New Vid: "It Depends On What You Pay" (Dollhouse)

[giandujakiss]

Song: It Depends On What You Pay from The Fantasticks
Artist: Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones

Fandom: Dollhouse

Summary: You've come a long way, baby.

Spoilers: Through "Haunted"

Sizes: 30.8 MB (540 x 360 .avi), 13.3 MB (420 x 280 .wmv)
Length: 2:48

Download from Sendspace: The .avi file is here and the .wmv file is here.

Notes and Warnings:

I'm really not sure if a warning is necessary here, but I'd rather err on the side of caution and say that the song may be a bit ... triggery? Possibly.

It Depends On What You Pay is from the 1960 off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks. The original production of The Fantasticks ran continuously for 42 years, making it the world's longest running musical. By 1990, however, for reasons that will be obvious when you see the vid, It Depends On What You Pay had been largely excised from the show. Recent productions of The Fantasticks either include the song with a different set of lyrics, or delete it entirely and substitute a new song in its place.

The version used in the vid is from the original cast recording, and is performed by Jerry Orbach. It has been edited for length.

Watch on Vimeo

Password: omega


Thanks so much to cathexys, danegen, sol_se, and Thuvia Ptarth for their comments. Any flaws are entirely my own.

Comments would be appreciated. Cross-posted to LJ.

Comments

[giandujakiss]

Thank you! Yes, exactly - the show avoids the word "rape," only deals with these issues on particular occasions, and the rest of the time just expects us to ignore them while it tells another story. I'm so glad it came through for you in the vid - thank you!

No rape

[(Anonymous)]

Of course they don't talk about rape, because *NOBODY* has been raped on the show.
The body is just a shell, it has no opinion. It is the "program" in the brain which makes the person, and all of these persons want to have sex - that's not a rationalization, that's just fact. That the previous "program" might not have wanted it is not relevant for what the current person wants.

What you may or may not have wanted in a previous life is not relevant for what you want now.

(can't register)

Re: No rape

[(Anonymous)]

Really?

I guess I need to re-watch because the owner of the body (shell? No-one is paying for a nautilus here) is coerced into this gig with no idea what they are in for. None of the programmed personality algamations are real, just crafted for the cutomer's enjoyment.

Should "Echo", or "Victor", or "Sierra" get to the end of their contract and are informed about what their bodies did while loaned out to the Dollhouse, I'm sure they aren't going to be as calm as you are ( a.k.a. a reason for me to keep watching). All of the actives are incapable of consenting. And they are kept that way, because who would consent to being free, skilled at killing, and anonymous but then return to be re-programmed into the next client's new flavour?

Liked the vid.

Shelly.

Re: No rape

[giandujakiss]

Thanks, Shelly. I'm very glad you liked the vid. And yes, I agree that it's rape simply because Caroline, and whoever the others are, have no ability to refuse.

Re: No rape

[lady_ganesh]

That's interesting, because when Sierra's handler was fucking her between assignments, I believe they actually did call it rape, and she certainly didn't want to. Not to mention the man Sierra did not want to have sex with who sold her to the Dollhouse. If anything, we have no proof they're consenting ever, at all.

Re: No rape

[anotherslashfan]

If it is called rape or not and on which occasion is mainly decided by whose POV is made to be most important. Especially in the first season, we are mostly inside the Dollhouse, sharing the very skewed view of the various handlers, of Topher and DeWitt, all of them reliably sociopathic considering they even work for this institution in the positions they are in. Ballard might see it differently at the beginning, but it is this character's most notable failing that in season 2 he is far too accepting of the ways things are done (and people are treated) in the Dollhouse.
Aside from that, the show does ravel in the rapefantasies rather than distance itself from the Dollhouse's general wrongness - and that really is its biggest problem: you cannot have the interesting story without getting lots and lots of bullshit thrown at you.