Religious motifs in Serenity
Wednesday, 16 March 2016 15:11:35

Joss Whedon’s “Serenity” covers various religious motifs. While religion is certainly not a main point of the series nor the movie, it is touched on multiple times. Sometimes it is presented directly, while other times it is merely hinted at. There are seven main religious motifs: prophecy, immortality, messianic hero, free will vs. determinism, good vs. evil, apocalypse, and prayer/mysticism. Most, if not all of these motifs are addressed in one way or another within Serenity. Starting with prophecy, River is an excellent example. She is portrayed as a psychic, being able to see things before they happen, or “prophesizing” events. For example, on one of the crew’s heists River has a rather spiritual episode where she is “attacked” by a reaver. This occurrence leads her to believe that reavers are either already there or on their way. With this information the crew is able to leave their mission and escape the reavers just in the nick of time. Next I’d like to look at immortality. While this is not something expressed very often within this film, it is hinted at. The reavers are a great example of this. The reavers have abandoned their humanity, per say, but continue to live on. They are no longer conscious creatures, but very primitive. They also participate in self mutilation, often demonstrated by facial deformations, pulled back lips, etc. Another scene where immortality is evident is the holographic video left behind by the scientist on Miranda. The hologram depicts the scientist explaining how they had released a chemical composition into the airways that was supposed to weed out aggression. For the most part, it worked. However, not only did the population stop fighting, they stopped everything. They stopped going to work, they stopped eating, they stopped breathing. Essentially, they stopped living. In addition to this, about 1/10th of the population had the opposite reaction, their aggression increased, amongst other things. The summary of the hologram is that the scientists on Miranda and the Alliance were responsible for creating reavers. Immortality is also evident when the assassin kills Mr. Universe. In his dying breath, Mr. Universe crawls over to his love bot and records a message for Malcolm. The love bot is then motion activated when Malcolm finds Mr. Universe’s corpse, and activates itself, in turn acting out the message to Malcom as though it were Mr. Universe himself. Personally I believe there are two messianic heroes within Serenity’s story line. The first one being Captain Malcolm Reynolds. He demonstrates himself as such by protecting himself and his own crew at all costs. This means sacrificing other people and quite possibly himself to ensure their safety. In addition to this, Captain Reynolds aims to protect the rest of the universe by giving them the truth of how the alliance created reavers and how it might be possible to bring an end to them. He gets this information out by broadcasting the hologram throughout all signals and all televisions throughout the galaxy. The other messianic hero in this film is River. She is depicted over and over as being the chosen one, or rather a “star student.” They explain that River is a psychic. The alliance and members of parliament experiment on her, using her as not only a useful asset, but turning her into a lethal weapon as well. River is unaware of her importance in the beginning, but later goes on to explain that the crew isn’t safe with her around. In the end River essentially sacrifices herself in a battle against the reavers. She does this after speaking of how her brother Simon always takes care of her, now it is her turn. When she ends up defeating all of the reavers in that battle, it becomes clear that she was the only one who would have been able to survive that, more evidence of immortality. Next I would like to look at free will vs determinism. Considering several of Serenity’s crew members are very strong willed, it’s obvious that they value free will over determinism. One example of this are the numerous ways in which Simon tries to