The Reavers equate to Native Americans?
POSTED BY: Novagrass
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 00:00
VIEWED: 9834
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Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
The point is, the Reavers can't be completely mindless savages. Nothing can be that and expect to survive for long. Otherwise, they'll just dwindle and die off after a generation or less.
Unless, of course, some "civilized" group of people come along and slaughter them all first. Oh, that's right, that's not what this is about.
Well, I imagine that the mindless savage part was just an easy way to characterize the Reavers without going into too much detail. I have no doubt that they'll be more developed than simple mindless savages.
--Dylan Palmer, aka NoVaGrAsS--
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Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:Quote:
Originally posted by Novagrass:
While not racism, I do have a slight problem with the idea of the Reavers. I know this is scifi and understands that the level of realism is skewed. However, when Joss uses Hill Street Blue as a point of comparison for Firefly, I have to ask myself whether his "mindless savages" characterization of the Reavers is just a bit too one dimensional and too cliched.
Even savages have culture, no matter how minute, for the purpose of self preservation--a core survival instinct. The Reavers may be vastly different from what we would consider civilized, but at the end of the day, when they're done raping some poor woman and bagging her kids for dinner, they have to go home to somewhere to be with someone and do familial things; perhaps even kick that newly won dicapitated head of the father around with the little Reaver kids.
From what I can tell reading spoilers and interviews, Reavers don't have, as you say, "a core survival instict". Instead they are extremely suicidal and insane, having lost all humanity to the emptiness of space. They can't be compared to native people because they are not from one culture or race, but are a mob of crazy spacemen. I'm not sure the Reavers have any desire to do familial things at all.
Of course, I could be wrong, we'll have to wait and see.
Scroll.
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Quote:You have a good point. But remember, this is Joss Whedon we're talking about. One of the big reasons Buffy works is the complexity of its bad guys.
Originally posted by Haken:
While not racism, I do have a slight problem with the idea of the Reavers. I know this is scifi and understands that the level of realism is skewed. However, when Joss uses Hill Street Blue as a point of comparison for Firefly, I have to ask myself whether his "mindless savages" characterization of the Reavers is just a bit too one dimensional and too cliched.
Even savages have culture, no matter how minute, for the purpose of self preservation--a core survival instinct. The Reavers may be vastly different from what we would consider civilized, but at the end of the day, when they're done raping some poor woman and bagging her kids for dinner, they have to go home to somewhere to be with someone and do familial things; perhaps even kick that newly won dicapitated head of the father around with the little Reaver kids.
The point is, the Reavers can't be completely mindless savages. Nothing can be that and expect to survive for long. Otherwise, they'll just dwindle and die off after a generation or less.
Here's his characterization of the reavers from an interview:
Quote:
On the other side he has mindless savages called Reavers, which are a lot less complicated. You see them and you run. They're not monsters. What they are, are people who went out into space, saw the extraordinary nothingness and went completely out of their heads. They've become cannibalistic marauding savages. They're kind of like the Comanche in the old movies except without playing it as a racial thing at all, or even a cultural thing. It's a very personal thing. These are men who just gave up on the concept of humanity and are the scariest, worst, most awful serial-killing pirates who ever sailed around in burnt out ships in space. Everybody is terrified of them — Yeah, they're really fun [ laughs ].
The comparison with serial killers is interesting. Whedon keeps saying that Firefly characters will not be very different from people in the present day. That would seem to apply to the Reevers, unfortunately.
Full interview: http://www.scifi.com/scifimag/october2002/transcripts/
I have to say something about the portrayal of Indians in westerns. It's perfectly true that Hollywood has a terrible record when it comes to its portrayal of non-whites. (I simply cannot watch any Hollywood movie made before 1960 that features black or Asian characters -- the offense to human dignity is just too much!) But the fact is, I just don't see the "mindless savage" stereotype in all the westerns that are supposed to contain them. More typically, Indians are shown struggling valiantly, but futilely, just to preserve their way of life. Yes, the fighting was often brutal and cruel -- but Hollywood didn't invent that.
Ironically enough, these Westerns were actually drastically less racist than the popular culture that created and consumed these movies. One writer that was popular in this period was James Warner Bellah, whose stories were the basis of many John Ford and John Wayne westerns. One thing the movies left out was Bellah's characterization of non-Anglo groups as "dying races" -- a popular way to justify genocidal treatment of Indians and other groups, before Hitler took the concept to its logical extreme.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:Quote:You have a good point. But remember, this is Joss Whedon we're talking about. One of the big reasons Buffy works is the complexity of its bad guys.
Originally posted by Haken:
While not racism, I do have a slight problem with the idea of the Reavers.
I have to say something about the portrayal of Indians in westerns. It's perfectly true that Hollywood has a terrible record when it comes to its portrayal of non-whites. But the fact is, I just don't see the "mindless savage" stereotype in all the westerns that are supposed to contain them.
If the Reavers combine the worse characteristics of some "Native American" groups and my ancestors the "Vikings" (no squarehead jokes please) with heavy radiation thrown in as a sop to old SF flicks, you have a bunch of humans who are dead, know it and want to spread much pain and suffering to others before they go. Good villians, they won't be around long enough to develop a culture.
As for Hollyweirds portrayal of "non-whites" look at the current portrayal of Business men and "the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."
Jeff
Who doesn't believe any good can come from stereotyping anyone.
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Quote:
Originally posted by TinyTimm:
As for Hollyweirds portrayal of "non-whites" look at the current portrayal of Business men and "the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."
Hey, I always thought that was spot-on! But then I'm a fuzzy-headed liberal. (Well almost, I don't drive a Volvo.) So I guess I'm just obeying my own stereotype!
Quote:Except there are people who are to dumb to follow any story that isn't built around stereotypes. Probably not as many as Hollywood likes to think there are, but enough to keep the Rick Bermans of the world in business.
Jeff
Who doesn't believe any good can come from stereotyping anyone.
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Quote:
Originally posted by TinyTimm:
If the Reavers combine the worse characteristics of some "Native American" groups and my ancestors the "Vikings" (no squarehead jokes please) with heavy radiation thrown in as a sop to old SF flicks, you have a bunch of humans who are dead, know it and want to spread much pain and suffering to others before they go. Good villians, they won't be around long enough to develop a culture.
Hey, remember the computer piracy issue of Byte? The cover was a Viking ship with a 5-1/4" floppy instead of a sail. (Scary thought. Is anybody here besides Jeff and me old enough to remember 5-1/4" floppies?) Naturally they got complaints from the Norwegian Anti-Defamation League.
Radiation is an interesting issue. Since JW is bent on doing "hard" SF, I might have expected him to leave out the traditional mutant monsters. It's bad science -- mutation means minor changes, not instant transformation into an X-Man.
Then again, JW wrote one of the scripts for that movie, though they mostly discarded his work. And he Fray, he couldn't resist having all kinds of weird mutants walking around (or swiming -- one character, Gunther, is a green guy with gills, who lives in a giant fish tank) just so his demon characters would have a hard time convincing people they weren't mutants.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
(Scary thought. Is anybody here besides Jeff and me old enough to remember 5-1/4" floppies?)
Hey I remember 8" floppies!
Quote:
Since JW is bent on doing "hard" SF,
Has Joss ever said this? To be honest the only place I've ever heard this is here on this board from you Zic.
I mean I don't really care either way so long as it's entertaining.
Shug
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Uh, Shuggie, no offense, but that's kind of a nasty thing to say. 
You're implying that I'm either a liar or delusional. 
The next time you want to raise this kind of issue, the polite way to say it would be "I think you're wrong. Where did you hear Joss actually say that?" Which is when I'd point you at:
http://168.215.229.9/thread.asp?b=9&t=380
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Zic,
I wasn't implying that you were lying or delusional. I had no intention of being impolite - if I came over that way then I apologize.
I admit I was sceptical that doing 'hard SF' would be a priority for Joss - it doesn't seem to fit with his prior work. But that quote is very plain so I was wrong about that.
Shug
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Quote:Well, OK, I won't have you killed.
Originally posted by Shuggie:
Zic,
I wasn't implying that you were lying or delusional. I had no intention of being impolite - if I came over that way then I apologize.
I admit I was sceptical that doing 'hard SF' would be a priority for Joss - it doesn't seem to fit with his prior work. But that quote is very plain so I was wrong about that.
Shug
You know, just because Buffy is fantasy/horror, doesn't mean it doesn't have rigorous underpinnings. Fantasy writers can be just as bad as hard-SF writers that way. Look at all the work Tolkien put into the LOTR backstory. And Tolkien was a technophobe, which Whedon most certainly is not. So it's true that he's never done hard SF before -- but his previous work isn't that different.
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