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

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.