Alliance - Capitalist or Communist?
POSTED BY: chronicthehedgehog
UPDATED: Saturday, August 13, 2005 12:24
VIEWED: 12105
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
How could the rebels have staged an effective offensive against such a heavily entrenched military and economic power without some “core” planets of their own? Has anyone ever wondered that? We’ve seen several battle scenes from the war and the impression that I get is that the rebellion, while ineffective, was actually quit large and well organized.
That's a good point. It might be related to what I just mentioned, namely that we tend to see the 'verse through Mal's eyes, filtered by the hopelessness and despair that he struggles with. Hmmm, yeah, surely the destitute situation of the rim worlds is as much a result of the war than of conditions that preceded it. Otherwise it would have been over very quickly.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
I always saw the Alliance as pretty much the equivalent of the current day US.
Now see...I thought the Alliance MIGHT be the exact same thing as The Federation on Star Trek (without the aliens of course)
benign (from their point of view),
they want a perfect world with no disease or poverty...
or litter or desent or non-conformists...
and there are just a lot of humans
(particularly the misfits and riff-raff who colonized the out-lying planets)
who just can never fit into that perfect world.
Of course we may never know if the series doesn't come back.. but that's another thread.
SergeantX
no no, I don't think we need the series to return;
don't get me wrong: I WANT the series to return.
But I think that Joss can manage to tell his stories in the form of movie sequels and lots of comic books....
Join my crew: Fairfield Fireflies
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Quote:So our heroes may actually not necessarily be as noble, relatively speaking, as they are portrayed, but rather that we see the morality of the show through Mal’s eyes, who is basically a criminal and views the Alliance from a less then objective position. That’s may be one of the most astute assessments I’ve read on this. That’s really pretty smart.
Originally posted by SergeantX:
I always saw the Alliance as pretty much the equivalent of the current day US. And I don't mean that in a bad way neccessarily. Keep in mind that we saw the Alliance pretty much through Mal's eyes. If you watch 'between the lines' though, the vast majority of the 'feds' they run into were relatively neutral, even benign, given that fact that Mal and crew were criminals.
Quote:Yeah, I’ve always found it hard to believe that the “rim” worlds could support an offensive against the Alliance. If one or two of those rim planets were actually the remains of a much larger economic/political institution, then that would make a lot of sense. Or maybe the rebellion was actually fought between the core planets, and the rim planets had nothing to do with it. We’re simply assuming that the rim planets were the source of the rebellion; maybe that was never the case.
Originally posted by SergeantX:
That's a good point. It might be related to what I just mentioned, namely that we tend to see the 'verse through Mal's eyes, filtered by the hopelessness and despair that he struggles with. Hmmm, yeah, surely the destitute situation of the rim worlds is as much a result of the war than of conditions that preceded it. Otherwise it would have been over very quickly.
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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Quote:
Originally posted by embers:
no no, I don't think we need the series to return;
don't get me wrong: I WANT the series to return.
But I think that Joss can manage to tell his stories in the form of movie sequels and lots of comic books....
I heartily disagree with that one, but it's not worth debating. The movies will be good, but having seen the first one, I think it's clear they'll be telling different kinds of stories at a different pace. I'll always be a fan, of the movies and the series, but justice won't be done until Joss gets to do the serial story arcs that Firefly deserves.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
So our heroes may actually not necessarily be as noble, relatively speaking, as they are portrayed, but rather that we see the morality of the show through Mal’s eyes, who is basically a criminal and views the Alliance from a less then objective position.
More or less. I mean, they're pushed to the wall, and doing the best they can, which is what being hero is in many ways but... they did kill people and steal things for a living.
That's pretty much what the message of 'The Message' was.The main thing I was saying though, is not that Mal isn't heroic, but that the Alliance isn't some monolithic font of badness. Look at the opening scene of the pilot (after the war flashback). Mal and crew get caught red handed pulling illegal salvage. But after they launch the cry baby, the commander of the Alliance ship very quickly makes the decision ("let's go help these people") not to chase Serenity in favor of saving lives.
Or in Bushwhacked, when they're caught again. They weren't beaten or tortured or anything. Looked like a fairly respectful interrogation. And after Mal saves his life the commander lets them go free. Now, I'm not saying the feds are all warm and fuzzy huggy-bears, but they aren't exactly Nazis, even if they do dress like them.
There's plenty of legitimate Alliance bad guys too (blue hands, operatives, etc), but it seems to me Joss deliberately dropped hints that it wasn't as black and white as Mal made it out to be.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Well from what ive seen in the show i have to disagree with many of you and say that they are Communist. Like what Mal says to the sherif in the train job
"Thats sounds like the alliance, unite all the planets under one rule so everybody can be interfered with or ignored equally."
Sounds like a capitalist society and the fact that Mal and Zoe fought for the Independants which reminds me of a United States Type of thing they were fighting for.
"You can live with a man for fourty years , share his meals, talk on every subject, then tie him up, and hold him over the volanoes edge. And on that day, you will finally meet the man"
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You've got quite a unique viewpoint there SergeantX, and now I think about it it seems pretty logical to me.
Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
There's plenty of legitimate Alliance bad guys too (blue hands, operatives, etc), but it seems to me Joss deliberately dropped hints that it wasn't as black and white as Mal made it out to be.
One note, the CIA have been caught out doing some pretty, uh shall we say dodgy things, and from my own neck of the woods I'm sure the British intelligence agencies haven't been beyond the odd bit of 'dodgyness' themselves.
So blue hands and operatives could just be the slightly dodgy last resort fellas that get the job done, perhaps?
Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.
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I think the word everyone is looking for is oligarchy. Posably 4 or 5 large businesses got together. I do think the Civil War comparison is a good one. The outer planets send the raw materials to the core planets. Even though they look down on the core planets they would cease to exist without them.
"I was on the losing side I am still not convinced I was on the wrong side"
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.
But wait, frog gonads are located inside their body cavities, and those gonads are not green. . . ;)
And now back to the serious thread.
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