My Dollhouse Essay:
Here is my Dollhouse Essay that I wrote for SmartPop books:The Desire of The Dushku: How Dollhouse, Desire, Identity, and Reality Collide
Jody Sollazzo
“Who do you want me to be?”
That was the tag for Mutant Enemy’s new show Dollhouse in 2009. Mutant Enemy, and its president, Joss Whedon, are known for writing shows featuring stereotype-smashing female characters. Yet, with Dollhouse they had their sexiest and most controversial actress asking the audience this leading question. The ad campaign even featured Dushku superimposed naked against a backdrop of fast-moving Los Angeles. Dushku had just been quoted that February in The A.V. club (avclub.com) as saying: “I’ve been redefining who I want to be in this business [of acting.]” So, what was going on here? Were Mutant Enemy and Dushku selling out? It might have looked that way-they were presenting a sexy young woman and implying that she would be anything you wanted her to be.
So, who did the mainstream audience want Eliza Dushku to be?
Over the last decade Dushku’s audience saw her as a brat, a troublemaker, a bully, the psycho-chick, a slut, an understanding and beautiful tomboy, the horror movie chick, and the beautiful yet pitiable working-class woman. When she played Faith Lehane on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Dushku made embodying all of these characteristics at once look easy. The dominant audience seemed to think that therefore it was easy. She was typical the “bad girl.” The dominant audiences and some critics alike wanted more of this bad girl and said so when she tried to be anything else. So, we want Eliza to be sexy for us. We want her to be sexy and damaged.
Dollhouse seemed to offer what we wanted Dushku to be on a silver platter, or at least a high-tech chair. Dushku good-naturedly went on the talk show circuit to explain the complex nature of the Dollhouse plot as host after host told her how hot she was. The show indeed did open with a display of party-girl hotness. We saw her toughness as she was in a motorcycle race, then she stripped down to a skimpy white dress, sexuality displayed. Dushku even showed her ability to subtly bottom-from-the-top. She told her client she would tie him up with ropes…if that was what he wanted.
This is just who we wanted Dushku to be, and who better to give it to us than Joss Whedon who created bad girl Faith? Give her to us larger than life, but make the city run through her naked body as if she were a ghost. This is what we had been asking for.
Or was it? We then see the party girl Dushku was playing fall away. The fans all knew that this was going to happen. We read what the show is about. It was kind of creepy. There was nothing recognizable on Echo’s face between clients. Where was our tough trash-talking girl? Like the original Echo of ancient Greek times, she is trapped. By the end of the first episode she still wanted to please, but knew something is wrong. But, she seemed so devoid of any other knowledge that we can’t possibly have any hope for her by the end of the hour.
Wait! This wasn’t what we wanted Eliza to be at all! We wanted her damaged, but not this damaged. Many people commented, or demanded from the comfort of their laptops, that Dushku should just be playing a more “simple” bad girl role, as she did with Faith.
That, after all, is what we desire from her. Why can’t she just do what we want? Be what we want her to be? This is when a smart Mutant Enemy fan should have felt the gotcha moment that keeps us coming back.
Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Dushku herself as a producer immediately set up the paradox of identity as well as a more disturbing paradox of desire. Dollhouse showed us what it would be like if we truly had our object of desire. She would truly only be an object. She could never have a true identity if she was only what we desired. Yet, when you have a human being as your object of desire the one thing you want most is for them to have an identity.
Over the course of the series, Echo was developing an identity. It was just taking time. On Jimmy Kimmel Live! Dushku described the show as somewhat autobiographical. It’s not hard to imagine her once being in a position similar to Echo’s, even if she started out more like Faith. Dushku has said in ATV club interview she came to L.A. as self-proclaimed tomboy rebel with a “kill or be killed attitude.” It’s easy to see how she could feel lost her own identity. Like Echo and Faith, Dushku is someone that people desire, over-simplify, and objectify.
However, if you aren’t into over-simplifying, first episode Echo also actually has a lot in common with Faith as she first appeared in Buffy. Like Echo, Faith desperately wanted to please. Sure, she was a rebel, but she comes to town in her brash way to instantly befriend everyone. She needed everyone to believe she was an invincible Slayer. Like Echo Faith was trying to be her best and make connections in a place where others are in power and desire her skills and abilities. Like Echo, she suffered from some trauma and lacks a solid mentor-Faith’s Watcher was killed by a vampire, leaving her to wander, unsure of her identity or place in the world.
In Echo’s case, the themes of desire and objectification were no longer subtext. We see it from every in the demands of Dollhouse client. They get whoever they desire and this works great…for a little while. Only some clients end up more miserable that satisfied, and a lot seem to end up dead. Desire is a dangerous and tricky business. Damn! And those Rossum people really thought they had something here. If they had watched how it all ended with Spike and Warren and their robot-girlfriends they would have known that the Dollhouse was going to collapse.
But, maybe Rossum did watch those episodes and knew they didn’t have anything. In “Hollow Man”, Boyd revealed that the Dolls were merely a proof-of-concept for technology designed for the greater purpose of controlling people’s bodies to protect the wealthiest one percent of society from the apocalypse. So, Boyd either knew that The Dollhouse would fall apart or didn’t care. He failed to see the irony (as big bads always do) that he himself was one of those rich people with insatiable desires, a desire that ultimately led to the literal erasure of his existence and the destruction of his company. Talk about the paradox of desire: He wanted to control the world while having the very people that were fighting to save it as his family. C’mon, dude you’re asking for it.
Anyone who messes with a girl’s (and sometimes a boy’s) identity comes to a bad end (most of the time) in the world of Mutant Enemy. The struggle to have one’s own identity is a constant theme across the Mutant Enemy shows. Every character of any significance fights this battle. It is their stories Whedon’s characters are defined, but in Mutant Enemy, as in life, people’s identities are multi-storied. You can never just be one thing e.g. “the bad girl” or a “Doll.” We call contain multitudes, and we must fight to not be reduced into a thin description of ourselves. This is a fight for all of us and our power is in knowing and saying who we are.
The dominant social structure is constantly pushing us into a prescribed single-storied, identity that not only limits us and our relationships but also the possibilities of a better life for everyone. Our identities are limited. We are forced to forget pieces of ourselves due to the hegemonic stories the powerful tell us: You are a hard-working American. Hard working Americans don’t take government handouts. Forget that you can’t pay your mortgage and medical bills due to faulty systems the government helped create. You won’t vote for handouts.
Or: You are a successful businesswoman. Successful businesswomen wear high heels and expensive suits. Forget that you love your Chucks and really wanted that suit money for your trip to Burning Man and a Baby Bjorn.
Or: you are an actress that has a sultry voice. You must be sexually aggressive and put yourself somewhere where we can first worship you, then take you down a peg. Forget that you can perform complex roles. We command you to be the sexy bad girl. Because everyone knows a bad girl can only be bad girl. There can only be one story, one version of you.
Dollhouse is not the first Mutant Enemy program to show that those in power will destroy and rewrite the identities of others to keep that power. In Serenity River’s identity was wiped by The Alliance, who desired her amazing brainpower. The First Evil desired to take hold of the world and attempted to manipulate practically everyone, by making them think they were small and weak. “From beneath you it devours.” Angel’s identity was manipulated by…everyone and their mother. All of Angel’s enemies desired control over Angel because of the power he had whether he was “himself” or his “other,” Angelus. Of course, we cannot forget Faith, who literally took over Buffy’s identity. She was the only character to fully and purposely take over another main character’s identity with their own self. But what did Faith want?
Some people would think that this question is the easiest to answer: Faith wanted to be Buffy. Did she? Or did she really desire to be a fuller and better version of herself? If Faith truly wanted to be Buffy she would’ve just continued to walk around in her skin, having friends and a mom at a cool distance. She could keep on partying, flirting with and teasing Spike (and everyone else, but Spike was the most fun). If Faith only wanted to be Buffy, she would never have experienced the moral crisis she did. Faith couldn’t see herself as a good person worthy of love. The paradox of desire comes to bite Faith from the opposite direction as it does the clients of the Dollhouse. If you desire to be an entirely different person, you still have to be in there somewhere to experience that desire met, so you can never truly meet that desire.
The desire of Echo to become Caroline Farrell worked out quite differently. Echo comes into her own self-awareness slowly. Echo is told that her weak identity is a false; as are the many other personalities she accumulated. The entire time she is told that she is truly someone else-Caroline. The one who tells her this story most often is Paul Ballard, a good guy. Her Price Charming...if you forget the detail that she decided to save herself when he couldn’t.
However, when Echo reveals that she desires Ballard, he rejects her. He does not desire Echo. He desires Caroline. Paul sees identity as one-storied and simple. The “real” person is Caroline, and Echo cannot be Caroline. Caroline is the girl that Ballard had never met but wanted to do and be everything. It was a classic case of desiring a fantasy woman, then having her right in front of you and not being able to see her. One wonders if this is like Dushku’s fight with her loving, yet single-minded audience or her critics.
In the end Ballard dies, twice. In his second incarnation as a Doll in his own body he is able to make a new connection to Echo. Maybe because the old connections were literally taken away, which was supposed to have been a bad thing. But it doesn’t matter; she never really lets Ballard in. Until, of course, he dies again and Echo lets him in by putting his personality inside of her. So, Echo is the only one that fully gets to have her object of desire, and have him be a real personality too. Only he just has to stay inside of her. That’s head-spinning and creepy. But Echo deserves to eat her cake and have it too.
Echo’s character is the one whose identity got messed with most by Mutant Enemy. People from all sides, good and bad, desired her to be someone else. If Buffy Summers met Echo she would stop complaining about how many people she has to be-Slayer, sister, and friend is only three. Echo completely has Connor beat, who was raised by his father’s enemy to be someone else, manipulated by his older girlfriend to be something he was not, and then given a completely new identity by his father.
If there was any Whedon character to suffer more, it’s Caroline. Caroline’s body was used in every way while her original self is erased. At fist, Echo desires nothing but to be Caroline again. But this desire is short-lived. As Echo gains more self-awareness, she is fearful of again becoming Caroline and losing all that she has gained. Echo then gets to see Bennett’s version of Caroline. Caroline is a cold-hearted abandoner. Echo is quick to believe Bennett’s thin description of Caroline. Caroline is a bad girl. Despite Ballard pointing out that the story may not be that simple, Echo seems really eager to believe it. She even offers to help Bennett get revenge on Caroline. “I’ll hold the bitch down,” says the normally kind, Echo. Only she has been provoked. Boyd has manipulated her into thinking that if Echo downloads Caroline, she will lose herself.
Echo ultimately does decide to download Caroline’s personality into herself, but only to save the world. Echo believes that she can win any struggle Caroline might put up to control their shared body. Caroline doesn’t even seem to try to fight, maybe because she is Echo, though Echo doesn’t believe it. This is the only time when Echo can’t hold the belief that she can be herself and someone else too. She can’t accept that she is also an older version of herself.
Caroline’s own story is much like Faith’s. The story of Faith’s identity went like this: She was a working class Boston girl who had an easier time breaking rules than Buffy did. She then, in Buffy’s words, Faith “went crazy and started killing people.” Much like Echo does to Caroline, Buffy maintains a skewed, simple, and limited view of Faith’s identity-and Buffy makes sure her friends have this view as well. Like Echo literally does with Caroline, Buffy continuously shuts Faith out in a way that she doesn’t with others. Buffy forgives other people (and sexy vampires) who have done her wrong but Faith is never truly forgiven by Buffy or Buffy’s friends.
In the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy allows Faith to help stave of an apocalypse, just as Echo allows Caroline to help in her final apocalypse. After years of fans seeing the complex story of Faith’s redemption on Angel, she is introduced to the Potential Slayers at Buffy’s house (on Buffy) as “the murderer” who is atoning for her sins. Andrew Wells, himself five minutes off the atonement truck, calls Faith “the Dark Slayer.” It is no accident that Andrew Wells is saying this, as he is Buffy’s ultimate “storyteller” with his video camera.
Perhaps, this is an example of how in middle-class suburbia (a place in which Faith doesn’t fit) holds women to a higher moral standard than they do men. However, by this time Willow had her dark period of flaying men alive and attempted world-destroying, and she was treated to a six-month rehab in London. It’s easy to see Faith as criminal of fewer resources (less of a friendship with Buffy) who got a much heavier sentence for a lesser crimes.
But I think it’s much simpler than that-Faith and Caroline mess with Buffy and Echo’s identities. The dominant person in a social group will always find the person they know to most be like themselves as a threat. They will also hold that other, as they do themselves, to higher moral standards then they hold the rest of the group. Caroline and Faith will always be the ultimate others and therefore outsiders due to the desires of Echo and Buffy to maintain their own unique identities. So, Buffy and Echo push the stories that Faith and Caroline are either simple bad girls or just unimportant…until they need their help.
Caroline Farrell, Faith Lehane, and Eliza Dushku herself all complicate the idea of what we think women should be. This is because Dushku refuses to play the simple bad girl and ME refuses to write such a role for her. She is messing with the simple thin description we have for bad girls. Eliza has worked hard to fight for the complex and multi-storied identity of Echo/Caroline.
Meanwhile, there is continuing story of the identity of the original bad girl, Faith Lehane. Any fan knows that she is much more than Buffy’s dark half. She is arguably the only Mutant Enemy female character that has ever had to truly fight for her redemption for its own sake. Faith Lehane never denies that she was once “bad” person. She regrets that her actions have hurt others but she doesn’t regret the fun she had, as most redeemed bad girls must at least pretend to do. She still makes jokes about S&M, calls attention to any repression in a room, and quickly shames anyone that trying to be someone they are not.
However, she is not the one-dimensional cleavagey-slut-bomb the old dominant group (The Scoobies) thinks she is. We got to see her intelligence on Angel, with her second complex plan to trick/safe him. She implemented this plan while she quoted Albert Einstein and sneaking in some SAT words with her South Boston speak. She is clearly self-sacrificing, and even (gasp) nurturing. She is the only one who has no outside agenda toward Connor and the Potential Slayers. She ever so subtly keeps Dawn from guilting Buffy. Unlike Buffy, she is not interested in being in charge or having power. It isn’t either Buffy or Faith are wrong or better. They are just different. We saw Buffy Summers grow up, but whose Faith Lehane as an adult? But, as in art, in life Faith’s story will always live in the shadow of Buffy as critics compare Gellar to Dushku.
Certain critics claim Eliza should play less complex roles. They are literally telling a tomboy, feminist, Mormon-raised, avid gay rights supporter, deer hunting-democrat, high-heel and Ugg boot lover, and activist she was trying to be too many people. I laugh. Well, I laugh, but then I get mad and I desire to have Faith come back to show them they are wrong. Paradox of desire? Not really. I want everyone to see how complex Faith Lehane is once and for all. I want Eliza to see it herself. Faith is like early Echo, discovering who she is in a world that underestimated her, and like
later Echo the world will be ready for her to save when she shows it all her complexity.
And I want her and Spike to be together-to form a new archetype, the anarchist anti-heroes of relationships. And I want them to have a baby, but not a creepy baby that ages fast and has a love affair with a werewolf when it’s an infant. On second though, scratch the baby. That’s been ruined for me somehow. But, I want Buffy to show up and be jealous, really jealous...
Okay, so, I am a big fat paradox of desire! I want Dushku to be the original bad girl, the one that started all the trouble, the one that she probably wants to leave on a shelf somewhere. I do not want Slayers nearing 30 (or even older) to go to the attic! I am the very thing Dollhouse set out to criticize- a desirer of fan who desires Dushku just to meet my own needs, but I really think they could meet hers too. It could work, no? What do you want from me? I’m only learning disabled, Master’s degree having, fashion-loving, track-suit wearing, feminist, South Park fan, anti-gun, lesbian-loving straight girl. I’ve always been the “other” and the “bad” girl, just like Faith. And Caroline. And Echo and Eliza.
Thank you all who took the time to read this and if you want to see way too much into my fantasies about the future of Faith Lehane you can go to my fanfiction @
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/477618/Strange_Bint
Jody Sollazzo
“Who do you want me to be?”
That was the tag for Mutant Enemy’s new show Dollhouse in 2009. Mutant Enemy, and its president, Joss Whedon, are known for writing shows featuring stereotype-smashing female characters. Yet, with Dollhouse they had their sexiest and most controversial actress asking the audience this leading question. The ad campaign even featured Dushku superimposed naked against a backdrop of fast-moving Los Angeles. Dushku had just been quoted that February in The A.V. club (avclub.com) as saying: “I’ve been redefining who I want to be in this business [of acting.]” So, what was going on here? Were Mutant Enemy and Dushku selling out? It might have looked that way-they were presenting a sexy young woman and implying that she would be anything you wanted her to be.
So, who did the mainstream audience want Eliza Dushku to be?
Over the last decade Dushku’s audience saw her as a brat, a troublemaker, a bully, the psycho-chick, a slut, an understanding and beautiful tomboy, the horror movie chick, and the beautiful yet pitiable working-class woman. When she played Faith Lehane on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Dushku made embodying all of these characteristics at once look easy. The dominant audience seemed to think that therefore it was easy. She was typical the “bad girl.” The dominant audiences and some critics alike wanted more of this bad girl and said so when she tried to be anything else. So, we want Eliza to be sexy for us. We want her to be sexy and damaged.
Dollhouse seemed to offer what we wanted Dushku to be on a silver platter, or at least a high-tech chair. Dushku good-naturedly went on the talk show circuit to explain the complex nature of the Dollhouse plot as host after host told her how hot she was. The show indeed did open with a display of party-girl hotness. We saw her toughness as she was in a motorcycle race, then she stripped down to a skimpy white dress, sexuality displayed. Dushku even showed her ability to subtly bottom-from-the-top. She told her client she would tie him up with ropes…if that was what he wanted.
This is just who we wanted Dushku to be, and who better to give it to us than Joss Whedon who created bad girl Faith? Give her to us larger than life, but make the city run through her naked body as if she were a ghost. This is what we had been asking for.
Or was it? We then see the party girl Dushku was playing fall away. The fans all knew that this was going to happen. We read what the show is about. It was kind of creepy. There was nothing recognizable on Echo’s face between clients. Where was our tough trash-talking girl? Like the original Echo of ancient Greek times, she is trapped. By the end of the first episode she still wanted to please, but knew something is wrong. But, she seemed so devoid of any other knowledge that we can’t possibly have any hope for her by the end of the hour.
Wait! This wasn’t what we wanted Eliza to be at all! We wanted her damaged, but not this damaged. Many people commented, or demanded from the comfort of their laptops, that Dushku should just be playing a more “simple” bad girl role, as she did with Faith.
That, after all, is what we desire from her. Why can’t she just do what we want? Be what we want her to be? This is when a smart Mutant Enemy fan should have felt the gotcha moment that keeps us coming back.
Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Dushku herself as a producer immediately set up the paradox of identity as well as a more disturbing paradox of desire. Dollhouse showed us what it would be like if we truly had our object of desire. She would truly only be an object. She could never have a true identity if she was only what we desired. Yet, when you have a human being as your object of desire the one thing you want most is for them to have an identity.
Over the course of the series, Echo was developing an identity. It was just taking time. On Jimmy Kimmel Live! Dushku described the show as somewhat autobiographical. It’s not hard to imagine her once being in a position similar to Echo’s, even if she started out more like Faith. Dushku has said in ATV club interview she came to L.A. as self-proclaimed tomboy rebel with a “kill or be killed attitude.” It’s easy to see how she could feel lost her own identity. Like Echo and Faith, Dushku is someone that people desire, over-simplify, and objectify.
However, if you aren’t into over-simplifying, first episode Echo also actually has a lot in common with Faith as she first appeared in Buffy. Like Echo, Faith desperately wanted to please. Sure, she was a rebel, but she comes to town in her brash way to instantly befriend everyone. She needed everyone to believe she was an invincible Slayer. Like Echo Faith was trying to be her best and make connections in a place where others are in power and desire her skills and abilities. Like Echo, she suffered from some trauma and lacks a solid mentor-Faith’s Watcher was killed by a vampire, leaving her to wander, unsure of her identity or place in the world.
In Echo’s case, the themes of desire and objectification were no longer subtext. We see it from every in the demands of Dollhouse client. They get whoever they desire and this works great…for a little while. Only some clients end up more miserable that satisfied, and a lot seem to end up dead. Desire is a dangerous and tricky business. Damn! And those Rossum people really thought they had something here. If they had watched how it all ended with Spike and Warren and their robot-girlfriends they would have known that the Dollhouse was going to collapse.
But, maybe Rossum did watch those episodes and knew they didn’t have anything. In “Hollow Man”, Boyd revealed that the Dolls were merely a proof-of-concept for technology designed for the greater purpose of controlling people’s bodies to protect the wealthiest one percent of society from the apocalypse. So, Boyd either knew that The Dollhouse would fall apart or didn’t care. He failed to see the irony (as big bads always do) that he himself was one of those rich people with insatiable desires, a desire that ultimately led to the literal erasure of his existence and the destruction of his company. Talk about the paradox of desire: He wanted to control the world while having the very people that were fighting to save it as his family. C’mon, dude you’re asking for it.
Anyone who messes with a girl’s (and sometimes a boy’s) identity comes to a bad end (most of the time) in the world of Mutant Enemy. The struggle to have one’s own identity is a constant theme across the Mutant Enemy shows. Every character of any significance fights this battle. It is their stories Whedon’s characters are defined, but in Mutant Enemy, as in life, people’s identities are multi-storied. You can never just be one thing e.g. “the bad girl” or a “Doll.” We call contain multitudes, and we must fight to not be reduced into a thin description of ourselves. This is a fight for all of us and our power is in knowing and saying who we are.
The dominant social structure is constantly pushing us into a prescribed single-storied, identity that not only limits us and our relationships but also the possibilities of a better life for everyone. Our identities are limited. We are forced to forget pieces of ourselves due to the hegemonic stories the powerful tell us: You are a hard-working American. Hard working Americans don’t take government handouts. Forget that you can’t pay your mortgage and medical bills due to faulty systems the government helped create. You won’t vote for handouts.
Or: You are a successful businesswoman. Successful businesswomen wear high heels and expensive suits. Forget that you love your Chucks and really wanted that suit money for your trip to Burning Man and a Baby Bjorn.
Or: you are an actress that has a sultry voice. You must be sexually aggressive and put yourself somewhere where we can first worship you, then take you down a peg. Forget that you can perform complex roles. We command you to be the sexy bad girl. Because everyone knows a bad girl can only be bad girl. There can only be one story, one version of you.
Dollhouse is not the first Mutant Enemy program to show that those in power will destroy and rewrite the identities of others to keep that power. In Serenity River’s identity was wiped by The Alliance, who desired her amazing brainpower. The First Evil desired to take hold of the world and attempted to manipulate practically everyone, by making them think they were small and weak. “From beneath you it devours.” Angel’s identity was manipulated by…everyone and their mother. All of Angel’s enemies desired control over Angel because of the power he had whether he was “himself” or his “other,” Angelus. Of course, we cannot forget Faith, who literally took over Buffy’s identity. She was the only character to fully and purposely take over another main character’s identity with their own self. But what did Faith want?
Some people would think that this question is the easiest to answer: Faith wanted to be Buffy. Did she? Or did she really desire to be a fuller and better version of herself? If Faith truly wanted to be Buffy she would’ve just continued to walk around in her skin, having friends and a mom at a cool distance. She could keep on partying, flirting with and teasing Spike (and everyone else, but Spike was the most fun). If Faith only wanted to be Buffy, she would never have experienced the moral crisis she did. Faith couldn’t see herself as a good person worthy of love. The paradox of desire comes to bite Faith from the opposite direction as it does the clients of the Dollhouse. If you desire to be an entirely different person, you still have to be in there somewhere to experience that desire met, so you can never truly meet that desire.
The desire of Echo to become Caroline Farrell worked out quite differently. Echo comes into her own self-awareness slowly. Echo is told that her weak identity is a false; as are the many other personalities she accumulated. The entire time she is told that she is truly someone else-Caroline. The one who tells her this story most often is Paul Ballard, a good guy. Her Price Charming...if you forget the detail that she decided to save herself when he couldn’t.
However, when Echo reveals that she desires Ballard, he rejects her. He does not desire Echo. He desires Caroline. Paul sees identity as one-storied and simple. The “real” person is Caroline, and Echo cannot be Caroline. Caroline is the girl that Ballard had never met but wanted to do and be everything. It was a classic case of desiring a fantasy woman, then having her right in front of you and not being able to see her. One wonders if this is like Dushku’s fight with her loving, yet single-minded audience or her critics.
In the end Ballard dies, twice. In his second incarnation as a Doll in his own body he is able to make a new connection to Echo. Maybe because the old connections were literally taken away, which was supposed to have been a bad thing. But it doesn’t matter; she never really lets Ballard in. Until, of course, he dies again and Echo lets him in by putting his personality inside of her. So, Echo is the only one that fully gets to have her object of desire, and have him be a real personality too. Only he just has to stay inside of her. That’s head-spinning and creepy. But Echo deserves to eat her cake and have it too.
Echo’s character is the one whose identity got messed with most by Mutant Enemy. People from all sides, good and bad, desired her to be someone else. If Buffy Summers met Echo she would stop complaining about how many people she has to be-Slayer, sister, and friend is only three. Echo completely has Connor beat, who was raised by his father’s enemy to be someone else, manipulated by his older girlfriend to be something he was not, and then given a completely new identity by his father.
If there was any Whedon character to suffer more, it’s Caroline. Caroline’s body was used in every way while her original self is erased. At fist, Echo desires nothing but to be Caroline again. But this desire is short-lived. As Echo gains more self-awareness, she is fearful of again becoming Caroline and losing all that she has gained. Echo then gets to see Bennett’s version of Caroline. Caroline is a cold-hearted abandoner. Echo is quick to believe Bennett’s thin description of Caroline. Caroline is a bad girl. Despite Ballard pointing out that the story may not be that simple, Echo seems really eager to believe it. She even offers to help Bennett get revenge on Caroline. “I’ll hold the bitch down,” says the normally kind, Echo. Only she has been provoked. Boyd has manipulated her into thinking that if Echo downloads Caroline, she will lose herself.
Echo ultimately does decide to download Caroline’s personality into herself, but only to save the world. Echo believes that she can win any struggle Caroline might put up to control their shared body. Caroline doesn’t even seem to try to fight, maybe because she is Echo, though Echo doesn’t believe it. This is the only time when Echo can’t hold the belief that she can be herself and someone else too. She can’t accept that she is also an older version of herself.
Caroline’s own story is much like Faith’s. The story of Faith’s identity went like this: She was a working class Boston girl who had an easier time breaking rules than Buffy did. She then, in Buffy’s words, Faith “went crazy and started killing people.” Much like Echo does to Caroline, Buffy maintains a skewed, simple, and limited view of Faith’s identity-and Buffy makes sure her friends have this view as well. Like Echo literally does with Caroline, Buffy continuously shuts Faith out in a way that she doesn’t with others. Buffy forgives other people (and sexy vampires) who have done her wrong but Faith is never truly forgiven by Buffy or Buffy’s friends.
In the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy allows Faith to help stave of an apocalypse, just as Echo allows Caroline to help in her final apocalypse. After years of fans seeing the complex story of Faith’s redemption on Angel, she is introduced to the Potential Slayers at Buffy’s house (on Buffy) as “the murderer” who is atoning for her sins. Andrew Wells, himself five minutes off the atonement truck, calls Faith “the Dark Slayer.” It is no accident that Andrew Wells is saying this, as he is Buffy’s ultimate “storyteller” with his video camera.
Perhaps, this is an example of how in middle-class suburbia (a place in which Faith doesn’t fit) holds women to a higher moral standard than they do men. However, by this time Willow had her dark period of flaying men alive and attempted world-destroying, and she was treated to a six-month rehab in London. It’s easy to see Faith as criminal of fewer resources (less of a friendship with Buffy) who got a much heavier sentence for a lesser crimes.
But I think it’s much simpler than that-Faith and Caroline mess with Buffy and Echo’s identities. The dominant person in a social group will always find the person they know to most be like themselves as a threat. They will also hold that other, as they do themselves, to higher moral standards then they hold the rest of the group. Caroline and Faith will always be the ultimate others and therefore outsiders due to the desires of Echo and Buffy to maintain their own unique identities. So, Buffy and Echo push the stories that Faith and Caroline are either simple bad girls or just unimportant…until they need their help.
Caroline Farrell, Faith Lehane, and Eliza Dushku herself all complicate the idea of what we think women should be. This is because Dushku refuses to play the simple bad girl and ME refuses to write such a role for her. She is messing with the simple thin description we have for bad girls. Eliza has worked hard to fight for the complex and multi-storied identity of Echo/Caroline.
Meanwhile, there is continuing story of the identity of the original bad girl, Faith Lehane. Any fan knows that she is much more than Buffy’s dark half. She is arguably the only Mutant Enemy female character that has ever had to truly fight for her redemption for its own sake. Faith Lehane never denies that she was once “bad” person. She regrets that her actions have hurt others but she doesn’t regret the fun she had, as most redeemed bad girls must at least pretend to do. She still makes jokes about S&M, calls attention to any repression in a room, and quickly shames anyone that trying to be someone they are not.
However, she is not the one-dimensional cleavagey-slut-bomb the old dominant group (The Scoobies) thinks she is. We got to see her intelligence on Angel, with her second complex plan to trick/safe him. She implemented this plan while she quoted Albert Einstein and sneaking in some SAT words with her South Boston speak. She is clearly self-sacrificing, and even (gasp) nurturing. She is the only one who has no outside agenda toward Connor and the Potential Slayers. She ever so subtly keeps Dawn from guilting Buffy. Unlike Buffy, she is not interested in being in charge or having power. It isn’t either Buffy or Faith are wrong or better. They are just different. We saw Buffy Summers grow up, but whose Faith Lehane as an adult? But, as in art, in life Faith’s story will always live in the shadow of Buffy as critics compare Gellar to Dushku.
Certain critics claim Eliza should play less complex roles. They are literally telling a tomboy, feminist, Mormon-raised, avid gay rights supporter, deer hunting-democrat, high-heel and Ugg boot lover, and activist she was trying to be too many people. I laugh. Well, I laugh, but then I get mad and I desire to have Faith come back to show them they are wrong. Paradox of desire? Not really. I want everyone to see how complex Faith Lehane is once and for all. I want Eliza to see it herself. Faith is like early Echo, discovering who she is in a world that underestimated her, and like
later Echo the world will be ready for her to save when she shows it all her complexity.
And I want her and Spike to be together-to form a new archetype, the anarchist anti-heroes of relationships. And I want them to have a baby, but not a creepy baby that ages fast and has a love affair with a werewolf when it’s an infant. On second though, scratch the baby. That’s been ruined for me somehow. But, I want Buffy to show up and be jealous, really jealous...
Okay, so, I am a big fat paradox of desire! I want Dushku to be the original bad girl, the one that started all the trouble, the one that she probably wants to leave on a shelf somewhere. I do not want Slayers nearing 30 (or even older) to go to the attic! I am the very thing Dollhouse set out to criticize- a desirer of fan who desires Dushku just to meet my own needs, but I really think they could meet hers too. It could work, no? What do you want from me? I’m only learning disabled, Master’s degree having, fashion-loving, track-suit wearing, feminist, South Park fan, anti-gun, lesbian-loving straight girl. I’ve always been the “other” and the “bad” girl, just like Faith. And Caroline. And Echo and Eliza.
Thank you all who took the time to read this and if you want to see way too much into my fantasies about the future of Faith Lehane you can go to my fanfiction @
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/477618/Strange_Bint