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221 “There Is No Me; I’m Just a Container” Law and the Loss of Personhood in Dollhouse S H A R O N S U T H E R L A N D A N D S A R A H S W A N Each of Joss Whedon’s four television shows has explored, in some manner , what it means to be human.1 Buffy the Vampire Slayer presented a world in which personhood is part of having a soul: beings with souls fall under the protection of the Slayer, while those beings lacking souls can be killed without compunction.2 Angel, with its eponymous vampire-with-a-soul protagonist , took this examination further and delved into the potential of the formerly soulless to regain the rights of personhood through redemptive acts. In Firefly, Whedon’s conception of the human became even more complex: the evil monsters facing the protagonists in this series were Reavers: humanmade monsters.3 Not surprisingly, then, Whedon’s most recent television series, Dollhouse, also asks what it is to be human. Yet unlike the first three series, Dollhouse does not examine this question from the emotional distance of a world of demons and mystical creatures, nor from the remove of a space empire in the distant future; Dollhouse grounds its examination in a Los Angeles that seems in almost every way like the present one and directly tackles some of the most pressing and concerning human rights issues of the twenty -first century: slavery, human trafficking, and sexual exploitation. Whenever the Dollhouse setting or the complexity of the technology allow the viewers to separate themselves from a seemingly distant science fiction future, passing 1. This chapter’s title comes from a statement made by Echo in “Omega” (1.12). 2. As the scholarship on this subject shows, the issue of the soul in the Whedonverses is complicated. See, for example, McLaren 2005. See also Erickson, this volume. 3. For a discussion of this issue, see Rabb and Richardson 2008. 222 ✴ Dollhouse comments root us to the present.4 In Dollhouse, Whedon engages with this subject matter in complex and disturbing ways. Slavery and human trafficking are unthinkable to most people in North America, yet somehow they continue to exist throughout the world, including in developed countries. Human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal activity in the world today (Das 2007). Globally, estimates suggest that 27 million people are slaves (Kristof and WuDunn 2009, 9). Within the United States, the Department of Justice estimates that 14,500–17,500 people are brought into the country each year to work as slaves, while more than 200,000 American children are at high risk for trafficking into the sex industry annually (Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance 2012). Relevant to the feminist Whedon, 80 percent of all slaves are estimated to be female, and 75 percent of all slaves are forced into commercial sexual exploitation (Kristof and WuDunn 2009, 10). There can be no doubt that the subject matter of Dollhouse—sexual slavery and rape—is deeply disturbing. Dollhouse attempts to engage the viewer in these unsettling topics through a variety of devices, but most important through the oft-repeated argument that the Dolls volunteered for service. Characters like Topher Brink and Adelle DeWitt who clearly accept, to some degree, the fiction of volunteerism and eventual benefit to the Dolls help viewers to enter into the world of the Dollhouse. Once inside, Dollhouse asks difficult questions regarding the possibility of consenting to the removal of one’s personhood. Dollhouse also presents the complex ways that slavery and sexual exploitation interact with personhood and with society. Through its depiction of the rise and fall of a high-end sci-fi brothel, Dollhouse offers a nuanced and challenging presentation of many issues surrounding personhood, sex work, and exploitation; demonstrates how law can be used as a technology of exploitation; and forces us to consider the ways in which exploitation, and in particular the exploitation of women, ultimately threatens the humanity of everyone. Contract, Consent, and Personhood Given the central fiction that the Dolls are all willing participants in their five years of servitude, it is only natural that Dollhouse begins with a contract 4. For example, when Caroline/Echo is grappling with the confusion of having thirty -eight personalities through the magic of the Dollhouse’s technology, Echo reminds us that we are in the immediate present “now that we have a black president” (“Omega”). Similarly, the entire episode...

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