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

[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.