Possibly, but I wouldn’t put the theme song to Firefly in that category. It’s a good song that ably captures the spirit of the show.
whimpering intensely annoying?
River I thought the best of the bunch!
then again, I really dig crazy women.
Osip
I like the song, I like it a lot. In fact I kind of know the obscure performer of it, Sonny Rhodes. He’s a great blues guitarist. I got to be his stage crew one night at a Jazz and Blues festival and I have seen him live about three times.
I actually agree with **Stranger ** on Morena Baccarin. She is very pretty but not a great actor. As to Summer Glau, well she is good at playing robotic characters as she cannot act at all. I don’t get all the fanboys she generated on her two sci-fi shows.
Jewel Staite was very cute and one of the better Engineering characters in a long time. She hearkened back to an older style of Engineer.
As others have said, Adam Baldwin was the best character as Jayne and he has reprise the role on Chuck. He has mostly played that character for most of his career, but it works damn well for him.
Jim
It fellates.
It fellates with Great Alacrity.
It is the only science fiction theme song I’ve heard that fellates with greater alacrity than Enterprise.
That ain’t the Blues. Robert Johnson is the Blues. Son House, Muddy Waters, even Rory Block can do the Blues, but not that theme song.
I was praying for defenestration. He had his moments and usefulness, like the Golem, and I suppose the actor was very good in the role, but surely not the best.
I think this is an interesting question. I think being a companion is glamorous and certainly lucrative, but maybe not truly respectable. Deep down, I think Inara knows this–you couldn’t insult a mid-20th century banker by calling him a “moneylender” or a “usurer”; he’d just scoff at you as being some crazy radical or lunatic if you tried. Inara likes to claim that being a companion is the same way–sure, maybe back in the Dark Ages people thought there was something wrong or demeaning about her profession, but it would be hopelessly atavistic to think that in the modern 25th Century. Her reactions to Mal’s insults (and to those of some of her customers) somewhat belie this, though.
I think the closest (but still imperfect) analogy would be “companion” is like “movie star”–you’re rich and famous and get invitied to glitzy parties, but maybe people don’t truly look up to you; lots of people think of you as being shallow, and your job isn’t really something that would make you a role model–and that sort of viewpoint is sufficiently widespread that someone might actually manage to hurt a movie star’s feelings by saying so (where you couldn’t really hurt a banker’s feelings by calling him a “moneylender”). Maybe throw in some of the now very old-fashioned idea that actors are actually immoral, and you start to get at what the true social position of a companion might be in the Firefly 'verse.
Good point, well taken.
Three reasons:
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Like Jewel Staite, Summer Glau is very attractive, but not in the “way out of my league” way that Morena Baccarin is. Your average sci-fi geek isn’t going to be so intimidated by her looks that he couldn’t talk to her.
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Unlike Jewel Staite — who comes across as “easy to hurt her feelings”, Glau has a look about her that says she’d be happy to give you an all-night romp of the most mind-blowing sex you’ve ever had and not be the least bit upset if you don’t call her the next day.
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She kicks ass.
HEY!
Please be careful about spoilers! There are people in this thread who haven’t seen the entire series or Serenity, so please be considerate.
I think it’s significant when a one-season TV show can add important phrases to our language. Now you’ve got me thinking about Jewel & Summer, so I’ll be in my bunk…
I look at the Companion issue a bit differently.
I think Companions are respected. They’re well-trained, and they’re regulated through a professional “trade association.” I got the impression they were licensed, too.
There are still, however, freelance whores in the Firefly world. Untrained, unregulated, and not well-respected at all.
Calling a Companion a “whore” would be a horrible insult, because she’s worked very hard to move past that.
The Ballad of Serenity was, in fact, written before the show. Whedon read The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara’s historical novel on the battle of Gettysburg, and thought it was a terrific story. The attitudes of the Browncoats have all the trappings of the Lost Cause without all that pesky slavery baggage.* After mulling things over for quite some time, he wrote the ballad, then he wrote the pilot, Serenity.
Folk-song writer Michelle Dockrey felt it was a chorus in search of a song, and wrote one, Mal’s Song.
*The Lost Cause got its main start with a series of articles written by Gen. Jubal Early, a name that will resonate when you see Objects in Space.
I think you are making MEBucker’s point to some degree. Calling someone a name that merely means “someone as the same profession as you but not as well trained and regulated” doesn’t work for a truly respected profession. It’s a laughable insult. It works for Companions because they know there is no really clear dividing line between them and something that isn’t respectable.
As to the series as a whole, I found it both extremely well done in its good parts, and intensely annoying for its faults. The only way to enjoy it is to accept that (a) the characters and dialog are just spectacularly good (b) the plots are annoying partly because they are so unfinished, but that’s not Whedon’s fault © there are some nonsensical aspects, but if you concentrate on them you’ll miss the pleasure potentially available from (a).
MacTech: I just want to thank you for starting this thread, because up to the moment I read it, Firefly had flown under my radar completely. (some days, you couldn’t find my radar with a superheterodyne.)
And now my mind is blown. Ridiculously.
I find it very humorous thinking how he must have sounded in the first minute or two of pitching it to the network execs: “It’s a western. … In outer space.”
Uh-huh.
Like some kind of Wagon Train to the Stars?
But with hookers and black jack. No - forget the black jack!
An American doctor would laugh off someone calling him a “quack,” and an American soldier would laugh off someone calling him a “mercenary”… but in a country with a less powerful government or with less regulatory muscle, or perhaps if corruption was rampant, I can see someone getting very upset at that. Especially if they believed that they really were on the right side of the line.
Someone who went to an arts academy for four years and majored in dance, who works for weeks to get a choreographed routine down perfectly – even if that routine involves removing some or all of her clothing – is clearly not in the same league as a stripper. But now the line is definitely more blurry, because where is the governing body? Is she perhaps in a union? Her mother might tell the ladies’ sewing circle that she’s a dancer, but when mom is out of the room, I bet the whispers could be vicious.
Inara doesn’t seem insecure about her own role, but she does seem to worry that people using the words Companion and whore interchangeably will devalue that difference… and that difference is her competitive advantage in the marketplace, and the only thing that puts food on her table.
Try rereading my post. I never said the song was a good blues song. I said Sonny Rhodes was “a great blues guitarist”. Do yourself a favor and type Sonny Rhodes into Youtubes’s search and listen to a few of his live performances. He really is a great live blues guitarist.
As to the song, I don’t know what it is. I like it, but that is probably influenced by the fact that I like Sonny so much.
Sorry, I shouldn’t diss another guy’s musical taste.
I think a Companion would be comparable to a geisha. Probably in training since a relatively early age. Highly trained in all kinds of arts - music, martial arts, dance, conversation, politics - not just sex. Able to converse as an equal with the highest caliber of people and an asset to any gathering. Highly traditionalized. Compare that to a whore scrabbling to survive, trading sexual favors for everything, including even ministry.
StG
It might not be the blues, but it sure makes me sad.