Yet another Public Response
Okay, I've already posted about this post as Friends Only, but I too felt I had to respond publicly. I have commented on the OP asking that if she is wanting to participate in debate, she replies here. I shall be setting comments to screened, not to weed out those who disagree with me, but to try to avoid too much flaming. Those who have valid backed-up arguments to my post shall get through.
The first scene opens in a war with Mal and Zoe. Zoe runs around calling Mal ‘sir’ and taking orders off him. I roll my eyes. Not a good start.
Yes, they're in a war, Mal is Zoe's commanding officer, she'd be in trouble if she wasn't calling him 'Sir!'.
So in the very second scene of the very first episode, an episode written and directed by the great feminist Joss, a white man tells a black woman to ‘shut up’ for no apparent reason. And she does shut up.
Reason - An Alliance Ship, which can quite conceivably monitor the communications taking place through the suit comm units, is approaching, Zoe shuts up because she realises this, and the fact that they need to conceal the fact they're there from the Alliance for as long as possible.
And she continues to call him sir. And takes his orders, even when they are dumb orders, for the rest of the series.
I'm very interested to know which 'dumb orders' you're referring to, perhaps if you let me know myself and others who've seen the serious several times can provide valid reasons for these orders.
The next scene we meet Kaylee, Jayne asks Mal to get Kaylee to stop being so cheerful. Mal replies, “Sometimes you just wanna duct tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.” Kaylee responds by grinning and giving Mal a kiss on the cheek and saying, “I love my Captain.”
What the fuck is this feminist man trying to say about women here?
I'm not sure if you're aware that Joss quite often creates families in his work. Sometimes families, and close-knit communities have ways of phrasing things that can seem odd and even downright strange to outsiders.
Also, are you using the Scripts or the Episodes themselves as your primary sources. Whilst the Script could plausibly be used to back up your conclusions, in the Episode itself, the very delivery of the lines belies that conclusion. My view of the relationship between Mal and Kaylee is not of a tyrant and one submissive to him, it's more that of an older brother who enjoys teasing his lil' sister. As for Jayne, well throughout the series he is portrayed as someone who doesn't have the highest intelligence. He's a mercenary guy who's out for himself, but he's kept within the limits of decency (mostly) by the rest of the crew.
As for Mal's relationship with Zoe, as stated before, he was her commanding officer during the war, he's now Captain of the ship on which she's First Mate, calling him 'sir' is not an expression of how he, as a white male, is superior to her as a black female, it's an expression that has been carried over from the war, most likely as a sign of respect, and in acknowledgement of the fact that as Captain he has ultimate responsibility for the safety of the crew and is always trying to do what is best.
Our first introduction to Inara the ‘Companion’, Joss Whedon’s euphemism for prostituted women, is when she is being raped/fucked/used by a prostitutor. I find it really interesting to read the scripted directions for this particular scene:
So, Joss Whedon refers to rapist/fuckers who buy women as sex, as ‘eager, inexperienced but pleasingly shaped’ who ‘make love’ to women in prostitution.
He refers to this particular client as such, a client who we later find out to be someone who has never had sex before.
In Joss Whedon’s future world prostituted women are powerful and respectable. They go to an Academy, to train in the arts of being a ‘Companion’. They belong to a Guild which regulates prostitution, forces women to endure yearly health tests and comes up with rules to make prostitution sound empowering for women. For example, one Guild rule is that the ‘Companion’ chooses her rapist, not the other way around.
I'm not sure what your issue with the yearly health tests is, surely anyone whose body is a major part of their work (athletes, dancers, singers) needs to keep their body in a healthy condition. As for Companion Choice, if the woman is choosing to have sex with a particular person, how can it be rape? A Companion could just as easily choose not to accept any clients, or accept only female clients (as shown in the episode War Stories).
But there is one really big question that does not get answered. The women who ‘choose’ to be ‘Companions’ are shown as being intelligent, accomplished, educated, well-respected and presumably from good families. If a woman had all of these qualities and opportunities then why the fuck would she ‘choose’ to be a man’s fuck toy? Would being a fuck toy for hundreds of men give a woman like Inara personal fulfillment? Job satisfaction? A sense of purpose? Fulfill her dreams? Ambitions?
Unfortunately we're not fully in possession of all the facts about the future 'verse that Joss has created. We know that being a Companion brings status (as shown in The Train Job, where it comes to light that some Companions have indentured men who travel around with them, a form of male slavery, perhaps...?), but we don't know what other occupations that a woman who is skilled at the arts can pursue. We see women in the Science based professions, and it's highly likely that there are women in the military (as shown by Zoe, who is obviously a career-soldier in the Browncoats), but for someone like Inara, with a world-view that aims for peace and harmony, perhaps being a Companion is a highly sought career choice (We even see, in the movie Serenity (the novelisation and the deleted scenes) that many girls from the outlying planets are wanting to be trained by the Guild as it gives them prestige).
Money doesn’t seem to be the motivation behind Inara’s ‘choice’ to be a ‘Companion’, presumably she just ‘enjoys’ swanning around in ridiculous outfits. And being used as a fuck toy by men is seemingly a small price to pay for the pleasure.
I wonder if you realise that some women do actually enjoy having sexual intercourse with men.
At any rate, Inara’s apparent ‘power’ is merely a figment of Joss Whedon’s very sick imagination.
I refer you to my earlier comments about The Train Job.
In a later episode, Inara is shown to have set down three very specific rules in relation to her arrangement to hiring one of Mal’s shuttles as her base of operations. 1) No crew member, including the Captain would be allowed entrance to the shuttle without Inara’s express invitation. 2) Inara refuses to service the Captain nor anyone under his employ. And 3) the Captain cannot refer to Inara as a whore.
The third thing that Mal says in the first interaction between Inara and Mal is, “She’s a whore…” Does Inara stop him from calling her a whore? Nope. She just goes on smiling and being gracious. So he calls her a whore again.
The scene where Inara sets the rules takes place at least 6 months before the start of the series proper. It's highly conceivable that during those six months the relationships between the crew members have become friendly enough to allow some relaxing of the initial ground rules. Also, in the example given above, Inara is intelligent enough to realise that Mal's use of the term is not an attack on her, it's simply an attempt to shock the Shepherd.
And in regards to her first rule, Mal takes every opportunity he can to break it. In the first episode Mal barges into Inara’s shuttle.
In the instance above, Mal has entered after he's been eavesdropping on Inara and Simon's conversation. The phrasing above to me infers that this is the first time that this has happened. As for why, it's more about Mal unsettling Simon (who still doesn't know whether he's managed to save Kaylee, ergo, he doesn't know if he's caused both his own and his sister's imminent deaths), than Mal undermining Inara's rights.
Scenes like this continue to occur for the rest of the series.
I've not watched the series for a while, but the main example I can think of is when Mal bursts in looking for Kaylee, again, he has another purpose than just invading Inara's space. As for his ignoring Inara, I refer you again to the length of time between the rules being set and the start of the series, and as for her apparent not minding, it's well-accepted that Inara is in Love with Mal.
In regards to her servicing the crew, she begins to service the Captain and the male passengers of the ship from day one. The following is an excerpt from the script of Serenity. Book is a black male character. He is a Preacher and disapproves of Inara’s ‘profession’.
It is clear from the outset that a large part of Inara’s service involves addressing issues of male inadequacy and fulfilling many other emotional needs of her clients. The ability to do this IS a resource and it is therefore a service that Inara must perform. BUT Inara services all of the male passengers and the Captain in this way. She also services Kaylee but the relationship between them is a little more reciprocal.
To say Inara must perform this service is putting it a little strongly. As with everything else Inara does, she chooses whether to provide it or not. As for this being akin to her servicing the crew, I disagree. For one, Book is not a member of the crew, and personally I feel that it's one of our natural instincts to try and comfort someone who is in pain, especially if they are a friend, or, in this case, is someone who may be a friend (which Inara would quite possibly feel, seeing as Book's beliefs would quite possibly make him feel that he had to shun or preach at her, both of which he refrains from).
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Joss uses his own wife in this way. Expects her to clean up his emotional messes. Expects her to be there, eternally supportive, eternally subservient and grateful to him in all his manly glory. I hope the money is worth it, Mrs. Whedon. But somehow I doubt that it is. No amount of money can buy back wasted emotional resources.
I'm sure others have mentioned that this is verging on libellous, you may find it wise to offer an apology as Mr Whedon no doubt has some very powerful lawyers...
I counted the amount of times women talk in the episode Serenity compared to the amount of times men talk. The result was unsurprising. Men: 458 Women: 175. So throughout the first episode men talk more than two and a half times as much as women do.
Two sayings for you - 'Quality rather than Quantity' and 'Actions Speak Louder than Words'. Just because the women are not as vocal as the men doesn't mean that they don't have as much influence as the men. I can quite often influence my husband without saying a word. The human face is a very expressive canvas.
In Serenity, Mal enjoys using a character called Simon as his personal punching bag. In one scene he walks up to him and smashes him in the face, without any provocation or logical reason. In another scene Simon asks Mal a question and Mal smashes him the face again. No reason, no explanation, just violence.
Reason - Wash has just told Mal that someone has signalled the Alliance, Simon is in the Cargo Hold checking on River, Mal, attempting to find out the source of the signal sees him and assumes the obvious. As Mal is currently concealing Alliance marked foodstuffs in his hold and there's already a flag on the vessel from the illegal salvaging on that, obviously Mal does not want the Alliance catching up with him.
As for the second occasion, it's been a while and I can't remember which episode it is in, but the question Simon asks is questioning Mal's integrity, causing Mal to get angry. As the relationship between these two is never really friendly, it's not surprising that there is so much antagonism between them.
Zoe, the token black woman, acts as a legitimiser. Her role is to support Mal’s manly obsession with himself by encouraging him, calling him ‘sir’, and even starting the fights for him. Zoe is treated as a piece of meat by both her husband (Wash, another white male) and the Captain. Wash and Mal fight each other for Zoe’s attention and admiration, both relying on her submission to them to get them hard and manly. In fact there is a whole episode, War Stories, devoted to Wash and Mal’s ‘rivalry’.
Zoe is not shown to have a personality of her own. She has no outside interests, no ideas or beliefs, no conversation with anyone other than Wash or Mal. She has no female friends, in fact she tends to dislike women. For example, she is the first one to insult Saffron in the episode Our Mrs. Reynolds, calling her ‘trouble’.
The rivalry is not, in fact, a rivalry. The simple fact is that Wash is jealous because Mal and Zoe share all these experiences. He's madly in Love with this woman, and is therefore jealous of anyone whose had experiences with her that he doesn't share. As for her submission. I hardly call her grabbing Wash's collar whilst telling Mal to take the controls of the ship because, in her words 'I need this man to tear all my clothes off!'. Submissive. Zoe is the strong one in the relationship, and Wash accepts this.
Zoe, of course, is meant to be our empowered, ass-kicking sidechick. Like all sidechicks she is objectified from the get go. Her husband, Wash, talking about how he likes to watch her bathe. Let me just say now that I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour. So you will forgive me for believing that the character, Wash, is a rapist and an abuser, particularly considering that he treats Zoe like an object and possession.
I can't comment personally, but I'm sure there's many coloured women with white husbands out there who'd disagree with you, and unfortunately, I cannot concur with your assessment of Wash as a rapist and an abuser, due to the many indications throughout the series of Zoe's obvious dominance of the relationship.
I hope you've at least taken time to read this, which has been submitted in the spirit of having a lively debate, but the fact that so few comments encouraging debate, and trying to present all sides of your original statement appear does not fill me with confidence. I shall therefore be posting this on my own journal.
Yours
A 28-year-old Graduate who is in a perfectly happy, loving relationship with a man, and is one of those people who does enjoy sexual intimacy with those who possess a Y Chromosome.
The first scene opens in a war with Mal and Zoe. Zoe runs around calling Mal ‘sir’ and taking orders off him. I roll my eyes. Not a good start.
Yes, they're in a war, Mal is Zoe's commanding officer, she'd be in trouble if she wasn't calling him 'Sir!'.
So in the very second scene of the very first episode, an episode written and directed by the great feminist Joss, a white man tells a black woman to ‘shut up’ for no apparent reason. And she does shut up.
Reason - An Alliance Ship, which can quite conceivably monitor the communications taking place through the suit comm units, is approaching, Zoe shuts up because she realises this, and the fact that they need to conceal the fact they're there from the Alliance for as long as possible.
And she continues to call him sir. And takes his orders, even when they are dumb orders, for the rest of the series.
I'm very interested to know which 'dumb orders' you're referring to, perhaps if you let me know myself and others who've seen the serious several times can provide valid reasons for these orders.
The next scene we meet Kaylee, Jayne asks Mal to get Kaylee to stop being so cheerful. Mal replies, “Sometimes you just wanna duct tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.” Kaylee responds by grinning and giving Mal a kiss on the cheek and saying, “I love my Captain.”
What the fuck is this feminist man trying to say about women here?
I'm not sure if you're aware that Joss quite often creates families in his work. Sometimes families, and close-knit communities have ways of phrasing things that can seem odd and even downright strange to outsiders.
Also, are you using the Scripts or the Episodes themselves as your primary sources. Whilst the Script could plausibly be used to back up your conclusions, in the Episode itself, the very delivery of the lines belies that conclusion. My view of the relationship between Mal and Kaylee is not of a tyrant and one submissive to him, it's more that of an older brother who enjoys teasing his lil' sister. As for Jayne, well throughout the series he is portrayed as someone who doesn't have the highest intelligence. He's a mercenary guy who's out for himself, but he's kept within the limits of decency (mostly) by the rest of the crew.
As for Mal's relationship with Zoe, as stated before, he was her commanding officer during the war, he's now Captain of the ship on which she's First Mate, calling him 'sir' is not an expression of how he, as a white male, is superior to her as a black female, it's an expression that has been carried over from the war, most likely as a sign of respect, and in acknowledgement of the fact that as Captain he has ultimate responsibility for the safety of the crew and is always trying to do what is best.
Our first introduction to Inara the ‘Companion’, Joss Whedon’s euphemism for prostituted women, is when she is being raped/fucked/used by a prostitutor. I find it really interesting to read the scripted directions for this particular scene:
So, Joss Whedon refers to rapist/fuckers who buy women as sex, as ‘eager, inexperienced but pleasingly shaped’ who ‘make love’ to women in prostitution.
He refers to this particular client as such, a client who we later find out to be someone who has never had sex before.
In Joss Whedon’s future world prostituted women are powerful and respectable. They go to an Academy, to train in the arts of being a ‘Companion’. They belong to a Guild which regulates prostitution, forces women to endure yearly health tests and comes up with rules to make prostitution sound empowering for women. For example, one Guild rule is that the ‘Companion’ chooses her rapist, not the other way around.
I'm not sure what your issue with the yearly health tests is, surely anyone whose body is a major part of their work (athletes, dancers, singers) needs to keep their body in a healthy condition. As for Companion Choice, if the woman is choosing to have sex with a particular person, how can it be rape? A Companion could just as easily choose not to accept any clients, or accept only female clients (as shown in the episode War Stories).
But there is one really big question that does not get answered. The women who ‘choose’ to be ‘Companions’ are shown as being intelligent, accomplished, educated, well-respected and presumably from good families. If a woman had all of these qualities and opportunities then why the fuck would she ‘choose’ to be a man’s fuck toy? Would being a fuck toy for hundreds of men give a woman like Inara personal fulfillment? Job satisfaction? A sense of purpose? Fulfill her dreams? Ambitions?
Unfortunately we're not fully in possession of all the facts about the future 'verse that Joss has created. We know that being a Companion brings status (as shown in The Train Job, where it comes to light that some Companions have indentured men who travel around with them, a form of male slavery, perhaps...?), but we don't know what other occupations that a woman who is skilled at the arts can pursue. We see women in the Science based professions, and it's highly likely that there are women in the military (as shown by Zoe, who is obviously a career-soldier in the Browncoats), but for someone like Inara, with a world-view that aims for peace and harmony, perhaps being a Companion is a highly sought career choice (We even see, in the movie Serenity (the novelisation and the deleted scenes) that many girls from the outlying planets are wanting to be trained by the Guild as it gives them prestige).
Money doesn’t seem to be the motivation behind Inara’s ‘choice’ to be a ‘Companion’, presumably she just ‘enjoys’ swanning around in ridiculous outfits. And being used as a fuck toy by men is seemingly a small price to pay for the pleasure.
I wonder if you realise that some women do actually enjoy having sexual intercourse with men.
At any rate, Inara’s apparent ‘power’ is merely a figment of Joss Whedon’s very sick imagination.
I refer you to my earlier comments about The Train Job.
In a later episode, Inara is shown to have set down three very specific rules in relation to her arrangement to hiring one of Mal’s shuttles as her base of operations. 1) No crew member, including the Captain would be allowed entrance to the shuttle without Inara’s express invitation. 2) Inara refuses to service the Captain nor anyone under his employ. And 3) the Captain cannot refer to Inara as a whore.
The third thing that Mal says in the first interaction between Inara and Mal is, “She’s a whore…” Does Inara stop him from calling her a whore? Nope. She just goes on smiling and being gracious. So he calls her a whore again.
The scene where Inara sets the rules takes place at least 6 months before the start of the series proper. It's highly conceivable that during those six months the relationships between the crew members have become friendly enough to allow some relaxing of the initial ground rules. Also, in the example given above, Inara is intelligent enough to realise that Mal's use of the term is not an attack on her, it's simply an attempt to shock the Shepherd.
And in regards to her first rule, Mal takes every opportunity he can to break it. In the first episode Mal barges into Inara’s shuttle.
In the instance above, Mal has entered after he's been eavesdropping on Inara and Simon's conversation. The phrasing above to me infers that this is the first time that this has happened. As for why, it's more about Mal unsettling Simon (who still doesn't know whether he's managed to save Kaylee, ergo, he doesn't know if he's caused both his own and his sister's imminent deaths), than Mal undermining Inara's rights.
Scenes like this continue to occur for the rest of the series.
I've not watched the series for a while, but the main example I can think of is when Mal bursts in looking for Kaylee, again, he has another purpose than just invading Inara's space. As for his ignoring Inara, I refer you again to the length of time between the rules being set and the start of the series, and as for her apparent not minding, it's well-accepted that Inara is in Love with Mal.
In regards to her servicing the crew, she begins to service the Captain and the male passengers of the ship from day one. The following is an excerpt from the script of Serenity. Book is a black male character. He is a Preacher and disapproves of Inara’s ‘profession’.
It is clear from the outset that a large part of Inara’s service involves addressing issues of male inadequacy and fulfilling many other emotional needs of her clients. The ability to do this IS a resource and it is therefore a service that Inara must perform. BUT Inara services all of the male passengers and the Captain in this way. She also services Kaylee but the relationship between them is a little more reciprocal.
To say Inara must perform this service is putting it a little strongly. As with everything else Inara does, she chooses whether to provide it or not. As for this being akin to her servicing the crew, I disagree. For one, Book is not a member of the crew, and personally I feel that it's one of our natural instincts to try and comfort someone who is in pain, especially if they are a friend, or, in this case, is someone who may be a friend (which Inara would quite possibly feel, seeing as Book's beliefs would quite possibly make him feel that he had to shun or preach at her, both of which he refrains from).
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Joss uses his own wife in this way. Expects her to clean up his emotional messes. Expects her to be there, eternally supportive, eternally subservient and grateful to him in all his manly glory. I hope the money is worth it, Mrs. Whedon. But somehow I doubt that it is. No amount of money can buy back wasted emotional resources.
I'm sure others have mentioned that this is verging on libellous, you may find it wise to offer an apology as Mr Whedon no doubt has some very powerful lawyers...
I counted the amount of times women talk in the episode Serenity compared to the amount of times men talk. The result was unsurprising. Men: 458 Women: 175. So throughout the first episode men talk more than two and a half times as much as women do.
Two sayings for you - 'Quality rather than Quantity' and 'Actions Speak Louder than Words'. Just because the women are not as vocal as the men doesn't mean that they don't have as much influence as the men. I can quite often influence my husband without saying a word. The human face is a very expressive canvas.
In Serenity, Mal enjoys using a character called Simon as his personal punching bag. In one scene he walks up to him and smashes him in the face, without any provocation or logical reason. In another scene Simon asks Mal a question and Mal smashes him the face again. No reason, no explanation, just violence.
Reason - Wash has just told Mal that someone has signalled the Alliance, Simon is in the Cargo Hold checking on River, Mal, attempting to find out the source of the signal sees him and assumes the obvious. As Mal is currently concealing Alliance marked foodstuffs in his hold and there's already a flag on the vessel from the illegal salvaging on that, obviously Mal does not want the Alliance catching up with him.
As for the second occasion, it's been a while and I can't remember which episode it is in, but the question Simon asks is questioning Mal's integrity, causing Mal to get angry. As the relationship between these two is never really friendly, it's not surprising that there is so much antagonism between them.
Zoe, the token black woman, acts as a legitimiser. Her role is to support Mal’s manly obsession with himself by encouraging him, calling him ‘sir’, and even starting the fights for him. Zoe is treated as a piece of meat by both her husband (Wash, another white male) and the Captain. Wash and Mal fight each other for Zoe’s attention and admiration, both relying on her submission to them to get them hard and manly. In fact there is a whole episode, War Stories, devoted to Wash and Mal’s ‘rivalry’.
Zoe is not shown to have a personality of her own. She has no outside interests, no ideas or beliefs, no conversation with anyone other than Wash or Mal. She has no female friends, in fact she tends to dislike women. For example, she is the first one to insult Saffron in the episode Our Mrs. Reynolds, calling her ‘trouble’.
The rivalry is not, in fact, a rivalry. The simple fact is that Wash is jealous because Mal and Zoe share all these experiences. He's madly in Love with this woman, and is therefore jealous of anyone whose had experiences with her that he doesn't share. As for her submission. I hardly call her grabbing Wash's collar whilst telling Mal to take the controls of the ship because, in her words 'I need this man to tear all my clothes off!'. Submissive. Zoe is the strong one in the relationship, and Wash accepts this.
Zoe, of course, is meant to be our empowered, ass-kicking sidechick. Like all sidechicks she is objectified from the get go. Her husband, Wash, talking about how he likes to watch her bathe. Let me just say now that I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour. So you will forgive me for believing that the character, Wash, is a rapist and an abuser, particularly considering that he treats Zoe like an object and possession.
I can't comment personally, but I'm sure there's many coloured women with white husbands out there who'd disagree with you, and unfortunately, I cannot concur with your assessment of Wash as a rapist and an abuser, due to the many indications throughout the series of Zoe's obvious dominance of the relationship.
I hope you've at least taken time to read this, which has been submitted in the spirit of having a lively debate, but the fact that so few comments encouraging debate, and trying to present all sides of your original statement appear does not fill me with confidence. I shall therefore be posting this on my own journal.
Yours
A 28-year-old Graduate who is in a perfectly happy, loving relationship with a man, and is one of those people who does enjoy sexual intimacy with those who possess a Y Chromosome.