The Bene Gesserit Seamstresses of the 'Verse
A link kindly provided to me by linaerys about the class conflict in Firefly/Serenity has been eating my brain for the past twenty minutes because, being bored as nuts around work, I am doing nothing but thinking on a plot bunny I plucked from my brain last week and how to work it out. It's not what the article itself talks about that I've been considering, however, but something brought up in the comments to it:
Fictional guilds are well established in literature, and I've been comparing the guilds and workers in Joss Whedon's 'verse to a pair of my favorite series with similar constructs: Frank Herbert's Dune stories and Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
Now, all three of these fictional realms are very different from one another, with one being openly comedic, another focusing primarily on pathos and tragedy, and the one at the heart of my deliberations being stretched between the two. However, the two series I know so well actually shed different lights--both very useful--onto the matter of the Guild of Companions in Firefly.
So, let's start with what we know. In the 'verse, women and (contrary to what some might think based on the series alone) men are trained from a young age to be Companions. Just to make sure I'm understood, keep in mind that just we don't see the men does not mean they weren't there--in fact, when Serenity reaches the point where Mal goes to meet Inara, there is at least one man clearly visible in the training house. He may be a teacher, true, or perhaps akin to the kind of model you'd find in an art studio. If the latter explanation holds, he would still be pretty well trained in all the arts Companions would impart to students. If the former, well, the only teachers we know of are former Companions themselves, ergo, he would be a Companion. Moving on...
Companions are schooled in art, music, dance, language, beauty (evidenced by Inara's abilities with both makeup and cloth), hygeine (her trip for an annual physical, which includes, we can reasonably presume, a screening for STDs), psychology (inferred from her ability to solve problems mostly by listening and asking incisive questions at the right moment), and, of course, sexuality (do I even have to say why I think they learn that last one?). In the deleted scenes from Serenity, Inara reveals that such training began early in her life, at the cusp of puberty for girls, when she was 12. Additionally, we are exposed to one training lesson wherein Inara is playing the part of a client while one of her students lowers her to a bed (thus strengthening my argument for the male at the house to be both teacher and Companion--he would have lots to impart here). In her argument with Sheydra, Inara says the girls cannot be Companions because of sexual coaching alone, and that shaping their outlook requires years of teaching control prior to higher order acts.
Beyond this, we know little of the Guild aside from a few laws. One is the physical, as imparted to us by Inara in "Ariel." In "The Train Job," "Jaynestown," and "War Stories," we are also told that Companions have the right to choose clients, thus ensuring they are always able to refuse an offer or a request for their services. Unlike, we are to imply, whores, who are to be assumed and shown to be too dependent on earning whatever they can to refuse many (Rance Burgess in "Heart of Gold" is the only man Nandi singles out as specifically unwelcome; she never once tells any of the posse willing to follow him that they aren't allowed in her house). Against clients chosen who prove to be unworthy, a la Atherton Wing, the Guild provides protection in the form of blacklisting.
The Guild is a union that way. Seen as such, it takes no stretch of the imagination to end the debate of what kind of class of girls are sent to them for training in the first place. Run like a union, the Guild could charge fees to its members to support the central House. In return, the Guild would arrange to contact them with new clients, filter client registry to suit talents or appetites, pay for or help fund medical care, use social and intra-house leverage to punish any who attempted unfairly to besmirch a Companion. It would not make decisions for its members, per se, but it would streamline the processes that are not worth every single Companion handling individually.
As such, it seems extremely unlikely that the sorts of girls and boys sent to Companion Houses are wealthy to begin with. In a world where the wealthy want for nothing because they can abuse a servile class almost without censure (there is much talk of indentured labor in "Jaynestown," a mention of slavery in "Bushwhacked," and even Badger is seen examining a prospective worker like a head of cattle), there is no need for the wealthy to have to rely on blue-collar labor to pull through. Artists, musicians, and dancers would be better served attending academies devoted solely to those pursuits, if endowed offspring of rich scions were so inclined, rather than working to bed those talents to serve others (artists are notoriously bad people-persons, so I doubt the central idealogy of pleasing others with their work would fly with them). It is possible that Companion Houses recruit among the rich, possibly as polishing/finishing academies for children before they enter more career-oriented paths (Simon's use of the word 'MedAcad' interested me because the word academia applies more to tertiary schooling, but academy immediately calls to mind private secondary schools; perhaps it's just me, but it does appear that the schooling system focuses more on trade universities after high school).
Poor people, on the other hand, have everything to gain by sending away extra mouths to be educated at the Guild's expense. The Guild would be able to afford the education by its dues, and, one presumes, any endowments by former members, and would, in return for the scholarship, have its choice of students to suit its program. Not that I think the affluent don't put their children through similar hoops--perhaps there is an entrance exam as with ancient Chinese civil service, or modern-day Japanese high school admissions?--but the poor would be less picky for one, and the immense gratitude of being accepted into a career path where one might make a lot of money would make for a more pliable mind than if one enrolled a child already accustomed to luxury and leisure. Upward mobility, or the promise of it, is not to be discounted as a motivating factor in engaging in work, no matter how degrading it might seem on casual glance. As the Guild ensures protection against abuse, or retribution where it fails to do so, the risks are considerably lessened. Since a lack of money can often lead both men and women to sex work in particular--the one form of labor that is truly mobile and requires next to nothing in the way of 'skill' (yes, there is some, but no, for the most part, none is required)--most of those without funds would probably see great promise, glamor and security in becoming a Companion. They would be able to run their own lives--and be better at running them--when they were through, with the Guild to protect but not interfere with their business.
But is the Guild autonomous in its own right, or does it adhere to the Alliance much as its own members are bound to it? In this much, I think immediately of Pratchett and the guild structure of Ankh-Morpork. Lord Vetinari uses the guilds of the Discworld as primary enforcers without forcing them to do his will. This comparison between 'verse and Disc clarifies things for me in that both worlds have Guilds that represent businesses deemed illegal in most 1st-world nations on Earth. The Disc has a host of guilds devoted to crime--Thieves, Assassins, and Seamstresses*--versus the 'verse's one, the Companion Guild, is all. Vetinari allows the theives to steal without punishment so long as they have a license; the assassins may off whoever they please, so long as it is covered in a contract; and no one dares confront the Seamstresses lest they run afoul of the Agony Aunts.
In return, the possibility of losing one's money to theft is severely limited, provided one pay a tax of sorts to the Thieves' Guild. In exchange for this tax, the Thieves take it upon themselves to mark a person as not to be stolen from and they deal with anyone who tries to steal from that person. Likewise for the Guild of Assassins, the tax you pay provides you with a crime-specific policing--task forces, if you will. Pay regularly, in moderation, and you will be fine.
As demonstrated in Serenity, the Alliance is badly in need of such a system, and perhaps the Companion Guild is part of it. The Alliance cannot patrol and police the entire solar system, and we know they already fund private firms in areas too remote to be worth their effort. In the 'verse, there are dangers for sex workers, too, as we learn in "Heart of Gold," ones that cannot be helped with an appeal to local law (which may often be the problem). Creating a willing fleet of women prepared for violence (one thing I forgot to add to Companion training: they are school in martial arts and weaponry, proved in Serenity's climax and Inara's efforts to stop the Operative at her training school) and backed up with the threat of the resources of the entire Guild behind them, creates an effective buffer against the excesses in the outer rim (I almost said Uncharted Territories--oh dear, mixing fandoms in an essay about mixing fandoms).
But with that protection comes a price, physical, emotional, and monetary, and this is where I begin to see shades of Dune. In Dune, there are guilds aplenty, but the one that interests me most are the Bene Gesserit in relation to the Companion Guild. The two are eerily identical in their mockup, though the Bene Gesserit are more open about pursuing their own agenda (whatsoever the Companion Guild agenda might be--if they have one--is not revealed, though it may have something to do with Inara choosing not to stay and work on the Central Planets). The Bene Gesserit also begin teaching their pupils at young ages, sharpening their minds, bodies, artistic talents, and skills of inducing pleasure. The Bene Gesserit place their trained girls and mothers in strategic locations to further their plans for collecting and directing the flow of genetic information (aka they guide bloodlines through pregnancies to create more of their number and, eventually, a messiah, who, strangely enough, is a man). They are not disinterested or passive about involvement in government because they cannot afford to be. To get what they want, they appease dictators, or use their skill at manipulation to goad those with political or militaristic power to do--often without knowing they do it--according to the Bene Gesserit agenda.
This is a very different read on the Guild from the one in Pratchett, which is a whimsical practical one. The Bene Gesserit in function are more akin to the Companions, but in terms of intent it is less clear. How does the Guild know the Alliance will respond if they bring a complaint on behalf of a Companion? Surely, such threats must be made good upon, or else they would carry no weight. Inara blacklisting Atherton Wing might keep him from hiring a date, yes, but what if she'd not gotten the chance? Suppose he killed her then or later? He threatened to disfigure her, a threat which Mal and she laughed off, but which is a scarily real compromise if she wants to pursue her career (high-minded as we want to be about Companions, we must all confess that they are obligated, out of deference to human nature if nothing else, to be at least average if not attractive--scars and disfiguration do not qualify as 'average').
The Bene Gesserit response to such a threat would be tailored to their need for the person making it. If he or his genetics were unimportant, they might only kill him. In their minds, people who aren't important should be eliminated before they can make themselves dangerous. Inara's response to someone who is of no consequence (Atherton is one man on a middling--not poor, not Central--planet, and is not well-liked from what we can tell) is to brush him off. The only man she comes near to killing is Rance Burgess, but even then, she uses the threat of violence rather than the action. When he does the unforgiveable, Inara is not the one to put him down or even chase after him (those tasks fall to Petaline and Mal, respectively).
A Bene Gesserit, on the other hand, would treat someone who was a threat much more carefully if he was a serious problem. In the Dune prequels, Baron Harkonnen possesses both the power of the spice and a genetic line the sisterhood desires, but he cannot be outright killed because he is in a position of power. Were Inara to have no other choice to protect herself or another Companion, violence must be a right no matter who. The Bene Gesserit, though influential and politically powerful, do not. Their revenge is best when it is subtle, the better to engender fear in those who challenge or oppose them--after all, there are many well-trained non-Bene Gesserit assassins, but few men or women who can control their bodies to the point where they can infect a rapist with a crippling, incurable STD that was stored in the victim's body for just such a purpose (which, sorry if this is a spoiler, is exactly what they unleash on Baron Harkonnen, turning a virile man into a bloated pus-bag).
Either set of women, Companions or the Bene Gesserit, has the right to react, and the expectation of vengeance should keep rowdy types in hand. But are the Companions or their Guild empowered beyond the shadowed expectation they will act, whereas the Bene Gesserit are subject to law and could be pinpointed to being eradicated if they could be proven to have done the act? Are they perhaps expected to react, and, while not strictly legal, forgiven it by people who see the offender as having had it coming a la the Seamstresses, Thieves and Assassins of the Discworld? That, to me, is the real question, which is more interesting than the endless moral debate over what Inara does for a living or the mystery of what she did that caused her to run away (unless it relates to the aforementioned seeking-of-vengeful-justice, in which case I'm all ears).
In fact, my questions about the 'verse are more general and less character-specific. My next long discussion of Firefly might center around the Sino-American Alliance, its origins, the issue of dominant-dependant nation statuses within, the absence of Chinese people but the primacy of the Chinese language (ads are in Chinese, suggesting it is the first language taught to children being reared, as ads and secondary/casual literature like it are good indicators of what the mainstream, predominant language of a people is), and the other nationalities that populate a small corner of the 'verse (Cockneys and Russians and Irish, oh my!).
Look forward to being bored to tears by my verbal runs on that later!
Fictional guilds are well established in literature, and I've been comparing the guilds and workers in Joss Whedon's 'verse to a pair of my favorite series with similar constructs: Frank Herbert's Dune stories and Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
Now, all three of these fictional realms are very different from one another, with one being openly comedic, another focusing primarily on pathos and tragedy, and the one at the heart of my deliberations being stretched between the two. However, the two series I know so well actually shed different lights--both very useful--onto the matter of the Guild of Companions in Firefly.
So, let's start with what we know. In the 'verse, women and (contrary to what some might think based on the series alone) men are trained from a young age to be Companions. Just to make sure I'm understood, keep in mind that just we don't see the men does not mean they weren't there--in fact, when Serenity reaches the point where Mal goes to meet Inara, there is at least one man clearly visible in the training house. He may be a teacher, true, or perhaps akin to the kind of model you'd find in an art studio. If the latter explanation holds, he would still be pretty well trained in all the arts Companions would impart to students. If the former, well, the only teachers we know of are former Companions themselves, ergo, he would be a Companion. Moving on...
Companions are schooled in art, music, dance, language, beauty (evidenced by Inara's abilities with both makeup and cloth), hygeine (her trip for an annual physical, which includes, we can reasonably presume, a screening for STDs), psychology (inferred from her ability to solve problems mostly by listening and asking incisive questions at the right moment), and, of course, sexuality (do I even have to say why I think they learn that last one?). In the deleted scenes from Serenity, Inara reveals that such training began early in her life, at the cusp of puberty for girls, when she was 12. Additionally, we are exposed to one training lesson wherein Inara is playing the part of a client while one of her students lowers her to a bed (thus strengthening my argument for the male at the house to be both teacher and Companion--he would have lots to impart here). In her argument with Sheydra, Inara says the girls cannot be Companions because of sexual coaching alone, and that shaping their outlook requires years of teaching control prior to higher order acts.
Beyond this, we know little of the Guild aside from a few laws. One is the physical, as imparted to us by Inara in "Ariel." In "The Train Job," "Jaynestown," and "War Stories," we are also told that Companions have the right to choose clients, thus ensuring they are always able to refuse an offer or a request for their services. Unlike, we are to imply, whores, who are to be assumed and shown to be too dependent on earning whatever they can to refuse many (Rance Burgess in "Heart of Gold" is the only man Nandi singles out as specifically unwelcome; she never once tells any of the posse willing to follow him that they aren't allowed in her house). Against clients chosen who prove to be unworthy, a la Atherton Wing, the Guild provides protection in the form of blacklisting.
The Guild is a union that way. Seen as such, it takes no stretch of the imagination to end the debate of what kind of class of girls are sent to them for training in the first place. Run like a union, the Guild could charge fees to its members to support the central House. In return, the Guild would arrange to contact them with new clients, filter client registry to suit talents or appetites, pay for or help fund medical care, use social and intra-house leverage to punish any who attempted unfairly to besmirch a Companion. It would not make decisions for its members, per se, but it would streamline the processes that are not worth every single Companion handling individually.
As such, it seems extremely unlikely that the sorts of girls and boys sent to Companion Houses are wealthy to begin with. In a world where the wealthy want for nothing because they can abuse a servile class almost without censure (there is much talk of indentured labor in "Jaynestown," a mention of slavery in "Bushwhacked," and even Badger is seen examining a prospective worker like a head of cattle), there is no need for the wealthy to have to rely on blue-collar labor to pull through. Artists, musicians, and dancers would be better served attending academies devoted solely to those pursuits, if endowed offspring of rich scions were so inclined, rather than working to bed those talents to serve others (artists are notoriously bad people-persons, so I doubt the central idealogy of pleasing others with their work would fly with them). It is possible that Companion Houses recruit among the rich, possibly as polishing/finishing academies for children before they enter more career-oriented paths (Simon's use of the word 'MedAcad' interested me because the word academia applies more to tertiary schooling, but academy immediately calls to mind private secondary schools; perhaps it's just me, but it does appear that the schooling system focuses more on trade universities after high school).
Poor people, on the other hand, have everything to gain by sending away extra mouths to be educated at the Guild's expense. The Guild would be able to afford the education by its dues, and, one presumes, any endowments by former members, and would, in return for the scholarship, have its choice of students to suit its program. Not that I think the affluent don't put their children through similar hoops--perhaps there is an entrance exam as with ancient Chinese civil service, or modern-day Japanese high school admissions?--but the poor would be less picky for one, and the immense gratitude of being accepted into a career path where one might make a lot of money would make for a more pliable mind than if one enrolled a child already accustomed to luxury and leisure. Upward mobility, or the promise of it, is not to be discounted as a motivating factor in engaging in work, no matter how degrading it might seem on casual glance. As the Guild ensures protection against abuse, or retribution where it fails to do so, the risks are considerably lessened. Since a lack of money can often lead both men and women to sex work in particular--the one form of labor that is truly mobile and requires next to nothing in the way of 'skill' (yes, there is some, but no, for the most part, none is required)--most of those without funds would probably see great promise, glamor and security in becoming a Companion. They would be able to run their own lives--and be better at running them--when they were through, with the Guild to protect but not interfere with their business.
But is the Guild autonomous in its own right, or does it adhere to the Alliance much as its own members are bound to it? In this much, I think immediately of Pratchett and the guild structure of Ankh-Morpork. Lord Vetinari uses the guilds of the Discworld as primary enforcers without forcing them to do his will. This comparison between 'verse and Disc clarifies things for me in that both worlds have Guilds that represent businesses deemed illegal in most 1st-world nations on Earth. The Disc has a host of guilds devoted to crime--Thieves, Assassins, and Seamstresses*--versus the 'verse's one, the Companion Guild, is all. Vetinari allows the theives to steal without punishment so long as they have a license; the assassins may off whoever they please, so long as it is covered in a contract; and no one dares confront the Seamstresses lest they run afoul of the Agony Aunts.
In return, the possibility of losing one's money to theft is severely limited, provided one pay a tax of sorts to the Thieves' Guild. In exchange for this tax, the Thieves take it upon themselves to mark a person as not to be stolen from and they deal with anyone who tries to steal from that person. Likewise for the Guild of Assassins, the tax you pay provides you with a crime-specific policing--task forces, if you will. Pay regularly, in moderation, and you will be fine.
As demonstrated in Serenity, the Alliance is badly in need of such a system, and perhaps the Companion Guild is part of it. The Alliance cannot patrol and police the entire solar system, and we know they already fund private firms in areas too remote to be worth their effort. In the 'verse, there are dangers for sex workers, too, as we learn in "Heart of Gold," ones that cannot be helped with an appeal to local law (which may often be the problem). Creating a willing fleet of women prepared for violence (one thing I forgot to add to Companion training: they are school in martial arts and weaponry, proved in Serenity's climax and Inara's efforts to stop the Operative at her training school) and backed up with the threat of the resources of the entire Guild behind them, creates an effective buffer against the excesses in the outer rim (I almost said Uncharted Territories--oh dear, mixing fandoms in an essay about mixing fandoms).
But with that protection comes a price, physical, emotional, and monetary, and this is where I begin to see shades of Dune. In Dune, there are guilds aplenty, but the one that interests me most are the Bene Gesserit in relation to the Companion Guild. The two are eerily identical in their mockup, though the Bene Gesserit are more open about pursuing their own agenda (whatsoever the Companion Guild agenda might be--if they have one--is not revealed, though it may have something to do with Inara choosing not to stay and work on the Central Planets). The Bene Gesserit also begin teaching their pupils at young ages, sharpening their minds, bodies, artistic talents, and skills of inducing pleasure. The Bene Gesserit place their trained girls and mothers in strategic locations to further their plans for collecting and directing the flow of genetic information (aka they guide bloodlines through pregnancies to create more of their number and, eventually, a messiah, who, strangely enough, is a man). They are not disinterested or passive about involvement in government because they cannot afford to be. To get what they want, they appease dictators, or use their skill at manipulation to goad those with political or militaristic power to do--often without knowing they do it--according to the Bene Gesserit agenda.
This is a very different read on the Guild from the one in Pratchett, which is a whimsical practical one. The Bene Gesserit in function are more akin to the Companions, but in terms of intent it is less clear. How does the Guild know the Alliance will respond if they bring a complaint on behalf of a Companion? Surely, such threats must be made good upon, or else they would carry no weight. Inara blacklisting Atherton Wing might keep him from hiring a date, yes, but what if she'd not gotten the chance? Suppose he killed her then or later? He threatened to disfigure her, a threat which Mal and she laughed off, but which is a scarily real compromise if she wants to pursue her career (high-minded as we want to be about Companions, we must all confess that they are obligated, out of deference to human nature if nothing else, to be at least average if not attractive--scars and disfiguration do not qualify as 'average').
The Bene Gesserit response to such a threat would be tailored to their need for the person making it. If he or his genetics were unimportant, they might only kill him. In their minds, people who aren't important should be eliminated before they can make themselves dangerous. Inara's response to someone who is of no consequence (Atherton is one man on a middling--not poor, not Central--planet, and is not well-liked from what we can tell) is to brush him off. The only man she comes near to killing is Rance Burgess, but even then, she uses the threat of violence rather than the action. When he does the unforgiveable, Inara is not the one to put him down or even chase after him (those tasks fall to Petaline and Mal, respectively).
A Bene Gesserit, on the other hand, would treat someone who was a threat much more carefully if he was a serious problem. In the Dune prequels, Baron Harkonnen possesses both the power of the spice and a genetic line the sisterhood desires, but he cannot be outright killed because he is in a position of power. Were Inara to have no other choice to protect herself or another Companion, violence must be a right no matter who. The Bene Gesserit, though influential and politically powerful, do not. Their revenge is best when it is subtle, the better to engender fear in those who challenge or oppose them--after all, there are many well-trained non-Bene Gesserit assassins, but few men or women who can control their bodies to the point where they can infect a rapist with a crippling, incurable STD that was stored in the victim's body for just such a purpose (which, sorry if this is a spoiler, is exactly what they unleash on Baron Harkonnen, turning a virile man into a bloated pus-bag).
Either set of women, Companions or the Bene Gesserit, has the right to react, and the expectation of vengeance should keep rowdy types in hand. But are the Companions or their Guild empowered beyond the shadowed expectation they will act, whereas the Bene Gesserit are subject to law and could be pinpointed to being eradicated if they could be proven to have done the act? Are they perhaps expected to react, and, while not strictly legal, forgiven it by people who see the offender as having had it coming a la the Seamstresses, Thieves and Assassins of the Discworld? That, to me, is the real question, which is more interesting than the endless moral debate over what Inara does for a living or the mystery of what she did that caused her to run away (unless it relates to the aforementioned seeking-of-vengeful-justice, in which case I'm all ears).
In fact, my questions about the 'verse are more general and less character-specific. My next long discussion of Firefly might center around the Sino-American Alliance, its origins, the issue of dominant-dependant nation statuses within, the absence of Chinese people but the primacy of the Chinese language (ads are in Chinese, suggesting it is the first language taught to children being reared, as ads and secondary/casual literature like it are good indicators of what the mainstream, predominant language of a people is), and the other nationalities that populate a small corner of the 'verse (Cockneys and Russians and Irish, oh my!).
Look forward to being bored to tears by my verbal runs on that later!