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You can keep saying that, but (at least according to the interviews I've seen) Joss Whedon himself wouldn't agree with you. He stated several times that he based his show on the Civil War and Reconstruction. You can interpret Firefly any way you want, but that doesn't change what Joss Whedon said about it.

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I wasn't directly comparing anything in Firefly to the actual Jesse James. I was comparing the show's depiction of Mal to the myths surrounding people like Jesse James, which depict them as altruistic and kind, when they were actually dangerous psychopaths who rarely, if ever, stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Robin Hood probably never existed. I was saying that Mal and his crew are an extension of this mythology - albeit not based directly on any real person. You could say that since they are fictional my comparison is meaningless, but since Joss Whedon publicly stated several times that he was basing his show on Reconstruction era ex-Confederate outlaws - like Jesse James - I would argue that it is valid.

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However, if people are going to continue to deny that the Confederacy was a white supremacist movement and wear Confederate battle flags and fly them from their houses, some - not all, mind you - of them must be buying into the whole deal, not just the mythic, self-reliant everyman part of it, and that's what I object to, and what leads to events like the one I mentioned.

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posted by NicolaClarke:
You can compare the crew of Serenity to the Confederates (although not all of them - Inara directly states in one ep that she was pro-unification, for example), but it's clear that they're operating in a very different environment and are motivated by different concerns to their historical counterparts. Mal and Zoe were fighting against unification, yes - but there's nothing in the show to hint that slavery, or an issue of similar magnitude, was a point of contention or even a part of the rhetoric. Immediately, then, it's obvious that the parallels are far from exact

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However, if people are going to continue to deny that the Confederacy was a white supremacist movement and wear Confederate battle flags and fly them from their houses, some - not all, mind you - of them must be buying into the whole deal, not just the mythic, self-reliant everyman part of it, and that's what I object to, and what leads to events like the one I mentioned.

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True. But then, it's always possible to find someone to distort any perfectly reasonable (or less so) ideology.

Yes, white supremacist attitudes perpetuate evil deeds and attitudes in the world. So do misogyny and religious fundamentalism. Yet simply because these things can be extrapolated from a given mindset (such as rose-tinted memories of the Confederate side of the Civil War) doesn't make that source-mindset itself evil.

It just means that it - as everything - should be approached with caution and an awareness of consquences.

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Hope that made some sense, and thanks for the debate! (you evil firefly hater, you )
Nic

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True, but sci-fi and fantasty writers have always used their medium as a way to make comments about contemporary issues - in other words using a future (or past) time and place as a smokescreen which allows them to sneak controversial statements past editors, censors, TV executives, etc. Inexact parallels (or better yet, subtle connections) only help them in this strategy. (I know - the Civil War as a contemporary issue? Well look at the fights over flying Confederate flags over state houses. Remember the Civil Rights movement, when African-Americans had to fight to get the rights they were promised after the Civil War? That was only forty years ago. How about all the militia groups who believe the Confederacy was right and are armed and training for war?) Some examples of sci-fi or fantasy used this way are Fahrenheit 451, 1984, or even some Star Trek episodes (though these were usually the worst ones - like the one with the half-black/half-white guys). Rod Serling created The Twilight Zone essentially so he could say whatever he wanted about politics, etc. without interference from the network. Certainly the parallels were also far from exact between Communist Russia and 1984 (or better yet, Animal Farm) but no one can really deny what the author was talking about. It's not sci-fi, but would you say that The Crucible has nothing to do with the McCarthy hearings just because the parallels aren't exact (certainly much less exact than Firefly and the Civil War)?

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You make a good point about there being no apparent connection between slavery and the War of Unification, but it should be noted that pro-Confederates ever since 1865 having been saying the same thing about the American Civil War, i.e. that it was not about slavery, but the freedom of the individual states - much like the autonomy the independents in Firefly wanted for their planets. There's a parallel if you're looking for one - that's actually a perfect example of how Firefly put forth the Confederate version of U.S. history.

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Also note that Joss Whedon in his descriptions of the show always referenced the Civil War and slavery, but also insisted that his show would have no alien races in it. I'm not suggesting anything by this except what he said - that he believes humans are the only sentient beings in the universe, and that he wanted his show to be different from other sci-fi shows, but you have to admit it's interesting that a man who wanted to make a show inspired by the Civil War removed race from it both as a physical presence and as an issue. Yes, I know he had an interracial couple on the show, but my point is, a lot of sci-fi writers would have welcomed the inclusion of alien races so that they could make some statements about racism in a metaphorical way. Instead Joss Whedon excluded alien races from his Civil War/Reconstruction allegory altogether, just as Confederacy buffs exclude race from the actual history.

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I guess I can agree with that - if seeing the Confederacy through rose-tinted glasses can been seen as a reasonable (or less so) ideology which can be distorted into a negative by nefarious, evil-doer types. However I would argue that that ideology - the Old South as a model society which held democracy more dear than the rest of the country - rather than being distorted by white supremacists (or whoever), is itself the distortion that should be approached with caution - a distortion of the truth that hides a lot of dangerous consequences for those who believe it. For instance, buying into that idea requires you to also accept that African-Americans were pretty happy as slaves or that property rights are more important than human rights (oops, they might take away my citizenship for that one, how un-American of me).

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Originally posted by BrownCoat1:
I welcome your rebuttal, but would ask that if it is lengthy to email me @ browncoat1@yahoo.com so as not to inconvenience our fellow board members with lengthy posts.

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Posted by browncoat:
I welcome your rebuttal, but would ask that if it is lengthy to email me @ browncoat1@yahoo.com so as not to inconvenience our fellow board members with lengthy posts.

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The problem here is the period and frame of reference. Slavery was introduced to the United States before it was even a country. Many slaves came to the US through New York harbor, and it was not until the 1840's that slavery was abolished in the North. The South did not have the luxury of abolishing slavery as it had come to rely on slavery as a cheap labor force to harvest agricultural goods; goods the North readily bought. It is a shame the North & South could not work together to find a solution to the problem and end slavery while not destroying the economy of the South by ending slavery w/ no system in place to fill the vacuum left by the loss of labor.

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Originally posted by arrghyle:
Firefly is about freedom or its lack.

I have examples for just about every member of the crew, but I'll use the biggest one; Inara.

[snip]

That's what Mal hates about her job. And it's what he hates about himself. He sells his self-respect each and every time he commits a crime. Part of his choices come from getting back at the evil central governement. Part of it is because he's desperate to keep the little freedom he has left.

Firefly is about allegorical slavery - in addition to all of the examples of indentured servitude we've seen. That's not a copout on Joss' part. Dramatically, it's better than a preachy over-the-top "slavery is bad" bill board.
It's harder to see, so it's harder to ignore.

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As far as Civil Rights groups having to fight for the rights given to African Americans after the War, you can split that blame between the Northern states and the government in Washington DC as much as any Southern state. For one hundred years, the federal government did nothing to get those rights instated. I believe that same federal government also failed to deliver on the fourty acres & a mule that they promised to slaves.

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I do not wear Confederate flag apparel, fly one over my house or have a bumper sticker on my car, but that does not mean I am not proud of my heritage. Rather it is to avoid conflict w/ people who have the misconception you mentioned above that the Confederacy was a "white supremacist movement", which I find a laughable statement at best. I have mentioned above that less than 6% of the population of the South owned slaves, and less than 25% of that number fought, so to say the Confederacy was some sinister supremacist movement is ridiculous.

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lordj wrote:
I am really glad to see this discussion because the issues Willie (if I can call you by your first name) identified bothered me from the first time I saw the show.

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Also Willie I am finishing a Ph D in US History, and can't help myself: run, run from grad school before it's too late!

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The fact, for example, that our nation has a museum in D.C. dedicated to the Holocaust--a crime committed certainly with the knowledge of our political leaders but not their complicity--but nothing which mentions slavery--a longer-lasting institution built into the very fabric of our society and politics--is another example of how we as a society continue to think we can exalt our committment to freedom while we elude the crimes we have committed in its name. In this sense I agree with Willie Zaza and think he raised an important question.

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Posted by NicolaClarke:
I agree (again) that simply drawing upon a particular period doesn't oblige Whedon to engage with all of said period's concerns.

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I think you are conflating two separate issues. If you look at a)the debates in Southern state legislatures after the initial wave of secessions in 1861, or b)pronouncements of the political leaders of the Confederacy during the war, you will find that, for those folks the war was precisely about the freedom to continue enslaving African-Americans. That is to say, the political class of the Confederacy was not just proslavery but believed slavery to be the one and only reason for secession.

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The question of why white southerners (something on the order of 2/3 of the white male population between the ages of 20 and 45 or something) fought in the war is of course a very different one. Not doubt many joined for the reasons you claim your ancestors did, browncoat, because they believed their country was being invaded by an essentially foreign army.

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I also think it is likely that many heads of households who didn't own slaves had a reasonable aspiration of slave ownership, and that owning slaves and farming commercial products like tobacco, rice, and cotton represented what little upward mobility existed in the antebellum south, esp. in the context of the 1850s cotton boom. James Oakes notes, for example, that while the majority of slaves lived and died on large plantations, the majority of slaveholders owned one or two slaves.

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I am trying to suggest that one has to grapple with the contradictory legacy of the civil war as fully as possible; and to claim that symbols of the Confederacy can be somehow divorced from the institution of slavery is an argument that doesn't hold historical water for me.

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Who forced the South to base their economy on a cash crop instead of a more flexible, diversified, industrial/agrarian economy like the North and Northwest had? Didn't the South (or at least, important Southern leaders like James Hammond) insist that an agrarian economy, based on Slavery, was the basis of the ideal society? They chose to become dependent on cotton (and slavery) because it was highly lucrative and suited their ideas of civilized culture. New England made tons of money on the triangular trade (molasses to rum to slaves) but they also lead the abolitionist movement, so you can't argue that economics forced anyone into doing anything.

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The South also had plenty to do with ruining their own ecomony. The war and the end of slavery did not necessarily mean the end of exports of cotton, but Southern leaders during the war decided to cut off supplies of cotton to England, believing this would help to force that country - which had a hugely important textile industry - to enter the war on their side. Apparently it never occurred to them that England controlled one-sixth of the planet at that time and could easily find other places (India and Egypt) to grow their own cotton. Consequently, after the war the South's monopoly on cotton was gone forever - by their own doing. Even without all that, basing their whole economy on a single cash crop was a bad idea in the first place.

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It is a shame that the North and South did not work to together to end slavery while maintaining the southern economy, but since the South did not want to end slavery, I don't see how this could have happened. Southern leaders wanted slavery to expand into former Mexican territory and even to Cuba and further into Central and South America if possible. Most of the filibusters like William Walker who were trying to take over Latin American countries were southerners who hoped to expand the slave power. Northern leaders who opposed slavery, such as Lincoln (at least early on) were perfectly willing to allow it to continue where it existed, and even expand provided the number of slave and free states remained equal. They did this in the spirit of compromise (and the spirit of States' Rights-!), but the South saw it as a first move in an attempt to end slavery altogether and considered that they were being persecuted. Any spirit of compromise that might have lead to ending slavery peacefully existed, for the most part, only in the North. It takes two to tango.

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Also, speaking of State's Rights, it should be noted that, in theory at least, the Dred Scot decision made slavery legal in every state when it was decided that if a southerner brought his slaves into a free state they, as property rights are inviolable, must remain slaves. So in that Supreme Court decision the South's law was forced on the rest of the country - where were State's Rights then if New York or Massachussets had to allow slavery to exist within its borders? But I digress...

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Except it was the Federal Government that had to declare martial law and send in an airborne division to integrate the high school in Little Rock against the wishes of those who ran the state. While the Federal govt. did nothing for a hundred years to insure the Civil Rights of black people - a passive sin, the Southern states were actively returning them to a state little better (or even worse) than slavery by enacting unfair poll taxes and requirements that prevented them from voting, and other things, such as the sharecropping system - an active sin, which the Federal govt had to correct in the sixties. The FBI also had to go after the perpetrators of murders committed againgst southern blacks and northerners who compaigned in the south to help them get the vote when local law enforcement looked the other way or even committed such crimes themselves. You can blame the North for not enforcing Federal Law, but does that absolve the South from blame for actively undermining it? If someone murders someone and the cops don't arrest him, obviously that's terrible, but does that make the original murder OK?

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Certainly you should be proud of your heritage, but If I were you, I would be actively distancing myself from a war that was started by rich men who callously took advantage of the patriotism of your forebears and sent them to die for an economic system they got little benefit from. I'm Italian, Irish, German, Albanian And Welsh, but I'm not going to go around making excuses for the behavior of Mafiosi, The IRA, Nazis, Albanian bandits, and Catherine Zeta-Jones's dubious choices in the marriage department. The majority you mention, among them your ancestors, didn't start the war, they just fought it (a reason to be proud), so why they fought is irrelevent to what it was about, except in terms of why those individual soldiers chose to fight - as opposed the larger political and economic reasons for the war, which is what I've been talking about. The minority of slave owners are the ones who ran the state governments (which is why for instance the non-slaveholding Virginia upcountry, who didn't want the war, seceded from the state and became West Virginia). South Carolina, whose population was over 50% slave, seceded first and fired on Fort Sumter. If you read the documents in which the Southern states stated their intention to secede, you will see that they list the protection of slavery as the reason (among others). Rich man's war, poor man's fight, as usual. Show some real respect for your ancestors and, at least symbolically, tell the plantation owners to go to hell and leave the ordinary people out of their fight.

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browncoat posted:
Lincoln is quoted in many debates and in personal writings as not truly caring if African Americans were ever freed, so long as the Union was preserved. In a 1858 debate, Lincoln said he felt the whites should always maintain a dominate role to the black man, and that he did not abdicate their voting or holding any office.

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I don't agree with your belief that "many" heads of households aspired to slave ownership. From records and receipts on display in the Museum of the Confederacy here in Richmond, VA, slaves sold at public auction for far more than any household could hope to amass in several years. I have personally seen receipts showing a total for one slave from $2500.00 to $4000.00. I am not sure what that would equate to in today's economy, but I know it was a great deal of money in the 1860's and far more than I daresay that 90% of the Southern population could spare for labor.

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Again I have to disagree with you. I respect your opinion, and understand where you are coming from, but I think it is a matter of perception and your interpretation of history.

Louis Farrakhan himself said it best when he said that African Americans spent more years in chains beneath the flag of the United States than they ever did under the Confederate flag. The only difference is that the Union used slavery as their rallying point, and freed the slaves. How different would it have been if the Confederacy won, and freed the slaves, seeing it as an immoral institution that could no longer exist? Would they then revere the stars and bars and damn the flag of the U.S.? Food for thought, no?

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I think cash crops were the basis of the Southern economy due to geography, climate, the people that settled there, and the needs of the country at that time. I do not think that the first settlers into the Southern regions of the U.S. thought "Wow! We can settle here, lay on our butts and enslave a race while we cash in". That is ridiculous and nothing more than an assumption.

More likely it was the fact that the temperate southern portion of the country was more suited to crops than the north. The land and climate certainly supported crops, and the North was eager to buy them. If they were not necessary, then why did everyone want them? Why did the North not plant their own tobacco and cotton?

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I do not recall James Hammond ever saying "an agrarian economy, based on Slavery, was the basis of the ideal society". If I am in error, please point me to a text where he is documented as saying that. In his "Cotton is King" speech he does make mention of the profitable markets of cotton and tobacco, and how the south was content to be left alone, but I do not see any comment like the one you mention.

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As far as the abolitionist movement, I don't think that New England or the north had a corner on that market. Many in the South felt slavery was wrong and freed slaves and participated in the Underground Railroad. Many leaders of the Confederacy did not own slaves, such as Robert E Lee, JEB Stuart, Johnston, and AP Hill to name a few. To villianize an entire society for the crimes of a few is ludicrous.

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Please cite your sources for leaders of the South cutting off cotton to England to coerce them into entering the war. I do not recall that anywhere. What I do know of, and can point out in books and receipts in the Museum of the Confederacy, are exchanges of Enfield rifles and medical supplies for cotton and tobacco with England throughout the War.

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If that is the only State Rights infringed upon by the Union in the North, they were better off than the South. Funny that when New England or other Northern states profitted from slave trafficing or the fruits of their labors that they did not complain very loudly. If it was such an issue, why not boycott Southern goods? If it was goods gained by the labor of slaves, it seems the "morally upright" North would have refused to feed the South their money. Guess morals only extend as far as they don't outweigh your wants.

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Guess morals only extend as far as they don't outweigh your wants.

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I think you mean "advocate."

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In the same debate he also said that slavery was a moral wrong which should be abolished. It should also be noted that his views about the equality of black and white people evolved considerably during the war.

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His position of placing the Union above the abolition of slavery (abolition being something he always advocated) had more to do with what he thought were his moral and legal responsibilities as president, as well as what the constitution would allow him to do, than it did with his personal convictions. As president he had to preserve the Union (or so he felt), however as president he was also protector of the constitution, which itself protected slavery. The fact that he worked very hard to find ways to end slavery despite it's being protected (and despite the majority in the North who either opposed this or didn't care) shows what his true feelings were.

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From the American Heritage Dictionary:
Aspire - To have great ambition, desire.

Your argument that southern heads of households did not aspire to own slaves because they couldn't afford it is ridiculous. What else do people aspire to than things that are presently out of their reach? If you have something, or can get it easily, there is no need to aspire to it. In any society the poorer elements will aspire to have what the rich have, whether it means cars, big TV's, or slaves. It would contrary to human nature if some non-slaveholding whites in the antebellum south did not aspire to own slaves.

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Why would the Confederacy free the slaves if they won the war? The only time the Confederacy considered doing so was as a desperate, last-ditch war measure when they were running out of troops - and then they only considered freeing slaves that fought for the Confederacy. They never put this idea into practice, and the General who first suggested it, Patrick Cleburne, was admonished and kept from advancement while his idea was suppressed.

"The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong".
-Robert Toombs

In other words, if slaves make good soldiers then they would make good citizens and must be equal to whites. If this fact means the end of the revolution, then the revolution is about slavery, and more importantly, whether black and white people are truly equal.

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One of the most fertile areas in the country for growing anything is Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but as it was largely settled by Quakers, Mennonites and the Amish, there was little slavery there. Again you make excuses for the south based on some kind of economic necessity from on high that they were unable to resist. They chose cash crops, they chose slavery, and they chose to continue with it when the British Empire, many of the newly liberated South and Central American nations, and the northern states decided to get rid of it. We're talking about most of South America, most of North America, Australia, India, much of Africa and some of Aisa. Is the American south the only place on Earth that geography and climate dictated the need for cash crops and slavery? Hardly, the south was swimming against the current of 19th century civilization.

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Do these receipts and books refer to legal trade between the CSA and the UK? Since all trade would have had to come through the blockade, technically it would all be illegal, and in practical terms, whether you see it as illegal or not, it would probably be done by smugglers, who probably didn't care about the CSA's official position on the cotton embargo. Also, no matter what the official position was, the south was desperate for supplies, and was unlikely to turn away any guns or medical supplies that happened to turn up on blockade runners. In any case, this was an early war measure and the south knew at least by 1862 that they weren't going to get help, either political or military, from England or France, so there may well have been plenty of trade in the later years of the war - which doesn't change the fact that there was an embargo by the south and it did effect the cotton business badly (and that it was a stupid idea born of arrogance and ignorance).

This is not a primary source, but it does contain quotes from some:
"The bill for an embargo on cotton was of course simply an application of of the Confederate doctrine of King Cotton, by judicious squeezes in the British windpipe, could compel foreign assistance. "We hold the aces," rejoiced the Charleston Mercury, "and we shall bankrupt every cotton factory in Britain and France if those nations do not acknowledge our independence." Other newspapers advised the planters to keep the cotton on their plantations, thus it could neither fall into Union hands nor relieve that desperate European stringency...British consuls in the South reported to the foreign office that planters and government alike were determined to carry through a plan of economic coercion."
-Alan Nevins, The War For Union page 100

"What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her, save the South."
-Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond of South Carolina, p 316-317

"Is some way or other [the blockade] will be raised, or there will be revolution in Europe...Our cotton is...the tremendous lever by which we can work our destiny."
-Vice President Alexander Stephens, quoted in Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson.

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Wouldn't boycotting southern goods be another example of damnable Yankees poking their noses in the south's business and trying to change their precious society? When the North did anything end slavery, according to you they are hypocrites, and when they did nothing they are also hypocrites. I notice as well that, according to you the South did not want slavery and was on the verge of getting rid of it. If all this is true, why was the south the last place in the western world (with I think, the exception of Brazil) the last place to get rid of slavery and the only place to be forced to do so by war?

If the south was so outraged by the North's supposed constant infringement of their rights, why didn't they boycott Northern goods? Because they believed in an agrarian society based on slavery as the ideal one - see James Hammond. If they stopped buying industrial goods from the North, they would have to make them themselves, but they preferred to remain dependent on Northern goods (and Western wheat). Despite the fact that Confederates and Confederate apologists like to cast themselves as the spiritual descendents of the Founding Fathers, this is completely in opposition to one of the main reasons the US fought the revolution - in order to stop being a supplier of raw materials to Europe. As in south and Central America, the revolution in the American south was betrayed by those who wanted to maintain their hegemony over the agricultural businesses that supplied industrial society. The Civil War was all about Southern leaders attempting to maintain, along with serfdom in Russia, one of the West's last vestiges of a medievel, feudal society based entirely on class and a working class completely without freedom.

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Originally posted by Succatash:
One of the Civil War experts from FFF could maybe contact the guy, or maybe it's best to ignore him.

www.ratsalad.com - It's right on the home page, and has been since July:
Help prevent Firefly: The Motion Picture

Dear God in Heaven!

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Originally posted by stillshiny:

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
As long as we're considering supernatural influence on the Sept. 11th attacks, it seems there's far more evidence to indicate Allah was the actual culprit. Just a thought.

SergeantX

"..and here's to all the dreamers, may our open hearts find rest." -- Nanci Griffith

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very well said,

though there are many, many godless and inhuman acts carried out in the name of "god"s" that have no basis in their teachings only the overzealous passions of extremists.

but sadly there are such violent hate-filled teachings as well.

I know it's a drift from this thread in a thread, but it actually brings us back to the SCi-Fi of Firefly.I wonder if we will learn more of the "Philosophy" of Reavers.

MAL
Reavers might take issue with that philosophy. If they had a philosophy.

Mal: “See how I'm not punching him? I think I've grown!”

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
As long as we're considering supernatural influence on the Sept. 11th attacks, it seems there's far more evidence to indicate Allah was the actual culprit. Just a thought.

SergeantX

"..and here's to all the dreamers, may our open hearts find rest." -- Nanci Griffith

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Originally posted by Nur:

SergeantX,
I am struck dumb by the audacity of your statement. It is the equivallent of saying that Jesus was responsible for the Holocost, which is the farthest thing from the truth. I find your comment both ignorent and insulting both as a Muslim and as a human being. The acts of extemits (few or many) are not the acts of a religion or its god (who, by the way, is the same god that Christians and Jews believe in, "Allah" is just the word for god in Arabic) and it is deeply saddening to see a post like yours.

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Hey Bub,
Relax, you have completely misunderstood Sarge. He is assuming that we all realize that blaming Allah for 911 is completely ridiculous.

You might have a right to play the "poor me" card but Sarge doesn't deserve the brunt of your frustration, someone else does.

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Your argument that southern heads of households did not aspire to own slaves because they couldn't afford it is ridiculous. What else do people aspire to than things that are presently out of their reach?

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Originally posted by Nur:

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
As long as we're considering supernatural influence on the Sept. 11th attacks, it seems there's far more evidence to indicate Allah was the actual culprit. Just a thought.

SergeantX

"..and here's to all the dreamers, may our open hearts find rest." -- Nanci Griffith

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SergeantX,

Better late than never but here it does. I am struck dumb by the audacity of your statement. It is the equivallent of saying that Jesus was responsible for the Holocost, which is the farthest thing from the truth. I find your comment both ignorent and insulting both as a Muslim and as a human being. The acts of extemits (few or many) are not the acts of a religion or its god (who, by the way, is the same god that Christians and Jews believe in, "Allah" is just the word for god in Arabic) and it is deeply saddening to see a post like yours.

Those who restrain desire, do so because thiers is weak enough to be restrained.
-William Blake

O my Lord! bestow wisdom on me, and join me with the righteous.
-Qur'an [26:83]

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