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]

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.

When God Was A Woman goes into how these matriarchies developed because women had the babies and there was absolutely nothing coming close to biology. The only one she really talks about was one located in Africa.

She goes into the archetype of the goddess in Western culture and how that archetype developed and eventually split and became more recognizable as Hera, Artemis and Hestia.

I mean saying the goddess archetype is rooted in India is just flat wrong. Earliest records of humans are in Africa and thus that would be the birth. Also India was fairly isolated from the Western world...hence it being included as part of the Eastern world.

It is also vaguely offensive to say all forms of the goddess archetype are based on a consort.

Wow now I want to read this book and then send the author a long letter.

[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.