Book Review: Finding Serenity

[sihaya09]

Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds, and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon's 'Firefly'
Edited by Jane Espenson

Comments

[mercury318]

I remember hearing about this book and wanting to go buy it. However now I'm a little glad I didn't.
No coverage of the shows Western themes? Or the fact that in the core cast they have EVERY single Western archetype?

Also after reading your rant of matriarchies I have to ask...ever read "When God Was A Woman?" It was a hella popular book towards the end of the second wave of feminism and although it bears many of the hallmarks of the third wave (damn men! Damn them to hell!) it is pretty historically accurate. It actually goes into the chief historical matriarchies and why they failed. Something as simple as "men had iron and women had bronze."

But I was hoping the book would be a little more academic. Oh well.

[sihaya09]

I haven't read it. However, the author posits that every single goddess was related (to Kali Ma, no less!) and that all societies were interlinked matriarchies that were all peaceful and loving and goddess-centric. I'd need some SERIOUS sources to back that up, you know?

[mercury318]

The article in the Firefly book? Wow. Did the author never crack a history book or talk to an anthropologist? Matriarchies existed but they were extremely early in the history of man and I think only one or two was actually organized enough to leave anything of historical value behind. And Kali Ma is a Hindu goddess. Matriarchies were extremely early forms of government (barely organized) and their gods and goddess would not be based in India but in in the "cradle of civilization" Africa

[sihaya09]

You're smarter than me. Thanks for saying that all clear-like. :)

[sihaya09]

I think that also, there is a fundamental difference between matriarchal societies and matrilineal ones, because that's not exactly the same thing.

Yeah, Davidson made it sound like a worldwide Priestesshood of Avalon or something, and also had a footnote to the tune of Artemis = Astarte = Aphrodite, which is also untrue. I can see an Aphrodite/Venus being lumped together, since they're esentially different cultural visions of the same goddess, but this went a bit too far into plain falsehood. So, yeah. Hence my problems with this article.

[sihaya09]

To clarify, since this is the internet, and you can't hear my tone of voice:

I didn't mean SERIOUS to imply that book isn't scholarly. I haven't read it, and it may be. I meant it to mean "multiple scholarly books with no blatant bias."