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.