Welcome to the Dollhouse

   by a MIM Comrade
   
   This movie is a revealing study of Amerikan adolescence, if not an
   entirely progressive statement about the oppression of children.
   
   The film takes place in a middle-class white suburb somewhere near New
   York City. The hero, Dawn, is in her first year of junior high school,
   and she is portrayed as completely oppressed - by her family (in which
   she is the third favorite out of three children), by her teachers (she
   gets in trouble when someone else cheats off her test), and by her
   peers (she is the acknowledged so-called ugliest girl in the school,
   and is constantly tormented by other students).
   
   But the most revealing part of the story is how these oppressive
   forces combine to pit young people against each other. They all go to
   the same fascist-type school, which cares not a wit for their real
   education, they all have the same obnoxious or abusive parents, and so
   on. And yet the perverse manipulations of the adults lead the kids to
   torment each other.
   
   In one scene, Dawn (known as Weinerdog, from her name Weiner) comes to
   the aid of a young boy who is being beaten up in the halls. He is
   charged with being a "faggot". When she comes to his aid, the abused
   boy tells her to stay away - he would rather take his beating than be
   associated with her. In the cafeteria, a bunch of other girls come up
   to Dawn and ask, "Um, we were wondering: Are you a lesbian?" (She is
   not.) Laughter all around. She denies it, but then the girl across the
   table stabs her in the back: "Yes she is, she just made a pass at me."
   
   Dawn's parents couldn't care less about her. She is sandwiched between
   her adorable little sister Missy, often seen prancing around the yard
   in her pink tutu, and her older brother Mark, who has plans to go to
   college in computer science. When Missy is abducted by a neighbor, who
   keeps her in the basement, videotaping her naked for a while, Dawn
   runs away to New York City to find her. After spending the day
   pounding the pavement and the night sleeping on the street, she calls
   home, and asks if her parents are upset.
   
   "Not really," says Mark. "They found Missy." Her mother can't talk to
   her because she's in the middle of a TV interview.
   
   Presumably to help solve these problems, Dawn wants a boyfriend. She
   dreams of the studly Steve Rodgers, who's in high school, but she ends
   up with Brandon, a white trash bully who starts out as her enemy. He
   pins her against the wall and tells her he'll rape her after school. A
   custodian interrupts them and the rape is off. But he tells her to
   show up the next day, and inexplicably, she does. With her at
   knife-point, they walk to the beat up old mattress he intends to use.
   But instead of carrying out their consensual rape, they get to
   talking, and end up in love.
   
   That this love is obviously a messed up combination of loneliness,
   alienation, eroticization of rape, and so on, is a progressive part of
   the film, ironically. Audiences may want her to get a more "normal"
   relationship, but in the context of the movie it's clear that the
   "healthy" relationships are all based on the same things as theirs,
   even if they are less disturbing. Their relationship is short lived
   but pivotal.
   
   The movie is most effective as a case study in alienation, shot in a
   fitting, low-budget realistic style. Youth from the oppressor nations
   are property, playthings for adults, and deposits for genocidal
   disinformation. When MIM says age is the principal contradiction
   within the white nation, we mean that young people such as Dawn and
   her peers are the best bets for revolutionary consciousness, partly
   because they are not yet dug in to their class, nation and gender
   positions of privilege, and partly because of the oppressive treatment
   they receive at the hands of adults. Welcome to the Doll House brings
   some of this contradiction to light.