I have a lot of feelings about the controversial writer/director Joss Whedon that we are absolutely not going to get into here, but it’s essential to make clear that my interest in television criticism has been entirely shaped by his work. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first serious work of TV I fell in love with and, like some other critics, I wouldn’t be writing this without it. This is all to foreground that Whedon’s Dollhouse is one of my favorite works of science fiction. The series ran on Fox for almost a year, from February 2009 to January 2010, then, like many other Whedon projects, was canceled. The show is about a company that has invented a device capable of removing a person’s core personality and memories, storing that on a disc, and then imprinting a constructed personality onto that person instead. Essentially, this turns a person (doll) into whoever you want them to be. If you want the perfect chef or spy or babysitter or prostitute, you can make yourself one. This project is deeply underground, with only the rich and powerful even hearing rumors of its existence. The show followed a group of dolls as they began to glitch, starting to remember pieces of the many personalities they had been given over the years. The show explores identity, memory, exploitation, and what remains when you strip everything away from someone. I loved it.
One of the most interesting things about the series is when it was on television. In 2009, television was still beholden to a lot of the elements of its traditional form. This was especially true for network television, which couldn’t afford to take the same risks some of the streamers were beginning to. Dollhouse landed with a thud, confusing both critics and viewers and struggling internally to satisfy the sexy case-of-the-week format a network like Fox demanded, while also telling a story that required more nuanced, creative, and intelligent writing. If it premiered today, I think Dollhouse would be received very differently. I think it would be received a lot like Severance.
Apple TV’s Severance explores a lot of the same themes that Dollhouse was interested in, especially themes of identity, memory, and grief. As I mentioned in an earlier post,
It’s a show about workism, technology, memory, and identity. In the series, technology has been invented that allows you to mentally sever your work life from your home life. When in the office, you only remember your office persona and when you’re outside the office you can only remember your outside life. Of course, as the show Dollhouse pointed out many years ago, any technology that can be exploited will be exploited. Severance explores how our memories are constitutive of our selves and how without them we are helpless in the face of exploitation and manipulation.
I want to talk first about exploitation. Both of these shows are concerned with the invention of a technology that controls or alters the human brain, specifically human memory and personality. In Dollhouse this technology is generally secret, but the rich and powerful are openly aware of it and pay the Rossum corporation to use that technology. Later in the series, there is a flash-forward to several years later when the technology has gotten loose and is being used by basically everyone to erase people’s memories and turn them into slaves. The technology brings about the end of our world as we know it. Severance is only on its freshman season, but it has the same apocalyptic tinge. Near the end of the season, we find out that a congressman has used it on his pregnant wife to not only allow her to forget the pain of childbirth but also to control how many children they have and what they are named. The severance technology is presented as utopian, as giving everyone the chance to escape the drudgery of their work (or other labor). The other half of them, the work half with no memory of their outside life (these are creepy/cutesie called “outies”) and no knowledge of their identity, are demoted to the status of robots. Or, without stretching too far, of slaves.
Dollhouse’s central message about technological progress was that it was not only open to exploitation, but that exploitation was inevitable. If someone creates a technology that allows you to control others, it will be exploited in the worst and most creative ways. As the severed workers in Severance begin to self-actualize, the authorities controlling them tighten their grasp. Although there are alternate authorities on the outside skeptical or openly hostile to severance, they are largely powerless in the face of something so revolutionary that is championed by powerful people. In both shows, the subjected parties try to tell the world what it is like to have your memories and your self ripped from you, but the world is rarely ready to listen, and the exploitation seems likely to continue.
Second, the two shows are closely linked by their explorations of grief and memory. In Dollhouse and in Severance the subjected parties have usually signed up to have their memories taken from them. Whether one can ever do that, under coercion or not, is a topic of debate in both shows, but there is an element of willed forgetting common to both. In Severance, Adam Scott’s character is grieving the death of his wife when he chooses to be severed; in Dollhouse, Miracle Laurie’s character is grieving the loss of a child. And yet both still grieve, somehow, even though they don’t know who they are grieving for. In both series, strong emotions and memories like grief and love are presented as so intrinsic to who we are that even brain surgery cannot strip them from us entirely. Both shows are always dancing around the concept of an ineradicable soul in their own secular ways.
The questions Dollhouse raised have endured and the success of Severance is a testament to that. I think it is extraordinary to see a show that shares so much DNA with Dollhouse succeed. Both of these shows wear their philosophy on their sleeve. They are deeply interested in ethics and choice. They want to know what remains when you strip away everything we think of as our identity. I think shows that ask those enduring questions will always find fans, even if it takes years for us to rediscover them. In that spirit, go watch both these wonderful shows.