skull_bearer: (Default)
skull_bearer ([personal profile] skull_bearer) wrote2009-03-24 01:35 am

Watching Firefly

Simon is so like Mirek it's not even funny. Even looks like him, right down to the mad, 2,000 mile stare that always freaks Johannes out.
Weird.
Oh yeah, great series, sexist as hell, with the main captain dude being a textbook example of the nastier type of 'nice guy'. And all the so-called macho women needing men to save them from other nasty men who 'don't respect them'.
But it has spaceships and funny lines and a bunch of people who are basically nazis running the place and dark eldar on steroids hacking people to pieces. What's not to like?
Apart fromt he fact, y'know, that this is meant to be cowboys in space, and that makes the 'nazis' the Northern states in the Civil war and the Reavers... Native Americans. You know, the ones that had nine kinds of genocide inflicted on them? Those guys.
Yeah. The subtext sucks so hard it's painful to think about.

[identity profile] pepperjackcandy.livejournal.com 2009-03-24 01:47 am (UTC)(link)
Have you gotten to the end of Serenity yet?

[identity profile] skull-bearer.livejournal.com 2009-03-24 01:51 am (UTC)(link)
Watched it ages back, yes.

[identity profile] pepperjackcandy.livejournal.com 2009-03-24 02:16 am (UTC)(link)
I thought Serenity had the most anticlimactic ending in the history of anticlimactic endings.

So, Joss gratuitously kills off everyone's favorite character, and then it turns out that River's amazing power is that . . . she's Buffy. With brown hair.

:deletes rambling about how much cooler it would've been to have had River turn out to be some kind of all-powerful ascended pandimensional being or something like that:

[identity profile] wikdsushi.livejournal.com 2009-03-24 01:59 am (UTC)(link)
Amazingly, you've actually made me want to watch the series even less than I already did. This is probably borderline sacrilege, but I can't stand Joss Whedon. At all. I loathed Buffy, barely tolerated Angel, and haven't even gotten around to bothering with Doctor Horrible.

The funny lines won't save it in my eyes, unfortunately. :( Whedon's funny lines all fall flat for me. Like he's trying too hard. (Where's Heathers when you need it?)

Ignore terrible grammar. I'se tired.

[identity profile] pepperjackcandy.livejournal.com 2009-03-24 02:22 am (UTC)(link)
I don't *quite* feel that strongly (I did like the first four seasons of Buffy (the ones that others call S1, S2, S3, and S5 -- S4 was painfully bad)), but otherwise, um, pretty much.

[identity profile] deviantcreature.livejournal.com 2009-03-25 12:36 pm (UTC)(link)
Doctor Horrible is by far the best of the bunch. The style fits his particular schtick whereas Serenity and the more "serious" episodes of Buffy (especially late season) are truly barf worthy.

[identity profile] arkan2.livejournal.com 2009-03-26 03:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Huh, I've seen people talking about how the Reavers represent Native Americans, but I hadn't made the Alliance/North, Browncoats/South connection before. I doubt either was intentional (Whedon seems to have an even shakier grasp on issues related to race than on issues of feminism) but that doesn't make it any less problematic.

Being Whedon (he apparently suffered a serious concussion circa 2002/2003 which made him forget everything he'd previously known about feminism) he equates feminism with “beating up the most outrageously over-the-top cardboard misogynists Joss Whedon can dream up.”

The part that really got me about Firefly was the message that "murdering helplessly prisoners is noble (also funny) if it's the good guys doing it to the bad guys (the Russian hit man from "The Train Job," and the cartoonishly misogynist rancher or whatever in the episode centered around a brothel.)

Oh yeah, and the fact that the main character was a sadistic little dictator the writers tried to pass off as a Han Solo-esque lovable scoundrel.

[identity profile] skull-bearer.livejournal.com 2009-03-26 09:09 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm sure neither was intentional, but that doesn't mean anything. That anyone subconciously makes these equasions does not make me comfortable on any level.
I didn't pick up on the 'killing helpless prisoners', but you are very right about the main character. The probably with Mal was that you could feel how hard the writers wanted you to like him, which made him even more irritating than Jayne, who yes, was worse, but was called on his actions. Mal never was.

[identity profile] arkan2.livejournal.com 2009-03-26 09:30 pm (UTC)(link)
True, it's just as bad that those interpretations are so apt, regardless of anyone's intent.

I actually liked Jayne because the writers were honest about who he was. When he acted like a jerk, the writers presented him as a jerk, and occasionally called him out on it. When Mal acted like a jerk, the writers presented it as no big deal, or (as in the kick-helpless-prisoner-into-the-engine gambit) as heroic and hysterical. It naturally follows that they wouldn't call him out for being jerk.

Well, they thought he was a little bit jerkish, and I suppose they called him on that, but they still let him slide on the big stuff.

*sigh* It's a shame that the flaws in Firefly are so glaring, because the rest of the show is really pretty good.

[identity profile] skull-bearer.livejournal.com 2009-03-26 10:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Exactly. He was a bastard, he was disliked and mocked for it, and thus he's one of the most popular characters in the show. Mal does things as bad or in some cases worse, and not only do the characters do nothing about it, the writers hints that we should approve.
I agree, all in all it's a great show and the premise had a lot of potential.