class and gender in Firefly/Serenity

[firecat]

Via my cousin-out-law Michael, an excellent blog post about class and gender in Firefly.

http://capitalismbad.blogspot.com/2005/12/in-which-i-descend-to-previously.html

Comments

[xiphias]

In fairness, I suspect that the Mal-thing was far more about Inara being specifically and personally fucked-up, much more than sex.

My theory is that Inara, personally, has fucked-up intimacy issues. And when I say "intimacy", I am not talking about sex -- I'm talking about intimacy. I think that the reason she left Sinon to ship out to the Rim on a tramp freighter was that she was developing intimacy with the other people who were there that she grew up with -- and she couldn't deal with it. She couldn't deal with having a family, so ran away from it.

I base a lot of this on "Heart of Gold" -- I think that what ACTUALLY happened in Inara's head during that episode is that she discovered that Mal was sleeping with what's-her-face, discovered that she had feelings of jealousy about that fact, and dealt with them fine -- but THEN she realized that the REASON that she had feelings of jealousy was that she genuinely CARED about Mal in a way that implied intimacy and family, and THAT'S why she broke down crying -- because she felt that this meant that she had to leave. She realized that she'd created the sort of family, on Serenity, that she had run away from on Sinon, and therefore felt compelled to run away again.

WHY she feels like that, I've got no idea, however.