and creators from show to show. I always say that I'll watch the shows that actors I've seen before and enjoyed are on, but I rarely end up following through on that promise. Hence, no Brothers & Sisters for me, even though it has Rob Lowe. No How I Met Your Mother, even though it has Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris. No Heroes, even though it has Milo Ventimiglia - though I have to admit that I did try on that last one. It just didn't take. I am the kind of viewer responsible for things like "The Seinfeld Curse". But Bones, I could get into. Emily Deschanel is so incredibly engaging, and David Boreanaz has developed some actual skill since "Welcome to the Hellmouth". And everything was going fairly okay between me and my viewing of Bones. Yes, I think the first season was the best; yes, I was upset by the betrayal of Zack Addy, and thought Zack's actions had very little basis in the character; yes, I saw a more slapstick sense going down. But overall, the show was still one on my "must watch" list, a list occupied this season only by Chuck, the now defunct Pushing Daises, and now Dollhouse. But I didn't watch this week, and I'm trying to work up the enthusiasm to watch via Hulu. Why? Well, because in "The Hero in the Hold", one of the things I love best about the series - that being the way the two main characters' different religious beliefs (one being Catholic and one having none) is placed on equal footing as equally valid and plausible - was shot to shit.

I'm well-accustomed to seeing atheists not being presented well in fiction. If there is an atheist on a crime drama, there's 10 to 1 odds that atheist is your man, responsible for the death or mayhem that has occurred. For example, Law & Order: Criminal Intent had an episode that I had hoped would show an actually ethical and intelligent atheist, but instead it turned out he killed the preacher's wife because she outed him as having mentally disabled son. So, not only was he responsible for death, he was also responsible for not being able to love or care for his kid because he thought the boy defective. Even House (whom I love dearly and whose reason for being an atheist mirrors my own), probably the best known atheist on television, isn't really the best in terms of ingratiating atheists with the community at large. And so, one of the joys of Bones was watching a character - in this case a woman - who had a firm moral code, who had friends, who was considered not only a good guy but one of the best of the good guys and who was also an atheist. I even loved her conversations with Booth regarding his Catholicism and her atheism. I loved her reading of certain scripture, like her interpretation of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac and being stopped by God's messenger when she said, "when it comes to your children, your love has to be absolute. The messenger represents goodness, what you know to be right. Ergo, you have to remain open to what you know is true". I liked that Brennan's atheism was absolute, and that she didn't look foolish or wrong for not believing. I liked that Booth's Catholicism was never put into question either, that he never looked foolish or wrong for believing.

But in "Hero in the Hold", the dynamic in the handling of religion changed. Sure, there had been other unsavory examples. "The Man in the Morgue" had an assertion that Brennan really had been under the power of some voodoo; "The Skull in the Desert" had Angela experiencing some kind of vision that led the team to a missing woman in the desert, and Booth and Angela gently mocked Brennan's belief that Angela subconsciously sifted through the logistics and processed "the most likely scenario". However, never before did I feel like the show was showing that Brennan was just out and out wrong in her atheism. Those other times, it was the characters believing in something more and disbelieving that the explanation could be of the mundane. In "Hero in the Hold", though, Brennan comes face to face with a spirit, and doesn't recognize him as such. In "Hero in the Hold", the spirit is actually able to help Booth escape a deadly situation. "Hero in the Hold" validated the belief in some form of afterlife and invalidated the belief that there was none. And what was almost worse than that was the fact that having the mystical and spiritual an actual part of the show made the show over all less. This was a show about science, even when the actual science was somewhat questionable. It was a show about logic, and how science and logic - along with the more slippery elements of human interaction and good old fashioned FBI work, could make cases and solve murders and mysteries. Add in some helpful spirits, and the actual spirit of the show takes a bit of a hiatus.

Take "Aliens in a Spaceship", where Hodgins and Brennan escape from the same serial killer that captures Booth in "Hero in the Hold". They don't have a ghost; they have their knowledge and a bit of luck. They escape because they are the premiere minds in their fields, and have working back at the lab a team that was heads and shoulders above the rest. They created electrical currents to send a short text message to their colleagues, they popped the spare tire, they made oxygen out of lithium scraped from batteries and soda ash, and they used the explosives contained in the air bags to blast their way to freedom - freedom they obtained partially because the people on the other end were able to put together what their text message and were able to narrow down their possible locations from it. Science, and faith in themselves, each other, and their friends pulled them through it. That episode was brilliant because it contained the best of what Bones could offer. It had both the science and the interpersonal relationships; it had both character growth and a meaty mystery. It was a classic. "Hero in the Hold" didn't, and it was the weaker for it. It would have probably been weaker no matter what, because "Aliens in the Spaceship" is one of the best episodes the series has to offer; but contrasting an episode that utilizes Brennan's intellect and skill with one that makes a mockery of one of the core tenets of the show, and that second episode is bound to be at the bottom of the pack. Plus, it had the added benefit of making me feel just a little bit alienated from the show as a whole. And so even though I'm going to watch Thursday's episode via Hulu and I'm going to try to not be sensitive over this gaffe and just throw it into the pile containing that whole Zack-Gormogon plot, at some point that pile is going to be larger than my enjoyment of the show. And that will be too bad.

February's Charity

When my maternal grandmother was 14, she contracted the polio virus. One day, she was winning hopscotch tournaments and being the one of the best jump ropers (specifically double dutch) in her area, and the next, she was bed-ridden. She was taken to the hospital like all of the other sufferers of polio, and because my mother's side of the family were and are mostly poor, rural folks, the March of Dimes stepped in and paid the bill. The March of Dimes also paid for my great-grandparents to travel to the hospital and see their daughter. Eventually, my grandmother got well enough to go home, go to work, get married to a man who had lost his left arm at birth, and have two children, but never well enough to walk again, or play hopscotch or double dutch. 

The March of Dimes has an odd story; founded by Franklin Roosevelt to find a cure for polio, it was headed by his legal advisor Basil O'Connor, who agreed to be its treasurer not because he had any pressing wish to cure polio but because he was so loyal to Roosevelt. It became the March of Dimes during the depression years by asking the general population to send in a dime to the charity; the thinking was that even during hard economic times, everyone could spare a dime (which was also probably the thinking behind the song, "Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime"). And the people did, partially because most could find a way to spare a dime and partially because the specter of polio loomed so large nearly everyone feared getting it and nearly everyone wanted to find a way to ensure not to. It was a rousing success, and it led to - along with Jonas Salk's vision and Basil O'Connor's impatience - a vaccine. From that point forward, March of Dimes shifted from being about curing polio to preventing premature birth, birth defects, and infant mortality.

Today is my grandmother's birthday; her favorite charity is the March of Dimes, for obvious reasons. And even though we bought her earrings and some cupcakes and we brought her balloons and flowers, I thought that her favorite charity and the one she has been giving to her entire life could be this month's charity for me as well, as my way of continuing to fulfill #5 on my New Year's Resolution list.