Why I'm okay that Dollhouse is dead

This is a somewhat controversial viewpoint for a self confessed Whedonite, I know, but I'm not sorry about the cancellation of Dollhouse. If you don't mind spoilers for season one, I shall explain.

Firstly, I understand that it was meant to be uncomfortable viewing. I get that the show was about abuse, and prostitution, and slavery, and many other uncomfortable things. I like that they were exploring themes about attitudes to women's bodies, and that they made episodes that dealt with rape, and with loss, and with the struggle for independance from a force that controls your very mind. It was interesting. It was exciting.

It was seriously misogynistic. If you're going to make a show that is at it's heart about a group of women who are stripped of their free will and turned into sex toys, you are treading a fine line between showing this for what it is- a company trading in sex fantasies, but an ugly truth under the surface, that these women are enslaved- and revelling in the fantasy. I felt that Dollhouse fell wide of the mark, and as a result we spent more time being invited to look at Eliza Dushku's body parts than to consider the problems with the concept. Try watching a few eps and counting the number of upskirt shots, or times when her character needs to change on screen, or when the camera pulls back to show us that yes, that revealing outfit does indeed show off her naked bum cheeks. There is a difference between the character who is intentionally sexy in her sex-toy mode, and the camera giving us gratuitous shots of her arse. One of them is plot. The other is exploitation. Watching this show, I felt that the Eliza herself was the one who had been turned into a porn-doll for the viewer's enjoyment, and I felt myself feeling a little bit sick for her.



Joss's superwomen have always been sexy. The short skirts of Buffy and the kicking-ass-in-a-pretty-dress River and all the women in between. But they were sexy, they weren't being actively perved over by the camera. It didn't feel this gratuitous. If anything, it is more important for the camera to seem an impartial observer in a world where the main character is a personality-less drone for a large part of the time, and one where the other characters mostly act on the assumption that it is fine and normal to brainwash and rape young women. If the camera seems to be colluding... well, it sort of undermines any attempt to counter the "rape and slavery okay" world view.

I really wanted to like it. Especially after the amazing Epitaph One, and a good few eps of Season 2. But I can't get over this queasy feeling that the show has already contradicted it's message too strongly in the first Season to ever feel like a feminist endeavour. It's not empowering. It's inviting us to be turned-on by women who have had all their power removed. It's a fetish about strong women made weak and abused, not weak women made strong, and I'm over it.

A splishy splashy holiday...

Hello blog, it's been a while. A while in which I mostly had a life when I wasn't watching Star Trek films and working.

I have crawled back onto the internet though, and mostly because the new seasons of EVERYTHING are starting again. Supernatural has embarked on it's fifth (and final?) season which promises to be quite theological again, with the trademark gore, bromance, and dorky references (season two sees Dean make a flippant comment about a pit-stop at Mount Doom, for instance. Where does he find the time between saving the world from demons to see all these fantasy films?) which make it the best genre show on TV at present.

Sci-fi is busting out all over the local multiplex too, with the beautifully old-school Moon (reminded me of Sunshine only with more Sam Rockwell) being followed by District 9. The latter turned out to be extremely... satisfying. A thinky opener followed by some The Fly style horror and an action movie ending that left me thinking, for some reason, of Men in Black but with less slapstick. Prawn porn which I totally loved from start to finish. And this week I hope to see Surrogates with Bruce Willis (who hasn't left the house since he can't remember when, but seems to retain his lightening quick action-hero reflexes all the same, which is lucky).

I am at home at the moment, squinting at my own skin to see if I can find evidence of a tan. I just got back from a trip to Croatia, where I spent a lot of time asleep on a beach, and jumping out of my skin when fish bumped into my legs in the sea... I'm a bit of a pussy when it comes to swimming.



Absolute highlight? Going white-water rafting with six enormous Slovenian firemen, who didn't speak a word of English. This was in Omis, (see photo) which used to be a pirate fortress in the gorge made by the Cetina River. My lovely friend Gemma, which whom I was on holiday, was all for doing some rafting down the gorge, and since this was supposed to be the best way to see it, I was rather up for it too. So we went to see a lady offering trips, who said that if we could go right that second, and fill her boat, we could go half price. Uh, provided we didn't tell anyone she was giving us the deal. Dodgy? You bet, but we went anyway.

I was wearing a skirt, which I figured was an atrocious idea, so I went next door to this little touristy shop to see if I could pick up some shorts. The girl there didn't speak any English, but she gave me to understand that she had only one pair in the whole shop, which were some white cotton kids shorts. Desperate not to have to do water sports in my underwear, I took them. They turned out to fit (the perks of being titchy) but were so short that Kylie would have been too embarrassed to wear them in public. My arse was hanging out, but it was all I had, so I went rafting in my hotpants.

The Slovenians were lovely, in a rugby-player way, with our Croatian guide acting as occasional interpreter (sometimes, when they were laughing in a rather robust way and looking at us, he feigned an inability to find the correct words in English and had the decency to look rather embarrassed. Bless). It came as no surprise to Gemma and I to discover they were firemen. We seem to stumble upon firemen in every conceivable situation, which is quite a handy skill to have.

Rafting itself was brilliant. I managed to only inhale river water once, which was pretty good going, and completely avoided falling out of the boat. In fact, I was very impressed with this fact, as the guide was sweet but somewhat patronising. There was a lot of "don't worry girls, I'll put you near me so I can catch you" bullshit, which was well intentioned but quite amusing, seeing as I have never worried about my balance or grip in these situations (years of horse riding and some kayak and sailing experience mean I'm not afraid of failing either) and Gemma used to navigate rapids on a kayak during her days as an outdoor ed instructor. We kept this to ourselves though, and just gave each other amused looks across the raft.

We were also told that it was great for us to go with these firemen, as we wouldn't have to do much paddling. It turned out the guys couldn't paddle for shit and the guide had to keep telling them to watch us, and do it like we were doing it. Oh dear.

Anyway, during one particularly exciting set of rapids the boat tipped and started to flip. I managed to slide into the bottom where I would be safe, as did Gemma, who had to throw herself upwards to make it, whilst the Slovenian firemen hit the water and floated downstream. Cue much hilarity from our guide, who had us help him steer the raft to catch them before they hit the next lot of rapids, and some jokes about how the pretty little girls were considerably better at this than the bit strapping men.

During one set of rapids we missteered round a rock and I was slammed bodily against a tree. Which HURT, and caused me to squeal in surprise and pain, for which I was roundly mocked. I carried on paddling though!

There was a wonderful calm section through a forest, where I felt like I was in that bit in The Fellowship where they paddle down river from Lothlorien. Gemma informed me I was a massive geek, but I knew this already. Another slow slide through a canyon-like section of the gorge with sheer rock walls broken by the occasional waterfall was particularly impressive.

At the end of the trip, the Slovenian firemen drove us back to town, squished in the back of their van, making cracks about the improvements we'd all made in European relations thanks to being impressively composed English chicks who out-paddled them.

This week I also devoured Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box as one of my holiday reads. It's amazing, a horror novel that is subtly scary and actually deserves to be called a page turner. I became an anti-social nightmare whilst reading this book. Also, I'm the kind of person who digs all the nerdy rock music references.

Supernatural: The Monster At The End Of This Book

It's been a little while, hasn't it blog? Well, I've been busy, and I'm still waiting on the extra RAM I ordered to make my beautiful Dell run at a halfway decent speed (1gb with Vista, are they joking?).

In this time, though, I have been watching an awful lot of good TV. Today I shall mostly be spoiling for Supernatural, up to and including episode 18 of season 4. Consider that fair warning.

Supernatural is by far the best genre TV show currently in production. It may well be the best TV show on air full stop. I just can't fault it. Okay that's not entirely true, I can fault on it's epic white male bias (women and characters of colour are mainly evil or they die. Fail, SPN, epic fail) but for storytelling this show is top. And each series just keeps getting better!

Season four has been spectacular so far. From the opening revelation that angels exist in the SPNverse, to the latest episode in which we discover the existence of prophets that receive the word of God, the show keeps coming up with exciting new moments where it could potentially jump the shark. But it doesn't. The writers make it work! And they do it by never forgetting that essentially their show is about two brothers with enormously depressing and fucked-up lives.

As funny as the "our lives are books, and there are Supernatural fans, and they slash us" opening was, I was a teensy bit scared that they weren't going to make it work in the context of the show. How was this going to be explained in a cheese-free way? In the end, I absolutely LOVED the prophets angle. The show considered how difficult it would be to live your life with too much knowledge about your destiny, and finally went to a really dark place with Chuck deciding to kill himself rather than be a helpless observer of the Winchesters' (apparently not so cheery) fate, only to be told by the increasingly creepy Zachariah that he had no choice.

Despite this doom and gloom, Supernatural always brings the comedy and this episode had more than most. I have to say, I loved the "I'm the Prophet Chuck!" line, and "M Night level of douchiness" as well as the Winchesters discovering the existence of slash fiction about themselves.

In fact the postmodern nod to fandom was quite touching really. Kripke keeps an eye on his fans, obviously, and validates them with a lovable piss-taking on screen. Compare this to the hatred of fanfiction you get from the likes of Anne Rice. Yeah, Kripke loves us. Also, commenting on the terrible writing of episodes like Bugs? Genius. And true. We've come a long way since those days, thankfully!

Castiel had an interesting role in the episode too, developing his relationship with Dean and seemingly showing more disobedience than he ever has before.

Some minor plot niggles. If Lilith wants to stop bringing about the apocalypse because she knows she won't survive it, why would she decide to make a deal with the Winchesters? Surely that's not much of a deal if it's something she actually WANTS to do anyway? So now she got turned down, does she intend to sacrifice herself to free Lucifer to spite the boys? Makes no sense.

I'm loving this season so much! I can't wait to see what the horrific prophecy Chuck had will be. I heart the Winchesters, and I heart watching them suffer, in a really sadistic way. I agree with the publisher lady, it's always best when they're crying.

I am the queen of technology!

I have a new, shiny, cherry red Dell inspiron! I love it, it's beautiful. It only set me back £350 which is pretty sweet, although I am skint now so woops.

I am also getting a Nokia brand fake Crackberry as my phone upgrade! It was this or the Nokia fake iPhone, but touch screens are for wankers.

Now I just need a digital SLR to cream over and I'll be sorted for shiny, expensive toys that always need recharging.

Getting in fights with dickheads.

Some guy started on me in a club tonight, and it really pissed me off.

This dude was dancing enthusiastically behind me and kept jamming with his elbows and slamming in to my back, clearly unaware/too drunk to notice/uncaring of the fact that this was a) painful for a slight woman b) annoying and c) unnecessary on a not too crowded dance floor provided he tone down the vicious gyrations. After one particularly violent body slam, I elbowed him off me. He took great offence to this and took hold of my arm to say, in a tone dripping with sarcasm: "Sorry if I got in your way."

Well, there you're implying I needed said space, when in fact I was already IN said space, and you just shoved me. Hard. So I replied: "Well, you kept jumping on me so I just figured I'd let you know I was here." I prepared to leave it at that. Oh no.

"Whatever," replies Agressive Dancing Man. "I didn't jump on you, and..." At this point I am no longer listening, because Agressive Dancing Man is RIGHT IN MY FACE, spitting his little tirade at me. Uh, not okay. I pushed him away from me to a decent distance, and getting angry myself I say "Fuck off you fucking dickhead." (I'm lovely, really.) "Oh! And again!" he yells, angry that I've pushed him away for a second time. I've had enough and turn away.

Then he utters the line that really fucked me off.

"You're not that hot."

WHAT?! How is that even minutely fucking relevant? How does my level of physical attractiveness come in to this argument about who shoved who first? Do I have less right to this space I am occupying on the dancefloor because you do not deem me to be attractive? Am I demanding space because I think I'm pretty? Am I here dancing because I think I'm pretty? Do you have the right to ignore the fact that I'm here, and then when I bring myself to your attention, to act aggressively towards me because you do not think I'm pretty? Please explain to me WHY IT MATTERS WHAT YOU THINK.

I replied, quite truthfully: "Well, neither are you." As in, why go there?

"Uh," he gets all disdainful. "I'm GAY."

At this I am completely stumped. You're gay. Uh, fine? Does my opinion on your attractiveness not count because YOU are gay? But YOUR opinion of MY attractiveness, a gay man judging a woman, DOES count. The implication is that this gay man clearly KNOWS where as my opinion is worth nothing.

And this frustrated and irritated me. The accepted stereotype of the fashion and beauty aware homosexual who is insightful and untouchable when it comes to judging the appearance of women is both incorrect, stupid and unhelpful. Perpetuated by the likes of the sickening Gok Wan, who passes judgement on women he supposedly feels a kinship with because he used to be fat, the myth that gay men are accurate and fair judges of female beauty has to end. Not only does this turn all gay men into camp charicatures along the Queer Eye line, which is simply not true, but by condoning this believe we breed a half-hidden misogyny which I have glimpsed in many gay men of my acquaintance. Whether it manifest as the seemingly harmless "Oh, I'll only hang out with women if they can be pretty accessories" or the downright insulting "I am an unquestionable judge of female beauty- do as I say". Either way, the most common attitude amongst gay men towards women appears to be that of exclusion and disdain.

I don't mean to generalise, and this cannot apply to all male homosexuals, but very few straight men have ever used "well, you're ugly" as a reason for being aggressive towards me, and the "I'm gay, so your opinions are worthless because you are a woman and you are not relevant to my world" argument is the worst and most sexist, bigoted thing anyone has ever said to me.

I am a woman, yes. And sadly for you, we make up half the world's population. So I AM relevant to your world, because I demand space in it. If you don't like it, you can have my fist in your face.

My sporting beard

I decided that I need to do some fucking exercise, because sitting around in my pants drinking cans of Red Stripe and eating fried chicken whilst laughing about the good genes that mean I hardly ever put on weight was probably going to lead to an extremely ironic heart attack at the age of thirty five.

I picked running, because it's cheap, doesn't involve sweating in a basement with a bunch of other women, and also involves fresh air. And I like the idea of running, thanks to some very romantic Nike ads. To get me started I was going to need some basic equipment, since running in converse and skinny jeans probably wasn't going to be a good idea. I haven't bought trainers since I was thirteen and used to buy four quid pairs from ShoeFayre for PE class, so I asked my friend Gemma to help me.

This wasn't the only reason I asked Gemma to help me. Sports shops are mysterious and foreign to me. The walls are always hung with painful looking instruments of torture, the staff are always watching you expectantly and saying things like "did you want sweat slick technology?" and the customers are usually fully paid up members of the chav community, buying "fashion trainers", which I'm sure is a contradiction in terms. It's terrifying.

Even a simple pair of trainers, once you're past the fashion section, isn't as easy at it sounds. There were running, cross, and trail labelled trainers which all looked the fucking same. The ones I eventually bought had "shock absorb technology" which apparently was a good thing. They make my feet look like I've duct taped pillows to them, which is also exactly how they feel.

Gemma then also suggested that a sports bra might be a good idea, even for tits as titchy as mine. I decided she was right, mostly because my right boob tends to hurt in the area of my scar if I run up stairs too fast or something. I eventually found one that didn't smoosh my girls up towards my shoulders, or mould them into weird points, and myriad other bizarre options that were clearly designed by someone who had never actually seen a breast, and had only heard about them from vague description.

As the proud owner of a lot of unused sportwear, I'm hoping the shame of buying this stuff will spur me on to use it, to at least justify the amount of time today I spent being patronised by people wearing airtex polo shirts with absolutely no irony whatsoever.

Culinary dilemma

I have an apple and a personal-sized M&S chocolate fudge cake sitting next to each other on my desk like treat scales, or twin covers of crappy teen novels about vampires. I daren’t eat one and upset the balance. I don’t have time to eat both. What on earth do I do?

Ah, someone gave me some chocolate, and upset the delicate ecosystem of my desk, so I ate that instead. Sorted.

The good, the bad, and the gory...

Struggling to find a film you can watch with a hangover in between all the Nazis, biopics and faux-documentaries? Wondering what to see at the cinema now that awards season is in full swing? Let me help with a quick run down of the no-brains-required options of the week... (minor spoilers follow)

Covering the comedy angle with a neat little film that manages to be both predictable and entertaining is Role Models, doing the better-late-than-never coming-of-age story with a wonderfully deadpan Paul Rudd (Knocked Up) and a nicely reigned in Seann William Scott (American Pie, Road Trip). Both leads are on form, and the pace cracks along nicely leaving no time for fidgeting around wondering where the next joke is coming from. It's really the kids in this film that make it so unexpectedly brilliant, though. Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad) is both lovable and ridiculous as a friendless role-playing nerd and Bobb'e J. Thompson had me in hysterics as a foul-mouthed ten year old. A pretty obvious plot (kids are impossible to relate to, but in the end they bond with their mentors and teach them a little something about life blah blah schmaltzy blah) is done with the minimum of puke-inducing chick-flick moments, and the comedy always comes first. The scenes with the seriously unhinged, ex-drug addict volunteer coordinator (Jane Lynch) are sometimes more awkward than funny, but this is a minor quibble in an otherwise very enjoyable film. Besides, hearing a ten year old saying "cock block" will never not be funny.

Also funny in an unintentional way was My Bloody Valentine 3D, which had me creased up over a lengthy and completely unnecessary scene of full frontal female nudity. On the whole, though, this film was pretty satisfying, with the usual amount of suspense, who-dunnit, and slasher gore vastly improved by the impressive use of the 3D gimmick. Gore flies in your face, shotguns are pointed into the audience, and pickaxes are waved under your nose. It's pretty cool. Jensen Ackles is passable in the lead role, although I felt the film would have been improved by more nudity on his part. Something for the ladies, please, makers of slasher films! That said, I also enjoyed the fact that the mysterious masked killer took a few beatings during the course of the film, most of them dished out by Jaime King as Ackles' ex Sarah, who manages to beat the mass murderer off with a shovel, a lamp, and a frozen leg of what may have been lamb. It's nice when women in horror films aren't just there to get naked, scream, and then get killed. That said, the plot twists aren't particularly impressive and any scene which doesn't involve someone getting killed seemed tedious and strained, and full of balls about the importance of mining to the community. But you don't go for the social commentary. You go for the scene where someone's eyeball flies towards your face on the business end of a pickax.

Last, and definitely least, there's Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. If, like me, you have pushed the first two Underworld films so far to the back of your mind that you can only recall vague images of Kate Beckinsale in an improbable outfit and some convoluted stuff about a guy named Corvinus then fear not, for this sequel is, in fact, a prequel and could stand alone, plot-wise. Mostly. It opens with some hurried exposition and then tries really hard to fill the next couple of hours with about enough plot for twenty minutes. Oops. Basically, there's a really weird sex scene over a cliff edge (I really want to make a safe sex joke but I wont), Bill Nighy overacts, and then the werewolves rise. That's pretty much it. The ending relies too heavily on a final showdown between Bill Nighy's vampire king Viktor and Micheal Sheen's (frighteningly buff, more frightening than James McAvoy in Wanted... more frightening than Gary Rhodes!) lycan Lucian which is doomed to fail, tension-wise, because this is a prequel and both these characters appear in the original films! In fact, since we already know what the outcome of the film will be (we have been told that the lycans rise and that Sonja (Rhona Mitra) dies during the plot of Underworld) it would have been nice to spend a little bit more on how we got here. Think the recent Star Wars prequels, or Titanic, for example. Why did Viktor let first-of-his-kind Lucian live? Why train the boy to fight to protect your clan then make him a blacksmith? How on earth did vampire princess Sonja end up falling in love with a lycan slave boy in the first place when her race supposedly despises his? This could have been so much better, and would have given the ending, when Sonja meets her inevitable doom, a sense of tragedy that was sorely lacking. Instead I just wondered at how Lucian managed to get all that tight leather on and off so quickly. I suspect with a liberal application of baby powder. Also, since when did Michael Sheen become such a shrimp (bite off the head, leave the body)?

I have no intention of seeing Bride Wars. Even I'm not that brave.

I washed my shoe...

Wow, first post in the new blog! It has taken me ages to get to this point. It looked so nice and neat and clean all post-free, you know? Although I realised that it was also a bit useless waiting for an AMAZING and EPIC first post topic, since very rarely to things amazing and epic actually happen to me.

Instead, I thought I would share one of my most recent failures in life. I washed my shoe. My lovely, real leather, tan coloured brogue to be precise. I must have picked it up along with a mound of sheets I had just stripped off my bed and thrown it straight in the washing machine, where it enjoyed an extra spin cycle on 40 degrees before I discovered it crying and dishevelled inside a pillow case, wondering what it had done to make me hate it so.

I didn't cry. I'm very proud of this. It's only a shoe, after all. A beautiful, real leather, tan coloured brogue that I got from Topshop and was featured a week later in Heat magazine which made me feel all fashion-forward and stuff.

This is it now:The washed shoe is on the right, all shrivelled and dark and devoid of natural oils and suppleness and laces. On the left is the other one of the pair, the one that escaped the washing machine by virtue of being wedged firmly under my chest of drawers.

I'm now left with the dilemma of how to fix this problem. Clearly there is no helping the washed shoe. I borrowed some clear shoe polish from my flatmate and this appears to have made it marginally shinier. The colour has run a bit and leather is hard and the inside is manky, but at least it's shinier. I'm loathe to put the unscathed shoe in the washing machine to try and make them match, but secretly I like the shoe better darker and skankier. I can pretend it's vintage. I'm not just saying that to hide my inner shame at having washed a really nice shoe and totally ruined it.

Moral of this story is: put your shoes away rather than leaving them on the floor. Especially the nice ones. Or stop giving a shit about your shoes. You choose.