The Alliance is messing with “improving” the race – which creates the Reavers. Very Nazi-like, I’d say. They took, er, whatshername, from her parents to rebuild her into some kind of warrior-assassin – it’s a tossup as it fits both Commies and Nazis. Their Agent slaughtered people who knew too much apparently almost wholesale. IIRC he wiped out a big chunk of hospital staff with his magic killer pen. I would say that’s quite Stalinist.
The Nazis weren’t really interested in “improving” the race. They thought that Aryans were already perfect. They were more concerned with making sure their perfect race was diluted or overrun by “lesser” races. So they tried to kill them all.
The Alliance’s program that led to the creation of the Reavers wasn’t really an attempt to improve the race, either. It was an attempt to control the population through chemical influence. There is no real-world government analogue for this. As a fictional trope, it’s not unusual, but it’s just as often something ascribed to ostensibly Democratic societies, as it is to overtly fascist or communistic societies.
How so? I’m not aware of any historical program by Hitler or Stalin to kidnap children and “reprogram” them into assassins.
A government murdering inconvenient witnesses to cover up an immoral black ops program isn’t really a unique feature of Stalinism.
I think you can both be right! Unforgiven, at least, is definitely an acme film…but it doesn’t “fit neatly into the genre.” It breaks too many rules.
(Hell, it breaks all the rules: specifically, it breaks every single one of the old Hayes Office censorship rules. Eastwood used those rules as a checklist, and deliberately broke every damn one!)
It’s a great movie, but it is a “genre-buster” par excellence, and very intentionally so.
The Unforgiven is a fantastically complex film that works on many levels, and does not have a clear or easy interpretation, but I don’t think it can be called a genre buster. It’s a meditation on the genre, not a redefinition or refutation of it. Unforgiven dovetails perfectly with Eastwood’s earlier, truly genre-busting work in Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy - to the extent that a common fan theory is that he’s playing the same character. The story about Eastwood and the Hays code is amusing, but Eastwood’s entire film career in the Western genre has been about deliberately breaking the Hays code. It is not coincidental that the Dollars Trilogy premiered in the US in 1967, and less than a year later, the Hays code was officially retired. The Unforgiven didn’t break the Western genre, it was the last spadeful of dirt on a grave Eastwood and Leone began digging in a Spanish desert in 1963.
I agree with those who are saying the Firefly is essentially a western set in space and the Reavers serve the same narrative role as the Indians did in old westerns.
And the basic idea of the series was inspired by the reconstruction period after the American Civil War. Which has made me wonder if Whedon was planning a surprise if the series had lasted longer. The episodes we saw were establishing the series and showing events from the perspective of the main characters, who naturally saw themselves as the good guys in their own story.
It would have been funny if Whedon had allowed the viewers to get used to this and then pulled back and showed the history of the Unification War - and let us see that the Alliance had been the good guys and Mal and the other rebels had been fighting for the wrong side.
I love Firefly, but I am very ambivalent about things - I would have preferred to live on the Core Worlds, not hardscrabbling on an outer world or moon. I don’t actually know why the browncoats were rebelling offhand, but I do have the feeling you are right and that we are seeing things through the looking glass - Mal and the rest are the unreconstructed James Gang …
That’s an interesting perspective on Firefly as a mirror of the US Revolution.
The Core Worlds Alliance may overall be a pleasant place with a high standard of living, but the government itself does some rather immoral things, and that casts them in the role of Bad Guy. Rather, it seems to be a case where the high standard of living of the Core Worlds comes upon the backs of the colonies. I don’t think Whedon had any intentions of flipping the perspective and showing the Browncoats to be in the wrong, like the views about the US Confederacy.
For instance, look at River’s classroom memory in Serenity. The lesson about the rebellion might come across as simply the difference of perspective, but then look at how it plays out in River’s mind. That’s not a benign lesson from a different perspective.
We don’t see a lot to see how they address political assembly or free speech, but there is a lot of manipulation behind the scenes that suggests they are going for population control rather than the ideas of freedom.
Mal has a strong sense of morality, he’s just hard-beaten by the world and so is creative in how he interprets it. It’s a case of looking out for number one while still trying to retain his sense of right and wrong. Jane is the opportunist of the bunch. Mal would like to make a buck, preferrably without being told what to do and bossed around and overregulated, but he sets limits on what he will and won’t do.
As for the guy into the engine intake, I’d argue that’s a horribly poor choice for techniques, but the justification for that act is fully given. Mal fully gave that man the opportunity to end hostilities and go his separate ways, and instead the man vows to hunt him down and make him pay. Executing him on the spot is a clean end and prevents future repeat confrontations. Plus it sends the proper message to the next guy down the list: you lost. That’s a far better solution than the “we must let them go” only to have them be a perpetual thorn in the side, and lead to continued loss and death later at their hands.
Look at Mal’s actions in the pilot (that we didn’t see until later) - early on the agent takes a hostage at gunpoint, and Mal is calm and tries to negotiate and plea and bargain with the guy. He was fully willing to find a workable solution that didn’t involve killing. But later when the Reavers are coming, and the same guy has once again taken a hostage at gunpoint, Mal doesn’t waste any time or words. He shoots him dead* without a hitch in his step as he strides back into Serenity. Because the time for words was over, immediate action was required. Bang! Now get us away from these Reavers.
Both of those scenes were designed to show something about Mal’s character, that he’s the Han Solo that shot first. The bad guys established their intentions, Mal was acting upon those intentions to his own best outcome.
I don’t think Whedon was cleanly making a western. He was certainly aware of the tropes and using them, but he was willing to subvert them for his own purposes.
As far as Reavers as Indians, they played the role of the old western as the frontier savage. There are plenty of historical and fictional references to the trope. They’re “monsters in the dark” by another name, the same way that “Injuns” were often portrayed in westerns.
*Apparently later in one of the comic book sequels, the guy is somehow alive and just lost an eye. I don’t accept that story. Mal isn’t shooting BBs. That guy was dead - the end.
On the original topic:
I didn’t realize that a celebrating Rebel yells “DIE, DICKHEADS!” in Return of the Jedi until it was pointed out to me. They didn’t even remove it from the Special Edition.
OMG, I’ve been watching the originals, and Return of the Jedi is next up. I’ll be watching for this!
When all’s said and done, *Unforgiven *is a Clint Eastwood movie that ends with Clint bursting in and kicking ass. The details may be different, but the essence is the same.
Until someone said it on TV, I didn’t realize that Will-I-Am is just William. :smack:
And I also did a :smack: when Steven Colbert mentioned Flo Rida = Florida.
I would say in my defense I really don’t follow their music, but their names are obviously enough that it shouldn’t make a difference.
Yes, we all saw Back to the Future III.
I’m surprised no one has yet compared Firefly to The Outlaw Jose Wales; isn’t it obvious?
:D. It happens on Admiral Ackbar’s ship after the Rebel Y-wing plows into the Super Star Destroyer’s bridge.
[Pedantic Nerd Nitpick]A-Wing.[/Pedantic Nerd Nitpick]
“Firefly” is clearly and unambiguously a western set in space. And it’s stuffed full of western tropes, like the Rebel soldier who is now a wandering cowboy.
But of course Joss Whedon can’t leave it at that, so nothing is just one thing. The problem with the old westerns is that in real life the Confederacy was unambiguously on the wrong side. Slavery? So yeah. But set the whole thing in space and you can remove the problematic parts. So in “Firefly” the Union is bad. But “The Alliance” isn’t just the Civil War Union, it’s also Star Trek’s Federation, seen from the underside.
In real life Injuns were human beings who were being ethnically cleansed. You can’t just have savage Injuns attack the wagon train for no reason in a modern movie. So the role of the Injuns is played by Reavers, who really are everything the settlers believed about the Injuns. If the Reavers are also zombies that’s because zombies in modern movies are Injuns. Or rather, zombies in modern movies and Injuns in older movies fill the same role–the savage enemy that you can oppose without considering their humanity. They aren’t human beings, they are wholly abstracted enemies against whom you can righteously fight without mercy, pity, remorse or limits. Injuns won’t work for today’s audience, so zombies, Nazis, orcs, or whatever take their place int he narrative.
So “Firefly” isn’t an apology for the Confederacy, it’s an attempt to tell the story with the problematic parts removed. You know, like they did in the old westerns.
Iraqi militias fighting the US-led occupation is a pretty good fit.
In what way?
Exactly, I’m surprised that this was ever a question. One of the characters even carries a Winchester rifle, they wear western garb, they actually transport cattle in an episode, another episode has a train robbery, and the opening credits look and sound like a western, complete with a country violin.
I didn’t realize that in Ghostbusters 2, the whole scene at the opening with people yelling at each other and one running guy crashing into an injured lady, was to set up the theme that in New York, people are miserable and treat each other like dirt. Which is “every New Yorker’s God-given right”, according to the Mayor, much later in the film. And that all these “bad vibes” are what’s giving Vigo his power.