With my freeze ray I will stop ...

... having Dr. Horrible stuck in my head - as it has been for the past week ... not that this is an altogether bad thing.

Right, so after watching Dr. Horrible in class - and then going home and watching it once on YouTube, then again with my boyfriend, and again with my Mom and Dad (no wonder I can't get the songs to go away), I have some thoughts on the show. I also want to share some points my mother made after watching Dr. Horrible as well (she may not be an English nerd, but she is a sci-fi nerd, and she got a kick out of the blog, too.)

So, some thoughts on symbolism first:

- After watching the first time, I noticed something significant about Dr. Horrible's outfit. The entire show, he's wearing solid white: white boots, white lab coat thingie, white pants, white rubbery gloves - until the very end. After Penny died, he looses the pure white (double meaning intentional) garb for black and red - perhaps a symbol of the loss of his innocence? I didn't see him as an actual evil character at all, though; sure, he was playing at evil, but it's sorta like kids who pretend to be a goth or a freak or something to be accepted by people they think they want to receive approval from.

- After the second time viewing, I noticed something that happens in the laundromat during the first song. After Billy's line "makes me feel ... what's the phrase," a series of dryer doors open, creating a tunnel-effect through which we see Billy, and the last door makes a "frame" of sorts for Penny's character. We are removed from her, as Billy is removed from her, and her profile appears picturesque through the created frame of the dryer door. I can't help but wonder if there's some deeper significance to this?

And now some general observations about the Sing-Along:

- I told my mother about the discussion we had in class about Penny's character, and she shrugged at it, much as I did. Sure, it can be construed that way, but she commented that "[Dr. Horrible] has a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor, like Buckaroo Bonzai and the old sci-fi B-movies. There's a lot of 'I'm doing everything very seriously, but everything I'm doing is ridiculous.'" I cannot help but agree - some parts of the blog are fantastically ridiculous, part of the appeal for me - and it made me rethink how I view the blog overall.

- About an hour later, Mom came back and told me that it reminded her of something else: a incident that happened right after D&D came out and was still big. Back in the late '80s (I think), a group of kids took D&D too seriously, found some catacombs or something to act out their RPG in, and someone got hurt - died, actually. "That's what I think happened to Dr. Horrible," Mom continued, "he was playing a game, and someone got hurt, so he lost his innocence and didn't want to play anymore. At the end of the blog when he says he doesn't feel anything is when he decided to stop playing - he's no longer Dr. Horrible, just Billy." Mom's are great, aren't they? This one really made me think, too. I could easily see the blog being either a dream sequence that ended like a nightmare or a group of friends playing around until someone got hurt.

- Remember my paper about BtVS, the one where I wrote about how the music can have meaning? Well, I think this entire blog is similar to that musical episode of BtVS, where the upbeat songs have more to them than pleasantries that would normally come to mind and the darker songs have more light and depth to them than we intially assign them. For instance, Billy/Horrible's song in Act III, after meeting Hammer in the laundromat, where he sings "Penny will see the evil me, not a joke ... not a failure" - he considers evil something that will be taken seriously, be considered as a success where all else has failed. But there's more too it than that, no? What are the implications of phrasing that the way he did, beyond the surface point?

- And finally, Penny. She is more than a "weak female character." I think she is a symbol, as I mentioned in my comment to Josh's post, of the social acceptance that both Hammer and Horrible crave and try to receive continually throughout the blog. "Penny will see the evil me, not a joke ... not a failure" is one of the prime examples of Horrible's quest for her approval. If he does something serious and successful enough, she'll approve of him. "The only danger is of you loving me to death" that Hammer sings when he comandeers Horrible's "A Man's Gotta Do" song is his own quest for social approval. He has to feel loved and accepted and approved of by society, and he tries to achieve that by saving lives (albeit in a jerk-ish fashion - I mean, c'mon, he shoved Penny into the trash!) and having an inflated self-impression.

Ooh, my, I've had a lot to say about this one ... I really liked Dr. Horrible - can you tell? I have already hooked three new people onto the blog that will watch it multiple times. There's so much going on, and so many layers here, that you just have to watch it more than once to catch everything.

By the way, thinking of that, did anyone else notice that Jeb Whedon is actually in the blog? He's part of the bad horse chorus (top left corner), and the gal (can't remember her name) that also worked on the music is in the groupie chorus that's obsessed with Hammer (and ends up becoming obsessed with Horrible by the end - so what does that say about the groupies, since they changed sides? - an excellent point told to me by my boyfriend) and shows up in the second act. Anyway, hopefully some of the above is some food for thought!