A Rapist's View of the World: Joss Whedon and Firefly

[_allecto_]

This is a really long rant about Joss Whedon's Firefly. Why? Because I'm angry and I think it is really important that feminists don't leave popular culture out of the equation. Especially considering that popular culture is increasingly being influenced by pornography

Comments

[beanheartbatman]

I'm sorry, I have to disagree. Firstly I think that's the laziest interpretation of Whedon's work I ever read. It reads of a person who refuses to leave their biased nature behind and has watched with a view to hate it regardless of its content. I'm not even sure you watched the whole series properly, or gave it any time.

To go into a rebuttle of your tedious points would take longer than I have. However taking one to emphasise my point; Inara's career as a companion is fraught with problems, as Whedon points out. She is less akin to a prostitue and more akin to a courtesan - a highly educated woman who does sleep with men, but is not simply a walking vagina sold into slavery and raped continously, as you suggest. Whedon is also careful to point out that she has not been sold into sexual slavery. She choses her clients (and whether to accept clients), dines with them, teaches them and companies them to balls. She is given the chance to give up being a companion and refuses. Whedon's depiction of the companion shows that no matter how unionised and careful the women may be, there are always problems (such as the treatment Inara endures at the Ball).

I am however disapointed that you have not bothered to detail the character of Jayne.

[_allecto_]

Hmm... Considering I watched the whole series twice, read through every single script, read through Serenity about five times, counted the lines that men spoke and women spoke, then worked for about three weeks trying to write this I think it is interesting that you call me lazy. But anyways, courtesan is just another name for a woman in prostitution. I don't distinguish between women who are bought by men as sex and other 'feminine' resources. If you do, and you think that there is a nice way for men to buy women as sex, that there is an empowered way that women can sell themselves as sex then my journal is the wrong place for you. If you are pro-prostitution then you are not a feminist and pro-prostitution/women-hating opionions are not welcome on my journal. All prostitution is rape. The men who buy Inara ARE selling her into sexual slavery. For the time that they buy her she is 'theirs'.

I will be talking more about all of the characters. I was particularly concentrating on Serenity in this post. And Mal and Jayne's relationship definitely begs for a feminist examination.

Oh, and any more pro-prostituion comments will be deleted.

[beanheartbatman]

You're awesome and I can't remember my password.

m Andrea, the feminazi. :)

Also, LJ just confuses the hello outta me.

Your point on prostitution was well put. What is the point of having sex with a thousand men who all taste like sardine juice if you have other options? Saying women like that crap is kinda up-is-down Orwellian doublespeak.

Your next deconstruction?

[fiat_knox]

My personal recommendation for your next deconstruction of eye-wateringly horrifying brutish misogyny in action? Skip "Our Mrs Reynolds" and go straight to the episode "Heart of Gold".

Knowing what the past was like, all its cultural biases and prejudices, and understanding how the future can be as much a dystopia as a utopia depending on our decisions now, it makes me appreciate what I have now, and the marginally more enlightened times we live in.

Just as the past is a foreign country, and they do things differently there, so too the future is an alien land, and we may never know which of the cultural assurances we enjoy here - good health, freedom of association and expression, the vote - we may lose, or see changed as time marches.

One point I'd like to note, however, is to remind the readers here that science fiction, like all fiction, holds a mirror up to life. It reflects the cultural dreams, and also the prevailing cultural prejudices, of the time.

Consider the 1960s, and observe how Star Trek was an attempt to reflect the hopes and dreams of the optimism of that time - but also reminded us of the struggles of that time, too, with the rise of feminism and black civil rights, and the anti-war movement.

Look at the downbeat SF films of the early 1970s such as The Stepford Wives, Phase IV and Soylent Green, when people were convinced that the lunatic leaders of the day were hell bent on bringing nuclear war down upon us all.

Now compare the fin de siecle bouncy optimism of the late Nineties and see it reflected in Babylon 5. But also note a warning on the rise of dictatorship if we're not careful. JMS was ten years ahead of his time.

And now, think about all that was going on back in 2002 when Firefly aired, with the post-9/11 buildup to war, the Patriot Acts, Homeland Security and a general backsliding to a hardline government governed by a small, misogynistic hegemonic cabal - the return of Star Chamber government. And see it reflected in the Alliance.

I really wouldn't want the future to turn out like the 'Verse of Firefly, though. And I really wouldn't want to live there if it did. But I fear that we may have little choice, because the grim Neo-Medieval mores of that future are with us in life, right now.

Re: Your next deconstruction?

[kitsune_das]

Extremely well-put.

Re: Your next deconstruction?

[_allecto_]

Yeah, Heart of Gold was incredible in its portrayal of women. But it wasn't an episode written by Joss Whedon. I am particularly concentrating on the episodes that were written by him as he is the one going around calling himself a feminist.

As to the future, I have to believe that the Women's Movement will once again gain momentum and stop the madness that men have created. I have to believe that. If I didn't then life wouldn't really be worth living.

[queenmother49]

All prostitution is rape.

Does that apply to male prostitutes as well? Or does that not apply to men?

[_allecto_]

Of course it applies to males in prostitution.

[beanheartbatman]

I do not in anyway show support for prostitution, however, I would like to see what you have to say about the ball scene in "Shindig." Atherton Wing begins to call Inara a whore, and Mal punches him (because that's how he reacts) and Inara questions him on why he did that when Mal calls her a whore. Mal says that "I don't respect your job, but he didn't respect you."

Geisha / Prostitution condemnation

[beanheartbatman]

Allecto's arguments are well-formed and I think she may have a point. However, I also think that will all the patriarchy and misogyny in the series, Joss was intentionally pointing out flaws in our own society. I think we must recognize that he was hardly upholding this as a bright and shiny future, but more a dystopian as another commenter said.

In particular, while the Alliance culture perceives companions as studied, high-caste, hyper-sexualized (nee objectified) women of influence, it is the violent, hyper-masculine Malcolm Reynolds who recognizes the inherent hypocrisy of her prostitution. Whatever his motivations, and regardless of his bull-headedness, he does not approve of this profession. The way he voices this opinion is to do away with any of the more flower-y descriptions of "companion" or "geisha" or "escort" and cut straight to "whore", which, bottom-line, is a person who trades sex for money.