Considering irony has only contigent value, i'm sure existentialism wouldn't acknowledge such a notion. However, I do find it interesting that Firefly writer's decided to name a black character Jubal Early. Jubal Early was a confederate general who founded the idea of The Lost Cause post Confederate losing the Civil War. Basically the Lost Cause movement is that the war was 'unfair', the Confederates were cheated out of a win and their slave-owning based economy was just a different way of life. The latter being a sort of existential perspective.
Firefly's Jubal Early and the Civil War's Jubal Early are comprable due to the same existential ideology. Both had a certain 'code' they lived by. One was a bounty other the other a slave owner. Both could be valid reasons to criticize existential, that there are no values, only 'freedom' (which is ironic thought when thinking about slave-owning societies). Existentialism applied in the wrong way can be a very dangerous tool. When I think about it usually I see it as a positive way to be analytical about cookie cutter expectatioins that are put forth by whatever powers at be. Apparenlty this sort of intellectual freedom that existentism allows can be used to justified rape, murder and baby dashing. So maybe a dash ,not of baby, but of utilitarianism in with my existentialism would be fine just fine.
Also, applying existentialism onto objects is absurd to me as Derrida's Deconstruction approach to literature. Viewing things independent of context other than just that specific object, work, whatever is an over simplification for a creature that feels the need to create a philosophy to explain such madness. When River pulled up the gun/branch part of me wanted to laugh or just throw someting at the screen. I get the symbolism for the bigger picture, but the literal application of objects just seems a bit pointless to me. Us humans should enjoy the utilization of tools that our ancestors created without getting to caught up in some pretentious philosophy consciousness that evolution 'gifted' us with. This is going under the assumption that River is trying to be some sort of teacher or is a use of symbolism for the writers, not that River is mentally deranged. Given the transition to a clever creature by the end of the episode I'd find that hard to do (also how did that transition happen.
River could have done us all a favor and shot all the characters so I wouldn't have to read Firefly fans talk about the blindness (Harris) of a text like it has potential for the greatest profundities for anything that the texts lacks (for now). The show was cancelled for legit reasons. It was on a network that doesn't do well with sci-fi and expects shows to gross lots of cash. Atleast, that is what I've read. For the cost of each episode it wasn't drawing enough of viewers. I've read both sides though... but you either way Firefly fans win with new episodes on the Science Channel. Hurray.
8 comments:
haha! I totally didn't think about the fact that Firefly's early was black, even after finding out that his namesake was a confederate general. Definitely some irony there. By the way, if you want to see River come close to shooting the other members of Firefly's class, you should watch the movie (Serenity).
Jubal Early is an interesting character and I liked him in this episode. I didn't realize that there was a real Jubal Early. The General comparison makes sense because I read that Whedon got his inspiration for the show from a war book.
Just curious, you said the show was canceled for 'legit reasons' do you agree with its cancellation or are you in the ' it was a show ahead of its time' boat?
Although Firefly had similar ratings to Angel and Buffy, those two shows played on networks that don't draw as much as an audience as Fox does. The episodes were expensive to make and it didn't draw the viewers to justify it in the budget. Television is a money making business. I'd be interested for someone to make the argument that is was cancelled for content rather than Fox is just an evil network (which generally I am not opposed to that notion). Even if someone did make the argument that the content had something to do with the cancellation it seems to me after reading both sides of the story that it came down to a money issue.
What aspects of the content would you say made it worthy of cancelation? I feel like we have discussed some of them in class, but not fully, you should definitely do a post on potential reasons for cancellation other than Fox douchiness.
That's a great idea... may get a little political though. Given a show that has a setting of a world... well a universe in a world post-globalization being cancelled on a network that leans towards a certain political party that is mainly composed of elitists.
And I'll leave political ramblings there before I get myself in trouble.
Girl, I totally feel you, and politics have ALWAYS mattered even in film and art, so it totally makes sense here, honestly I hadn't really thought of it in terms of political agenda.
It makes me like the "different" choices that Joss made more now, knowing that they might have been a slap in the face to some elitist a-hole on network tv.
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