Uh - are they though? I never considered them direct analogues at all. Especially since it turned out they are literal victims of The Alliance and their experiments for creating a drug that would prevent aggression.
I suppose there are a few common parallels, but more differences.
Tell me you haven’t watched Serenity without telling me…
Whoa. You do know Reavers were settlers, right? 
Of course they are
Talking about Firefly means constantly being gaslit by fans about how the elements of the show come from nowhere and reference nothing
yes. but if you look at westerns, and you look at firefly – that’s what joss was going for. a “primitive” group of people that “can’t be reasoned with” who attacked settlers and “scalped” them.
( im using quotes because the racism involved with westerns is just so painful. joss imo tried to extract the “feeling” without the racism by turning them into zombies. and that’s part of what i mean by the white washing of it all. )
how were native americans not victims of the federal government? and there was certainly bio-warfare employed then too.
i only bother to think about the content of shows and movies that i like. and i haven’t thought of serenity in a very long time. 
>sigh<
Firefly is not a carbon copy of the Civil War; it’s more of a rough sketch with vague similarities, but certain specific details changed.
I would argue (again) that no, the Independents were not meant to stand for a pro-slavery South. The Alliance government was happy to take advantage of poorer planets and exploit their labor and misery for the wealthy and powerful’s gain, which makes them more analogous to the rich plantation owners of the South than the hardscrabble rebels we’re clearly meant to side with. But there’s a better argument (spoilers for those who don’t want details): In the movie Serenity, we discover the origin story of the Reavers. They were the result of the Unification government’s attempt to drug an entire planet of settlers into compliant docility. It went wrong, and wacky, bloody, horrific hijinks ensued… so in essence, the Alliance was trying to create slaves, which would make them the South in that analogy, not the Independents.
That having been said, I do agree that there were definitely problematic elements to the show, and any reboot worth its salt would need to address them for today’s audience. (And good riddance to Whedon!)
To be honest… I’m not as happy at this news as I ought to be. I loved the original Firefly, flaws and all. But it’s been a long time, and after so many years I’m not sure a reboot can catch that ol’ lightning in a bottle twice. No matter how shiny the new crew might be, I’ll probably miss my “old friends.” I hope the new show works… but I won’t be holding my breath for it.
But why comment on it only to get so many of the fundamental facts wrong? At least brush up on the elements of the story that are right there in the story.
i dont think i ever said it’s a copy. i said it tried to extract elements of the lost cause mythology and of westerns and sanitize them… and that there’s harm in that when a show/entertainment doesn’t address those issues directly.
all but mal. unless he sees a therapist or something. somewhat repeating myself from earlier, but he treats inara just like an abuser does. and knowing what we do of joss now. yikes.
show me where firefly actually grapples with racism, chattel slavery, or the effects of colonization. ( also, please show me where all the native chinese speakers went. still can’t figure that one. )
it’s totally okay to like a thing, and recognize its flaws.
Hmm, I didn’t get my xmas card from the Dipshits yet
I see what you’re saying, and I can’t entirely disagree… but I can’t entirely agree, either. Firefly clearly takes quite a bit of inspiration and “flavor” from the Civil War and the Western genre as a whole; however, there really isn’t any direct comparison between the history and the series, because the show is, at best, a derivative work and not a true recreation. Yet every time the show is discussed, the same old false equivalencies are trotted out… and being a Media Studies nerd as well as a Sci-Fi nerd, that’s the kind of thing that will put a burr under my saddle.
That’s a fair point. I’d like to think that maybe if the show had gotten more episodes, we might have seen some of that happen. (Probably not, given the show’s creator and the era it was filmed in, but a fangirl’s heart can dream, right?) With any luck, those issues could be addressed in the new series–I’d definitely watch it for that.
Certainly everything comes from “somewhere”, and like I said there are parallels. But the show and mythos made a significant number of changes that I don’t think they are direct “stand ins” to the point that they say anything about real world people and events. They aren’t “primitive” people, they are people driven to literal madness. Before that they were ordering Space Starbucks and watching Space Bachelorette.
Well Joss Whedon did. He was quoted saying the following in a 2005 convention session:
Honestly, I immediately saw the analogy when watching the pilot episode, and it was only stressed further in some of the subsequent episodes. Yeah, obviously there were some important differences too and they weren’t exactly the same thing, but in the context of a Western they definitely filled the same role.
IIRC, indentured servitude and the effects of colonization were part of the plots in “The Train Job” and “Shindig,” just to name two. Slavery was mentioned, but not seen. There was a lot more misogyny than racism, imo, with “Heart of Gold” as an example.
ETA: I thought descendants of native Chinese speakers were throughout the 'verse.
LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU /s
to me it’s like the question “is it a long gun”, or “is it a rifle” – unless we name it accurately in every case, any discussion of gun violence is off the table. [ eta: which to me seems like a not great position for a discussion. ]
i think it’s totally possible joss fell in love with westerns as a kid, and just wanted to capture those feelings again, so he remixed it into something (more) palatable.
all of his sources, though imo, are right there on the (small) screen, even if thing x is now called thing y run by group z.
it’s just… yeah… carrying that forward can cause harm.
im right there with you.
Definitely. But they should be real flaws, not imagined ones.
And why does it have to tackle your laundry list? I think we’ve settled (pun intended) the false impression of Reavers representing indigenous peoples above.
Slavery, as I mentioned above in a different response, was addressed in the episode Shindig, where the crew start a fight with slavers. Makes it pretty clear how at least Mal feels about the practice. Stole a bunch of their money, too. I was wrong about that part.
As for the effects of colonization, you’re going to have to get more specific. Most of the show is about that.
As for the native Chinese speakers, from the supporting material, they are mostly on one of the wealthy core planets, Sihnon. After all, the foundational premise of the show was that the US and China come to dominate Earth before humanity had to skedaddle.
Just as it’s, as you put it, ok to like something with flaws, it’s equally ok to dislike something without crapping on it over misunderstood or skipped-over parts of the story.
How did we get more than 70 comments deep into this topic without discussing Alan Tudyk’s other outstanding work for Disney? And is his character still dead in the new show?
“What if the liberals WERE the real racists?”
“Let’s make a whole show about that, and if somebody thinks it’s problematic then they’re clearly just ignorant …”
But where that ends is, they weren’t. The story flips the Western trope on its head by making them not just settlers, but the victims of The Alliance.
shown from the point of view of what would be the white settlers in a western. so it’s not really unwinding what the effects of that settlement would be on native people
( and obvs. he removed “native people” by not making them part of the fiction. just like he erased any actual visible slaves )
what he does show is oppression by the federal government, making it hard for the “honest man to make his living.” and that the rebels have hearts of gold, out here to help them.
( not shown again, they way the ex-confederates helped white settlers repress non-white settlers after the war )
those choices of what to show, and what not to show have meaning. it recapitulates one certain (mythologized) thread of american history over other ( more honest ) ones
it’d just have been cool to have some asian actors… somewhere… anywhere…
