Dollhouse

[Woodsman]

I downloaded the first three episodes of the brand new Joss Whedon show, "Dollhouse" and I felt compelled to comment on it.

This show immediately caught my interest from its description. --Not only is it a Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Firefly") creation, but this time, it steps beyond the bounds of fluff entertainment and into the touchy area of seeding the idea of mind control. He did this before with Firefly, (which also included the specters of oppressive government and psychopathy, but this time rather than bury those concepts under a high adventure story in space, "Dollhouse" makes mind control its primary focus.

This is airing on Fox, (of all networks), which if previous patterns hold, means that the show will have a rough ride with a high probability of its being canceled within 12 episodes.

Already there has been a bit of a battle, though it seems to have taken place in Joss's head in the form of a tug-o-war of influences. --Apparently, he had either partially or fully shot the first episode but then delayed its release so that he could perform a massive (and highly detrimental, imo) re-working of things. The reworked version was quite mediocre with a lot of the real meaty material pulled from it. --I know this because I dug around and managed to find a copy of the original script. Here's an excerpt on mind-control which was yanked from the show. . .

Boyd:
"Topher, I had three days in the van outside that hospital and I'm in no mood."

Topher:
"Get a mood! That's your girl, center stage in this riveting drama. Look."

[Boyd follows Topher's eye-line out across the main area.]

Boyd [unimpressed]:
"They're eating lunch. Thank God you called."

Topher:
"They're eating lunch together, man-friend."

Boyd:
"Still not a headline."

Topher:
"Third time this week. Same group. Even the same table."

[Now Boyd is interested -- but not as happy as Topher.]

Boyd:
"Statistical probability that it's random?"

Topher:
"Don't even look down that path. They're grouping."

Boyd:
"Are you saying they remember each other?"

Topher: [shakes his head]
"The wipes are clean. This goes deeper than memory, into instinctual survival patterns. Flocking. Whole mess of sparrows turning on a dime. Salmon truckin' on upstream. This isn't a book-club, man-friend, it's the herd."

Boyd:
"They're not Bison, Topher."

Topher:
"They're a little bit bison."

Boyd: [quietly]
"Well they didn't used to be."


[. . .]
~~~~~~snip~~~~~~
[. . .]


Topher:
"They fall in love -- real love -- with unreserved passion."

Boyd:
"There's nothing real about it. They're programmed."

Topher:
"That tie keep you warm?"

Boyd:
"What? No."

Topher
"No, it's what grown-up men do in our culture. They put a piece of cloth around their necks so they can assert their status and recognize each other as non-threatening kindred."

Boyd:
"What is this, the sixties? Are we gonna burn our draft cards?"

Topher:
"You wear the tie because it never occurred to you not to. You eat eggs every morning but never at night. You feel excitement and companionship when rich men you've never met put a ball through a net or over a goal line, you feel guilty and a little suspicious every time you see a Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell, you look down for at least half a second if a woman leans forward and your stomach rumbles every time you drive by a big golden arch even if you weren't hungry before. Everybody's programmed, Boyd."

Boyd:
"Damn. You've really spent some time on your self-justification."

Anyway, I think that either Joss has been reading around here for inspiration, (his study on psychopathic characters in "Firefly" was quite lucid), or that he and his work may be a concrete example of the Psychic Projector phenomenon. --Seeding the public with ideas about internal programming and how it works.

On another note. . ,

I find that I am very torn at the moment. --I had planned to do a big exploration of the various bits of media currently playing for dominance on the public conscious, but after posting a lot of old and new research regarding the matter of televisions and how they work on a fundamental level as a vector for mind control, I find myself wondering if this is really the best course of action.

No conclusion on this yet. I'm still thinking it through. . .

 

[Maat]

I watched all several month ago and find it interesting. It is not so well known but deserves a try given the topics involved. There are food for thoughts in symbolistic or more plain ways in it, the thing that makes a good sci-fi movie or TV show. For example, a quote of wiki :

"Epitaph One", the final episode of season one, which was not aired as part of the show's original run on US television, depicts a post-apocalyptic future where the mind-wiping technology of the Dollhouse has developed to the extent that vast numbers of people can be remotely wiped and have new personalities implanted, which has brought about the end of civilization. Many of the series' main characters' futures are shown.E-13 As the second season begins, the show's focus shifts to depict the dangers of abusing the mind-wiping technology. Each character in the L.A. Dollhouse is forced to confront their own moral complicity in an increasingly downward spiral from moral grey areas to the realization that what the Dollhouse is doing is ultimately immoral and extremely dangerous. The Dollhouse's corporate sponsor is a medical research entity known as the Rossum Corporation, whose ultimate goal is revealed to be gaining control over national governments and even innocent people with no association with the Dollhouse. Through these abilities, the leaders of Rossum can rule the world and also be immortal, jumping from body to body at will. Attempting to stop the further spread of the mind-wiping technology, the L.A. Dollhouse vows to take down Rossum and its mysterious founder, whom only Echo's original personality, Caroline, has met.E-25 They also learn that there is no person named "Rossum"—the company founder took the name from the play "R.U.R.", which is short for Rossum's Universal Robots". This 1921 science fiction play by Karel Čapek is the origin of the word "robot".

The final episode of the series is set in the year 2020, and takes place shortly after the events that took place in "Epitaph One". Despite its best efforts, the L.A. Dollhouse has been unsuccessful in stopping the mind-wiping technology from spreading out of control. Rossum executives use multiple bodies to live in decadence while the peoples of the world are enslaved. A now mentally unstable Topher, architect of much of the technology, devises a way of restoring everyone's original personalities and eliminating Rossum's power, but at great sacrifice to himself and others. The series concludes with the world's personalities restored, while the Earth still lies in ruins, and those with Active architecture sheltering inside the Dollhouse for one year in order to keep the memories they have acquired since their original personalities were restored some years ago, rather than being wiped and defaulting back to their memories from before the Dollhouse got hold of them