Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Reactions)

[out_there]

I'm going to say outright that I loved it a lot. It was funny, it was entertaining, it was involving and the music is incredibly singable (and some of it, like "With My Freeze Ray" stuck in my head for days and got sung in the shower). For a 45 minute show, it had interesting characters that caused an emotional connection, and I wanted to jot down some thoughts about it. I'm going to go by character, since that's the easiest way for me to organise this.

First we have Captain Hammer. Wonderfully smug and sleazy, yet he's a hero that has mass adoration and support from those around him. He supports the status quo, the establishment, and is clearly a very privileged member of society. He has what he has from luck, from birth and doesn't seem to need to work for it ("I never go to the gym. I'm naturally like this.") or have overcome any personal distress to gain his position. He has the "privilege" of being able to ignore troubles that bother other people -- such as the homeless -- and is a selfish, ego-centric, socially-supported jerk. He really is a tool. His attitude towards Penny is basically wanting something that other people value, that will look good on his arm; he only seems to care about her in relation to how it effects him.

And yet, he does good. For the wrong reasons of trying to "win" Penny like a prize, he convinces the Mayor to help the homeless. For the sake of ego and supporting the current system, he fights villains and tries to protect and save people. You can argue that it's all about self-promotion -- all about ego, sex and Penny -- but he does help her cause and seem to learn about the struggles of others. "Everyone's a Hero" shows he's highly patronising, insulting and his basic belief is that anyone half capable can succeed (but he's still better than everyone else), but it suggests a distant possibility for growth and helping others.

Despite the fact that he's introduced as little more than a smug bully, he does help others. Until the moment when it personally costs him something. While it's easy and minimal effort, Captain Hammer is a hero; once it hurts, once he's vulnerable, once he has to overcome the risk to himself and the potential for pain and humiliation, he's running for the door. (He's not a nice, liked or admirable figure but NF plays it beautifully for laughs and cringes.)

Opposed to the jock-bully stereotype of Captain Hammer, we have the geek stereotype of Dr Horrible. He's the sympathetic POV character, the one that many Joss Whedon fans can recognise, and relate to just a little. He seems sweet, smart and caring; he's aware of problems within society and wants to improve things for everyone... and then we get to know him. He's not a nice guy, he's a "Nice Guy". He's one of those jerks who believes that he's nice and respects women, he's the type to bitch about Penny not seeing Captain Hammer's true nature while simultaneously planning to buy her love (with Australia, which is a nice country as far as love tokens go, but still). He's the type to complain about the flaws in the system, to rationalise that he's interested in fixing things, that he sees the bigger picture, while he's just as ego-driven as Captain Hammer.

Dr Horrible feels marginalised and victimised, and responds by searching for acceptance from the Evil League of Evil and revenge against Captain Hammer's perceived unfair assaults. I find it interesting because I get it. I get why people who feel like somewhat outsiders have the need to connect and reinforce their values (and anyone shaking their heads at me, remember you're on LiveJournal and reading the LJ of a fan. If that isn't a direct example of the way that people connect to form supportive communities and struggle for acceptance and validation from peers, I don't know what is), but the desire to find validation doesn't make up for the choices that Dr Horrible makes.

NPH plays the role wonderfully, making the guy appear lovable while he's intentionally choosing *evil* as a career path. As much as Captain Hammer is a doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, Dr Horrible claims to be doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. The trouble is... the reasons aren't purely right. His attempt to kill Captain Hammer is motivated by revenge for past slights, by desire for Penny and to gain the ELE's approval. Social change is a rationalisation, but by the last montages Dr Horrible is established in the ELE and social change is... nowhere to be seen. There's a nice visual change from the scientific, almost virginal white lab coat to the passionate, blood-invoking red; there's the party scene full of people and alcohol; there's the very last shot of Billy looking far more normal on his blog than we've ever seen before (in every other shot, he's in the Dr Horrible outfit). But there's no sign that any of Billy's rhetoric was honest, that the citizens themselves will have life any better with the ELE in charge than the Mayor.

It's interesting how Captain Hammer and Dr Horrible switch roles by the end of the piece. Captain Hammer starts as the one defending the ruling power structure, with someone to answer to -- the Mayor -- and enough fame to have his own fanclub, while Dr Horrible is unknown, alone, complaining about the situation and relatively powerless. By the end of Act III, the power has shifted to the ELE, Dr Horrible is one of its members (most likely needing to report to Bad Horse), has taken over the fanclub and the media, and is supporting a new power structure but not actually ruling anything. (If he'd done it off his own back, without the ELE, he might have ended the piece ruling the world, as he'd planned. But his search for group acceptance led to him losing that individual power.) Captain Hammer, on the other hand, is shown in therapy without his confidence or popularity, effectively taking the "outsider" status that Dr Horrible first had.

I have to say that one of the worst things about Dr Horrible is his inability to learn. Captain Hammer at least learns about the homeless problem from Penny (or says he does). Dr Horrible, on the other hand, makes the same mistake of choosing evil deeds over getting to know Penny. The first time, he follows his own plans and it results in him losing Penny to Captain Hammer (understandable given that Billy barely seemed interested in saying goodbye to her). The second time, he follows his plan to kill Captain Hammer and loses Penny permanently.

This is where the big issue comes up. We're very used to Joss Whedon having a reasonable grasp of female characters and writing them well, yet Penny gets overshadowed by both males. I liked Penny. I liked her self-possessed ways, I liked the glimpses we saw of someone who'd responded to problems in her life by finding something bigger to focus on, other people to help, and she had some funny lines (especially in regards to being able to perfectly visualise getting fired now). But in a story about larger-than-life figures -- heroes and villains -- the mature, realistic character can seem boring in comparison. She's not taking over the world, she's not a glory hound looking for press and mass adoration, she's just someone getting on with her life, trying to make the best of the situation and doing what she can.

Because she's quiet, because her opinions are shared in a gentle way, it's easy for both guys to project their desires onto her. Captain Hammer wants her for sex and because Dr Horrible wants her. Dr Horrible wants her because he's watched her from afar and decided that she's his dream girl (because he "loves her hair", not because he has any idea of who she is as a person). Neither of them particularly cares about getting to know Penny except as a way of claiming her for themselves. She's a prize, something to be fought for and won, not a person to get to know and be allowed to make her own decisions.

I get why there'd be backlash because the only female character gets treated as a trophy and then killed, but for what it's worth, I'm taking it as a sign that both of the guys are jerks (privileged, ego-driven, socially-acceptable, unthinking jerkhood isn't any *better* than underdog, ego-driven, "Nice Guy", self-rationalising jerkhood). The show itself doesn't portray Penny as brainless or skin-deep; in fact, it's the opposite: she's the most mature character of the three, the only one that's faced adversity and risen to the challenge, instead of running away (Captain Hammer) or wanting revenge (Dr Horrible). She's the only admirable one, who's struggled through disappointment, found a place and reached out to help others.

I don't think it's an inherently anti-female show. I think it's a show about this really interesting woman and the two jerks that are interested in her. She's way too good for either of them and while I would have loved for her to make her own decision on both of them (I think her leaving during Captain Hammer's speech was the start of her making a decision to follow her instincts and leave Captain Hammer to his fanclub), I think the timing issues of a 45 minute show wouldn't have made it work. If it was a series, if it was about Penny (instead of about Dr Horrible), you might have been able to show Penny shifting from someone who thought the best of both guys to someone who realised that she was worth more than that. I don't think that kind of turnaround could fit into a 13 minute last act without taking the entire focus of the story from Dr Horrible.

There's two other drawbacks to having the ending change. First is that part of Dr Horrible's jerkhood is the victim mentality. The way that he genuinely sees himself as the underdog, the one who's right and doing best for all (when, in fact, he's as driven by ego and approval as Captain Hammer). It would annoy me far more for Penny to dump both of them and then have our POV character turn around and decide that she'd been a waste of his time all along (because a "Nice Guy" like Dr Horrible? Would totally go around blaming Penny and painting her as worthless and superficial because she didn't appreciate him, and that hits more buttons than her death does).

The second is that this is the superhero/supervillain genre. This type of back story -- death of a loved one -- is typical in comics for both the good and the bad guys. The only difference here is that it's being tongue-in-cheek way, in a way that's silly and poking fun at the genre as much as it's having fun playing with the overblown props and fake-science. It's an undeserved death that both the hero and villain can blame on each other, and it's a death that catches the audience by surprise. Part of me likes that it ends with this emotional punch, while you're still kind of supporting Dr Horrible. And then you go away and think it over, and realise both guys were jerks.

So, hmmm, I rather like how it stands. Which is not to say that I wouldn't have loved an extra 15 minutes (I would) or that I'm not looking forward to getting the DVD and listening to the commentary (I am). I loved singing along to the songs, I found a lot of the lines funny and the characters realistically interesting as personalities (flawed, but engaging). YMMV but for what it's worth, I enjoyed it.