The most powerful character in the show, at least insofar as we can tell from the character descriptions, is a white woman, as is the lead; most of the men (1 of the white men, both of the men of color) are in positions of ambiguous power; all the women of color are dolls, i.e., initially at least powerless.

You could use this setup to talk about negotiating power hierarchies of both race and gender, although given his history, I think it is more likely that Whedon is going to continue to fall into typical traps of "colorblind" racial commentary. My tiny hope on this front comes from my conviction that he has in the past been somewhat responsive to political complaints about his work: i.e., Kennedy was unsatisfactory for many reasons, but she was also clearly an attempt to counteract the Dead Lesbian Cliche for Willow's relationships; the racial makeup of both Firefly and Dollhouse are unsatisfacory, but they both seem like efforts to increase diversity in response to complaints about Buffy and Angel. I'm not saying anyone else should feel satisfied with this kind of marginal improvement (especially giving the exasperatingly obvious problems with Firefly), but yeah, it does make a difference for me, since the careers of many white male producers (e.g., David Kelley) make it clear that they can get away with whitewashing TV as long as they want to.

Labels: a: whedon joss, tv: dollhouse

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