The Word-Pocalypse: Joss Whedon's Dollhouse and Dystopian Language

The destabilization of simple pronouns is one of the first steps towards a greater breakdown of identity language, and in turn destabilization of identity itself. In his essay “Identity” Joseph writes that, “Researchers have been analyzing how people's choice of languages, and ways of speaking do not simply reflect who they are, but make them who they are – or more precisely, allow them to make themselves.” (9). As pronouns lose their ability to accurately describe the character in Dollhouse they reflect the new and unstable modes of identity the Actives must perform. Because identity language is not sufficient to describe these new modes of identity, people cannot use it to define or “make” concrete identities.

The destabilization of identity language leads to a destabilization of identity, leaving bodies vulnerable to the imposition of outside imprints. In “Epitaph One” Lawrence Dominic remarks that he saw a grown man acting as though he was a young girl and he could not determine if the man had been imprinted with a different personality or had seen an opportunity to embody whatever identify he wanted (1.13). For this man the destabilization of gendered language and the larger weakening of identity language have created an environment where societal conventions of sex and gender have been undermined, that allows him greater freedom to perform his identity. However, the threat in undermining identity language is that it becomes more difficult to distinguish and preserve individual identities. While this man could be freely acting out his chosen identity, it could also be that this man's identity has become so weak and ill-defined that it is subject to influence from roving digital imprints and that his true identity has been forcibly suppressed.

The Word-Pocalypse

“I'm the one who brought about the thought-pocalypse” - ("The Hollow Men" 2.12)

As Dollhouse approaches the dystopic future of “Epitaph One” (1.13) and “Epitaph Two: The Return” (2.13) the elements of language discussed in the previous sections contribute to the formation of a dystopic language, a language that is both a symptom and a contributing producer of a dystopian world. The dystopia of “Epitaph One” and “Epitaph Two” is characterized by a massive loss of language in the form of a “word-pocalypse,” which represents the relationship language has to creating the world as discussed in the previous section on word meaning. The massive language loss of the “word-pocalypse” is paired with a massive loss of independent thought. Loss of language also correlates to loss of information bringing in David Harrison's study about how language holds information. The dumbshows and butchers that populate Dollhouse's dystopia are victims of language, people who have been manipulated by the same kind of programming represented in the repetition section taken to further extremes of suppression and manipulation. Manipulation of the actives through language contributes to the “word-pocalypse” by making them passive so they cannot object to the further advances in technology or the use of their own bodies. Without objecting voices the technology runs rampant creating a dystopia. As language is used to manipulate the Actives and is manipulated itself, it becomes less stable, and so does the world it is creating. In order to survive the dystopia the characters of Dollhouse must gain control over their identities by mastering language. Ultimately the importance of language is undercut by “Epitaph Two” (2.13), which moves the importance placed on language development back onto technology, subverting expectations for language-based resistance to the dystopia.

“Epitaph One” (1.13) and “Epitaph Two: The Return” (2.13), set roughly ten years beyond the present depicted in the other Dollhouse episodes, present the end result of the Dollhouse's imprinting technology. “Epitaph One” begins in the ruins of Los Angeles where a small group of “Actuals” (humans that have not yet been affected by Dollhouse technology) travels through a world where disembodied imprints hijack bodies through broadcast signals. The Actuals share their world with placid mindless bodies without personalities referred to as “dumbshows,” and equally mindless but aggressively violent and destructive “butchers.” Topher calls the event that throws the series world into dystopia the “thought-pocalypse,” an apocalyptic abuse of imprinting technology based on Topher's own idea for wireless wipes, but I feel that the term “word-pocalypse” would be more accurate to describe a world-ending event characterized by a mass destruction of language capability.

The apocalypse depicted in “Epitaph One” embodies the fear of massive loss of language, a fear which has particular significance to those who make their living from controlling language, including writers and linguists. A number of linguistic theorists have proposed that all mental processes are predicated on language, and a loss of language ability would therefore damage the ability to think. Linguistic determinism, “the idea that the language people speak controls how they think,” (Pinker 124) is a recurring theme in linguistic study. Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf explored linguistic determinism in the form of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which posited that thoughts and behavior are determined (or at least influenced) by language. In his essay “The Status of Linguistics as Science” Whorf theorizes that our “social reality” can only be conveyed by the, “particular language that has become the medium of expression” (209) in local society. In simple terms, “the Whorfian Thesis is that a people's 'view of the world' is shaped by the language that they speak; language determines reality, or what is regarded as reality among its speakers” (Barnes 144). As language describes the world, categorizing and organizing it, we manufacture a reality, “unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group” (Sapir 209). The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis was a staple of language courses from its invention in 1929 until the early 1970s; “by which time it had penetrated the popular consciousness as well.” (Pinker 124). While this hypothesis has been dismissed by well regarded linguists like Noam Chomsky and Ray Jackendoff (whose theory of conceptual semantics is in direct opposition to linguistic determinism) a recent revival called “neo-Whorfianism” (124) is evidence of the theory’s undeniable influence on popular thought. The process described by Sapir-Whorf is circular: by describing reality through language we create reality, and that reality is then described by language creating a new reality, and so on. In her study of speculative linguistics Myra Barnes remarks that, “all dystopian languages technically belong to Whorf” (Barnes 150). The relationship between the manipulation of language and the dystopian future in Dollhouse shows a similar circular pattern as Whorf's hypothesis; as language is manipulated, destabilized, and restricted by technology the reality of the characters is manipulated, destabilized, and controlled, leading to a further destabilization of language. While the “word-pocalypse” is the result of technological attacks, it is the controlling language used to silence opposing voices that allows the technology to evolve unchecked. The language of Dollhouse is a participant in the creation of the dystopian reality.

While not Whorfian in its conclusions, David Harrison’s research on dying languages carries some similar implications about the relationship between language and thought. As a field linguist Harrison researches and records languages that have extremely limited numbers of remaining speakers. He theorizes that when a language “dies,” or stops being spoken, information specific to that language is irretrievably lost. In his book When Languages Die, Harrison writes, “As languages rapidly vanish into the vortex of cultural assimilation, linguists justifiably fear they will never see the full range of complexity and structures human minds can produce.” (206). Information stored in spoken language, from grammatical structures to untranslatable concepts and descriptors, does not survive its speakers unless it is recorded. When there are no longer any speakers of a language that language dies and whatever information it carried is lost. If Harrison’s theories are applied to a dystopian event like the “word-pocalypse” the amount of information lost to the general public would be staggering. There is no way of knowing if in the world created for “Epitaph One” and “Epitaph Two” any languages have been completely destroyed but the number of humans still able to speak English has been so severely decreased that other more local languages are likely to have been wiped out entirely. Like Dollhouse's Echo, Harrison seeks the acquisition and preservation of language. Though he preserves languages faced with destabilization in the wake of globalization, the rapid spread of “big” languages (English, Russian, Mandarin) can be compared to the blanket signals that create the dumbshows and butchers. Both reprogram the way in which people think, though in the case of Dollhouse the reprogramming is literal.

The origins of “dumbshows” and “butchers” can be found early in the first season of Dollhouse. The severely limited language of the Actives when they are in their doll-state is taken to the extreme in the form of the dumbshows, who are literally incapable of speech and equally incapable of independent thought. Dumbshows are victims of limited language capacity, similar to the Actives in the Doll-state. When Sierra is assaulted in the Doll-state by her handler her limited language gives her no way to address her rape (“Man on the Street” 1.06). The phrases that the Actives are equipped with, the call-and-response and repeated phrases as well as the extremely basic forms of interactive dialogue, do not give Sierra the ability to adequately protest her assault or even give voice to her pain. Sierra's situation foreshadows the dumbshows as extreme versions of the Doll-state whose capacity for language is so limited as to be nonexistent. The vulnerability of the dumbshows is parallel to Sierra's vulnerability because they too have no voice and no agency in their situation, though they are presumably unaware of it. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the aggressively violent butchers, people programmed only to kill and destroy. First targeting those who are not also butchers and then turning on one another, butchers cannot stop until there is nothing left to destroy. November's wordless attack on Heron in “Man on the Street” (1.06) is the first incarnation of the rage-filled attackers in the Epitaphs. When she is triggered and November's “sleeper” persona is activated she stops speaking and becomes a mindless killing machine until she is released, and her return to humanity is demonstrated by her reacquisition of language. As extreme forms of Sierra, November, and the other Actives, the dumbshows and butchers can be recognized as logical extensions of the products of the Dollhouse. Dumbshows resemble Actives in the Doll-state, but their level of suppression is much greater. They are left without any ability to speak, and are therefore denied even the most basic form of expression granted the Actives. Referencing Sapir-Whorf theory, Dollhouse implies that in addition to their loss of language dumbshows have also lost any ability to think, linking the ability to produce language and the ability to produce thought. Butchers are similarly speechless and potentially devoid of thought, but have also been programmed to pursue unthinking violence and destruction. The unquestioning nature of this state also bears commonalities with the manipulation of trust in the Dollhouse, as both butchers and Actives give up individual thought in order to follow directives and dumbshows are helpless without outside manipulation.

Repression of the Actives ability to use language to voice individual thoughts and feelings or assert themselves in any way deprives them of what Huxley terms in Brave New World, “the right to be unhappy” (240). By limiting their language the Actives are less able to dissent, to express unhappiness about how they have been manipulated by the actions of the Dollhouse. Manipulation of their language faculties makes the Actives passive characters, and it is their passivity that allows for the Rossum Corporation to create even more extreme forms of controlling technology and to reduce language capacity even further. The end result of the technology, the creation of the dumbshows and butchers, happens because no one has the right to be unhappy and to protest their creation in the early stages. Those who do oppose the Dollhouse are suppressed; made into Actives like Echo or handlers like Paul. By the time the technology is introduced into the general population it is too late to curb the coming dystopia.

Because dystopian societies are so dependent on the suppression of language for their existence it is only appropriate that they may also be combated through language. In Brave New World “Huxley's society fears the printed word as perhaps the only force that can subvert years of wordless conditioning, even prenatal conditioning” (Sisk 52). Any threats to the establishment are dealt with by “appropriating words, stripping them of genuine meaning, and using them to further extend State conditioning of its citizens,” (52). Despite deadly government retaliation in Fahrenheit 451 people continue to conceal books in their homes, knowing that the mastery of language they represent becomes more important when language is restricted. Language is a threat to both sides; it is a weapon through which dystopian oppressors may seize and maintain power, but at the same time “language also serves as the primary tool by which the oppressed characters in these fictions resist and rebel” (57). The gradual increase of language awareness and subsequent language ability is the key factor in the development of the Actives' identities and the best hope of combating the vision of the future shown in the first “Epitaph”.

Echo's quest to master language, first shown in her use of the Doll phrases, is a quest that is designed to prepare her to survive the “word-pocalypse.” Echo develops a use of language based on the foundation of the simple repetitious call-and-response and Doll phrases she is equipped with, and as her control over language expands she begins to gain power over her circumstances. Instances, like in “A Spy in the House of Love” when Echo asks to be imprinted, are moments where she changes her reality through language. By employing language to request an imprint Echo makes the imprinting process a matter of her choice and takes control of her interaction with the technology. As she enters the second season Echo has learned to manipulate words, lying to Boyd, reading books, and even writing out her memories on the ceiling of her sleeping pod (2.04 “Belonging”). By “Meet Jane Doe” (2.07) Echo has completely mastered the ability to use language and as a result has emerged a fully realized identity. What the viewer roots for in the character of Echo is her anamnesis, literally her “loss of forgetfulness,” achieved by regaining the language ability she possessed as Caroline and lost when she became Echo. As she reacquires language and masters the ability to manipulate it, Echo gains the agency to affect her reality denied to her as an Active. Echo represents hope in the dystopia by demonstrating how mastering language may be used to fight manipulation by dystopian control in order to retain freedom and identity.