Serenity Found

[purplecat]

Serenity Found is a set of essays on the Firefly TV series and the film Serenity edited by Jane Espenson. I found them a rather mixed bunch. My initial thoughts, after reading the first couple, were that the authors tended to rather over-state their case. I think Firefly was one of the best drama series of the past decade, however that doesn't mean I think it represented a quantum leap forward in either the insertion of social commentary into TV-SF or in the representation of women in genre shows.

However I was fascinated by a trio of the essays which, almost certainly unintentionally formed a dialogue with each other. Freedom in an Unfree World by P. Gardner Goldsmith interpreted Firefly and Serenity as a libertarian political tract, one in which the allegorical links to the American Civil War highlighted the South's position as one opposed to excessive government meddling. Mal Contents by Alex Bledsoe focused on the character of Malcolm Reynolds and explicitly rejected the idea that he is some kind of libertarian hero, stressing instead his teenage-like refusal to accept any authority over him, any criticism of his own authority or indeed any responsibility for others beyond those in his immediate vicinity. Bledsoe's theory is that it's only towards the end of Serenity that Mal is motivated by any kind of principles beyond self-absorption and knee-jerk rebellion. The Bonnie Brown Flag by Evelyn Vaughn examined directly the Civil War allegory and tried, though I'm unconvinced it succeeded, to address the erasure of the issue of slavery from the allegorical story. This highlighted one of the aspects of Goldsmith's essay that troubled me. In painting the South as heroic libertarian heroes, freedom fighters and underdogs and sidelining completely the issue of slavery it rather showed up, I felt, one of libertarianisms flaws - it's failure to account for the way the privileged tend to rise to the top in an unregulated environment and human-kind's unfortunate tendency to assume that people with superficial differences either do not count, or are happy with their lot. I find it hard to consider a side which was in no small part funded by slave-owning and motivated by a desire to protect the practice, even if it did not primarily consist of slave-owners, as suitable role-models for heroic freedom fighters and I doubt, somehow, that was Whedon's intention. It seems more likely that he found the cause of the South in the American Civil War a convenient allegory for Malcolm Reynolds' knee-jerk rebelliousness.

But, in the end, it has to be said I came away from the essays less happy with the Firefly stories than I went in. While I accept that slavery was far from the only issue involved in the American Civil War, I'm uncomfortable that the series can be read as a vindication of the South's position, that it provides a way for people to erase the issue of slavery from the conflict and, as a result, let's them view the Confederates as heroic freedom fighters and, essentially, the good guys. I also think libertarians should find themselves better heroes.


This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/28122.html.

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

It seems that the collection might say more about the perspective the writers have on American history than the series itself. Personally, I see Mal as comparable to those Americans sceptical about the merits of the US Constitution and who preferred their freedoms guaranteed by the Articles of Confederation; there is a school of historical writing to this day which regards the US Constitution as enshrining a coup against the people, though it appears that most of the population are not aware of it.

[purplecat]

Goldsmith certainly seemed be coming from a position in which he viewed the US government as a tyrannical oppressor whose power had been entrenched by the defeat of the South.

But this seems to be a reading in which Americans would be freer, better-off and happier had the South won which may be the case if you are white, but something like a third of the population of the South, at the time of the Civil War were slaves and I don't see that this libertarian ideal would have done much for them.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

This is an awfully complex debate. I don't know what I think about it... Reading about the Civil War left me feeling morally quite confused about the whole situation. Obviously slavery is wrong, but the North is quite repulsive in parts too.

I think... I don't think that writing sci fi that uses the Confederacy as very partial inspiration, without slavery, is wrong. Writing historical or 'what if' fiction without it would be, but Firefly is not that.

American history is often very readable, I have found : they don't seem to have the English historian's belief that Short Easy Sentences Are Wrong.

[purplecat]

I didn't have a problem with the use of the Civil War as a partial allegory until, I guess, I read the essay which seemed to say `Hey look! the South were right all along', followed by the one that basically pointed out that slavery had been deliberately removed from the equation in order to make the South more clearly sympathetic, and then I got kind of uncomfortable with it.

I guess it's when the allegory gets turned back to rewrite history that I get uneasy.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

mmmmmm yes, but so *many* things have been changed / removed from the equation that sort of seems a bit forced to me.

The fact that other people will read their own views into it - I'm not sure that should affect how I see it myself. Isn't that the road down which protecting all photos of children because of what other people might read stuff into them, lies?

(I expressed that badly. Hope you can figure it out!)

[purplecat]

I think (hope) there's a difference between saying "it worries me that this can be used to justify that" and, I hope, pointing out ways that it maybe doesn't and in saying "this should not have been created" or "this should not be enjoyed" or even "this should not be seen".

My intention is in the spirit of the former not the latter.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I see your point. Thing is though that the South does have a lot that is appealing about it in some ways : it's not like Nazi Germany where you can fairly easily slot the whole 'side' neatly into the 'bad guys' niche.

If the South had not been, (or, had not believed that their society was) dependent economically on slavery, then what? I dunno. It is a question that is strangely appealing to ask, even though it does take a HUGE element out. For that matter, if the South had not seceded, then the war would not have happened, and nor would abolition, so presumably at some point, the South would have had to tackle the whole slavery issue internally... Hmmmm.

[purplecat]

I'm tempted to side-track this comment into asking how libertarianism interacts with real (or perceived) economic necessities where such necessities involve interfering with the liberty (in the case of the South) or these days the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

I'll just agree that I can see its an appealing question but it's important, I think, that when you make or encounter an allegory you recognise both what's makes it the same and what makes it different.

the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Not entirely sure it is a different Q : the economic equivalent to the Southern slave worker is the factory worker of the Northern USA and Britain, who had more freedom (but, the slavery apologists of the Confederacy would argue, less security, though I understand this claim is thought to be incorrect.)

Thinking about this issue, I wondered about other historical references in sci fi that leave out uncomfortable truths, and thought of Star Trek and the Frontier, which I *think* can be seen as a similar parallel, but doesn't cover the whole 'genocide' aspect so much (so far as I recall).

You'll have to talk to PP about libertarianism: he says I am an anarchist. (shakes head sadly)

Re: the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[purplecat]

I was thinking more of the plight of various modern Chinese factory workers and the like who build iPad's for us and the economic arguments that we need cheap luxury goods to drive growth in the economy (gross over-simplification I know). Western governments seem pretty toothless in the face of this kind of exploitation but I can't help feeling that a country run on libertarian lines would be even less well-equipped to exert any kind of pressure on anyone involved in that system of oppression.

I once did one of those political affiliation test things, which possibly PP linked to I'm not sure and it turned out that on economic questions I'm dead centre, but on most other political and social issues I'm somewhere to the left of Stalin...

Re: the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

But are the Chinese factory workers not the inheritors of the mantle of the British workers who worked long hours and suffered during the Industrial Revolution?

I think my take on that is that it's not good enough to rely on governments to regulate : the problems just move to somewhere else, and this will continue as long as the majority of people don't think that the suffering of others is their problem, but should be sorted out by some vague 'Them'.

Re: the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Probably also worth pointing out that Chinese factory workers in 2010 are better off than Chinese peasants during the Great Leap Forward.

Re: the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[purplecat]

Which makes libertarianism the correct approach to the problem?

Re: the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

China is probably too far removed from a properly free society to go straight to libertarianism and have it work well. You can't go from Mao to Hayek, you have to go via Deng first.

Re: the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[purplecat]

But regulation has improved conditions of factory workers in the UK, not to mention providing women and the unpropertied with the vote, protecting children and (to a limited extent) animals and a host of other measures which help to prevent exploitation and cruelty. I don't really feel that would have happened without some meddling on the part of government because, sadly, I don't think there is any point in the forseeable future where the majority of people can be persuaded to care a great deal about a wider group of humans than those they meet on a day-to-day basis.

Re: the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I agree with you : what I'm suggesting though is that there comes a point where the effective power of national government legislation is quite limited, and at that point, reliance on legislation becomes something of a double edged sword, because people expect government to handle everything and can't/won't take responsibility for the consequences of their own buying decisions.

Re: the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[purplecat]

That's pretty much what I think. I think you want to limit regulation to the minimum necessary to prevent exploitation and cruelty it's just I seem to part company with most libertarians of my acquaintance (and I'll exclude PP and sixgun here, since I don't think I've ever really discussed it with either of them) is were "minimum necessary" lies.

I think most would think it not the government's business at all what wages an employer chose to pay, what hours the employer chose to demand and what working conditions he chose maintain so long as the employer was up-front at the hiring stage on what those wages, hours and conditions were and I think that is far to open to abuse. Similarly most think it entirely a person's own business how they discipline their children and pets so long as no bones are broken.

Re: the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"I think most would think it not the government's business at all what wages an employer chose to pay, what hours the employer chose to demand and what working conditions he chose maintain so long as the employer was up-front at the hiring stage on what those wages, hours and conditions were and I think that is far to open to abuse. Similarly most think it entirely a person's own business how they discipline their children and pets so long as no bones are broken."


Most libertarians certainly, but all the major UK political parties think that the government should set a minimum hourly wage, a maximum hourly working week.

Re: the ability of people to lift themselves out of poverty but that's a different question.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

You're right that regulation improved conditions of factory workers back in Victorian times. Since then? I'm not so sure. Regulation also brought in enforced trade union recognition and all the problems associated with that in the 1970s and subsequently. There are people unemployed today because of the Minimum Wage Act. There are small businesses struggling because of the bureaucratic demands of the state. There are companies who cannot invest because of high corporate taxation.

Etc.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

The defeat of the Confederacy and the establishment of military rule by the union army in the south was a triumph for a particular interpretation of the United States Constitution; after the Civil War relations between the states, I think, lose the character of diplomatic relations between countries which they had often had. It's often said that it was only after the Civil War that the idea of the United States as a singular entity overcame that of it as a collective - "this United States" replacing "these United States" but I'm not sure how true that really is.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

It does seem to me to be rather odd to equate the American South with ideals of freedom. Admittedly, my knowledge is based on old memories of history A-level, and a recent reading of Gone With The Wind, so it could be entirely wrong. However, it certainly struck me that any ideals of liberty applied only to the rich land-owning male elite, and excluded loads of white people, as well as black slaves. "White trash" is a term that pre-dates the Civil War, after all - and I doubt your average "Southern belle", despite her wealth, had any real freedom to do whatever she wanted, in defiance of convention and social expectation.

[purplecat]

I'd not thought of that angle, but I agree with it as well.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Are there any historical groupings that you would associate with ideals of freedom? I'm trying to think of some now!

[purplecat]

I'm not sure at a national level, but I think you can see it at the grass-roots level in movements like Chartism and the Women's Suffrage movement - although even they are very much of their time and generally seek to exclude some other group from the freedoms they are fighting for...

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I've seen at most one episode of Firefly (I can't quite remember), so this may not be relevant at all, but liberal opinion in Europe in the 1860s was pretty much entirely on the side of the south. The Civil War was perceived as being entirely about state's rights vs the union, not slavery (to be fair, even Lincoln thought in these terms). IIRC, Gladstone even contemplated taking Britain to war on the side of the south, although there were other big political factors influencing this.

So, what I'm saying is, this may not be a pleasant attitude (and parrot_knight is right that it says as much about the authors of the essays as anything else), but it isn't an unprecedented one.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Our posts crossed, but what we say doesn't contradict.

[purplecat]

I'm not assuming it's unprecedented, but I don't like treating, even silly TV shows as things that exist in isolation without looking at, and accepting, the way they allow people to justify their own beliefs.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

British commentators seem to downplay the other roots of the American Civil War, and concentrate on the slavery aspect. Mind you, they aren't alone, as this famous scene from The Simpsons illustrates (Apu, the illegal immigrant convenience store owner with a PhD is applying for American citizenship):

Proctor: All right, here's your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?
Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter...
Proctor: Wait, wait - just say slavery.
Apu: Slavery it is, sir.


I haven't read that article, but I have seen similar libertarian arguments about Firefly. For example, Joss Whedon won a Prometheus Award (libertarian SF award) for Serenity. Surely the fact that there is no suggestion in Firefly that the Independents kept slaves means that it's ok to see them as heroes doesn't it? If you read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, you're clearly meant to see Aslan as a hero. But we know that Aslan is allegorically meant to be a christian allegory, and didn't nasty christians start the Crusades? Well maybe, but in the book, Aslan's followers don't do anything bad, and in Firefly, the Independents don't keep slaves. If they had, it would be a different matter.

Incidentally, I don't think libertarians tend to go for heroes. We're too free-thinking for that for the most part. It's the authoritarians and statists who go around wearing Che Guevara t-shirts, attending Nuremberg rallies and reading Polly Toynbee.

[purplecat]

All I can answer to this really is that the essays certainly seemed to consider Mal as, potentially, a libertarian hero and the South defeat of the South as a defeat for libertarianism. Even allowing the Civil War to have been caused by a complex set of factors, 30% of the population of the South were slaves and I don't see that the South's libertarian credentials were doing much for those people. If libertarianism wants to vindicate the South then it needs to explain how libertarianism would have brought freedom to the slaves or it needs to reject the South as some kind of last gasp libertarian cause.

I also love The Lion, the With and the Wardrobe but that doesn't stop me being uncomfortable with some of the ways it acts as a christian apologia, and some of the attitudes it tacitly vindicates by making its allegorically christian protagonists a good deal nicer and more sympathetic than many christians have en masse, historically, been. I also think, from a Christian perspective, it wraps up a number of attitudes which probably are not particularly Christian into the allegory and thus, to a certain extent, tars Christianity with the brush of some of Lewis' own prejudices.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I think we can probably agree that if you support slavery, then you ain't a libertarian. After all, libertarianism is all about freedom of the individual. Nowadays we tend to think of that in terms of freedom from the state, but in a society where it is possible to own other people, then libertarianism has to include freedom from other people.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

This sort of debate always makes me think of Thomas Jefferson...

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

...who wouldn't be a bad choice if you really wanted a libertarian hero.

"We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles & organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness."

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... was a lifelong slaveowner tho. Interesting example of 'do what I say, not what I do'.

[purplecat]

I really get the impression that a lot of slave owners genuinely considered slaves to be "not human" in some way shape or form. Ideals of liberty and freedom were simply not applicable where slaves were concerned. I don't think it was hypocrisy per se, or at least not on any conscious level. It's one of the things that always makes me a bit wary when people complain about political correctness (not that there aren't total loons doing completely daft stuff in the name of political correctness) - our ability not to appreciate that some people who are disadvantaged really don't deserve to be so and are not in a position to do something about it without intervention on the part of the advantaged.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Jefferson certainly did agonise on the subject and wrote about it at length. His slaves were mortgaged and he never earned enough to free them.

Of course, whether he would have done so in practice is another matter. :-/

He was a separatist racist, and believed in deportation to Africa, but that's a different matter.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

True, but nobody's perfect. You have to think in terms of the context of the time and place.

[grahamrobinson.livejournal.com]

Out of interest, how many westerns have you watched? I'm always intrigued how people's views of Firefly vary with their exposure to that genre.

And add another voice to the "slavery not being a big motivator for the civil war" choir.

Cheers,
Graham

[purplecat]

I've not seen many westerns since I was a child when they seemed to be on endlessly. I wouldn't at all describe myself as much of a fan of the genre.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought slavery was a big motivator for the civil war (EDIT: I simply don't know enough about the war to have an opinion). But I stick by my point that the libertarian position seems to be one in which makes it easier for people to assume that certain other groups of people don't count, or don't need assistance, and their championship of the South (if, indeed, they do champion it) rather reinforces that belief of mine.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

The argument was advanced at some point that a human being could only know liberty if they actually owned other human beings.

One anecdote that stuck with me from the Ken Burns television series The Civil War was the drop in morale in the Confederate Army when forces were compelled to remain together and in camp or on the field during the winter; for many, the principle that they were a militia who would go home to their families out of the campaigning season was at the heart of what they were fighting for.

[purplecat]

I've certainly read arguments put forth historically that slave were actually happier being owned than free. The ability for fundamentally good and decent people to self-delude depresses me no end, not to mention the skill with which those less fundamentally good and decent manipulate and perpetuate that self-delusion.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

I've seen that in a classical context, though I can't remember where or quite which classical state (maybe Athens? Though that might just be the "Athen was terribly enlightened about everything" trope kicking in). The argument was that the slaveowner had legal obligations with respect to his slaves and could be punished for failing them, but no-one had any obligations to a free man, and so the slaves ended up with a better standard of living. They were guaranteed a minimum amount of food, for example.

[lsellersfic.livejournal.com]

I think the 19th century arguments were along the lines of "they get stressed if they have to think for themselves poor dears" though I'd have to look it up. But I suspect similar arguments are deployed in any slave-owning society. Very few people like to think of themselves as oppressors so the temptation to view slavery as a mutually beneficial relationship must be pretty strong.

[purplecat]

ack! that was me! account fail!

[sophievdennis.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the weakness of the essays is in treating Firefly as simple allegory for the American Civil War. Allegory is a highly simplistic reading of just about any fiction: see the knots people tie themselves in trying to apply purely allegorical readings to LotR (WW2) or Star Wars (Vietnam / Cold War). It's not surprising then that they have difficulty fitting an allegorical reading to the stories.

Andy points our further that a) Mal is more anti-hero than hero. As Whedon has said himself, this is Han Solo, not Luke Skywalker; and b) that the Government in Firefly is more the classic Sci-Fi totalitarian set up.

To my mind, though, Firefly as classic Western - with all the character tropes that involves - is a much more robust reading.

[purplecat]

I think Bletsoe made the points very well about Mal's failings as a hero. His was my favourite essay of the piece, I think, since he talked quite starkly about how unsympathetic Mal is, essentially, on the page and the way in which Nathan Fillion turned him into a sympathetic character.

I think Goldsmith definitely saw the Government in Firefly as a fairly direct allegory for the American Government both present and at the time of the North's victory. I think his reading of Firefly is, as you say, wrong, or it at least misses many subtleties and complexities. I could probably have teased out my unease better but there was a conflation of libertarianism = Mal Reynolds = the South = good and current US administrations = the Alliance = the north = bad that made me deeply uncomfortable and uncomfortable that that reading was there in Firefly to be had.

[sophievdennis.livejournal.com]

It sounds like Goldsmith is choosing a reading which fits his personal political view of the current US administration and the rights and wrongs of the American Civil War. This enables a conflation of Serenity Crew = Good, Serenity Crew = The South, therefore The South = Good.

The evidence for Serenity Crew = The South is weak. There might be "Mal + Zoe = defeated Southern foot soldiers", but Firefly stories are just as savage about their equivalent of the comfortable Southern landowner (think the Mudders, or the episode with the Governor's son's virginity) as they are about the Alliance or any other kind of abusive power-figure.

Many stories can be (mis)read to support distasteful world views. That is no reason for anyone else to feel uncomfortable enjoying the stories.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Yes. (Although as I said, I haven't read the article.)

Mal Reynolds does work as a libertarian hero, but it's more because he's trying to make a living for himself despite the efforts of an authoritarian government than because he somehow represents state rights against a federal government.