I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head with this- in-spite of the spaceship and the occasional use of cool futuristic toys, at heart, Firefly is more of a western than a sci-fi show. Which is probably part of why I love it so much- as a rule, westerns tend to a level of grit and moral ambiguity built in that science fiction sometimes ignores.
I don't know, maybe it's just me, that I've never seen anything wrong with rooting for the morally ambiguous types- I often find them easier to sympathize with then the hyper noble, moral-obsessive sort. As long as they weren't really hurting anyone who didn't deserve to be hurt, I didn't see that they were doing anything particularly wrong. Which I think ties into the morality problems certain people have with the show- they see the Alliance as being basically good guys, whose laws should be obeyed. And while it's obvious to me that most of the Alliance people are just guys doing their jobs, the Alliance as a whole is screwing over the rim planets, and it's up to people like Mal and his crew to ensure that those people on the rim get food, or vitamins, or vaccines.
Maybe it's the fact that way to many people are trained to think that Confederacy = evil, but I've run into a few people outside the fandom before who have had basically the same reaction as the person you're responding to, which has often struck me that that reaction is being based on the assumption that the fact that the Alliance is the law, and Mal and crew are busy breaking the law puts them in the wrong. I don't know, maybe it's that even though in the pilot episode, Mal and crew are basically doing what Robin Hood did, they're charging for it- which in their case is necessary, but seems to turn people against them. I don't know, I think I tend to be a bit to practical about that sort of thing, since I see absolutely nothing wrong with what they do.
And the fact that I grew up with westerns is probably part of why I'm from New York (which is about as Yankee as you can get), but the only thing I ever saw as wrong about the confederacy was the fact that they still had slavery.
As for the language- yeah, I think it's pretty much a given that most of Joss Whedon's characters tend to speak in a manner that sounds a little odd to the non-geek, but which sounds perfectly natural to geeks. Which is part of why Joss's shows can be so deadly- half an hour of Buffy or Firefly, and I start sounding like Xander or Mal.
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Date: 2005-08-06 02:18 pm (UTC)I don't know, maybe it's just me, that I've never seen anything wrong with rooting for the morally ambiguous types- I often find them easier to sympathize with then the hyper noble, moral-obsessive sort. As long as they weren't really hurting anyone who didn't deserve to be hurt, I didn't see that they were doing anything particularly wrong. Which I think ties into the morality problems certain people have with the show- they see the Alliance as being basically good guys, whose laws should be obeyed. And while it's obvious to me that most of the Alliance people are just guys doing their jobs, the Alliance as a whole is screwing over the rim planets, and it's up to people like Mal and his crew to ensure that those people on the rim get food, or vitamins, or vaccines.
Maybe it's the fact that way to many people are trained to think that Confederacy = evil, but I've run into a few people outside the fandom before who have had basically the same reaction as the person you're responding to, which has often struck me that that reaction is being based on the assumption that the fact that the Alliance is the law, and Mal and crew are busy breaking the law puts them in the wrong. I don't know, maybe it's that even though in the pilot episode, Mal and crew are basically doing what Robin Hood did, they're charging for it- which in their case is necessary, but seems to turn people against them. I don't know, I think I tend to be a bit to practical about that sort of thing, since I see absolutely nothing wrong with what they do.
And the fact that I grew up with westerns is probably part of why I'm from New York (which is about as Yankee as you can get), but the only thing I ever saw as wrong about the confederacy was the fact that they still had slavery.
As for the language- yeah, I think it's pretty much a given that most of Joss Whedon's characters tend to speak in a manner that sounds a little odd to the non-geek, but which sounds perfectly natural to geeks. Which is part of why Joss's shows can be so deadly- half an hour of Buffy or Firefly, and I start sounding like Xander or Mal.