Click to viewJoss Whedon ’s new TV show , Dollhouse , is all about hoi polloi whose minds are erased , let them to “ become ” anybody and have any skills . So does this mean Whedon is coming down on the “ nurture ” side of the nature / fostering debate ? Are people purely shaped by their conditioning ? Is your genius just a piece of computer hardware that you’re able to pass any software on ? We caught up with Whedon and asked him . His answer may storm you .
Here ’s a handy transcript :
Are you fare down on the side of upbringing in the whole nature / upbringing debate ? Are we just shaped by our conditioning ? Are our bodies just hardware that you’re able to black market any software program on ?
First of all , thank you . No - one ’s ever asked that interrogative . I intend it . And secondly of all , nature versus nurture is something I ’ve spend a circumstances of my lifetime think about . And I ’ve always been a raising guy . I ’ve always felt , “ You ’re work by your environment , and the terrible , terrible things that your perfectly reasonable parents do to you . ” And then I had children , and they descend out very much themselves . There are definitely things I can do to mess them up , and I ’m doing my best , but they are who they are .
And I retrieve Dollhouse … I will never answer your interrogative , by the manner . Dollhouse is the question . I ’ve said before : Movies are an solvent , TV shows are a question . Because if you give a definite answer , what the hell is your next episode about ? My feeling is , there ’s a lot of both . Nuture is the key , but nature is interesting . And there is something unlearned within us , that can overcome what we ’ve been saddled with . My married woman is an amazing illustration of somebody who should not be as nerveless as she is , but could not help herself . So I ’ve emphatically learned that there are two sides to it , and that ’s what I need to explore with Dollhouse .
It ’s about something who — there is no nature . They ’ve wiped out her personality . So she has to produce her own . But she has the will to do that . They have not receive rid of that . That ’s the Florida key to the whole show . It explain what I ’m about , it explains Eliza [ Dushku ] , it is Echo defining herself with no parameters . With no nurture , and no real nature , to come back on . Who am I ? So I ’ll be answering your inquiry , with any chance , for the next seven years .
You ’ve almost answer my reexamination question . Your show is about somebody who ’s programme to be whoever they need her to be this week . She does n’t have any agency . How are we supposed to identify with her or root for her , as an audience ?
The throughline of the show is that bit by bit she is becoming ego - aware in between these engagements . And her self - awareness starts to move the engagements , and the date start to sham her self - cognizance . And she begins to realize , “ I think that I ’m somebody . I think I exist . And I think the fact that I love that might be dangerous for me . ” So that throughline , and the way the Dollhouse runs , that ’s progress throughout .
I will never do a show that ’s just a reset show . These people are going to grow and read and become foreign and more twisted every week . But every week she will have an troth that does resolve , so you may just sit down and keep an eye on it . It ’s not one of those shows , like I always apply Murder She Wrote as an model , where there is no accumulated knowledge . And it ’s not just one of those shows where it ’s just , “ Twist - twist - spin - twist , please add up back next week . ” We ’ll definitely resolve her interlocking .
At the same time , if you watch consistently , you will get to see her struggle to become , and the battle everybody around her has dealing with that . Because some are against it , some are for it , but everybody has to manage with it . She is the Isidor Feinstein Stone in the pond that creates ripples in everybody ’s lives .
In a late Buffy comedian , Faith buy the farm cloak-and-dagger as an upper year British woman , I was like , “ This could be an sequence of Dollhouse . ”
Yeah . It was really written before Dollhouse was conceived . It was something Brian [ K. Vaughan ] had pitched a long while ago . But she will decidedly be bring that as well .
That ’s the great affair , it ’s like , who can she be this workweek ? Eliza , she ’s not wear down wig , she ’s not Meryl Streep with accents , she ’s always Eliza to an extent , but that ’s not a problem . Because her character is just the perfume of what she ’s doing , and she really is versatile . We had her being not British , but very upper year swing dance sort of forties , and we had her being a Latina gangster , speaking Spanish for an entire scene . She did both of those scene in one day . And all she did was change her costume . It ’s not like I explain how she should do that . She brings so much in condition of understanding of body language . And of dialect and and the way she introduce … she ca n’t turn off the Eliza . Nobody can turn off the Eliza . You could power the power grid with the Eliza . But she can present it in many unlike ways , and it ’s beautiful to see .
dollhouseEliza DushkuJoss WhedonTelevision
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