Dollhouse: Everyone is Broken

“Every person I know is pretty poorly constructed.” Boyd Langton, Season 2, episode 1 “Vows”.

The Dollhouse is meant to be a paradise.  For the right price, a person can have all their fantasies fulfilled.  The dolls are not slaves, they are volunteers who will be compensated, and they live in a peaceful spa-like setting.  Technology can give us whatever we want.  And with the flick of a switch, bad things can be permanently erased.  This is the future.  This is perfection.

And yet, if anything, this veneer of perfection accentuates rather than covers up the fact that the dolls are broken, the staff are broken, and the clients are broken.  Everyone is utterly and completely broken.

The Dolls are Broken:

Bicks: “What do you think DeWitt will do? Do you think she’ll come down hard? It was probably just a mistake. You know, these dolls, they’re smiling all day. Sierra’s crying in bed. Why always in bed? Maybe she’s broken. You figure she’s broken?”

Boyd Langton: “They’re all broken.” Season 1, episode 6 “Man on the Street”

While it is true that most of the dolls are volunteers, trading five years of their lives in service to the Dollhouse, not all of them are.  Some of them come from such horrible life circumstances that they have no other options.  But they are promised that they will be rehabilitated.  At the end of their contract, whatever their previous problems were will be gone.  Except, it doesn’t actually work out like that.  Even after having their personalities and memories wiped, these dolls demonstrate brokenness.

Sierra:

Sierra was recruited from a mental health institution, supposedly suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia.  It turns out that a doctor gave her drugs that mimicked PS after Sierra spurned his romantic advances.  Now a doll, the doctor buys her for repeated engagements, having her imprinted with desire and love for him.  The wipes should work.  She should have no memory of her encounters with him.  And yet, each time Sierra comes back from an engagement with him, she paints black and disturbing pictures.

Victor:

Victor was an army veteran suffering from PTSD.  At the end of his five year contract, he is released.  The programmer has managed to erase his PTSD, and yet, only one day back in the real world and he is unable to cope.  He doesn’t fit.  The world around him doesn’t make any sense.  So what does he do?  Joins a psychotic group of soldiers who are mentally connected through the same technology that made him a doll.

November:

Suffering from the loss of her daughter, November willingly chooses to become a doll in exchange for the promise that the Dollhouse will take away her grief.  At the end of her contract, November goes back to her life, but can’t feel anything for her daughter.  There is no grief, no sadness, nothing.  She is completely numb to the memories of her daughter.

Alpha and Echo:

Alpha and Echo are two very special dolls.  Both are evolving.  Echo is able to remember and retain elements of her personality imprints even after being wiped.  Alpha, who was an inmate in prison with serial killer potential, never actually loses his serial killer tendencies and goes on a killing spree within the dollhouse.  Both Echo and Alpha end up being imprinted with several dozen imprints at the same time, and learn to navigate between them depending on the situation.

The Staff are Broken:

“We’re pimps and killers, but in a philanthropic way.” Boyd Langton, Season 1, episode 9 “A Spy in the House of Love”

While some of the staff of the Dollhouse may have originally signed on to work because they were scientists, fascinated with the potential of the human brain, it becomes apparent that they are not the rational, neutral scientists they claim to be.  In many ways, the staff are more broken than the dolls.

Adelle DeWitt:

Originally a researcher at Rossum, the corporation behind the Dollhouse franchise, Adelle is promoted to manager of the LA Dollhouse.  She has to put morals aside and sends out dolls to cater to the sick whims of the wealthiest clients.  This beautiful, powerful and smart woman has no life outside the Dollhouse.  She has to resort to adopting a pseudonym (Miss. Lonely-hearts) and hiring a doll to find companionship.  She falls in love with this doll (Victor) and when he is released from his contract, Adelle finds solace in a bottomless bottle of bourbon.

Hearn:

A handler, entrusted to protect a doll while on engagements, Hearn takes advantage of his position of power, and begins taking sexual advantage of Sierra while she is in her doll state.  When caught, his rationale for his crime is that what he did is no different from what the Dollhouse does imprinting the dolls and sending them out to clients.

The Clients are Broken:

They may have inestimable wealth, but the fact that the clients have to pay to find love, romance, and adventure, demonstrates that money does not solve all problems.  One of the clients, Joel Mynor, pays to have a doll imprinted with the memories of his dead wife every year on the anniversary of her death.  One client loses his entire fortune because he spent it all paying for dolls.  One client so desperately wants to get back at his girlfriend that he brings a doll, who is programmed to love him, to his ex-girlfriend’s wedding, to show her just what she is missing.  The fantasies that these clients pay for are fleeting, and eventually, the doll is returned to the Dollhouse, wiped and reassigned to another engagement.

Whedon, Humanism and The Church:

Humanists tend to see the inherent goodness in people.  Whedon is a realistic (cynical?) humanist.  He sees the brokenness, the evil, the selfishness, and has no problem exploring the darker sides of humanity.  (See also Serenity where he explores a sinless humanity on Miranda).  In accepting the 2009 Cultural Humanist Award, Whedon said this:

The enemy of humanism is not faith. The enemy of humanism is hate, is fear, is ignorance, is the darker part of man that is in every humanist, every person in the world. That is what we have to fight.

The church, on the other hand, should understand brokenness and selfishness and sin.  But more often than not, it feels like the church is the Dollhouse, catering in fantasy.  We put on our shiny happy faces every Sunday, worship and fellowship together and pretend that all the crap in our life doesn’t exist.  We assume the best in people.  “So-and-so could never do that [insert bad thing here], because they are a Christian!” For all our buzz-words about “authenticity” and “missional” living we still don’t get it.  It is easier to pretend that we’re okay, especially since we have “Jesus in our hearts” than to admit that we are actually self-destructing.  We are like the dolls who, despite having been programmed and wiped, still remember, and still experience echoes of their previous brokenness.  Our mega-churches look an awful lot like the spa-like hotel residence of the dolls, aesthetically pleasing and seemingly perfect, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is full of broken people.

Amanda Mac

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