Dollhouse Renewed? Why not Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles?

Duration: 4 minutes and 46 seconds

Country: United States

Language: English

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Genre: Video Blog

Director: Anita Sarkeesian

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Posted by: feministfrequency on Jul 24, 2009

Fox Networks decided to renew Dollhouse for another 13 episodes but canceled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I’m less then thrilled about this decision. www.feministfrequency.com

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I just found out that Dollhouse is being
renewed by Fox for another season.
It’s a Joss Whedon TV show so I wanted to
give it a chance when it first started.
Dollhouse is a show about a bunch of people
who get there brains wiped and then new
personalities and experiences and
memories get put into their heads and they
can exist as that person for X amount of time
and they get hired out by
clients to perform various tasks.
Most of the “engagements” are men
trying to fulfill a fantasy.
Dollhouse is really a glorified brothel.
Dollhouse is really misogynistic
I don’t know what other word to describe it
as. There is a big issue that hasn't
really been raised about whether this is rape
or not. It’s been talked about online a little bit
but the show hasn’t dealt with this issue at all.
So they sign these contracts saying
that they’ll be in Dollhouse for X amount of
years and their conscious mind
isn’t around so they can’t consent to every
single engagement that they go on.
Now if you can’t consent then
that would be rape right?
In Dollhouse we as the viewer are supposed
to condemn the dollhouse, we’re not
supposed to like it, we’re supposed to think
it’s morally and ethically wrong
to do these things to these people yet we
identify with all of the characters
in the dollhouse.
So Boyd the handler, you think he’s pretty
cool because he seems to have issues with
what’s going on, yet
he still continues to work there.
The woman who runs the place
towards the end of the season we start to
get more of an emotional grasp on her
and her character becomes a little more
more entrenched in who she is and not,
you know, not hating her.
Tofur the crazy scientist,
you totally think he’s funny and witty and
smart and goofy
you don’t really take him too seriously.
If we’re not supposed to like dollhouse
which I think we’re not supposed to
then why are we sympathetic with all of the
characters inside of the dollhouse?
Joss Whedon on Whedonesque.com
was quoted as saying that part of the pitch
to renew for a second season was that they
were going to go in the direction of
the season finale.
I think we have enough crazy, serial killing,
murdering men on television that we don’t
need to add to the repertoire with Dollhouse.
The season finale was just blah
cover my ears
cover my eyes
I didn’t want to watch a single other episode
of Dollhouse after that.
It was just so grotesquely violent
it was unnecessary
it’s this crazy maniacal guy who was
damaged by the dollhouse
(which were sympathetic to right?)
doing all these crazy things
so now he becomes the enemy and the
dollhouse is kind of in that grey
middle zone area.
This news is troubling in that I really
didn’t want Terminator: the Sarah Connor
Chronicles to get cancelled.
I thought it was a really good show.
I felt like the story line and the characters
were really complex.
They made complicated relationships
between each other and the characters
evolved in interesting ways that I thought
could grow over another couple of seasons.
Also the show is based on the Terminator
movies which most of us have
probably seen that are kind of big macho
fests about you know
gore and violence and
blowing things up and robots
the whole sci fi chase scene
GRAAA thing
But Sarah Connor, although it had those
elements, was actually really smart.
It fused together the action part of the sci fi
genre but it also brought in character
development was really well done.
The show is also mostly about a woman
she’s an independent, tough, single mom
that’s trying to protect her son.
The other main character on the show
is a representation of a teenage woman
who although she’s a robot
you still see as young female.
She’s empowered, she’s smart
she’s strong
these are all good things to have on
television I think.
I think looking really critically at why a show
like Dollhouse is getting renewed
and the Sarah Connor Chronicles are not
The Sarah Connor Chronicles really took its
time and sometimes it was a little slow
moving because they really did a lot of
character development
and really built up a story line
so you really became attached to what
was going on and really invested.
Where Dollhouse you met a new
character every week.
It wasn’t really super complicated you didn’t
have a lot of character development
There were a few things here and there
where the main character Echo
started to remember her old past
but even then it wasn’t that interesting
and it was kind of the same old same old.
There was a really interesting article
in the Washington Post that talked
about how Dollhouse was produced
by Fox and aired on the Network of Fox
so they have more invested in that
financially and can make more profits.
Where Sarah Connor was produced by
Warner Brothers aired on Fox
there’s not as much financial investment.
I know that Joss Whedon is capable of
writing really good quality television
that’s critical and analytical
and has social commentary while still
being entertaining and fun.
So I don’t know why he can’t do that again.

Dollhouse Renewed? Why not Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles?

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