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

[punzel]

Thank you for sharing this.

[rmjwell]

I disagree with several of her notions.

First, Inara has more to offer than her labor power; she has access to privileges because of her status and she uses that to her and the crew's benefit. Second, while Mal is a property owner, he has much more in common with the independent trucker than say a landed property holder.

I also wonder why she doesnt touch on the third romantic relationship, Zoe & Wash, as it examines boundaries being crossed between the military and civilians.

[firecat]

I agree Inara has more to offer than labor power.

[epi_lj]

It's interesting. I think that the analysis might be somewhat convoluted, or the perspective somewhat convoluted, by the author framing class as an issue of men having power over women. (And what about stories where a woman falls in love with her manservant, who is torn because he does feel some closeness to her but is still ultimately a slave?) Ultimately, that requires the analysis to prove along the way that Mal has power over Inara and that that's the basic dynamic of their relationship. I'm not convinced that that's the case, especially given that she stands her ground on issues of space and boundaries and he backs down a few times in the show, and ultimately, she leaves. It was also given on many occasions that they needed her more than she needed them.

I also think that reducing her role to pleasing men and then brushing aside the time she was shown entertaining a female client and the references they made to female clients in a, "That didn't count," hand wave is a bit simplistic.

[firecat]

Maybe I didn't read it carefully enough, but I did not see the author framing class as an issue of men having power over women, per se; she did say that in many stories class and men-over-women are conflated and suggested that this is the case in Firefly too, but to a lesser degree (partly because of the mechanic/doctor relationship

[epi_lj]

The quote I took as equating class with power of men over women in this context was this one:

"In the world of movies class is just another way of exploring the power men have over women."
I think that it's important that Inara's ability to leave was presented in a way that made it seem like a constant, viable and attractive option and one that would not hurt her at all and would hurt the crew a great deal. It came up multiple times that she had better options available to her and that she had control of her own destiny. In that context, I don't think that I really believe that Mal's actions were an exertion of power and that leaving being her only option was the classic power situation it's being made out to be. If anything, it felt more like Inara had the power in the situations and that her choosing to stand for his behaviour was part of her dysfunctional way of coping with her feelings for him (a theme that was played up on both their parts). In the conversation where he tried to assert that she would live by his rules while

[firecat]

OK, here is where I got my understanding of what the poster is saying about class and gender: ...a lot of culture (particularly television) ignores class entirely. At the movies, upper middle class America is the default - anything else is a concious choice - something that needs an explanation. Movies that show people from different classes relating to each other are even rarer.
I thought she was talking about something peculiar to TV and movies and not saying that class and gender power are the same in general.

I don't know if a a frequency approach to the references to her clients really holds *that* effectively in this case, since most of the references to her clients were included to set up jealousy and tension vis a vis her and MalIt depends on how you're going about your analysis. I see three ways to analyze it

[hfnuala]

I hated the whole idea of the Inara character - it really felt like very little thought had gone into it past 'hey, let's have an intergalactic high class whore! It'll be very!'

[firecat]

That was my emotional reaction too. The other part of said reaction was "and then this rigorously-trained-since-childhood-Companion had no training about how to deal with romantic feelings toward men, such that she can't make up her mind whether to fuck Mal or not? Yeah, riiiight."

[xiphias]

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

[rmjwell]

A friend of mine has a theory that everyone has that thing or person they can become addicted to, that slips past their defenses and just plays hell with their life. I don't have a problem with Mal being Inara's personal crack.

So to speak.

[xiphias]

I think that, if there was genuine sexual equality in the 'Verse, then there would be male Companions. As it was, Companions were female only, and the one time we saw a male prostitute, it was unusual enough for Kaylee to comment on it. "Hey! They got boy whores! How considerate!"

[jenk]

Um, Kaylee's from the sticks. What does she know about Companions?

[xiphias]

There are no male Companions. And the fellow she was talking about was a prostitute, not a companion. I suspect that, while Kaylee might not know anything about Companions, except what she might learn from the fact that one of them is one of her best friends and thinks of her as a little sister, Kaylee has a perfectly normal working knowlege of whores.