Firefly: A Dissenting Opinion

Of course I still love Firefly. I love the Space-Western setting, and the rich, complex, funny world that Jos Wheden creates. What I like even more than the setting are the characters. Wheden does a good job at creating solid, believable sorts.

Except for River. I don't like her. Psychosis as a plot device is so boring. River is a character bereft of agency, of having to deliberate over painful moral conundrums. And because her brain has been messed with, she has acts irrationally and the lack of limitations on her character is dull - a character must be subject to human sorts of limits to be believable and interesting. She's like someone re-telling a dream; someone else's dream is boring because anything can happen. There is no launching pad of rationality for your mind to cling onto, to make the story and the character meaningful.

You might protest and say that River does have reasons for disturbing the peace and for making a dull subplot; the authorities have twidled with her brain. But this is not a reason, this is a cause. If I asked you why chose chocolate over vanilla, a response like "because my neurons fired in this certain configuration, causing my muscles in my arm to contract and reach for the chocolate..." does not answer the question because it makes a category error. A response like "I like chocolate over vanilla because chocolate makes my tastebuds go 'zing' and I like a 'zing'" answers the question.

River is incapable of giving "reasons" for her behaviour, only Simon can step in and name some "causes". Part of what makes a human is this higher-order ability to articulate (even if it's grunts like Jayne's), rationalise and give meaning to behaviour. River is a creation by Wheden who looks human, is terribly clever and dances like a cat. But she is hard to like, because she is so unlike a human.

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A lot of people don't like the character Jayne. I gather that's because he's a thug. People don't like thugs because 1) you can't understand why a hitmen hit men or 2) you don't like thugish values. In response to 1), I think Jayne is pretty understanable as a character. He's a simple man who knows what he wants. And he knows how best to get it. And he has a strong sense of justice. It's pretty simple, really. As for 2), sure violence isn't usually the way, but let's face it, in Firefly World, it seems to get the job done!

Then there's Inara. She's a self-righteous prostitute. She doesn't like petty theft because it's illegal, but because the culture has sanctioned whoring, what she does is perfectly legal, honourable even. I don't like how Firefly implicitly validates prostitution in it's morally ambigious attitude to it. The courtesans are graceful, educated and beautiful. But no matter how much you dress up whoring, it's still whoring.

Inara and Mal can share a cup of tea, but there's a tension there, and it's not just sexual. Inara doesn't like lawbreakers. But Mal's not really a lawbreaker. For how can you be a lawbreaker when your miles above the law, orbiting far outside it's juristriction? In a world like Firefly's, the lines of government and power are blurred. There are rebels, there are authorities. But is the authority rightfully begot? Where does Imperial territory begin and Independent territory end? If there's no land to draw borders on, but merely dust and gas... If the planet you're inhabiting is barely terraformed, who owns it?

Mal and his crew aren't outlaws, they're justified, because there's no laws for them to break. It's just every man for himself in black.


Disclaimer: Some may read me as saying that psychotic people are not human. That would be a silly reading because if you read clearly and don't commit any logical fallacies in the reading, you'll discover that's not what I'm saying.

The Fall of Man: Genesis, Gender and Jesus.

No matter how hardcore a materialist you are, you can't deny the existence of experience. Or at least you can't deny words or words that are somehow connected with your experiences.

We can then safely say that it is uncontroversial to admit that there exist two domains; (even though the dichotomy itself may be in question) the natural, and the non-natural. The “natural” is relatively easy to define, but what constitutes the “non-natural”depends on your worldview.

If you make the most admissions to the materialist or the reductionist (such as 'the “spiritual” doesn't exist'), you still cannot deny the existence of the “non-natural”, even if what we are talking about is words or minds or subjective experience or the ordering of the world according to a language.

Paradoxically, the natural is and is not matter, propelled by the expansion of the universe, accreted into the earth by the rhythms in the solar system, grown and fostered into life and incarnated as our bodies. It seems obvious to say that this is merely a description of the phenomena of matter, but not the phenomena itself. And the description, by definition, is non-natural.

We are bound to express the natural, in this way and we can never think of it as itself, in its raw state. This is because it is an inevitable human endeavour to interpret or even simply perceive the external natural world in at least basic categories.

Let us now consider the relationship between the natural and the non-natural.

God created the world, that raw stuff we call matter and energy and whatever else we care find in the universe. He did this by his Word. Not just by speech, which is merely a human instantiation of the universal Word. The Word is the essence of the non-natural, which orders that which is completely different in kind to it, that is the natural. Thus God can create the world (mere matter etc) with the Word, since it reigns supreme.

This might seem paradoxical to our human understandings of matter, which seems so solid and full of momentum, able to overpower the wispiness of the supernatural.

But the world is not as it seems, and even in modern scientific terms, it seems that information is more fundamental than matter.

But this is not to say that matter is evil or inferior to the non-natural. For God created the natural and called it good. He created us out of the natural, and made us in his image.

Thus we share in both realms, it appears that we are made of matter and sustained by blind, ignorant nature (yet nature is sustained by God's Word) and yet we think, speak and classify. The latter is a reflection of God's activity with respect to the world. He calls the world into being, he rules it with intention and thought, attributes that no natural manifestation (such as Mother Nature or evolution) can ever possess.

When God creates Man, he gives him the task of naming the animals. This is no menial activity. It is representative of how God intends Man to act in the world that God has created. For he creates Man as steward, a kind of caretaker and ruler of the world under God's authority. So Man's responsibility is the proactive subduing of nature through classification and explanation, but also through using the natural world to sustain himself, and the Woman, whom God creates to help the Man in his task. She is like the Man, she is made from Man, and they are in a profound relationship, yet they have different roles.

In all of this, God's abundant goodness is seen. He provides for the Man exhaustively. The Man and Woman are given nature for their own sustenance and are instructed to use it. Being created in God's image means that we are given the tools to use nature. Language and understanding enable us to order, explain and subdue nature. Not only are we enabled to do this, but we are also instructed to do so.

This has further implications in the relationship between the Man and the Woman. The Man is to lead, to lead through actions and importantly, to lead through words. For this is also one of the ways God leads. (He is not a silent God, but speaks to men and women, through the written word, the Bible.)

This is the way Man is to lead, yet Man has failed to do so. Sometimes he has lead, but not by Word or decree, but by the sword, by violence, fear and death. Or has been repelled by this, equating leading with wielding the sword of violence, fear and death. He has then shrunk back from leadership, or attempted to lead silently (which is not leadership at all), allowing nature to overcome him, and drifted into the mute world of tides, phases, seasons and decay (nature).
The serpent subverted the Man's leadership (as well as God's Leadership), the serpent, part of the natural world, overcame the Man. He did so by deceiving the Woman, while the man watched on silently, failing to intervene, to save his wife from certain death.

The serpent spoke: “Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?...[for] you shall not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”1

Thus the serpent reinterprets God's Word, and so not only deceives, but also steals the Man's task of interpreting. The man does not even defend himself.

The subversion of God's sacred order does not stop here. The Woman gives the fruit that makes them wise in their own eyes to the Man and he eats. He fails to rebuke his wife, instead he obeys her.

When God confronts the Woman and Man, the Man blames the woman for his disobedience (and so fails to lead and take responsibility), and the Woman blames nature.

Man has fallen.

God is a God of justice, and he punishes their disobedience. He tells the Woman that “your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”2 She will clamour for his attention, to be in relationship with him, and when he fails to do this, she shall desire to rule over him, to make him want her. But she will be in misery, for she desires leadership, but the man will only give her rulership.

God says to the Man “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree which I have commanded you 'You shall not eat it', cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you...By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”3

God condemns Man for obeying the Woman. He does not do this because the Woman is evil or stupid and so should be ignored. The Woman is not evil or stupid, she is Man's helper, made too in the image of God. No, God punishes the Man because to obey the Woman is to not fulfil his role as leader and order of nature, which the Woman is part of.

The punishment is inextricably linked to Man's role and nature. Ordering and subduing nature will become difficult for the Man. And because it will become difficult, Man will be tempted to abandon his leadership role of subduer of nature and to regress into the natural, to the easy life, into laziness.

And the regression into nature, into the ground, into the dust will lead to death.

The Word is eternal, but nature dies. And man has returned to nature.

If this was the end of the tale of God, Man, Woman and Nature, it would indeed be a tragedy. But the tale does not end here.

Among the Woman's offspring God says that there will be one who “shall bruise [the head of the serpent] and the [serpent] shall bruise his heel.” Here God speaks of one who shall rule nature in a way that Man has failed to do. This one shall be part of nature (as Man and Woman are) but he will triumph over nature and nature's expiry, because he is the Word, and the Word is eternal.

Indeed, “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”4

This offspring of Woman is also, paradoxically, God. He is the Creator, by his Word, of the very nature in which he humbles himself to be a part of.

The Word become flesh is Jesus. Jesus succeeds were Man fails. Jesus leads with words, not with swords. He speaks God's words; he is not silent. By his words he rules the natural, in a way that Man has and can not, because of Man's disobedience. By Jesus' words he commands the servants to refill the wine jars with water at the wedding in Cana. Jesus changes the very chemical essence of water and makes into wine. Again nature is subordinate to him when he commands the storm to cease, and when he commands the sick and diseased and lame to be healed.

Jesus demonstrates on earth, that he is the Word, that he is ruler of the universe.

His ultimate demonstration is submission to God by submitting to nature, to death.

But death cannot hold him down, and God raises Jesus to life. Jesus has triumphed over nature and death, and Man and Woman are no longer bound to fail to live according to God's order. For Jesus has brought about forgiveness of the disobedience of Man and the rebellion of Woman.

And when Jesus departed from the earth, God raised him up, and made him the ultimate ruler of the universe, to whom all must submit.

When we submit to God, God makes it possible for Man and Woman to live according to their roles, Man leading Woman, Woman submitting to Man, Man subduing nature, and Man and Woman submitting to God.

1Genesis 3:4-5

2Genesis 3:16

3Genesis 3:17-19

4John 1:1-3