Firefly politically incorrect?
POSTED BY: Bugboy
UPDATED: Monday, January 5, 2004 18:06
VIEWED: 15813
PAGE 2 of 6
Quote:
Originally posted by ManiacNumberOne:
Objects, (people included and their actions) are separate from any meaning we might give them, so giving them a label like good or evil is purely for our own benefit. They can not be inherently either.
I think this hits the mark on the head. Things are just that, themselves, things. Meaning and purpose, by their very definition, are products of the mind, of consciousness. So can only describe relationships that an object has, with some conscious entity.
To River, its just a stick. To Mal, Kaylee, et.at. its a gun and its pointed to kill. Whatever the object is, it means different things to different people.
Watching Firefly, I don't see a "shades of grey" type thinking in the writing. Dobson was going to kill River, Reavers were on the way, and there was little time to consider the question carefully. What Mal did was solve a problem, protect one of his crewmen's life, her very existence. For River, and Mal, it was good. For Dobson, not so much.
Well, to cut this short, my thinking is that morality is contextual, consequential (you have to look at the consequences of an action to determine its moral character.) and objective only to the extent that the commonalities of the human species hold. If you are trying to kill me, I am going to stop you, by any means available. If you get hurt trying to kill me, I ain't going to feel too bad about it.
"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"
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I think you illustrate my point precisely, you choose to see it in black and white, I do not. You say I take Book's statement out of context, then proceed to mention everything/everyone tangental to Book to justify your point of view.
Book swore to protect that man's life, saw him killed and then questioned whether he thought it was right or wrong that he was killed. I don't see that as a black and white issue, from BOOK's point of view.
"If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak!" - Jayne
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bugboy:
Book swore to protect that man's life, saw him killed and then questioned whether he thought it was right or wrong that he was killed. I don't see that as a black and white issue, from BOOK's point of view.
I had a really good response, but for some reason it has disappeared.
I don't see the world as shades of grey, because, well, it ain't. Books problem is not so much with shades of grey, but the simple fact that if Book had done "the right thing" River would have been returned to blue hand crew, and the rest of the crew, including himself would have been jailed, if not killed outright. (Although none of the Serenity crew saw what happened on Ariel, the jail thing has still got to be a worry)
Book's idea of the right thing to do is connected to a particular moral system. It appears to be New Testiment Christianity in origin, and I really do not want to turn this into an anti-religion thread. But there is a bug in any religion based moral system, and Book ran smack dab into the bug.
The purpose of a moral system is to provide a system of rules on behavioraly choices. We are living critters, and part of being living critters is dying. Something that most of us would rather avoid as long as possible. But actions have consequences, and amoung those consequence are issues of life and death.
Since actions are chosen by humans, humans require some system to pick those actions that will not get them killed, or injured. (Generally speaking. There are specific contexts were death may be preferrable to, say, living as a slave) And that is what morality does.
All religion based moral systems have as their foundation, "These are the rules because God says so." This is an appeal to authority, and as such is not a logical argument. It is an argument ender. Why the person obeys the rules is secondary to the effect such obeidence has on the life and welfare of the actor, and those in his environment. What real world effects does a general rule "Thou shalt not kill" have, does not matter why the persons are not killing.
I tend to look at it this way. "God says" is short hand for "I don't know how or why it works, it just does. If you act in this fashion, then things will work out better for you." Real world effects will feedback on the moral system (which is essentially a mental construct) and those systems that don't work, end up dying out, along with the believers in that system. Darwin applied to memetics.
Shades of grey, like "Lesser evil" reveal bugs in the moral system, rather than we live in an amoral universe, or as an excuse to forget morality altogether. You also have a problem in that certain cultural norms which really are unimportant to survival, (but may be important to identity, or culture of the individual) get glommed in with the rest of the moral structure. So we have some religions forbidding bacon, demanding burkas and the like.
Books problem was that killing Dobson was the right thing to do. Letting Dobson live, meant one or all of Serenity's crew would be dead or in jail (enslaved) But killing Dobson was against the rules of that particular moral system. Hence the conflict, which is more than a "shades of grey" thing.
Life and death is a black or white thing. You are either alive or dead. There really is no middle ground.
"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"
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2 cents:
While it's all well and good to bad mouth organized religion, I don't think Book's conflict is simply one of obedience to an abstract code. He says he "swore" to protect the marshal's life. Decent people do not take their oaths lightly, nor do they abandon them without serious doubt and inner conflict. It is not an abstract code he serves, but his own concrete personal integrity. It has to do with loyalty which is a human value that transcends religion or ethics--predates them, if you will. It's "in" us. How would you feel if you saw a decent person fullfilling his duty gunned down in cold blood? I believe Mal's action disturbs Book's humanity first, and his religiosity by the way.
HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bugboy:
I was under the impression the new Battlestar Galactica was another blatant boobfest, with the Cylons transformed into Amazons ...
This is a nitpick, but a tribe of Amazons can by definition not be a "boobfest"
--
Too much of you is less of a balm.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bugboy:
...people seem to prefer simple themes of right and wrong rather than the subtle nuances of Firefly's, which may be over the head of the common tv viewer.
I think you´re correct about this one. People want to see something "stable". The do not want to see the main charachters of a TV series shoot an old friend dead when they could have avoided it.
Also, I find it remarkable how funny the violence is portrayed, even the torture-scenes in "War Stories" made me laugh. I couldn´t help it. It is very possible that people are turned off by this. Not me, though :-).
However, I do not think that Firefly should be taken so seriously. It is very much a comedy, some of the dialogues could be from a movie parody on "Mad Magazine".
That one does buy some of the stories and is actually touched by them shows how great the actors are.
Since I got that Box-Set last weekend, I´m hooked to the show. Let´s all hope that the movie or new TV-Show or whatever gets made soon, because I´m already sad that I do not get to see more of the Serenity for a while.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bugboy:
...people seem to prefer simple themes of right and wrong rather than the subtle nuances of Firefly's, which may be over the head of the common tv viewer.
I think you´re correct about this one. People want to see something "stable". The do not want to see the main charachters of a TV series shoot an old friend dead when they could have avoided it.
Also, I find it remarkable how funny the violence is portrayed, even the torture-scenes in "War Stories" made me laugh. I couldn´t help it. It is very possible that people are turned off by this. Not me, though :-).
However, I do not think that Firefly should be taken so seriously. It is very much a comedy, some of the dialogues could be from a movie parody on "Mad Magazine".
That one does buy some of the stories and is actually touched by them shows how great the actors are.
Since I got that Box-Set last weekend, I´m hooked to the show. Let´s all hope that the movie or new TV-Show or whatever gets made soon, because I´m already sad that I do not get to see more of the Serenity for a while.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bugboy:
...people seem to prefer simple themes of right and wrong rather than the subtle nuances of Firefly's, which may be over the head of the common tv viewer.
I think you´re correct about this one. People want to see something "stable". The do not want to see the main charachters of a TV series shoot an old friend dead when they could have avoided it.
Also, I find it remarkable how funny the violence is portrayed, even the torture-scenes in "War Stories" made me laugh. I couldn´t help it. It is very possible that people are turned off by this. Not me, though :-).
However, I do not think that Firefly should be taken so seriously. It is very much a comedy, some of the dialogues could be from a movie parody on "Mad Magazine".
That one does buy some of the stories and is actually touched by them shows how great the actors are.
Since I got that Box-Set last weekend, I´m hooked to the show. Let´s all hope that the movie or new TV-Show or whatever gets made soon, because I´m already sad that I do not get to see more of the Serenity for a while.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bugboy:
...people seem to prefer simple themes of right and wrong rather than the subtle nuances of Firefly's, which may be over the head of the common tv viewer.
I think you´re correct about this one. People want to see something "stable". The do not want to see the main charachters of a TV series shoot an old friend dead when they could have avoided it.
Also, I find it remarkable how funny the violence is portrayed, even the torture-scenes in "War Stories" made me laugh. I couldn´t help it. It is very possible that people are turned off by this. Not me, though :-).
However, I do not think that Firefly should be taken so seriously. It is very much a comedy, some of the dialogues could be from a movie parody on "Mad Magazine".
That one does buy some of the stories and is actually touched by them shows how great the actors are.
Since I got that Box-Set last weekend, I´m hooked to the show. Let´s all hope that the movie or new TV-Show or whatever gets made soon, because I´m already sad that I do not get to see more of the Serenity for a while. :-(
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