The beginning to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog can basically be summed up as it is in the introduction. The mad scientist Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is a “supervillain” who aspires to enter the Evil League of Evil, the penultimate evil organization, led by a villain known as Bad Horse, the Thoroughbred of Sin, and to take over the world. His reasoning for this, of course, is that, as he says, “The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.” He talks about his life and plans on his internet video journal, from which the musical gets its name. On this blog, he discusses the problems he has with his nemesis, Captain Hammer (played by Nathan Fillion), and a girl named Penny (Felicia Day) to whom he can’t seem to bring himself to talk.
One of his plans involves building a freeze ray, which, as Dr. Horrible is certain to make clear, is “not a death ray or an ice beam” but instead stops time. To build this contraption, he first needs to steal a shipment of “Wonderflonium” that is being moved in a courier van. Thinking that this heist will for sure get him into the Evil League of Evil, he goes undercover in his secret identity (just a normal, timid guy named Billy) and uses a remote controller to carjack the van. When his plan seems to work and he is about to steal the Wonderflonium, suddenly, from out of nowhere, Captain Hammer jumps on top of the van and crushes the device controlling it. This causes the van to swerve out of control and head straight toward Penny, who had only just introduced herself to Billy. Captain Hammer jumps in to push Penny out of the way, just as Dr. Horrible manages to stop the van remotely. This has the unfortunate side effect of Penny falling in love with Captain Hammer, who completely ignores Dr. Horrible as he runs off with the Wonderflonium. This then kicks off the rest of the musical. In the two acts that follow, Billy tries to win over Penny and vows to defeat Captain Hammer as Dr. Horrible.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog began during the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America Strike. Director Joss Whedon, his brothers Zack and Jed, and Jed’s fiancée Maurissa Tancharoen, all screenwriters, had their studio projects shut down because of the strike. So they decided, as Tancharoen relates, to “get together and write something, whether . . . for $100 or whatever it [would turn] into” (quoted in Los Angeles Times). They worked independent of any studios, had a budget in the low hundred thousands, and created a 42-minute short film and released it online for absolutely no profit.
Would a silly, small production released on the internet actually become popular? The answer is a resounding yes. According to the Los Angeles Times blogs, in less than a week of the show’s three-part release, “so many people were clamoring to watch the show that its web site crashed completely, sending the makers scrambling to find more bandwidth” (Los Angeles Times). The demand for this short film was so intense that the people who made it were completely unprepared to handle the web traffic that it drew. Part of the reason for its popularity is, of course, the renown of Joss Whedon, who also created the cult classic television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. However, Whedon himself attributes the success to another factor, saying, “[There] is a modern societal truth about the kind of guy who needs to tell the world his troubles and show off his talents” (quoted in Los Angeles Times). This is also true. Dr. Horrible, supervillain though he may be, is an extremely relatable character. Who hasn’t wanted to talk to that special someone but just couldn’t, felt like they deserved something they couldn’t get, or aspired for greatness in their field and wanted to share these things with the world?
However, Dr. Horrible is not just popular for the sake of being popular, but actually has a fairly powerful impact. The film starts rather comically, with Dr. Horrible displaying the work he has done on perfecting his maniacal laugh, saying, “A lot of guys ignore the laugh, and that’s about standards.” It remains comical throughout, with slapstick, sight gags, and clever writing. However, at the end of the very last act, things take a very drastic turn. Dr. Horrible manages to trap Captain Hammer in his freeze ray at one of Hammer’s public appearances. Most of the people flee the room, but Penny, who was sitting by Captain Hammer at the time, hides behind some chairs in the room. Dr. Horrible aims his newly constructed death ray at Captain Hammer, but torn between his evil goals and his reluctance to kill, he hesitates, which gives just enough time for the Freeze Ray to lose power and Captain Hammer to punch him in the face. Dr. Horrible is sent careening through the room, and his death ray lands hard on the ground, causing it to malfunction. Captain Hammer picks it up and aims it at Dr. Horrible, who warns him against pulling the trigger. Ignoring the warning, Captain Hammer tries to fire it anyway, and it violently explodes, throwing Captain Hammer through the air and sending shrapnel flying in every direction. This causes Hammer to experience pain for the first time, and he runs screaming from the room. Dr. Horrible gets up from the floor, and looks around, thinking he won, until he sees a sight that makes all color drain from his face: Penny, who was still in the room, had been hit in the torso by some of the shrapnel and was now lying on the floor, dying. Dr. Horrible rushes to her side, where she recognizes him as Billy. In her delusional dying state, she feebly tries to reassure Billy that everything will be all right, her final words being, “Captain Hammer will save us.” These words completely shock Dr. Horrible to the core, and, emotionless, he sings a victory song to the tune of a funeral dirge. When he is given blame for her death and Captain Hammer’s defeat, suddenly everyone respects him and is afraid of him. He finally joins the Evil League of Evil, but at the cost of everything he truly ever wanted.
This tragic twist is what gives the film its power. Jonathan Bignell, in the book Media Semiotics, writes about the concept of film genre and its power to create expectations. Everything in a film – such as the stars, the setting, and the narrative structure – causes the audience to expect it to fit into a certain genre. However, according to Bignell, “it is . . . possible to position the film by raising generic expectations that will not be met, so that the film reacts against generic expectations by raising them in the first place” (Bignell 199). In the case of Dr. Horrible, we are shown for almost the entire film that it is a comedy. The writing, the bouncy musical styles used throughout, the casting (such as comedy star Neil Patrick Harris and notorious ham Nathan Fillion) – all of these create an atmosphere of humor and lightheartedness. We laugh at the ridiculousness of musical numbers popping up, sometimes from completely out of nowhere, we feel empathy for Billy’s hesitation to talk to Penny, and we laugh at the silly things Captain Hammer says. The audience expects this comedy to end the way all comedies do, with a happy ending. However, the moment we see Dr. Horrible’s expression change from cautious optimism from defeating Captain Hammer to absolute horror at seeing Penny lying wounded, we know that this film will not end happily at all. This is not so much a mood shift as it is a mood whiplash. This tragic ending to such a previously funny musical evokes quite an emotional response, one that keeps the viewers coming back for more.
This, then, is the reason why Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is such a success. But successful or not, it still is an important work. Some might write it off as silly nonsense. After all, one might reason, it’s a fourty-two-minute-long musical about superheroes that was released on the internet. Surely nothing could be serious about that. Certainly Mark Edmundson would not call it great writing. In his book Why Read?, Edmundson condemns America’s consumer culture and the current generation as “the progeny of two hundred available cable channels and omnipresent Blockbuster outlets. They grew up with their noses pressed against the window of that second spectral world that spins parallel to our own, the World Wide Web” (Edmundson 10). Edmundson goes on to say that in the internet, the current generation “met life at the second or third hand, peering eagerly, taking in the passing show, but staying remote, apparently untouched by it”(Edmundson 10). Edmundson views the internet and the expansion of media as the thing which causes complete and utter disconnect in today’s youth. It would seem to Edmundson that no good can come from the internet, and there is nothing in pop culture that can be held up as an example of important writing.
However, this is absolutely not the case. First off, the argument that nothing in pop culture is worth noticing is completely false. This is even the main point of Steven Johnson’s book Everything Bad is Good for You. In the introduction to this book, Johnson discusses many writers and essayists who have claimed just what Edmundson is claiming: that popular culture is thoughtless, morally bankrupt, and damaging to children and adults alike. However, Johnson argues, “[lost] in that account is the most interesting trend of all: that the popular culture has grown increasingly complex over the past few decades, exercising our minds in powerful new ways” (Johnson 13). Johnson views popular culture as changing in ways it never has before. With television shows with long, sprawling, complex narratives, such as The Sopranos or Lost, popular culture has found a medium of storytelling that allows for far more depth than an episodic sitcom or even a three-hour feature film. A film franchise such as Lord of the Rings told a complex story in a total of about nine hours for the theatrical versions. A television show such as Lost, which ran for six seasons with a total of 121 episodes, can tell a much deeper, fascinating, and intriguing story in the well over 80 hours of screen time it was allowed. But even outside of long sprawling narratives, the importance of popular culture also lies in the worldview it presents. While some may argue that today’s media exposes kids to violence and sex and dishonesty, Johnson would reply that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While it’s not the main point of his book, Johnson does go out of his way to point out that he is sympathetic to the argument that “[the] real world doesn’t come in nicely packaged public service announcements, and we’re better off with entertainment that reflects that fallen state with ethical ambiguity” (Johnson 14). And while certainly no one would call a musical about superheroes and supervillains “realistic” on the surface, it does present an interesting moral conundrum. Dr. Horrible seeks to be an evil mastermind, but his heart is not entirely in it. When Dr. Horrible makes the decision to kill Captain Hammer, it is these actions that lead to everything he truly wants being taken away from him. Does he triumph over Captain Hammer? Yes. Does he then fulfill his dream of being a renowned supervillain and joining the Evil League of Evil? Well, yes. But at what cost? Though he did not pull the trigger that caused the explosion that killed Penny, he is very much responsible for the death of the woman he loves. It is this moral quandary that makes the end of Dr. Horrible so poignant.
While the medium may be the Internet, while the budget may be small, and while the finished product may be a pure example of pop culture, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, despite its silly name, is a very important work in the millennial age. It may start out light and happy, but with its tragic twist and dark morals, it is a challenging film that at the same time remains one of the most enjoyable movies to watch again and again.
written 2010 by Dave Briggs, (c) 2011 all rights reserved
works cited:
Bignell, Jonathan. "Cinema." Media Semiotics: an Introduction. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. 155-78. Print.
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Dir. Joss Whedon. Perf. Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, and Simon Helberg. Mutant Enemy, Inc., 2008. DVD.
Edmundson, Mark. Why Read?. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004. 10. Print.
Johnson, Steven. "The Sleeper Curve." Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead, 2005. 1-14. Print.
"Joss Whedon's 'Dr. Horrible' Is a Site-crashing Success." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 15 July 2008. Web. 14 May 2010.
