Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity in American Popular Culture

Team America  meets feminism in this wild, demented romp through contemporary gender politics is how Nicole Brending advertises her full-length debut. And indeed, her Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity from American Popular Culture is a feminist bomb hidden inside the light-hearted, humorous form of a puppet animation, a satire on American pop culture and misogyny-based mechanisms of producing female stars and the clichés of documentary cinema. The whole is a parody of the sad, hypocritical biopics of Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston, in which talking heads (including a record producer, an obsessive journalist, a pseudo-friend, an unbalanced mother, psycho-fans, a PR agent who deals in gossip, a drunken ex-boyfriend and, of course, a therapist) reconstruct the career path and the fall of a certain Junie Spoons, appropriating every aspect of her life and, above all, her body. The film, which also takes a look at the stories of Patty Hearst, Janet Jackson and Marilyn Monroe (as well as the director's experience), breaks with political correctness in a manner that is in equal parts funny and shocking. But if you like South Park, you'll feel right at home in  Dollhouse.