The index to the entire Joss Whedon roundtable is here.
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One of the core philosophical mysteries that Philip K Dick lingered over throughout his career was the fragility of identity (and, by extension, reality). In particular, “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” twists a very knotty philosophical quandary into one of PKD’s more intense action stories. Typically, PKD is more concerned with perception of reality but “We Can Remember…” focuses more intimately on the mutability of memory and its relationship with identity. The protagonist, one Douglas Quaid, undergoes a procedure to gain a desired false memory, only to stumble onto buried memories that shatter his identity, replacing his mundane life with that of a government assassin.
Sound familiar?
If you’ve ever seen Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse and aren’t already acquainted with the plot of PKD’s seminal work, also adapted into film twice now, you’ll be now quite aware that “We Can Remember…” is the foundation upon which the show is based. If you haven’t seen it, here’s a crude summary; a corporation erases people’s identities and replaces them with useful identities until their debts are paid off.
One of the reasons why “We Can Remember…” seemed worthy of modernization as a TV series wasn’t just the possible complexities of a world where identities can be manufactured but the subtle thread of dystopianism, one that predates William Gibson’s corporations-as-gods cyberpunkism. In both Dollhouse and “We Can Remember…”, the powerful corporations responsible for identity manipulation don’t serve as arms of a nameless government but act independently of them and at odds with them, even.
In “We Can Remember…” it’s REKALL, the corporation, who triggers Douglas Quaid’s memories of his job as a government assassin and it’s left to the government to deal with the problem, though it’s again REKALL who provides the final resolution, or at least an intended one. It’s dystopian in the whole sense; Quaid was a government assassin who, had things gone according to plan, would never have awoken to his former identity and it is actually his false identity in denial of this that leads to the central conflict. “Real” Quaid, the government he worked for and REKALL are all complicit.
Dollhouse, on the other hand, is openly anti-corporation and, in its implications, a cautionary tale whose formula is “corporations + technology = bad.” This starts with the implication that Rossum Corporation took an invention intended to alleviate neurological disorders and turned it to arguably nefarious ends, and ends with a near-apocalypse. The depiction of the creators of this technology, as well as most of the technologically-inclined characters, is of sociopaths. Whedon’s Dollhouse has little sympathy for scientists and barely touches on the humanitarian uses of the Dollhouse technology.
On the other hand, in Philip K Dick’s “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” the existence of mind-altering technology is far more benign and pragmatic than Whedon’s. REKALL runs a business granting people the chance to have memories of experiences they never had or to take on an identity they wish they could be. There’s no apocalyptic endgame and, to that extend, Dick seems to acknowledge the mundanity of postmodern culture in which everything is changing but nothing is different. In fact, he’s not even concerned with it, instead punctuating his tale with a very PKD-ian twist from out of left field. Dick was telling a story and not running a simulation revolving around a theoretical technology, one in which the driving individuals are improbably corrupt, as those in Dollhouse seemed to be.
And therein lies the disconnect of Whedon’s riff on PKD; Philip K Dick was writing Weird science fiction, with a capital “W.” The universe he portrayed in his books, unlike Whedon’s Dollhouse (and, perhaps more tellingly, Firefly), was ultimately an irrational universe. PKD wasn’t really a science fiction author, not in the vein of Asimov or Clarke, but more a postmodern mutation of the old Weird, like Lovecraft for the hard disk era. The relationship between the two is even more stark if you consider Philip K Dick’s overriding affinity for “the beyond” and extrastellar and ungraspable entities. And, really, that’s what drives his dystopias; that what should seem patently absurd and surreal by our standards is rendered mundane by the plastic nature of his realities.
Whedon’s “dystopia” is of an increasingly common and wearying breed; one that doggedly tracks down a line of best fit, averse to outliers and designed not just to suspend disbelief but to lock the viewer into a meticulous and intricate conundrum. And Whedon’s solution to the whole thing is, bizarrely, a sort of anti-science deus ex machine; it turns out the secret to countering the mind-wiping technology is hidden away in a particular character’s DNA.
This last revelation feels like a loose thread that Whedon could’ve malevolently ripped clean from the scrupulously woven fabric of Dollhouse’s reality by implying that perhaps this miracle DNA isn’t of terrestrial origin. It certainly would’ve infused such an appallingly cynical story with some much needed weirdness, the kind of weird that made Philip K Dick’s works compelling.
This is a very good point: “The universe he portrayed in his books, unlike Whedon’s Dollhouse (and, perhaps more tellingly, Firefly), was ultimately an irrational universe. PKD wasn’t really a science fiction author, not in the vein of Asimov or Clarke, but more a postmodern mutation of the old Weird, like Lovecraft for the hard disk era.”
(One might also mention here Dick’s descent from Kafka.)
Also, like Lovecraft, PKD had his historical failings; he was as sexist as the rest of the sci-fi writers of the era, and unlike Lovecraft, he didn’t have any good excuses, given the existence of such incredible female writers like Ursula K LeGuin.
And thank you for picking out what ended up being the surprise main point of the article, not a point I had been driving for when I first decided to compare the two. Sometimes I surprise myself, in ways both pleasant and not (I really do like Dollhouse though!).
Meaning Lovecraft didn’t have examples of strong woman writers in and before his own time??? (Assuming we agree for the sake of argument to call an absence of examples of the same an “excuse” for sexism.)
That aside, “historical failings” and “of the era” implies that genre fiction is significantly less infested by sexism now than then, which I find dubious.
Also, “failings” implies non-sexism is an accomplishment, which I also find dubious. A whole lot of people manage to be more or less un-sexist. Hardly anybody at any given time ever manages to be an important writer. (Which I guess Lovecraft did, even though he couldn’t actually write.)
I’m certainly not excusing sexism in *any* scenario and I hope whatever discussion we have about Lovecraft, Philip K Dick and Joss Whedon can henceforth be had with the omnipresent implication that sexism is inherently bad and shouldn’t be posited as a natural or desirable state.
As far as identifying the successes that feminism has had in eroding the fraternal fortress of genre fiction, to say that there as been none of concern would be a discredit to the feminist movement.
‘I’m certainly not excusing sexism in *any* scenario…’
Of course. I didn’t actually think you were at all. Sorry, I was ruder in my last comment than I had any right to be.
‘As far as identifying the successes that feminism has had in eroding the fraternal fortress of genre fiction, to say that there as been none of concern would be a discredit to the feminist movement.’
Well, the “fraternal fortress” has certainly been somewhat breeched in the sense that there are more prominent woman creators of genre fiction now than then. But it’s not clear to me that the content – particularly the content created by men – has improved. But I don’t consider that to be to the discredit of the feminist movement any more than I consider the survival of the British, Russian, Austrian, and Prussian monarchies to be to the discredit of the French Revolution.
Addendum: I shouldn’t have singled out genre fiction. The high arts, or what passes for them today, are just as bad.
I know my article was remarkably ambivalent on the topic of Whedon, Philip K Dick and Dollhouse’s relationship to gender and sexuality and given that writing about Whedon (and Dollhouse particularly) should include some discussion of that matter, it’s not a surprise you were skeptical of my attitude on the matter. The fact is that, as someone who considers Hooded Utilitarian a bastion of critical brilliance that has often broken many of my own misplaced assumptions about pop culture and sexism/feminism (and much outside those), I was very wary of writing something politically charged, given my likely fumbling hands. So, no, no offense taken, I didn’t write a piece for Hooded Utilitarian just so everyone could clap me on the back and give me a cigar. I appreciate your candor, seriously.
I see your point and I think that I can recall a few examples of genre contemporaries who’ve consciously attempted to rectify the sexist inertia, but they’re a small (if critically acclaimed) minority. Genre fiction as a whole still sees sexism as a selling point and not a poison, sadly. As someone who doesn’t pay much, if any attention, to popular genre fiction, I do get tunnel vision and need to me reminded of how, frankly, awful people are.
Certainly, some of the work being done today has admirable sexual politics. But so did some of the work being being done in Dick’s or Lovecraft’s time. I’m just not sure the ratio has gotten much better, is all.
“And Whedon’s solution to the whole thing is, bizarrely, a sort of anti-science deus ex machine; it turns out the secret to countering the mind-wiping technology is hidden away in a particular character’s DNA.”
This is an interesting point. I hadn’t thought about this before.
I am glad to see that so many people were interested in writing about _Dollhouse_ because I really think that it touches on a lot of very interesting philosophic questions, which is one of the main reasons I think that it’s such good sci-fi. That they were constrained by the network and the audience response in which of those questions they got to fully explore is a shame. In the wake of Sense8 and Netflix’s TV coup, I am kind of fantasizing about a Dollhouse remake with a better lead actress and fewer cheap gimmicks.
“Which I guess Lovecraft did, even though he couldn’t actually write.”
Hey now! I adore Lovecraft’s writing. It’s clotted and clunky and beautiful, imo.
I think PKD’s approach to gender politics is pretty complicated. He was definitely sexist—but also sometimes a very canny analyst of sexism, and sometimes in some ways even I think anti-sexist. Lovecraft pretty much never managed that last one, I don’t think.
Pulp feminist content in Lovecraft’s time is tricky…but Lovecraft is definitely a writer who was aware of and influenced by non-pulp work. If he read Poe, it seems like he could have read say Elizabeth Browning, or for that matter Virginia Woolf — or Mary Shelley, who had a pretty interesting take on gender politics..
I think non-sexist genre work has maybe become somewhat more prevalent, but not enough to really be anything to boast about.
I like this essay because it inspired many thoughts, even though I don’t agree with some of the analysis.
I question that in Dick’s story “There’s no apocalyptic endgame” and “Whedon’s solution to the whole thing is, bizarrely, a sort of anti-science deus ex machine”.
Dick’s story ends by revealing Quail is the most important person on earth: met aliens who were going to invade the earth and persuaded them not to by “pious virtue” and is keeping the planet safe just by being alive. Which is both an apocalyptic endgame and “deus ex machine” – not quite anti-science but explicitly Christian subtext that evolved into overt text by the time of his mental break in 1974 (Dick’s interest in the messianic had always been there).
It’s typical of Dick’s early work which was more likely to have upbeat endings and almost always hinged on twists (I think the twist story is a cross-genre sub-genre rooted in writers like O’Henry & Poe).
I’d also argue the primary reason “We Can Remember” is known is Total Recall – which is a direct and open influence on Dollhouse, both in premise and visual design. I’m not saying Whedon hasn’t read PKD, but his source material and influences seem primarily film, TV and comic books (one could probably also compare Dial H for Hero and Dollhouse).