Would you say River is the soul of the ship?

POSTED BY: PhyreLight
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 8, 2008 14:54
VIEWED: 10095
PAGE 3 of 6

PREV PAGE 1 2 3 4 5 6 NEXT PAGE

JONGSSTRAW

Saturday, January 5, 2008 1:43 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Some folks have posted here that they think Inara represents "love". I would ask...what love?
This is the thing I find so interesting about Inara - yes, her time with her clients is clearly something acted, not matter how she argues that it's a real thing, a choice and all. But if you watch her around the crew, she is very motherly. She is always there to comfort Book, to offer her cloak to naked River, to brush Kaylee's hair, to empathasize with Simon on his disastrous birthday. She is love - when she's not doing her Companion act. Which makes me wonder why she's chosen to be a Companion...

So - you admit yourself, she's loving to the crew. Well, that's the thing. These people all find their own true selves when they're on this ship. What they are outside it is an act, a survival mode. Except for maybe Kaylee... she's pretty real no matter what.

Quote:
once again I'd have to say that no one represents the "love" of what Serenity is more than Capt. Mal.
This I agree with! That is what is so wonderful, that he thinks he's such a bad guy and acts all gruff, but he's the one who had the vision to buy the ship and put it together as a home for them all. He's the one who chose each new member of the crew. He brought in Zoe, recruited Wash, asked Kaylee to stay, rented the shuttle to Inara, thought to talk Jayne into changing sides, asked Simon to stay with River. And I guess he didn't throw Book off LOL!

Mal gathered this group. If there's a binding force that creates this entity and holds it together, it's Mal. And I don't think he did it out of thought or planning. I think he had a feel for these people; he intuitively saw them as the folks he wanted with him. That's why I think he's the soul.

And if you're saying he's the brain... could be you're not recallin' some of the captain's plans...

As for River, I rally do mean the wounded paw thing. She came to them hurt, hurt in a way that everyone saw and felt. They helped heal her, and she became both a tool for sensing the world outside them, (drawing Mal back into the fight) and a weapon. Girl's got claws. Mostly, I just feel like she's a connection to the outside world. She draws them out, away from the ship's business and into the larger problems of the world.

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

I'm pretty blown away with your personal insights on this subject...very impressive stuff!

PLATONIST

Saturday, January 5, 2008 2:23 AM

When folks say that Inara represents "love" on Serenity, I think they are referring to her nuturing/healing maternal nature in context to Mal and the other characters on the ship, and not what she does for a living, prostitution. In this sense, I agree with that assumption, especially since she is the only character that expresses actual love for the ship, "I loved this ship the minute I saw it" (OoG). And in a sense, she is expressing her love for Mal, because HE IS THE SHIP. The ship represents freedom and home. Mal affords all of the characters both of these by including them as riders.

Getting back to River, definetly the soul or an even better analogy would be Mal's "wounded spirit". By saving her and allowing her to fly free, from Alliance certain death, he heals his soul ("I'm alright") and is afforded real freedom to love, hence, we come to the love metaphor at the end of Serenity, after, Inara (love) is considering staying.

And Kaylee, the heart, Zoe, a soldier's loyalty, etc...Gosh... it's frackin "The Wizard of Oz", come to think of it!

CHRISTHECYNIC

Saturday, January 5, 2008 2:34 AM

I seem to remember someone, I think it might have been Joss on one of the commentaries, saying that Mal gathered people together who represented parts of him, some of them parts that he had cut out of himself.

In that sense there is certainly reason to consider the members of the crew as parts of a whole, but in doing so I don't think that anyone should forget that each is a whole person. Somewhere, hidden deep inside of Simon, there is a Jayne waiting to come out.

ASARIAN

Saturday, January 5, 2008 3:01 AM

Well, as always, AgentRouka, you make a solid case. :)

When River was pretending to possess the ship incorporeally, had you then asked me: "That seem right to you?", I would have said: "Yes!" :) I believe it's precisely River's transcendence that makes her so integral to the entire boat. I was really rather moved by her role as "Serenity," even though I reckon it was primarily meant to tickle the funny-bone. In fact, as Serenity, I think she truly transcends herself. She's nowhere, and she's everywhere. She's the hunted and the hunter. They didn't want her here, yet she's "right here" for Kaylee:

KAYLEE
I told him where you were, I'm sorry,
I didn't know what --

RIVER
Sshhhh... I'm fine. Only I need you
to do something for me. Gotta be
brave.

KAYLEE
I'm tied up, I can't --

RIVER (V.O.)
Got tools. something sharp. Don't
be scared. I'm right here.

As Serenity, River is really larger than herself. Once a scared young girl that crawled out of the box, she's now like a Motherly Being enfolding her frightened children. It's almost as if the vastness of the ship itself lends her an imperturbable serenity: a grandness that comes from being at one with it all. Fear and doubt make place for confidence and certainty. I should say, calm confidence and calm certainty, for there's not a trace of arrogance and boastfulness in any of it. Though burrying herself in the part, she's not faking: her comforting words to Kaylee are spoken from true transcendence. It's so beautiful. Honestly, there could be tears (and even more honest: there were).

River is the kind of figure you can easily see evolve to a point where she transcends to pure energy, the way they do in Star Trek and such. :) Why, not really, lol; but a fully matured River certainly has the potential to outgrow them all: not in the sense of being "better than", but simply as a person whose vast psychic abilities and great empathy connect her to almost everything, inspiring them all, making her presence as solid and comforting as the boat itself.

"Spirit" is good enough for me. :)

--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

PLATONIST

Saturday, January 5, 2008 6:17 AM

Good post, asarian

Yeah, I like "Spirit" too, and the way, like you said, that it starts in OiS and continues into the movie, and the way she watches Mal and the scenes that dissolve from her to him, like when he's contemplating Inara's vid or he is sleeping in his bunk, before Wash wakes him. It is almost like she lives within the ship, in an altered state, transcending into another dimension. Good stuff, gosh… it is times like this when I can’t understand why we don’t have a sequel and all these crappy movies do????

JONGSSTRAW

Saturday, January 5, 2008 10:50 AM

How do you think River communicated individually to Kaylee & Mal from Early's ship? Was it some sort of focused transmittal beam, or did she use telepathy to "speak" to them?

AGENTROUKA

Saturday, January 5, 2008 3:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by RiverFlan:

I semi-agree with that theory, but not by much. Mal is a many-sided person, but so's the rest of the crew. They might not be as obvious about it, but they aren't just "I'm Mal's __". The caracters reflect bits of him, but they aren't actually bits of him. You could do the same thing for Inara, Book, Wash being the star "actual and whole" person, with Mal being their "confused side"

I'm not saying that the other characters have no qualities beside being external representations of Mal-aspects. They obviously also stand on their own.

But their most obvious, most individually strong quality happens to coincide with Mal's own.

Mal is undeniably the main character, the point and heart of the show. You can't watch the show and mistake Wash for the main character.
Mal chose Serenity, he gathered this crew around himself and he's the one we focus on. He's the connecting factor for all of them. Without Mal no Serenity, no crew, no jobs, no passengers, no series. That's what makes my theory a valid concept.

Quote:

Back to the topic, I agree with someone above me that Mal is the head/brain of Serenity. As for River... I don't think she's quite the soul/spirit of the ship, but more like sub-concious part of the brain, the part that tries to make random scraps of memory it gleans into a story, or a dream. She makes as much sense as a dream, too, cause when you're in the dream it makes perfect sense but when you wake up, it flies in the face of reason. Her memories of Miranda, the Hands of Blue, and other scary stuff like that are the nightmares.

River, though, makes sense outside of dream-logic, too. Her problems are real and her powers are too super-natural to account for something as natural as the subconscious. It's not just a case of connecting unconnected facts.

She doesn't just know things that the others aren't consciously aware of, she knows things they could not naturally be aware of, and she definitely poses lots of moral and philosophical questions to the crew. That's a bit more spiritual than mere psychology.

AGENTROUKA

Saturday, January 5, 2008 3:44 PM

Beautifully said, asarian!

I guess that line between spirit and soul really does dissolve somewhere along the line. *G*

AGENTROUKA

Saturday, January 5, 2008 3:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
How do you think River communicated individually to Kaylee & Mal from Early's ship? Was it some sort of focused transmittal beam, or did she use telepathy to "speak" to them?

I'm fairly certain she did it ina purely "normal" technological way. Nothing in the series suggests that her powers are active rather than passive.

MAL4PREZ

Saturday, January 5, 2008 4:13 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
I'm pretty blown away with your personal insights on this subject...very impressive stuff!

Thanks! I spend entirely too much time thinking about fanfic LOL!

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

PREV PAGE 1 2 3 4 5 6 NEXT PAGE