Watching Firefly

[skull_bearer]

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.

Comments

[pepperjackcandy.livejournal.com]

Have you gotten to the end of Serenity yet?

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

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.

[arkan2.livejournal.com]

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.