Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Free Writing #1

The "blank slate" philosophy is relevant in dollhouse. "Blank slate" means at birth anyone can be anything. What your parents do or what kind of genes you have has nothing to do with what you will be. John Watson was famous for saying, "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select...regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors." Dollhouse takes peoples memories and makes them what they want them to be.

I believe that this is morally wrong. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to be anything that they want to be. Dollhouse is taking that away from them. They turn them into what they need them to be. Even if the subjects volunteer to be changed it's still wrong.

I think that this is Dr. Jack Kevorkian on a smaller scale. Those people told him to kill them, but it was still very wrong. No matter how bad someone may think they have it, messing with someones mind is not right. In the episode I watched Dollhouse still wasn't very confident in what they were doing. They weren't sure if everything was going to be "okay." I believe if they have the slightest doubt in what they are doing it shouldn't be done.

Works Cited

Powell, Kimberly. "Nature vs Nurture - How Heredity and Environment Shape Who We Are." About Genealogy - Learn How to Research Your Family Tree. 13 Oct. 2009 .
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3 comments:

  1. Tessa WilsonOctober 13, 2009 at 5:35 PM

    I think this theory is really interesting. But I think that Dollhouse is using the characters as symbols of real life. Think about it-where we come from does matter. It can be argued that an kid from inner-city new york will never be able to succeed as well as someone from private school conneticut. Someone working their way through college doesn't have the time to devote to studying that someone with no financial worries can. In many ways, we are like the characters in dollhouse because we don't have a blank slate and we can't choose every part of where we go.

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  2. AnhThuOctober 13, 2009 at 6:40 PM

    The part where you said everyone should have an equal opportunity to be anything they want to be is something to ponder on. Compared to reality, this applies to almost everyone because people want to live the life they want. It does not work this way because we do not always get what we desire or dream of.

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  3. Rebecca RadyOctober 14, 2009 at 8:48 PM

    This is a very interesting stance you have taken on Dollhouse. I really enjoied how you incorporated the psychological study into your analysis of Dollhouse. Equal opportunity is a very interesting, yet controversial topic. This should definately make for an interesting paper.

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