sympathy for the Alliance?
POSTED BY: mincingbeast
UPDATED: Sunday, March 14, 2010 15:28
VIEWED: 5040
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Killer Angels has been cited repeatedly by Joss as the inspiration, particularly in the idea of following the losers of the war to the west. But the War itself seems to be based more on the Revolutionary War, seeing that the border and rim planets were at no point part of the Alliance, until the Alliance walked up and claimed sovereignty over them as "colonies," which hadn't ever been a designation of those worlds before. This is specifically stated in the Serenity RP manual, which you may or may not take as canon, but it's been confirmed often enough that I accept it unless it's been retconned.
And the Alliance seems to be based on the British Parliament, though I'll grant you that perhaps the motivations for the war on the Alliance side were VERY similar to those on the Union side in the Civil War. And it wasn't about slavery, and it wasn't about "Civilizing the Brutes" (another British idea, used against both the Irish, the Native Americans, and later the American Colonists). It was about land and resources. Britian (and the Union) were the major manufacturing centers of the time. The Colonies (and the South) were major resource producers. Both conflicts involved the manufacturing power wishing to keep the production power oppressed, so that the production power would continue to buy the manufacturer's goods, with most of the profit on the manufacturer's side.
If you look at it in terms of the Revolutionary War, as I do, then you can have The East India Company (Blue Sun) stirring crap up on both sides, to hide a potentially ruinous secret. The Alliance decided to help Blue Sun keep their secret, Blue Sun lent it's massive corporate power to the Alliance (Britian) instead of the Independents (the Americans) and so the Independents lost.
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Quote:
Originally posted by mincingbeast:
also, i am an absolute black and white thinker and shun nuance,
You have my deepest sympathies for your disability.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Quote:
Originally posted by Storymark:Quote:
Originally posted by mincingbeast:
also, i am an absolute black and white thinker and shun nuance,
You have my deepest sympathies for your disability.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
thank you, thank you. i have long maintained that it is a congenital defect, as opposed to say...evidence of my stupidity and vicious asshole nature.
anyway, mr. storymark, the comparisons for me sort of work on a gut level, but i'd be happy to try to "unpack 'em."
ahem: extreme gallantry that cannot make up for the technological disadvantages, the odds being stacked against them, mythologizing their doomed cause after the fact, the dilemma of the vanquished (being absorbed by the jerks that PWNED! you)...it seems to fit, to me at least, but i might as well be comparing them to any under dog, i suppose. maybe it's just the western vibe that throws me off. Mal kinda strikes me like an angry civil war vet turned to a life of banditry...
and re: the civil war...it was about slavery, i think the evidence would suggest. not as a moral issue, but as an economic one. doesn't necessarily contradict byte's neat ideas.
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Oh, I agree that the Civil War parallel is pretty obvious - though while I think we are meant to draw that parallel, the fact that the good guys are ostensibly the confederates and the "bad" guys are the alliance is meant to make us question the heroics of the heroes and the villainy of the villains. Joss doesn't like things to be all that simple or black and white. I'm sure had the series continued, he would have played with the notion more.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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the civil war...it was about slavery, i think the evidence would suggest. not as a moral issue, but as an economic one. doesn't necessarily contradict byte's neat ideas.
I can agree with this part of it. Even abolitionists were somewhat racist in those times. And there's some question as to whether the Emancipation Proclamation was genuine on Lincoln's part, or strategic to deny the south a source of soldiers. Which is not a bad thing, because if you think about it, those are slaves forced to fight in a war that would keep them slaves.
Slavery was the South's big production power, the North didn't want their slave production to outstrip their industrial manufacturing production (South didn't have to PAY their laborers, which money pinching factory employers in the north did). Thus also the fighting over territories in the west and the free-soil argument, it was two economic paths pitted against each other. The north really wasn't concerned about the morality aspect, that's why you still saw stuff like Jim Crow Laws and Grandfather Clauses, which were slavery in all but name, even AFTER the war ended. And no one spoke up against them.
Still, back to Firefly, even though slavery on the Rim and Border happens, I think everyone kind of thinks slavers and the people who own them are scum, no one seems to like it, not Independents OR Alliance.
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I completely see why Mal would be mad at them for allegedly (probably actually) forcing Alliance rule on the independent planets, but we don't really know everything about the lead-up. How unanimous was the "vote" of the people on the independent planets to not join the Alliance? Was there investment in the planets by the alliance that justified their interest?
Hmm, I'm not really sure there was a vote. Let me see, I actually copied some history stuff from the Serenity RPG recently in an e-mail to someone, I'll try to find this out. I do get the feeling that the Alliance considered Rim and Border world it's "colonies," and Core worlds are "the motherlands," and that the Core worlds felt they were owed some sort of loyalty or gratitude.
But, you are right, there actually weren't that many pure Independent worlds out on the Border/Rim, most worlds (and even families) were very mixed on which side they were on. Sources I've seen list only three planets that identified themselves as Independent: Persephone, Shadow, and Hera. There might have been some minor moons that also threw themselves one way or another, but Independents were very much in the minority.
Here it is. From the RP manual:
Quote:
The Alliance was the protective parent. The Core
worlds were model children. But the Alliance had
another problem. They feared their “good children”
were going to be corrupted by the bad seeds who
lived on the wrong side of the ‘Verse. The worlds
on the Border and the Rim were self-governing,
outside the limits of Alliance control. Each world
had its own set of laws and rules that suited its
own particular needs. Folk living on these frontier
planets had been forced to be self-reliant in order
to survive, and they had come to be free-thinkers
who saw no need for a lot of government meddling.
The Alliance considered such independence a threat
to civilization. (They also considered that a lot of
valuable resources and real estate were outside their
control!) For the benefit of all people in the ‘Verse,
the Alliance decided that every planet in the system
should come under Alliance rule, whether its people
wanted it or not.
Idealistic folk of the Core planets thought this
was a great idea. Doesn’t everyone would want to
live on a safe, civilized world where folk are cared
for by their betters? The movement for Unification
spread like wildfire through dry brush. The leaders
on the Core thought they had only to open their
arms in a wide embrace and those poor benighted
souls on the Rim would come running home to their
mothers.
Those on the Border did come running. Only
problem—they carried guns.
The War for Unification was the most
devastating war in human history. All those who
lived through it are marked, like a scar left behind by
an old wound. (Just that some happen to have big
scars traced all ‘cross their faces while others have
tiny ones hidden away.) Outer planets, including
Shadow, Persephone, and Hera, mustered forces and
formed an alliance of their own—the Independent
Faction (known as “Browncoats,” thanks to the
brown dusters their soldiers took to wearing). The
Parliament of the Alliance instituted a draft to build
its forces. They were considerably astonished to
learn that more than half of the Independent forces
were composed of volunteers. The Alliance (known
as the “Purple Bellies” for their style of dress) had
the manpower, the ships, and technology to make
the result of the war a forgone conclusion—but no
one anticipated that freedom would be something so
many folk would be willing to die to protect.
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You know, I always thought of the Alliance as a more (on the surface) benign, socialist type of system - government run universal healthcare, education, infrastructure (the best in sewage, roads, general cleanliness of cities and towns, everyone's got air conditioning, not a huge homeless problem, and safety - strict gun laws, etc (you see in Ariel the cops didn't carry lethal weapons)and good system of law...I think the Core "Supreme Court" is supposed to be on Osiris...and the corruption taking place (Miranda, the Academy) is a deeply hidden secret, even within the upper echelons, that even only a few "key members of Parliament" are privy too.
I like the idea of the war being a cover-up for Miranda, but you would think if that's what the Independents were all riled up about, or if they even had a HINT of it, that certainly Mal or Zoe would have heard something to that effect, but it was a total mystery to everyone.
And you also have to consider why Inara and Simon, who we know to be good people, supported Unification - they probably thought they had an awesome government, and people out on the Rim were starving (which they are in places), uneducated and without running water, infrastructure, or healthcare (which again, are) and have a lawless system where they are at risk of criminals, war lords, mini-tyrants, and slavers (which again-again, they are)and Unification would help all those people. Like, has anyone here seen "Goodbye Lenin"? The guy's mom, with her total idealistic love of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany? I feel like a lot of people in the Core were probably like that.
But then, I keep saying socialism, which effectively is government controlling production - and we know Blue Sun and the Alliance are so intertwined as to be almost indistinguishable. So is government controlling that company, or the other way around? maybe socialism isn't quite the right way of putting it.
To put it at a more micro-local-current level, and this is an imperfect comparison, think of the Alliance like the Democrats, and the Independents are the Tea-Partiers - some see the government as a force of good (potentially) and others see it as nothing but "something that gets in a man's way" (you know Mal would be a Libertarian if he were around now ;)) Except in the Verse, the Democrats are secretly killing off entire planets and performing human experimentation. Or having death panels for realz.
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No no. No one had any idea about Miranda except Blue Sun and the Alliance. But riling up the Independents with unrelated stuff would have been VERY convenient.
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Interesting you guys should bring this up because when I saw the BDH, I immediately saw The Operative as a black version of 007 specifically from Golden Eye. The parallels between them pretty much line up. Towards the middle of the film, Bond runs into a character Valentin Dmitrovitch Zukovsky.This is the Exchange between the two:
James Bond: [while talking about the incident at Savernaya] They're not just criminals Valentin, they're traitors.
Valentin Dmitrovitch Zukovsky: Well, what do you expect from a Lienz Cossack?
James Bond: What?
Valentin Dmitrovitch Zukovsky: This Janus, I've never met the man, but I know that he is a Lienz Cossack.
James Bond: Group that worked for the Nazis against the Russians. Second World War.
Valentin Dmitrovitch Zukovsky: You know your history, Mr. Bond. At the end of the war, they surrendered to the British, thinking they would help in waging war against the Communists. But, the British betrayed them, sent them back to Stalin, who promptly had them all shot. Women, children, entire families.
James Bond: Not exactly our finest hour.
Valentin Dmitrovitch Zukovsky: Still, ruthless people. They got what they deserved.
Even if you would show the movie from only The Operative's perspective, it would seem more like a Bond movie. Mal would be the foreign Terrorist(Dust Devil), Inara would be the Bond Girl and Mr. Universe would be seen as the elite hacker who breaks into Alliance security. Sort of like the hacker ,Boris, in Golden Eye.
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interesting. i'd rather think of mal as a bond villain of the bitter cossack variety, as opposed to, say, a Tea Partier. but that would make inara the operative's girl, and as a sissy that struggles with profound feelings of mal/inara shipdom, that is totally unacceptable.
also, mal, in the series and comics, does not strike me as exactly sympathetic to the dust devils. because that would entail 1) harming innocents (something not even Mal enjoys) and 2) believing in something.
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