Dollhouse: When is a Person Human? |

What makes someone human? Is a doll only human when they are imprinted with a personality? Are they only human when they finally receive their original personality back at the end of their contract?

{Warning: This entire series on Dollhouse and Humanity includes references to plot points in the second season. If you don’t like to have secrets spoiled you may not want to read this series until you’ve seen all the episodes.}

In Joss Whedon’s TV show Dollhouse, humans are available for rent. Foundational to the show is the existence of fictional technology that enables someone’s brain to be fully mapped, the existing personality and memories wiped away, and an entirely new personality and set of memories and skills installed. Characters in the show who have been wiped are referred to as “Dolls,” and they exist in a childlike state in between “engagements.” Those who run the Dollhouse provide for the Dolls’ needs, program the Dolls to be whomever the client wishes them to be (spy, assassin, thief, spouse, lover, parent, etc), and collect the exorbitant fee for this highly-illegal service. After the engagement, the Dolls are again wiped (during engagements, Dolls are referred to as Actives). We are told that the Dolls have all volunteered to serve out a five-year contract, after which their original personalities and memories will be reinstalled and they will be very well paid.

Previously, we examined the role that brokenness plays in Whedon’s presentation of the Dollhouse and its occupants, as well as whether humanity comes down to just a matter of hardware and software. Today, we will address the question of the Dolls’ personhood.

Throughout the series, characters describe the Dolls as being less than fully human. However, we are also repeatedly told that the Active personalities that are created in the Dollhouse are not mere copies, but are in fact real people (until they are wiped away). The idea prevalent in the Dollhouse is that an Active is a person, while a Doll is not, thus creating a situation in which an individual is changed from a person into a nonperson (the initial wipe), and then into a person (when programmed to be an Active), and then back to a nonperson (when wiped again and returned to Doll state), with the process being repeated as often as desired.

This understanding of personhood is well-represented in traditional Western thought. Theologian Alan Torrance, in his chapter in the book From Cells to Souls—and Beyond, describes three elements that are found in Western notions of personhood: (1) the person is a self-contained unit, (2) personhood is a static state that one either “has” or does not “have,” and (3) personhood is defined in terms of reason. The emphasis on reason connects to Descartes’ famous description of himself as res cogitans (a “thinking thing”) and Boethius’ definition of a person as an “individual substance with a rational nature.” From this perspective, the elimination of Dolls’ rationality eliminates their personhood. Over the course of the series, the Doll code-named “Echo” develops the ability to retain every memory and personality with which she has been imprinted, with a core personality emerging as a kind of gestalt. It could be said, then, that Echo becomes a person as her capacity for rational decision-making grows and asserts itself over against her programming.

This traditional understanding of personhood however, has been challenged in many ways, rendering the status of Dolls more troublesome. Philosophers such as John Macmurray and Martin Buber, and theologian John Zizioulas, have countered with a definition of personhood as relationally constituted. As Torrance puts it: “our being is such that we transcend our physical boundedness in acts of freedom, of presence for another, and of interpersonal communion” (p. 203). Echo’s developing self fits all three criteria as she makes choices and resists her Dollhouse masters, as she begins taking care of other Dolls, and as she begins to love the character Paul Ballard. Interestingly, the Doll code-named “Victor” also fulfills all three criteria for personhood, as he develops (while in Doll state) a relationship with another Doll (“Sierra”), displaying concern for her well-being, engaging in shared activities, and eventually falling deeply in love with her. Victor’s love for Sierra is powerful enough to override his programming, enabling him to make a free choice and reject a client who had programmed him to be in love with her. Sierra, in turn, demonstrates two of the three in her love for Victor (there is no evidence that she is able to choose to go against programming).

Psychologist Warren Brown, writing in Whatever Happened to the Soul, provides an alternate list of criteria for personhood, in terms of the cognitive capacities necessary to function as a person: language, theory of mind (the ability to think about what someone else might be thinking or feeling), episodic memory, choice, the ability to think about the future, and complex emotional functioning. Of these six criteria, it could be argued that Dolls lack four (Dolls possess language, and are shown commenting on other people’s emotional and mental states.).

The fact that Dolls appear to possess some elements of personhood, but not all, makes it difficult to argue that they are either clearly persons or clearly nonpersons. This places Dolls in an ethical gray area alongside fetuses and patients who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or are in a persistent vegetative state. Biologist D. Gareth Jones writes (in From Cells to Souls), “in current bioethical debate, two of the questions that predominate are ‘When do we become persons?’ and ‘When do we cease to be persons?’” (p. 13). Determining the precise nature of our moral responsibility toward these individuals (terms used include “semipersons,” “diminished personhood,” and “ambivalent personhood”) is tremendously difficult.

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(This post was co-written by Amanda Mac and Dr. Charles Hackney)