Is Firefly Amoral Familism?

POSTED BY: two
UPDATED: Saturday, October 6, 2012 01:09
VIEWED: 12608
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BYTEMITE

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 5:33 PM

Who says he has to be law-abiding? The choice I was thinking of was more that he either dies or becomes a hero again, at least in the plan for the series anyway.

If he lives past the events of the series he can retire, but then he might get involved in a posse or vigilantism or other western tropes to keep things interesting. Or even capers. ROBIN HOOD capers! Stealing back taxes of poor farmers and ranchers from tax collectors or loan sharks. Fighting off land barons, bandits, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, slavers, or making a stand for free rangers or free-booters or bootleggers or moonshiners everywhere.

TWO

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 7:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Who says he has to be law-abiding? The choice I was thinking of was more that he either dies or becomes a hero again, at least in the plan for the series anyway.

I can only dream as far ahead as the next Serenity comic in 2014 or 2015.

Interpol will never ignore Mal after Miranda. Mal is responsible for thousands killed on that one day. Now he is notorious amongst criminals and the law. Criminals that might have allied with Mal were killed by the Operative. The Alliance military hate Mal for all the ships Reavers destroyed.

When I start listing things I always forget some, but Mal has only a few choices. Get out of crime because Interpol is constantly watching him (which makes for boring stories). Get deeper into crime working as a stool pigeon for Interpol (which goes against Mal's grain). Get deeper into crime and have Interpol arrest/execute him (which is a terrible option). Make new friends that protect him from Interpol (which is the best option. Where/Who are Mal's new friends? God and Joss only know, but please don't make them the Browncoats. I don't want him to re-fight the Unification War and lose.)

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

BYTEMITE

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 7:58 PM

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Interpol will never ignore Mal after Miranda. Mal is responsible for thousands killed on that one day. Now he is notorious amongst criminals and the law. Criminals that might have allied with Mal were killed by the Operative. The Alliance military hate Mal for all the ships Reavers destroyed.

Well... That really depends on how much information got out after the Operative squelched it. There might be maybe a thousand people involved in tugboating Serenity to port for repairs. The rest might not know much about the action or why they were there or why the Reavers attacked. Also, it's a big verse, chances of running into the any of the people who know about it might be small (Book was pretty unlucky).

And surely the Alliance and it's law enforcement and military branches have better things to do than chase down a worthless and luckless smuggler for revenge, assuming they even know or care about him. However if they found out about him in the sense of his association with River and Simon and later on maybe even other fugitives, they might resume interest.

That said, I do like this idea:

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Make new friends that protect him from Interpol (which is the best option. Where/Who are Mal's new friends? God and Joss only know, but please don't make them the Browncoats. I don't want him to re-fight the Unification War and lose.

We never did find out much about the underground group Simon worked with to get River out...

BYTEMITE

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 8:58 PM

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Since it was hollywood, they were all relatively attractive..real life might now have been so kind..in fact it would be fun to see how some of us, being honest, might cast the crew...same male/female roles, but with unattractives.

I think a real life Jayne would probably look like the guy who played Marv in the sin city movie. Chiseled, nose and even maybe face broken a dozen times, built like a brick house.

Mal would probably still have to have some looks because he tries to be the business man and talker for the Serenity crew, and people tend to listen to people who aren't completely scary looking. However, he would have WAY more scars than they showed Nathan Fillion with - I mean, supposedly Mal's been hit at least once with shrapnel, and judging by his tendencies to get into trouble and defy common sense, possibly more than once. Maybe the scars don't detract from his face much (maybe lots of little dark shrapnel line scars on one side of his face), but he'd be a mess everywhere else.

Zoe is more careful than Mal, she'd probably have scars too though. Not as many as Mal - mostly because that's symbollic. Maybe hers are mostly torture/interrogation related after capture, like someone slicing her ears or something. Though she might have something that suggests how and why she thinks she owes Mal so much loyalty, like if she has an artificial leg.

Wash would still be blond-strawberry blond, it fits his lighthearted personality. Inara would be drop dead gorgeous and probably played by Morena still, because she's a companion, she's supposed to look near unattainable. Book can be also played by Ron Glass again in this scenario, Book needs to look grandfatherly.

River might look a little more unkempt and thin and even a little lanky and awkward, like she hasn't grown into her last growth spurt because it was interrupted by the Academy experimenting on her. Simon could look like a geek/nerd.

TWO

Wednesday, September 19, 2012 4:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
We never did find out much about the underground group Simon worked with to get River out...

Let's create some facts about that underground for stories about Mal's new friends, post movie. He needs friends.

The underground is Russian and one of them trained River to fight. That is why "eta kooram nah smech" was River's password. The phrase is easily spoken by the Russian trainer who, hypothetically, is in the most danger while teaching River. The trainer believed Dr Mathias was an absurd little man and put that sentiment into the password. She neither liked Dr Mathias nor what he was doing to River.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

M52NICKERSON

Tuesday, October 2, 2012 12:47 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Self defense and homicide aren't the same thing. When someone is just simply annoying or inconvenient Mal DOESN'T kill them, like in the Ariel theft, they just knocked out the arrogant doctor even though he could've possibly identified them. Mal only actually kills people if they threaten him or his crew first, and sometimes not even then. It makes Mal's life more difficult, but then again, Mal has to live with himself.

So yeah, the Robin Hood thing still pretty much applies. Or if you don't like that, Mal is basically a future Butch Cassidy - he robs from the people it makes sense to rob, gives back what wins him sympathy to the people who might shelter them, and rarely ever kills because he has a code against that.

Sicilian mafia and gangsters will kill people if they're just inconvenient or who could rat them out, so yes, there is a very large difference between them and Mal.

Mal does shoot the unarmed Alliance pilot on Haven. Mal may not shoot unarmed people all the time, but I think that he will shoot someone who could rat him out if he thought it was needed to protect his ship.

Mal is not gangster, but he is not Robin Hood either. He has a conscious but that only keeps him in check to a certain point. He knew in the episode "Serenity" Dobson was going to have to be killed. He told Simon that it should be he (Simon) to do it. Had Dobson not gotten out of his room I thing Mal would have killed him later on.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

M52NICKERSON

Tuesday, October 2, 2012 12:57 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by two:
Interpol will never ignore Mal after Miranda. Mal is responsible for thousands killed on that one day. Now he is notorious amongst criminals and the law. Criminals that might have allied with Mal were killed by the Operative. The Alliance military hate Mal for all the ships Reavers destroyed.

If the Alliance want's Mal and Serenity they are doomed. Serenity could not land on any planet with port control, which if a backwater like Higgin's Moon has a vast majority of planets most likely have.

I still say the Alliance may very well have bigger issues after the Miranda wave is out than to worry about getting revenge on Mal. Plus we don't know what the Operative reported to the Parliament, or to who. He may have not told them who the Tams where traveling with. He may have made a cover story to explain Serenity's crew and ship being repaired. Lots of options. Oh, and nothing indicates that all the criminals Mal works with are killed by the Operative, just those who sheltered Serenity. So folks like Badger would still be around.

The thing that make the Alliance so scary is the fact that if you are on their radar, you are pretty much dead. Mal and the crew pulled out the mother of all Hail Marys in the movie. I very much doubt they could do it again.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

BYTEMITE

Tuesday, October 2, 2012 3:04 AM

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Mal does shoot the unarmed Alliance pilot on Haven. Mal may not shoot unarmed people all the time, but I think that he will shoot someone who could rat him out if he thought it was needed to protect his ship.

That was not a usual situation. Mal was very close to completely losing it there. It doesn't excuse it, but you can't really use that as a basis for his normal behaviour.

And I think it was less so much he was concerned the pilot would rat them out, and more that Mal was pissed off that the pilot had just bombarded a civilian settlement in cold blood. While Mal's equally cold-blooded reprisal killing can't be defended under any civilian or martial law, it is somewhat understandable.

I do agree that he'll shoot unarmed people to defend his ship - he kicked Crow into the engine for example - but I also think that in a lot of the examples there were extenuating circumstances, not killing someone because it was convenient or easy, but when they made themselves an obvious and dangerous threat. The exception is the pilot in the movie, not the rule.

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He knew in the episode "Serenity" Dobson was going to have to be killed. He told Simon that it should be he (Simon) to do it. Had Dobson not gotten out of his room I thing Mal would have killed him later on.

Zoe seems to have thought that was a very bad idea, because they didn't know whether someone would notice Dobson missing. We can speculate, but really all we have is the scary attitude Mal was giving Simon the whole episode; apart from that initially Mal seemed to agree with Zoe, in that they didn't kill Dobson right off and they were simply holding him captive.

Also, Dobson kept waving a gun around, and Mal had decided to take Simon and River under his wing by then. Dobson had a nasty tendency to threaten his crew, and when Mal walked up Dobson was again threatening, in Mal's mind, his new crewmembers. I'm still going to call that self defense, some jurisdictions consider intervening in a miscarriage of justice or a felony assault under the self-defense category.

In general, I don't think either of the above are enough to derail Mal from chaotic good to grey. The closest argument would actually not have anything to do with the way people tend to die around Mal, but rather Mal's one truly selfish act I can think of - giving away all his crew's money in Better Days so they have to stay with him. And despite the ramifications of that (it pretty much indirectly led to Wash dying), it still doesn't push him into amorality.

M52NICKERSON

Friday, October 5, 2012 1:18 PM

I would agree with chaotic-good to grey. That being said I don't think someone has to be selfish to be act amorally. Outside of the killing that crew and Mal do they also do quit a bit of stealing. Now they often do a fair bit of self justification while do it, but in the end it is still amoral.

The crew steals the meds from the Alliance hospital to make a profit. Yes, they are selling it in areas where it is needed, but they are still selling it, and doing so for more than just what it takes to fuel that ship and feed the crew.

You bring up the comics, which I try to ignore, look at how Better Days starts. They steal from a monistary. Again they give some money in an attempt to justify, or make right, their actions but they are still stealing. Even in Trash they try and justify stealing the Lassiter because of who they are taking it from. Well that is if you really believe Saffron.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

BYTEMITE

Friday, October 5, 2012 3:34 PM

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The crew steals the meds from the Alliance hospital to make a profit. Yes, they are selling it in areas where it is needed, but they are still selling it, and doing so for more than just what it takes to fuel that ship and feed the crew.

It's very likely that in the original Robin Hood stories, if Robin Hood and the merry men were real, they kept at least some of the wealth they stole in order to keep themselves fed, clothed, and armed. Ultimately there are limits to how "Robin Hood-like" a real person can be compared to the mythic figure.

I think if Mal had the option, he'd be happy to do charity work in between earning money to keep them in the air. I actually agree with Two's ideas to some degree, I'd like to see Mal become involved with a charitable organization, possibly through Inara, but I also don't think he'd give up crime if he were doing that as he has too little respect for Alliance law for that. Charity work with some smuggling and tariff dodging, basically, and of course skirmishes when other groups try to steal the aid parcels from the crew during delivery.

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They steal from a monistary. Again they give some money in an attempt to justify, or make right, their actions but they are still stealing.

Not quite. One thief had buried a big cache of money underneath a Buddhist monastery, possibly before it was even built or during construction. Another thief told the crew about a rumour of a lot of money under the monastery that no one ever came back for or claimed. The monks didn't know the cache was there. If they had, the monk probably wouldn't have mentioned Jayne Cobb's own Robin Hood-esque hero of Canton legend when Jayne gave him money. So, it was treasure hunting, not stealing.

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Even in Trash they try and justify stealing the Lassiter because of who they are taking it from. Well that is if you really believe Saffron.

True. But that's what actually puts this IN Robin Hood Territory. Even if Haymer isn't as bad as Saffron says, they still make an effort to mostly steal from the rich or well off. In Robin Hood and the original stories, he was actually stealing back taxes collected by the Sheriff of Nottingham, but in more modern days that's been conflated to Robin Hood stealing from rich people just passing through Sherwood Forest, whether or not they were cruel or evil.

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