Comments | _allecto_: A Rapist's View of the World: Joss Whedon and Firefly

_allecto_

A Rapist's View of the World: Joss Whedon and Firefly

Dec 15, 2007 23:15

This is a really long rant about Joss Whedon's Firefly. Why? Because I'm angry and I think it is really important that feminists don't leave popular culture out of the equation. Especially considering that popular culture is increasingly being influenced by pornography ( Read more... )

Comments 140

dis_senter December 15 2007, 23:03:22 UTC

Very articulately written. You've really untangled the woman-hating mess of this show, not an easy thing to do when there's so many levels of it.

I'm looking forward to the next instalment.

_allecto_ December 16 2007, 11:25:40 UTC

Hey thanks. I think I'll start dissecting Our Mrs. Reynolds tomorrow.

*rubs hands together in gleeful anticipation*

(The comment has been removed)

_allecto_ December 23 2007, 08:34:36 UTC

heh, true.

bookwormsarah March 26 2008, 13:08:15 UTC

My aunt and uncle have been happily married for thirty years, she is Motswana and he is English. They have three grown up children and a great life together.

I was interested to read your thoughts on the show. I am not sure I agree with all of them, but it does us all good to have our thoughts and opinions challenged from time to time.

(here via a friend who thought I might be interested)

ext_75028 December 22 2007, 20:07:14 UTC

I never got the Buffy=Feminism thing. Joss undoes a feminist message about every 6 seconds.
He's popular because he gives the feminist-lites hope they can still reap patriarchy accolades for being sexyay WHILE saving womyn. Wrong.

Great LJ, btw.

_allecto_ December 23 2007, 08:38:16 UTC

Glad someone agrees with me. Most feminists tell me that Joss and Buffy are SOOOO liberating. sigh.

And thanks. I'm loving your blog too.

badgerbag March 26 2008, 04:58:35 UTC

" Joss undoes a feminist message about every 6 seconds. "

God... so true. I have never understood the hype.

I did like watching Firefly in the way that I like pretty much anything that is science fiction and has a pulp-action story that moves along. But, yeah, it's fucking poisonous.

bronsonbeta December 26 2007, 18:50:19 UTC

This is a joke, right?

_allecto_ December 27 2007, 07:19:52 UTC

Unfortunately no. Joss Whedon did really write and direct the misogynist, racist trash Firefly. I wish that I had made up all of the info in this post but I'm sorry to say that Joss Whedon's Firefly was actually inflicted upon millions of innocent women.

beanheartbatman December 26 2007, 18:52:41 UTC

I'm sorry, I have to disagree. Firstly I think that's the laziest interpretation of Whedon's work I ever read. It reads of a person who refuses to leave their biased nature behind and has watched with a view to hate it regardless of its content. I'm not even sure you watched the whole series properly, or gave it any time ( ... )

_allecto_ December 27 2007, 07:34:11 UTC

Hmm... Considering I watched the whole series twice, read through every single script, read through Serenity about five times, counted the lines that men spoke and women spoke, then worked for about three weeks trying to write this I think it is interesting that you call me lazy. But anyways, courtesan is just another name for a woman in prostitution. I don't distinguish between women who are bought by men as sex and other 'feminine' resources. If you do, and you think that there is a nice way for men to buy women as sex, that there is an empowered way that women can sell themselves as sex then my journal is the wrong place for you. If you are pro-prostitution then you are not a feminist and pro-prostitution/women-hating opionions are not welcome on my journal. All prostitution is rape. The men who buy Inara ARE selling her into sexual slavery. For the time that they buy her she is 'theirs'.

I will be talking more about all of the characters. I was particularly concentrating on Serenity in this post. And Mal and Jayne's relationship ( ... )

beanheartbatman December 28 2007, 04:59:02 UTC

You're awesome and I can't remember my password.

m Andrea, the feminazi. :)

Also, LJ just confuses the hello outta me.

Your point on prostitution was well put. What is the point of having sex with a thousand men who all taste like sardine juice if you have other options? Saying women like that crap is kinda up-is-down Orwellian doublespeak.

Your next deconstruction? fiat_knox March 26 2008, 11:08:53 UTC

My personal recommendation for your next deconstruction of eye-wateringly horrifying brutish misogyny in action? Skip "Our Mrs Reynolds" and go straight to the episode "Heart of Gold".

Knowing what the past was like, all its cultural biases and prejudices, and understanding how the future can be as much a dystopia as a utopia depending on our decisions now, it makes me appreciate what I have now, and the marginally more enlightened times we live in.

Just as the past is a foreign country, and they do things differently there, so too the future is an alien land, and we may never know which of the cultural assurances we enjoy here - good health, freedom of association and expression, the vote - we may lose, or see changed as time marches.

One point I'd like to note, however, is to remind the readers here that science fiction, like all fiction, holds a mirror up to life. It reflects the cultural dreams, and also the prevailing cultural prejudices, of the timeConsider the 1960s, and observe how Star Trek was an attempt to reflect the ( ... )

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