Post Serenity: Is the Fireflyverse even remotely pro-government anymore?*warning: spoilers*
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Thursday, November 24, 2005 06:58
VIEWED: 10014
PAGE 1 of 11
Hmmm...government experiments on the unsuspecting to gain control and creat a utopia...government cover-ups on the deaths...wars fought to 'unify' everyone, that only drove many further apart...assassins sent to keep things quiet...
Doesn't sound like a positive statement on the 'right', or 'left', does it?
What's the message here? Be suspect of ANY government? Big government = big trouble for the little guy? Truth is only what the rulers decide it is? Official History should be taken as the 'version of the moment'?
...all of the above...?
As always, starting some s**t, Chrisisall, CT
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It's against tyrannical government to be sure. But then, isn't everyone? Except the tyrants.
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I give credit to Joss for having the courage to do something that seldom occurs in movies that are based on tv shows. And that's having events that transpired significantly change the firefly 'verse and there ain't no goin' back. That's hard to take because I want to go back, FF's time was too short but Joss wanted to move things along and hard as that is to take, I think he done right. As for the alliance and it's supporters........there's an ill-wind headed their way. Hope to see the results in a future feature film.
jbj
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Joss's politics seem to be a bit left of centre, to put it mildly...
I remember a thread in which someone argued that the Alliance wasn't really all that bad, we just saw it from the crews point of view. Guess the movie kind of wrecks that idea 
.
I think as much as anything it’s a warning to not let the government get away with things. Question, question and if in doubt question, and don't forget to question the questioners.
But big government is always going to big trouble for some individuals, and not just criminals and 'undesirables', merely people who 'fall through the cracks' for instance. Not saying big government is particularly bad, just not perfect.
As for truth and history... when has that not been the case? The history books are never written by the loser, cause, you know, the losers are dead. The winners aren't going to tell anything but the truth from their own POV, at best. At worst they'll just outright lie to make them look like the righteous hero's.
Likewise truth is very subjective. To some the American people are righteous fighting the good fight, others see them as the devil incarnate, and some see them as well, people, sometimes doing bad, sometimes doing good.
But where do we get our vision of the truth? Our idea of the world around us is nearly entirely formed by society. We add our own colour to a degree, which lets societies views change gradually, but still, our ideas of truth are formed by society. That, in a way, is all part of our culture. A culture is fifty percent ways of doing things and fifty percent ways of looking at things. Politicians have been changing truth for their own ends for sometime, its called spin. They kiss babies, so that they look caring, they spin the truth in their favor, it happens all the time.
Basically the Alliance is a caricature of some of the worst traits of modern society (or indeed pretty much any society), IMHO.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
Zen Buddhist to the Hotdog Vendor:
"Make me one with everything."
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Very perceptive, as always.
But I wouldn't use the word caricature, I would say that it is a focus on the worst traits.
Less science fictiony versions of the events depicted in the BDM have happened for real.
Sadly.
Chrisisall
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I tend to think that the Alliance was always meant to be viewed as an evil antagonist, but Whedon doesn’t seem to leave anything as completely one-sided. Certainly what the Alliance is depicted as having done is an example of totalitarianism gone horrible wrong, but it wasn’t depicted as having been done for evil reasons. Totalitarianism can exist as a pure selfish motivation as in the case of Saddam’s Iraq, but most of the really scary stuff are those governments that are based on an utopian ideology, as in the case of Nazism or Stalinism. When a government decides that a utopian society can exists, they can become the most dangerous and deadliest form of government. A people motivated by belief in a utopian future can feel that as long as their deeds result in that utopian world anything is justifiable. Truths are distorted for the “common good.” Human life becomes meaningless when it is compared to a fanatic vision of a utopian future. What is one death if it leads to world where everyone is happy and peaceful? What is one war if it results in the end of all wars? This is the bases of Marxism and extreme religious fanaticism. Bin Laden is one such “visionary.” He, like many fanatical Wahhabist (if he’s still alive) believes that a true utopian world is one in which lives are spent in disciplined devotion to a religious cause. A more insidious and dangerous form of the utopian belief is seen in people who seek to recreate a utopian world as an secular absolute in society. These are your Marxists, Nazis and Stalinists. The people who believe that “the dictatorship” is a necessary step on the path to a world in which all people are equal in the eyes of society; the government should “provide” for the people so that the people do not have to be bothered by providing for themselves. This kind of philosophy can seem very appealing to people. Who doesn’t want some all-powerful government helping them out? Providing for the common good? So what if the government holds absolute control over its people, so long as the people are well provided for and blissfully ignorant of how little freedom is left when the government is done providing. And isn’t in the greater good to maintain this peaceful and providing relationship at any cost? This is, I think, what the Alliance represents. Much of the dialogue from the “Operative” was very revealing of this kind of thinking or “belief.”
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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http://homepage.mac.com/merussell/iblog/B835531044/C1592678312/E200509
16182427/index.html
Quote:
Q. "Firefly" and "Serenity"'s political and cultural underpinnings are unusually well thought-out. You've obviously developed a whole system of planets, a Sino-American political system, a mix of languages. How long did the concept fester in your head before you started writing?
A. It festered for a while. It was probably two or three years after I came up with the idea that I made the TV show, a year-and-a-half doing that, and then a couple of years to write the movie. So it's had time to bake.
And people are always like, "They're fighting an evil empire!" And I'm like, "Well, it's not really an evil empire." The trick was always to create something that was complex enough that you could bring some debate to it -- that it wasn't black-and-white. It wasn't, "If we hit this porthole in the Death Star, everything will be fine!" It was messier than that, and the messiest thing is that the government is basically benign. It's the most advanced culturally….
Q. And [the government-sponsored assassin] The Operative has an honorable point of view -- in his way.
A. Oh, he totally does. Mal is somebody that I knew, as I created him, I would not get along with. I don't think we have the same politics. But that's sort of the point. I mean, if the movie's about anything, it's about the right to be wrong. It's about the messiness of people. And if you try to eradicate that, you eradicate them.
I think if he had the opportunity to develop the Firefly verse, he would show that Browncoats were not all good, and Alliance was not all bad. The same shades of gray were repeatedly highlighted in Buffy and Angel characters. I think if there were a message that Joss likes to send, it is that nothing is black-and-white, evil-vs.-good, all-benefit-no-cost. Joss provides an anti-thesis of the messages of Star Trek and Star Wars, where everything is easily identified as good or bad.
Another mistake people make is thinking that Joss' work must reflect his personal politics. (I admit I thought the same.) Libertarians see the anti-authoritarian themes and think, Joss must be a libertarian! Democrats like to point out that Joss is a well known liberal, a fellow Democrat. ( http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/29/22437/2481) Therefore, the Firefly verse must be liberal too.
I think the above interview shows that Joss is deeper than anyone expects. I love Mal, and identify the most with this character. Now I know I'm the kind of folk Joss probably would not get along with. And I respect him all the more for it.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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I tend to think the Alliance is not inherently a bad thing, just something gone astray. Here's why:
The Operative is right, the Alliance is not an “evil empire.” It’s not the Federation either. It is what it is, a government. It has its good qualities and its bad qualities, like all governments. Every nation on Earth has its own dirty little secrets (some noticeably dirtier than others), but that doesn’t make every government inherently evil. The Alliance doesn’t even seem to be a dictatorship; the film implies that this Parliament is an elected body. So it’s a democracy. It seems interested in improving the lives of everybody and feels its system is the answer. And it could do a lot of good on the border planets, which (admittedly in the post-war setting) appear to be plagued with bandits (the crew, Badger, Fanty & Mingo, Ott, etc), a wealthy and domineering overclass that oppresses the poor (Magistrate Higgins, whatshisname from "Heart of Gold"), violent religious fundamentalism ("Safe"), and slavery ("Shindig," etc). The fact that the Alliance doesn’t seem to be doing much about many of these problems suggests that either A) they’ve stretched their resources too thin (very plausible, especially considering the subcontracted law enforcement mentioned in the movie) and/or B) they ignore the poor and backwater parts of the system (making them the first and only government in the history of mankind to do such a callous thing).
Where the Alliance crosses the line is in trying to force its system on everyone else, rather than trying to persuade them. The Alliance probably looked upon the outer planets like we would look upon some impoverished and brutalized nation under a corrupt dictator. They would have the same thought: “Why doesn’t somebody do something about this?” And so they did. Miranda was the second part of this, this desire to make everybody “better.” The Alliance wanted peace, universal peace, which could only be gotten by changing human nature, by forcing a drug upon people without their consent.
Then came the cover-up, which, let’s face it, is a normal government action to undertake. It may not be right, but both democracies and dictatorships do it. And that’s where the Parliament became so paralyzed with fear that their accidental genocide would be uncovered, they refused to deal with the Reavers.
One thing I feel supports me here is in the dialogue of the film. In the series, the characters would always refer to “the Alliance” and imply it was the source of all things bad. But in Serenity, they frequently referred to “the Parliament” as the ones responsible for Miranda, not “the Alliance.” What this does is distance the Alliance as the larger whole from the blame, instead saying only a subgroup within the Alliance--its present rulers--are the problem. Like saying “the Administration” rather than “the United States.” The Alliance as a whole is not implicated, it is the leaders who took its ideals too far. Listen for that at the next showing you go to (and you WILL go to another showing, preferably this weekend) and see where they say “the Alliance” and where they talk about just “the Parliament.” Even the Operative at the end says that they’ve weakened the Parliament’s regime--not the Alliance.
I’ll end this by saying that a political reading is only one way to look at this. As an existentialist, Joss values free will above almost all else. Even if your utopia is great, forcing people to live in it rather than letting them decide is bad. If the Alliance simply let people choose, most would still live in it. Where it goes wrong is in forcing folks like Mal to conform. So, big government is only bad when it doesn’t let you choose whether or not to take part in it.
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Chris, I suspect the large numbers of citizens who are p/o'ed at our government might just take a fancy to the movie, which ends up doing us all a lot of good.
BTW, I have yet to see the movie, so please don't tell me anything about it. My little town, 40-odd miles down the road, is about to acquire Gone With the Wind as a first-run movie....
Actually, it's showing the Jodie Foster movie and also 40-yr.-old Virgin.
Duh....
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