Lack of denim in the future by blackbeanie

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Lack of denim in the future

POSTED BY: BLACKBEANIE
UPDATED: Saturday, October 27, 2007 03:20
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VIEWED: 5899
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Thursday, October 25, 2007 8:28 PM

It occurred to me recently that I can't remember seeing a scrap of denim in Firefly or Serenity.

Is it possible some sort of plague wiped out this beloved material? Or am I blind?
Or is some ploy by Joss to confuse people who think too much like me?

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Thursday, October 25, 2007 10:11 PM

DARKFLY

Your right I can't remember anybody wearing any either. Maybe Levi went bankrupt at some point.

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Thursday, October 25, 2007 10:18 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Originally crafted from canvas, denim was the cheaper, more durable than finery clothing for worker types. Miners and hard surface workers an such.
The verse seems to be kinda westernish, and most outfits seem to be leather like. Kaylee would have the most need for durable cloth - what is her outfit made of, the coveralls - isn't that a color of denim?
Otherwise the comfort level in space would need to be bearable, and important - lots of more comfy clothing compared to denim, and with adjustable gravity, the wear factor could be less, thus allowing less durable cloth. Maybe just the ground-bound denizens with non-adjustable gravity use denim.
Just my .02

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Friday, October 26, 2007 6:42 AM

SICKDUDE

Denim is not that good of a material for people in the wilderness. It gets wet easily, it stays wet a long time. While it is durable, other cottons and even wool are better choices.

My two cents as well.....

"Your gratuitous jello awaits." - Dr. Helen Magnus, Sanctuary

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Friday, October 26, 2007 7:11 AM

CHARLOTTE

I may be misremembering but I think Mr. Universe wore jeans.

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Friday, October 26, 2007 7:21 AM

SUASOR

And look what happened to him...

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Friday, October 26, 2007 7:27 AM

BLACKBEANIE

Now that you mention it... I think he did.
*Goes and checks*
Yes, he did. Thank you

There you go, no plague.

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Friday, October 26, 2007 7:35 AM

MRBLUESUN

Sorry are we trying to establish a link between the wearing of denim and death?

I may wear brown, but theres a little purple mixed in there too.

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Friday, October 26, 2007 8:53 AM

DEEPLYKIDDING

Quote:
Originally posted by blackbeanie:
It occurred to me recently that I can't remember seeing a scrap of denim in Firefly or Serenity.

Is it possible some sort of plague wiped out this beloved material? Or am I blind?
Or is some ploy by Joss to confuse people who think too much like me?

What most people think of when they hear denim is a pair of jeans. The traditional fabric is a twill weave (diagonal ridges) with white cotton threads in one direction and indigo-dyed (blue) cotton threads in the other direction. In its "dry" form, denim is VERY dark blue, but we mostly see it nowadays with a wash, sandblasting, or other treatment to fade the color in various ways.

Also keep in mind that denim, as we think of it, has been around only about 200 years or so (late 18th century), and its popularity has changed dramatically over those years. Originally thought of as a workhorse fabric, it was not looked upon favorably by the fashionable. Its only in more recent decades that it has become a trendy fabric.

That being said, I suspect that the cotton plant could still be used in the Firefly 'verse (carried by ships that left Earth-That-Was) and planted & harvested on terraformed planets. They obviously had other Earth-That-Was plants (trees, grasses, food-stuffs, etc). Even if cotton was not transported, other materials, even man-made (possibly ones not created yet in our time) could have been used in the manufacture of "denim" type fabrics.

Also, the *type* of weave (twill) could still be produced in that 'verse (as we see many other types of woven materials in the show).

Plus, there's no reason to think that the future 'verse could not reproduce the color created by indigo (plant) dyes, with or without the actual plant.

So, why no obvious use of denim? Maybe its the current trend in the 'verse, or at least in the border planets, to not use that fiber, fabric or color. Plus, with the future, maybe there are so many new types of fabrics & fibers that denim has become obsolete.

But, obviously, this is all just speculation on my part. Mabye it was an intentional ploy by Joss to put a bug in your brain so that you couldn't stop obsessing about Firefly & Serenity. I know he did it to me with other props & techniques, hence my irrational obsession with this 'verse!

Thanks for starting the thread - fun topic for me!

I'd rather be a smartass than a dumbass...

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Friday, October 26, 2007 11:12 AM

WASHNWEAR

Quote:
Originally posted by DeeplyKidding:
That being said, I suspect that the cotton plant could still be used in the Firefly 'verse...

"Plant"?..."plant"!? Well, crap - there goes my theory. I figured that - having left behind the denim-mines-that-were on Earth-that-was and having failed to find any denim-mines-that-are in the hyperthyroidal-solar-system-that-is - denim in the future-that-will-be had sort of gone the way of the dinosaur and the S&H Green Stamp.

Man... this has been one gorram long week...

It was awash in fatigue poisons when we got here!

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Friday, October 26, 2007 11:30 AM

DEEPLYKIDDING

Whoa there - are you thinking "plant" as in a factory or workshop for the manufacture of a particular product? I was thinking any of a kingdom (Plantae) of multicellular eukaryotic mostly photosynthetic organisms typically lacking locomotive movement or obvious nervous or sensory organs and possessing cellulose cell walls.

Am I taking you too seriously? I have a gorram sinus headache, and am a might techy right now...

I'd rather be a smartass than a dumbass...

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Friday, October 26, 2007 12:11 PM

GRIZWALD

Maybe in Joss's universe, the bad guys wear hats, and the geeks wear blue jeans.

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Friday, October 26, 2007 12:41 PM

WYTCHCROFT

they blew all the denim in buffy series 7:)!

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Friday, October 26, 2007 1:05 PM

TRAVELER

In Jaynestown there may have been some mudders who wore denim, but they were so covered in mud it was hard to tell what they had on.

Like the guy singing Jayne's lament. His hat looks like a used coffee filter. Maybe coffee filters are the new denim in the future.

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler

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Friday, October 26, 2007 2:51 PM

NAUGHTYMAN

Joss might have avoided denim on account of it being so ubiquitous today. It would help give the show sort of an other worldly feel.
Who knows,everything could change in the future with the invention of the spandex gin. :)

"Come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all"

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Friday, October 26, 2007 3:46 PM

WASHNWEAR

Quote:
Originally posted by DeeplyKidding:
Whoa there - are you thinking "plant" as in a factory or workshop for the manufacture of a particular product? I was thinking any of a kingdom (Plantae) of multicellular eukaryotic mostly photosynthetic organisms typically lacking locomotive movement or obvious nervous or sensory organs and possessing cellulose cell walls.

Am I taking you too seriously?

It's not hard to do...

Quote:
I have a gorram sinus headache, and am a might techy right now...

You are more better with the polysyllabic verbery than I, but I'm at least vaguely down with the whole cotton=denim reality deal (never have fully grasped the weaving thing, though). But I had an irrepressible urge to make a contribution to the thread, and I thought "Gee, would it not be the height of hilarity to sort of pretend like denim is mined...?" Hard to believe in hindsight, I grant you...but that was the general flow of thought. I am starting to think I may have misoverestimated the Yuk Factor a bit...

Good luck with the headache - that sinus stuff is no fun.

It reeked of cordite and whimsy when we got here!

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Friday, October 26, 2007 4:25 PM

TRAVELER

When did S&H Geen Stamps disapear. No one told me.
Damn my tongue turned green licking those things. I may still have some items purchased with those things lying around here. It would have made an interesting episode if someone would have attempted to pay May with Green Stamps instead of the pouch of platinum they kept tossing him. What was with that. They never just handed Mal the pouch. They always tossed it.

There is your answer to denim. They are to busy mining for platinum to bother mining for denim. I bet when the platinum runs out the denim mines will soon open.

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler

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Friday, October 26, 2007 4:54 PM

NCBROWNCOAT

Quote:
Originally posted by wytchcroft:
they blew all the denim in buffy series 7:)!

And Caleb's black tight jeans.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

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Friday, October 26, 2007 4:57 PM

DEEPLYKIDDING

Quote:
Originally posted by WASHnwear:

You are more better with the polysyllabic verbery than I... But I had an irrepressible urge to make a contribution to the thread, and I thought "Gee, would it not be the height of hilarity to sort of pretend like denim is mined...?" Hard to believe in hindsight, I grant you...but that was the general flow of thought. I am starting to think I may have misoverestimated the Yuk Factor a bit...

Good luck with the headache - that sinus stuff is no fun.

No, no. I get it now. Thought it was humor, but wasn't sure of myself on that one. I'm just really slow sometimes. See I'd rather be a smartass than a dumbass, but that's really because I'm a dumbass wishing I was a smartass.

And as for my verbosity, can't take credit for that... gotta love www.merriam-webster.com for that one...

Thanks for the good luck wish w/my headache

I'd rather be a smartass than a dumbass...

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Friday, October 26, 2007 5:01 PM

WASHNWEAR

Quote:
Originally posted by traveler:
When did S&H Geen Stamps disapear. No one told me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&H_Green_Stamps

I can remember my grandma collecting them 30+ years ago...and I have absolutely no recollection of anything she redeemed them for...but she was diligent about the deal.

Quote:
Damn my tongue turned green licking those things. I may still have some items purchased with those things lying around here. It would have made an interesting episode if someone would have attempted to pay May with Green Stamps instead of the pouch of platinum they kept tossing him. What was with that. They never just handed Mal the pouch. They always tossed it.

I'd like to think that - if Firefly had got the 10 yr.+ run it so richly deserved (deserves) - there'd eventually have been a story involving the recovery of a bundle of filled-up, well-preserved S&H Green Stamp books...and/or the knocking-over of a redemption center.

Quote:
There is your answer to denim. They are to busy mining for platinum to bother mining for denim. I bet when the platinum runs out the denim mines will soon open.

And that's a day the platinum-pants-wearing masses are right eager to see!

It was cheap wallets and cutlery sets when we got here!

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Friday, October 26, 2007 5:15 PM

TRAVELER

S&H is how I got my hola-hoop. Now I am aging myself again.

It seems every time I get on one of these threads I leak out something from my past that dates me to the horse and buggy.

Gotta go. My platinum pants are chaffing me.

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler

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Friday, October 26, 2007 11:12 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Perhaps the characters we prefer to see choose to shun the denim of blue while in the shadow of BLUE Sun.

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Saturday, October 27, 2007 3:20 AM

DONCOAT

It's not the cotton. It's the indigo.

Cotton grows fine on terraformed planets. Indigo seed, however, suffered radiation damage during the voyage from Earth-that-was, and never grew properly in the new system.

While you might think that the transplanted Terrans could simply have used petrochemical dyes to replace the indigo, you'd be wrong. The new system's planets have no native life, so therefore they have no petroleum. Many materials we currently take for granted -- such as plastics, chemical fertilizers, and dyes -- are rare and expensive in the 'verse. They've been replaced by natural materials like metals, leather, and mud.

Mr. Universe could only afford blue-colored trousers because he was the ultimate hacker. Hey, when you can appropriate an entire planetoid, a couple pairs of blue jeans are a breeze.

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I'm pointin' right at it!

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