(warning for vague allusions of sexual abuse, as it appears on Dollhouse)
My recent Dollhouse rewatch has made me think of this short meta of mine (about male lead characters that went through sexual abuse and how the writing around them treated it/them) in the context of the show. And I think that, like John Murphy in The 100, Tony/Victor is another case that deserves its own analysis for diverging from the rest.
Like Murphy, he’s not the *actual* male lead, but does get ahead of him in the Romantic Hero department by miles (MILES I SAID! XD); they get to have an uplifting, loving, narratively potent relationship, which sadly it's something hard for writers to sustain with an abused male character, because they started to think LESS of him.
To be honest, I think not being the male lead worked in his favour in this case (and maybe in Murphy’s too): there seems to be very little that condems a male lead faster than a compromised agency and the very fact that they’re willing to put him through it in the first place; sexual abuse is one of the most visceral examples of such, one of the most impactful for an audience to see on-screen. It affects how the characters are perceived by the them and even by the writers, in ways that display classic victim blaming attitudes (add, in this case, the absolutely fucked up ideas about masculinity that plague our society, fiction included).
It’s as if being the male lead would put extra pressure to always be “ON”, so to speak. To be victorious, if not all the time, at least when it counts, ultimately. This is actually why at the end of the day, though I’m not interested in Dollhouse actual leads, I’m fine with how the show is structured: I don’t think a character like Tony/Victor could’ve been sustained as a protagonist on the long run, in between the loss of agency and the multiple personalities (leads also work better if they are Fully And Uniquely Themselves At All Times. Any “betrayal” of their core self --who or what they prioritize, brainwashing, possessions and body-snatching, dopplegangers etc.-- is an ominous sign); not as he was, which is how I love him.
Ironically, I think the multiple personalities also worked in his favour. They allow certain degree of separation and a rationalization of the facts: in a way, what happened didn’t happen to Tony; it didn’t even really happen to Victor, but to his imprinted identities. Specifically, in terms of what the audience sees on-screen, it happens to “Roger” (whose framing I think helps matters too. Like the pre-kiss sword fight where he acts as the “aggressor”; an absolute lie, purposely so, but visuals are no small thing in these cases IMO)... through whom Tony’s real self, thanks to his undying love for Priya, eventually emerges to successfully exercise the very agency he was robbed from.
Excuse me, I made myself emotional ;__;
(I also have Thoughts(TM) on how different Priya/Sierra’s abuse is framed wrt the other female Dolls, especially Echo’s, but that’s for another post)
