FIREFLY EPISODE DISCUSSIONS

Why River is more sane than you.

POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Thursday, January 17, 2008 08:34
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Wednesday, January 2, 2008 9:46 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


I have seen that many here consider River to be insane. I have seen different reasons given for that conclusion. I am far from convinced, and am greatly tending toward thinking she has no problems with sanity.
I am not trying to make you feel inferior, but if you fear finding yourself less sane than River, this is your opportunity to jump to another thread.

1. River is extremely intelligent. You nor I are expected to understand her, and niether is Simon, let alone the rest of the BDH.
For several decades now (in our time) it has been known that if 2 people do not have mental abilities rated within 15 IQ points, they will never be able to fully and completely communicate with each other. It is just not possible. This is not an insurmoountable obstacle, but it helps to understand the problem. Einstein was married to a woman decidedly not his equal (how could she be?), but through years of marriage they could communicate well enough to remain married. She always admitted that she had no idea what he did for work or how he did it, and she could never understand it or it's importance - but she understood from others that it was important.
This is normally not a problem for most people. If somebody has an average intelligence quotient (IQ 100), then the 1/3 of the population just smarter than him/her (IQ 101-115) and the 1/3 just less smart than him/her (IQ 85-99) will be within this range of full understanding capability - or 2/3 of the population. The farther below IQ 85 the other goes, the more he will have difficulty understanding them, and he/she will suspect the other is mentally impaired. Likewise, the farther another is above IQ 115, the same difficulty in understanding will occur, and the same conclusion will surface - the average intellect person will think the IQ 120 person is mentally impaired - until other references provide clarification (like a IQ 110 person points out that guy is way smarter than he, he aced all the tests, he does this or that better, etc.) This is such a common occurance that it was normal practice for public school teachers to place all genius children into the slow learner's group because the teacher was clueless about the child's abilities, and the mis-classification would continue unitl an IQ test was administered. Public school teacher will also try very hard to dumb down the studuents who outpace their classmates. A person of IQ 115 will generally understand he/she is smarter than most, but will still be able to understand 1/3 of the population between average and his level (IQ 100-114) as well as 5-10% of the population just smarter than him (IQ 116-130) - the vastly smart people (IQ 131+) he will have the same difficulty understanding as the below average (IQ 99 and below) population.
Some here seem to have not paid attention to Simon's Pilot speech - he went to THE BEST medical academy in the verse and was in the top 3% of his class. And River makes him look like an idiot child. He will NEVER be able to understand her or what she says or the way she views things in the way he could with his classmates. Almost nobody will. His biggest advantage in communicating with her is the shared experiences of siblings, and her willingness to suffer the fool in him and therefore dumb down her talk to his level, as well as their understood love for each other and the knowledge they are 2 alone in the wind, they must stick together. This still means they will suffer communication problems, both ways (she will not understand him, either - but she will understand him better than most others she meets, who will be even farther away on the IQ points scale).
In River's IQ range, +/- 15 IQ points account for probably less than a tenth of a percent of the population. And the likelihood of her meeting any of these people while on the fringe are fairly nil. Most extremely intelligent people find intellectual peers by congregating in similar professions, thus meeting them occurs in work environments - they might meet while working for NASA. River can't go to any of these places - they are Alliance.
So we are also not supposed to understand what she says, even if she wasn't an adolescent. The script writers have done an amazing job of capturing this phenomenon with River's interaction among characters on Firefly. The worst example of this would be Jaynestown, with the ridiculous exchange about Book's hair - River is just spouting gibberish so badly that I must assume the writers had no idea that the rest of the scriptwriting was on target (they just thought she was supposed to be insane).
She may have some qualities which are borderline autistic - do we call autistic people "insane?"

2. She sees things differently, not only because of her intellect, but additionally because of her Extra Sensory gifts and talents.
When she senses things, she does not automaticaly know if it is her own thought, another person's thought, or a memeory or another's memory, or who's memory or thought it is if not hers. She does not know if it a future event, a past event, a remotely occuring event, or real-time-right-here-and-now sensation. We can experience similar distortion, like during an earthquake, or when awaking, or recovering from orgasmic climax, or hearing/seeing input not properly sychronized (like when sound and video are not synch'd on playback) - each of these occasions we must process the input, determine what the problem or unknown is, and how to properly connect, correlate, or correct them in our minds.
But River's is vastly more complex than what we do. And yet, she must discern, analyze, and differentiate what all the input is, where it's coming from, and it's importance to her and her surroundings and her responsibilities. Not to mention whether it was/is a dream.
She must also isolate and filter input, which the Institute apparently prevented her from doing, or removed her ability to do so. When she is getting input, like the screams of all the Reaver victims, and she is likely also empathic, feeling their pain, this level and intensity of sound, thought, feeling overwhelms any mild conversation that's happening in the here-and-now. But she must filter out all in input, to just hear the present conversation. Even if n o current conversation is occuring, she must filter out the one or two more pertinent useful sources among all the others. We sometimes have to listen to one nearby conversation while trying to tune out other loud conversations (or vice versa), but River must do this on a momumental scale, and ALL THE TIME, without rest, unless everybody is dead.
When she was in the Institute, it was a controlled environment. When she was exercising and expanding her mental and Extra Sensory capabilites, she had corrective feedback. Her handlers knew what she was doing or trying to do, and after a session could tell her she read this correctly, that incorrectly, she interpretted this wrong and this right, this conclusion was right/wrong, that assumption was or was not accurate, etc. Now, on Serenity, where not even her brother understands what she's doing or thinking, she has no controlled environment, no reference, she's kind of lost. She has to sort it all out herself. Plus, nobody understands her when she does figure things out, and they say she's crazy or insane, and they don't listen when she actuially can help them. I'm kind of surprised they didn't name her Cassandra.

3. Other peolpe control her. She has been programmed with subliminal commands and instructions and responses/reactions, which can be implemented at any time. Apparently these are not fugue states or blackout periods, for she can recall in conscious memory what she did, but she had no willpower, no control over her actions, until an external "safe word" is issued to her subliminal propgramming - too bad it doesn't work on Jayne sometimes.

4. She on drugs. Simon is regularly medicating her with drugs which are supposed to affect her brain. By definition, these are mind altering pharmaceuticals.
The world-record holder for known serial murders is Henry Lee Lucas, with about 2,000 confessed and over 200 confirmed. Brain tests found that he lived his life from the age of 4 with a lithium level inside his head which is 16 times the lethal level. None of us would ever be able to understand any of his thought processes.
We have an overabundance of drug-addled bipolar people in our society, and we don't bother keeping them in an asylum.

So, she has all these Extra Senses that we don't know or understand, and while processing them her tremendous intellect can collate and deduct things we never would be able to. And then at various points, when her brain pauses enough to utter a word or two, what comes out is not likely to make much sense to an unknowing nearby person.
Her entire existence, at the age of 17, must be surreal.
I think Summer did an amazing job portraying her, as well. The ohter actors often commented that they read the script and were unanimously dumbfounded by her lines and didn't know what to make of them, but come camera time and she knew just how to deliver them in a believeable way. They say in acting circles that a very intelligent actor can portray a dumb or retarded person, but an actor of average intellect cannot adequately portray a very intellegent role.

Jayne is clearly the least intelligent of our BDHs, and he clearly and vocally proclaims her to be insane. Just because you do not understand her does not mean she is the one who is insane.

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 12:22 AM

STRANGEBIRD


Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
I have seen that many here consider River to be insane. I have seen different reasons given for that conclusion. I am far from convinced, and am greatly tending toward thinking she has no problems with sanity.
I am not trying to make you feel inferior, but if you fear finding yourself less sane than River, this is your opportunity to jump to another thread.

1. River is extremely intelligent. You nor I are expected to understand her, and niether is Simon, let alone the rest of the BDH.
For several decades now (in our time) it has been known that if 2 people do not have mental abilities rated within 15 IQ points, they will never be able to fully and completely communicate with each other. It is just not possible. This is not an insurmoountable obstacle, but it helps to understand the problem. Einstein was married to a woman decidedly not his equal (how could she be?), but through years of marriage they could communicate well enough to remain married. She always admitted that she had no idea what he did for work or how he did it, and she could never understand it or it's importance - but she understood from others that it was important.
This is normally not a problem for most people. If somebody has an average intelligence quotient (IQ 100), then the 1/3 of the population just smarter than him/her (IQ 101-115) and the 1/3 just less smart than him/her (IQ 85-99) will be within this range of full understanding capability - or 2/3 of the population. The farther below IQ 85 the other goes, the more he will have difficulty understanding them, and he/she will suspect the other is mentally impaired. Likewise, the farther another is above IQ 115, the same difficulty in understanding will occur, and the same conclusion will surface - the average intellect person will think the IQ 120 person is mentally impaired - until other references provide clarification (like a IQ 110 person points out that guy is way smarter than he, he aced all the tests, he does this or that better, etc.) This is such a common occurance that it was normal practice for public school teachers to place all genius children into the slow learner's group because the teacher was clueless about the child's abilities, and the mis-classification would continue unitl an IQ test was administered. Public school teacher will also try very hard to dumb down the studuents who outpace their classmates. A person of IQ 115 will generally understand he/she is smarter than most, but will still be able to understand 1/3 of the population between average and his level (IQ 100-114) as well as 5-10% of the population just smarter than him (IQ 116-130) - the vastly smart people (IQ 131+) he will have the same difficulty understanding as the below average (IQ 99 and below) population.
Some here seem to have not paid attention to Simon's Pilot speech - he went to THE BEST medical academy in the verse and was in the top 3% of his class. And River makes him look like an idiot child. He will NEVER be able to understand her or what she says or the way she views things in the way he could with his classmates. Almost nobody will. His biggest advantage in communicating with her is the shared experiences of siblings, and her willingness to suffer the fool in him and therefore dumb down her talk to his level, as well as their understood love for each other and the knowledge they are 2 alone in the wind, they must stick together. This still means they will suffer communication problems, both ways (she will not understand him, either - but she will understand him better than most others she meets, who will be even farther away on the IQ points scale).
In River's IQ range, +/- 15 IQ points account for probably less than a tenth of a percent of the population. And the likelihood of her meeting any of these people while on the fringe are fairly nil. Most extremely intelligent people find intellectual peers by congregating in similar professions, thus meeting them occurs in work environments - they might meet while working for NASA. River can't go to any of these places - they are Alliance.
So we are also not supposed to understand what she says, even if she wasn't an adolescent. The script writers have done an amazing job of capturing this phenomenon with River's interaction among characters on Firefly. The worst example of this would be Jaynestown, with the ridiculous exchange about Book's hair - River is just spouting gibberish so badly that I must assume the writers had no idea that the rest of the scriptwriting was on target (they just thought she was supposed to be insane).
She may have some qualities which are borderline autistic - do we call autistic people "insane?"

2. She sees things differently, not only because of her intellect, but additionally because of her Extra Sensory gifts and talents.
When she senses things, she does not automaticaly know if it is her own thought, another person's thought, or a memeory or another's memory, or who's memory or thought it is if not hers. She does not know if it a future event, a past event, a remotely occuring event, or real-time-right-here-and-now sensation. We can experience similar distortion, like during an earthquake, or when awaking, or recovering from orgasmic climax, or hearing/seeing input not properly sychronized (like when sound and video are not synch'd on playback) - each of these occasions we must process the input, determine what the problem or unknown is, and how to properly connect, correlate, or correct them in our minds.
But River's is vastly more complex than what we do. And yet, she must discern, analyze, and differentiate what all the input is, where it's coming from, and it's importance to her and her surroundings and her responsibilities. Not to mention whether it was/is a dream.
When she was in the Institute, it was a controlled environment. When she was exercising and expanding her mental and Extra Sensory capabilites, she had corrective feedback. Her handlers knew what she was doing or trying to do, and after a session could tell her she read this correctly, that incorrectly, she interpretted this wrong and this right, this conclusion was right/wrong, that assumption was or was not accurate, etc. Now, on Serenity, where not even her brother understands what she's doing or thinking, she has no controlled environment, no reference, she's kind of lost. She has to sort it all out herself. Plus, nobody understands her when she does figure things out, and they say she's crazy or insane, and they don't listen when she actuially can help them. I'm kind of surprised they didn't name her Cassandra.

3. Other peolpe control her. She has been programmed with subliminal commands and instructions and responses/reactions, which can be implemented at any time. Apparently these are not fugue states or blackout periods, for she can recall in conscious memory what she did, but she had no willpower, no control over her actions, until an external "safe word" is issued to her subliminal propgramming - too bad it doesn't work on Jayne sometimes.

4. She on drugs. Simon is regularly medicating her with drugs which are supposed to affect her brain. By definition, these are mind altering pharmaceuticals.
The world-record holder for known serial murders is Henry Lee Lucas, with about 2,000 confessed and over 200 confirmed. Brain tests found that he lived his life from the age of 4 with a lithium level inside his head which is 16 times the lethal level. None of us would ever be able to understand any of his thought processes.
We have an overabundance of drug-addled bipolar people in our society, and we don't bother keeping them in an asylum.

So, she has all these Extra Senses that we don't know or understand, and while processing them her tremendous intellect can collate and deduct things we never would be able to. And then at various points, when her brain pauses enough to utter a word or two, what comes out is not likely to make much sense to an unknowing nearby person.
Her entire existence, at the age of 17, must be surreal.
I think Summer di an amazing job portraying her, as well. The ohter actors often commented that they read the script and were unanimously dumbfounded by her lines and didn't know what to make of them, but come camera time and she knew just how to deliver them in a believeable way. They say in acting circles that a very intelligent actor can portray a dumb or retarded person, but an actor of average intellect cannot adequately portray a very intellegent role.

Jayne is clearly the least intelligent of our BDHs, and he clearly and vocally proclaims her to be insane. Just because you do not understand her does not mean she is the one who is insane.


Intelligence has nothing to do with sanity. River IS emotionally and mentally disturbed and slightly unstable due to the experiments done to her at The Academy, that much is without question and is stated in the series and movie by Simon himself, more than once. I'm fairly certain the majority of Browncoats know this... somehow you seem to think we're all idiots and incapable of knowing our favorite TV show word for word. God knows the best of us have seen each episode at least two dozen times. I know I have. Also IQ does not a genius make. I've met very creative and successfull people with a fairly average IQ and one that had a very low IQ who was an amazing artist.

I must ask you... are you yourself on some sort of mind altering drug yourself? Or was that rambling, grammatically challenged essay just the work of a very bored, sleep deprived mind? I know I currently have a very bored, sleep deprived mind and I can understand how such a rambling could come about. As a matter of fact I've done them before on this very board. I did take the time to spell check though. I really do need it most of the time.

Finally, I must add that I have never thought of River as insane.... you on the other hand may truly be downright certifiable.

--------------------------------------------------
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." Albert Einstein

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 12:47 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:
Originally posted by StrangeBird:

Intelligence has nothing to do with sanity. River IS emotionally and mentally disturbed and slightly unstable due to the experiments done to her at The Academy, that much is without question and is stated in the series and movie by Simon himself, more than once. I'm fairly certain the majority of Browncoats know this... somehow you seem to think we're all idiots and incapable of knowing our favorite TV show word for word. God knows the best of us have seen each episode at least two dozen times. I know I have. Also IQ does not a genius make. I've met very creative and successfull people with a fairly average IQ and one that had a very low IQ who was an amazing artist.

I must ask you... are you yourself on some sort of mind altering drug yourself? Or was that rambling, grammatically challenged essay just the work of a very bored, sleep deprived mind? I know I currently have a very bored, sleep deprived mind and I can understand how such a rambling could come about. As a matter of fact I've done them before on this very board. I did take the time to spell check though. I really do need it most of the time.

Yes, caffeine.
I am regulalry interrupted here at work tonight. I have already done a half dozen correction sessions for the "spelling" or typing errors - our corporate spyware here has tremendous gaps in keyboard timing. I do apologize for the remaining grammatical and spelling errors. Posting bits and pieces here and there does tend to make the flow disjointed, but I tried to mend the words together.
I've considered posting this for a few weeks or a month now. Been kind of busy instead. Perhaps I should not post the other topics I've been considering - some of them might be lengthy as well.
Also, yes an IQ does a genius make. The reverse, however, as your examples portend, is not always the case. You would be correct if stated that an IQ does not a savant make.
Quote:

Finally, I must add that I have never thought of River as insane.... you on the other hand may truly be downright certifiable.

--------------------------------------------------
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." Albert Einstein

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 12:58 AM

STRANGEBIRD


Well either way I meant no offense if you took it as such. I actually agree with a few of your points. It's just that you make so many I find it hard to know which are your own opinion or just facts you are presenting. I do however stand by my belief that you are completely bugnuts.


--------------------------------------------------
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." Albert Einstein

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 5:04 AM

CHAOSSERENITY


Anyone remember her going after Jayne with a butcher's knife?

All kidding aside, whether insanity is the correct word to use, she's clearly mentally unstable, and anyone would be after having their brain played around with. I'm trying to remember, if this was canon or speculation, that her amygdala had been stripped. That is going to affect her mental capacities, and we know she was intelligent, but mentally stable, from the flashbacks in the series.

~~~~~
"Sounds like something out of science fiction." ~Wash
"We live in a spaceship, dear." ~Zoe

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 5:12 AM

MAL4PREZ


Hey - we should all have our wardrobes color-coordinated for our IQ ranges. That way, I wouldn't waste time trying to communicate with folks who are too smart or too stupid for me! Maybe just hats. My IQ group could be green, and I'd only socialize with other green hat-ers. The blue hats can clean my floors and hang out in seedy bars, and the red hats can design my cell phone and meet their red hat mates over chat groups for smarties. It'd be perfect!



To the point: River is clearly unable to function in society. It's not about smarts - it's about functionality. The girl is nuts. Just because there are reasons for her kind of nuttiness, don't mean she ain't got it.

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 6:11 AM

LEIASKY


I'm not sure what the point of this long post was. It must have gotten lost in the length - or I'm just not intelligent enough to figure it out . . . but I had to comment on the below . . .


>River is just spouting gibberish so badly that I must assume the writers had no idea that the rest of the scriptwriting was on target (they just thought she was supposed to be insane).

Firefly was Joss' baby. Joss had approval on what was written. Just because you or I may not LIKE it, or think that it 'flows' with how we see the rest of the characterization, doesn't mean its not exactly how he wanted River to behave in one particular instance.

I thought the hair 'snow on the roof is too heavy, it might collapse' was a brilliant piece of writing and more than likely a metaphor for something else going through River's mind, something a bit more serious than those simple words would mean to anyone not River.

"A government is a body of people usually notably ungoverned."

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 6:37 AM

AGENTROUKA


Quote:
Originally posted by Leiasky:
I thought the hair 'snow on the roof is too heavy, it might collapse' was a brilliant piece of writing and more than likely a metaphor for something else going through River's mind, something a bit more serious than those simple words would mean to anyone not River.

"A government is a body of people usually notably ungoverned."


The "snow on the roof" bit was a pretty blatant criticism of organized religion, right? Since the whole eppy they were going back and forth about the Bible, faith, what is right or wrong, broken or fixed. She comes to apologize to him, but in the end.. too much snow on the roof too many issues connected to religion. "Just keep walking, preacher man."



And River's is absolutely crazy. It's not because people don't understand everything she says but because she is unable to control her behavior (Butcher knife.) or even attempt to make herself understood by using simpler terms (Aaah, the crazy HAIR!). Which is different from the arrogance or fatigue that sometimes very intelligent people develop when they cannot bear to explain things more simply (again and again).

River isn't unwilling, she is incapable. That's what makes her crazy.

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 6:58 AM

LEIASKY


>The "snow on the roof" bit was a pretty blatant criticism of organized religion, right?

It definitely could be for some. For others, it could mean something different, I suppose. For River - only Joss and the writers know if it meant something else (maybe that they would touch on later on down the line - and it never happened because the series was canceled). They didn't spell it out for us, they let us take what meaning we wanted to from her crazy comments.


>River isn't unwilling, she is incapable. That's what makes her crazy.

Exactly. She wants to be a normal girl, but she's 'broken' and unable to control herself.

"A government is a body of people usually notably ungoverned."

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 9:56 AM

ASARIAN



All this talk about River being crazy is, well, crazy talk. :)

Is she insane, though? Depends on what you call insane. If you use a rather clinical frame, and define insanity as "The inability to stay connected to reality," then yes, she could be called insane. Thing of it is, though, she has a problem with her brain being missing. :) Or part of it, at least. Reality comes in either too pronounced, or she becomes otherwise too disconnected from it (with flashbacks to her traumatic past). "This is paranoid schizophrenia," as Simon called it. Who am I to argue with that diagnosis?

But crazy she ain't. Or if she is, she's my kinda crazy.


--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 10:19 AM

MAL4PREZ


Quote:
Originally posted by asarian:
Thing of it is, though, she has a problem with her brain being missing. :)
*snort* Good one.

Have to admit, I never saw Book's hair scene as anything but a bit of silliness, and I'm feeling silly about it. It is such a clever connection to all the weighty things he must have in his head that freak River out - religion for one, his mysterious past for another. I can't believe I missed that!

Go those writers, for giving everything in this show layers!


-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 10:46 AM

ASARIAN


Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:

Have to admit, I never saw Book's hair scene as anything but a bit of silliness, and I'm feeling silly about it. It is such a clever connection to all the weighty things he must have in his head that freak River out - religion for one, his mysterious past for another. I can't believe I missed that!


Well, if it makes you feel any better, I never interpreted Book's hair scene to be anything more than a funny hair scene, either. :) Snow, religion, roofs, can't say as I feel burdened with an overabundance of guilt about not getting it, though. But I applaud those who do. :)


--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 9:36 PM

PONYXPRESSINC


I find this interesting; the way it breaks down in my head is that trying to understand River is like me anthromorphising an ape only in reverse.

Reminds me of interviewing a guy for a job who had a severe developmental disorder coupled with a very high IQ. I watched him being patronised by the rather dim caseworker sent to help him through the interview process because he expressed a wish to work in a certain way that suited his particular needs. I could see the case workers point, what he wanted would be difficult for any firm to cope with, at least the kind of firm I was working for at the time, but at the same time he knew what he could do and what his limitations were. He essentially got patted on the head and told not to be a silly boy. She simply did not understand him. Neither did I if it came to that, but I do think that someone that smart might perceive things and follow a logic that can still be valid even though I can't understand it.

This guy's "logic" wasn't going to do anyone any harm. Obviously, in practice you can't have people wandering around slashing people’s chest because of a logic only they can understand.

A Headache for everyone all around I think.

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 10:47 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.


I thought the snow on the roof comment was about, well, Book's hair. The snow on the roof is too heavy. His brain is in terrible danger.

To address the first post here, well, my IQ has been tested at 140. Now, not that I know the IQ of everyone I've ever talked to, but I don't think it's til someone hits 'average' that I start to think they're a bit mentally sub-normal. Likewise, it's the average and below crowd who seem to think that I'm just a bit odd, to use the wording of one of them. Maybe I'm wrong, and the people who think I'm out of my mind and I think are idiots have IQs of 120 or possibly even higher than that... but I have trouble believing that is the case. Now, Jayne might pigeonhole River into 'moonbrained' because he doesn't understand the complexity of it. The trauma and the drugs and the stripped emotional filter heightening extra-sensory abilities that no one fully understands, and the genius mind that drives it all, but the fact is that she is a little disjointed. Her own reality matrix has been fragmented. Though she may know more than anyone, she has trouble putting it into words, because she's so fragmented. She sees and feels things that aren't, for all intents and purposes, real. Like leaves and a tree branch that exist only as her perception of an object. Like thoughts and emotions that exist outside her own experience. Jayne doesn't understand that, because he doesn't have the intellect to understand that. He just sees it as crazy. It's not because her IQ is so much higher than his, it's because he doesn't understand the difference between 'moonbrained' and 'traumatized/controlled/fragmented' and probably doesn't much care to.

But I don't think River is entirely sane. I don't think that anyone who's been through what she went through and can see all the horrible things that exist inside certain minds could ever be entirely sane. It's not her fault nor the fault of her birth, but the fault of the medical team who made her a reader and drove needles into her eyes.


I don't think that being cautiously ashamed, or selectively ashamed, or in any way ashamed of who I am is any way to live my life.

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 10:59 PM

ASARIAN


Quote:
Originally posted by PhoenixRose:

I thought the snow on the roof comment was about, well, Book's hair. The snow on the roof is too heavy. His brain is in terrible danger.

To address the first post here, well, my IQ has been tested at 140. Now, not that I know the IQ of everyone I've ever talked to, but I don't think it's til someone hits 'average' that I start to think they're a bit mentally sub-normal. Likewise, it's the average and below crowd who seem to think that I'm just a bit odd, to use the wording of one of them. Maybe I'm wrong, and the people who think I'm out of my mind and I think are idiots have IQs of 120 or possibly even higher than that... but I have trouble believing that is the case. Now, Jayne might pigeonhole River into 'moonbrained' because he doesn't understand the complexity of it. The trauma and the drugs and the stripped emotional filter heightening extra-sensory abilities that no one fully understands, and the genius mind that drives it all, but the fact is that she is a little disjointed. Her own reality matrix has been fragmented. Though she may know more than anyone, she has trouble putting it into words, because she's so fragmented. She sees and feels things that aren't, for all intents and purposes, real. Like leaves and a tree branch that exist only as her perception of an object. Like thoughts and emotions that exist outside her own experience. Jayne doesn't understand that, because he doesn't have the intellect to understand that. He just sees it as crazy. It's not because her IQ is so much higher than his, it's because he doesn't understand the difference between 'moonbrained' and 'traumatized/controlled/fragmented' and probably doesn't much care to.

But I don't think River is entirely sane. I don't think that anyone who's been through what she went through and can see all the horrible things that exist inside certain minds could ever be entirely sane. It's not her fault nor the fault of her birth, but the fault of the medical team who made her a reader and drove needles into her eyes.

You made beautiful, well thought-out points: all 140 of them. :) And I hear you in terms of IQ. What was that saying again? "Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a freak!" Hence, come to think of it, 'fast like a freak.' :)


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Friday, January 4, 2008 12:09 AM

CITIZEN


Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
Hey - we should all have our wardrobes color-coordinated for our IQ ranges. That way, I wouldn't waste time trying to communicate with folks who are too smart or too stupid for me! Maybe just hats. My IQ group could be green, and I'd only socialize with other green hat-ers. The blue hats can clean my floors and hang out in seedy bars, and the red hats can design my cell phone and meet their red hat mates over chat groups for smarties. It'd be perfect!
I've never been fond of black hats.


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Saturday, January 5, 2008 4:57 PM

RIVERFLAN


Quote:
Originally posted by PonyXpressInc:
Reminds me of interviewing a guy for a job who had a severe developmental disorder coupled with a very high IQ. I watched him being patronised by the rather dim caseworker sent to help him through the interview process because he expressed a wish to work in a certain way that suited his particular needs. I could see the case workers point, what he wanted would be difficult for any firm to cope with, at least the kind of firm I was working for at the time, but at the same time he knew what he could do and what his limitations were. He essentially got patted on the head and told not to be a silly boy. She simply did not understand him. Neither did I if it came to that, but I do think that someone that smart might perceive things and follow a logic that can still be valid even though I can't understand it.


Gee, that sounds like me. I was tested for IQ when I was in preschool, and I got 180. Serious. But I also had Asperger's syndrom, or autism, so I had to get a lot of training, and it was only when I hit high school when I completely outgrew my autistic symptoms.

My grade-school teachers were, most of the time, stupider than me, and I'd always suggest better ways to do the lesson, because I got what they were trying to show, and the teachers would then label me as stupid because I obviously didn't know what they were talking about. One of them, my first grade teacher, even landed me in ISS because she was an athletic type and was just reading the textbook most of the time. Which is pitiful.

So I understand what JewelStaiteFan was trying to say. But that doesn't mean she isn't insane. She definately isn't fully in touch in reality, and that could be classified as insane. Insanity doesn't automatically mean stupid, and smarts don't mean sanity. Indeed, there is a fine line between genius and insanity, and River is walking directly on that line.

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Saturday, January 5, 2008 8:56 PM

ASARIAN


Quote:
Originally posted by RiverFlan:


Gee, that sounds like me. I was tested for IQ when I was in preschool, and I got 180. Serious.


Oh crap! There I was thinking I was doing a fair convincing job with my 145; and now, compared to you, I look like an idiot child. :) Oh well, here, out in the black, it don't mean much anyway. Right? Right?? :)


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Saturday, January 5, 2008 9:05 PM

PONYXPRESSINC


As it happens the guy in question had Asperger's.

Quote:
"So I understand what JewelStaiteFan was trying to say. But that doesn't mean she isn't insane."


JewelStaiteFan hasn't necessarily convinced me that River isn't insane either, I'm not really convinced of anything when it comes to River , it was just a different angle that I found interesting.

Quote:
"...my first grade teacher, even landed me in ISS because she was an athletic type and was just reading the textbook most of the time. Which is pitiful.


I wish I was surprised, but I'm not. I was labelled as "Slow" when I first went to School, didn't read until I was seven, then, when I finally got there (mostly on my own) I read through three levels (years) worth of books in three months. I can still recall with great pleasure the look on the teacher's face when they finally asked me to read something and I rattled through it in fine style.

Still can't spell worth a damn though and punctuation, oh boy .

Considering a person's complexities is hard work, requires thought and imagination, dismally, as you obviously know, a lot of people can't be bothered.

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Sunday, January 6, 2008 1:48 AM

USMCHELLRAISER


Firstly, I liked the initial post that started this, even if I have no idea how accurate it is, it made me think, which is always good.

Secondly, I think the only practical definition of crazy is "I don't get it, and no one I like gets/would get it". Some of the most inarguably successful people in the world did things that no one else would have done.

River slashing Jayne makes perfect sense- imagine the dialogue River would hear from Jayne's thoughts day-to-day, and how he felt about her and her brother. She might have just been retorting in a way his mentality, which she had excellent access to, would understand. A ten-year old knows how to kill someone, she certainly knew the difference between a cut requiring some stitches and a fatal arterial/CNS attack.

You could also attribute her odd comments to a kind of laziness- people who are thinking three times faster than the person next to them sometimes don't want to speak three pages of dialogue to 'catch someone up' on what they just thought- it's sometimes easier to just say the last thing on your mind, and let them figure out the rest, or just to get it out of your head- I think internet posters could agree with this- hell, most of you didn't even read to this point.

By the way, what does it mean if you have a 141 I.Q.?



"...let's not ruin an otherwise pleasant day with unnecessary bloodshed..."

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Sunday, January 6, 2008 8:34 AM

PONYXPRESSINC


Quote:
"I think the only practical definition of crazy is "I don't get it, and no one I like gets/would get it".


Hit the nail on the head there.

I think the meaning of the IQ scores varies a little, there is a percentile table here http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQtable.aspx. Enjoy .

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Sunday, January 6, 2008 12:33 PM

STEAMER


Well, without trying to stray too far off topic -

I have Asperger's Syndrome my own self. But it's like Serenity: you never truly lose it, you just learn to live with it and to feel more secure in who you are because it's part of you. Having said that, it's been my observation that no one really cares, least of all many of my past teachers and one of my past bosses (of course I only found out I was an Aspie about three years ago, and I had finished school some time before that). So you may be asking, How does this relate to River and whether or not she's truly insane?

Asperger's, autism, ADD, a lot of other mental disorders you can name - high intelligence and low social skills are dead giveaways. Such folk are extremely intelligent, but they have such a hard time expressing themselves that they come off as dumb, or weird, or otherwise different. (I mean no offense to anyone who has one of those disorders - RiverFlan, you least of all - this is just what I've discovered of myself and other Aspies I've known.) The only problem is not the individual's: People fear what they don't understand. Take River, for instance. In her case, she wasn't born with it, but the Feds did irreparable damage to her grey matter and now she has a mental imbalance that makes the people around her uncomfortable and/or nervous. Even if she hadn't been through it she still might have had a rough time: remember her comment about Simon in the R. Tam Sessions? "He hates it when I can tell which girls he likes." Or something along those lines. Even members of her own family might have been unnerved by her intelligence even if she hadn't had any trouble expressing herself.

But, now she does. The rest of the crew doesn't understand. From that comes, at the very best, concern. When people can't understand something or someone, they try to put it in terms they're familiar with: River comes off as crazy, so to everyone else's minds, she is crazy. First impressions can be misleading but many folk have a hard time getting past them unless they're willing to get past them. Even then, River's unpredictability is a source of constant vexation to the crew. IMO, there's still a girl beneath the weapon, but characters and fans alike seem to be having an awfully difficult time seeing the girl.

I wrote a short fanfic (or tried to - never have completed it) set during OiS, where Serenity has a heart-to-heart with River just before Jubal sneaks on board. When River realises he's coming, thus follows the exchange:
RIVER
He's crazy, but not stupid.
SERENITY
You sure?
RIVER
It takes one to know one.

Which suddenly brings me to a burning question.

Does River think she's crazy?

Think about it. Just because everybody else thinks (perhaps mistakenly) that she's crazy, does she agree with them? Or, being the only one on the ship who knows what really happened to her, does she have a different view of herself? That she's not crazy, she's just highly intelligent and now unable to express herself in a clear manner due to somebody else's impersonal and inhumane motives?

I used to think the problem was mine. Then I found out I had Asperger's. When I found that out and came to terms with it, the problem was no longer mine. It was on the bastards who knew I had it and chose to ignore it and believe instead that I was retarded. But I don't give a good gorram what anyone else thinks about it anymore, because I know the real story.

And only River knows hers. Based on that:

What does SHE think???



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Sunday, January 6, 2008 1:23 PM

RIVERFLAN


That means that you're pretty near the genius mark, USMCH. The way I remember it, 100-115 was average, between that and 145 was above normal, and 145+ was genius.

And I'm odd about that- I have to read all of a thread before I reply to anybody, or if it's a thread I've visited before, I have to read all the things that people have said since I last visited. And no, I'm not OCD, I'm just weird .

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Sunday, January 6, 2008 9:24 PM

PONYXPRESSINC


Quote:
"What does SHE think???"


That's a very good question and not one that's easy to answer. From what I can recall she is her most self-aware (pre-getting the Miranda thing off her chest) after playing chase with Kaylee and during the bullet in the brainpan bit. The latter misery I thought was more about what the Academy programmed her to do and what she had sitting in her head. The former seemed to be about her clarity slipping away. As far as I can remember it was her clearest moment of there is something wrong with me, rather than everyone else just doesn't get it.

There was a bloke I worked with when I was supervising a night shift a long, long time ago who had schizophrenia. He came off his meds without his Doctors approval and I spent a chunk of one night talking to him because he saw birds flying out of the back of a machine and understandably was scared out of his wits.

At that point he knew he was sane, but we were all crazy because we couldn't see what he could see. Baring schizophrenia giving him an altered perception that allowed him to see things that were there that we couldn't, I think probability is on the side of the rest of us being right and him being wrong.

With that in mind plus some other people I have come across in similar situations I think she would think she was sane regardless of what anyone else thinks, which in some ways I think she has a right to believe because all of her bizarre moments make some kind of sense when you look back at them. As someone said, she had some damn good reasons for slashing Jayne; the argument is whether the action was out of proportion to the cause.

Interested to know what other people think, particilarily if they can come up with a more conclusive argument.

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Sunday, January 6, 2008 9:38 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:
Originally posted by PhoenixRose:
I thought the snow on the roof comment was about, well, Book's hair. The snow on the roof is too heavy. His brain is in terrible danger.

To address the first post here, well, my IQ has been tested at 140. Now, not that I know the IQ of everyone I've ever talked to, but I don't think it's til someone hits 'average' that I start to think they're a bit mentally sub-normal. Likewise, it's the average and below crowd who seem to think that I'm just a bit odd, to use the wording of one of them. Maybe I'm wrong, and the people who think I'm out of my mind and I think are idiots have IQs of 120 or possibly even higher than that... but I have trouble believing that is the case. Now, Jayne might pigeonhole River into 'moonbrained' because he doesn't understand the complexity of it. The trauma and the drugs and the stripped emotional filter heightening extra-sensory abilities that no one fully understands, and the genius mind that drives it all, but the fact is that she is a little disjointed. Her own reality matrix has been fragmented. Though she may know more than anyone, she has trouble putting it into words, because she's so fragmented. She sees and feels things that aren't, for all intents and purposes, real. Like leaves and a tree branch that exist only as her perception of an object. Like thoughts and emotions that exist outside her own experience. Jayne doesn't understand that, because he doesn't have the intellect to understand that. He just sees it as crazy. It's not because her IQ is so much higher than his, it's because he doesn't understand the difference between 'moonbrained' and 'traumatized/controlled/fragmented' and probably doesn't much care to.

But I don't think River is entirely sane. I don't think that anyone who's been through what she went through and can see all the horrible things that exist inside certain minds could ever be entirely sane. It's not her fault nor the fault of her birth, but the fault of the medical team who made her a reader and drove needles into her eyes.


I don't think that being cautiously ashamed, or selectively ashamed, or in any way ashamed of who I am is any way to live my life.


Reading this practically sounds like an endorsement of what the first post was (or what I tried to make it), with certain points further detailed. However, I do get the impression your conclusion disagrees.

In response to this and other posts, we should remember that River does eventually regain control over herself, regarding reality/memory, etc. Joss specifically says this in the BDM commentary, after she vomits on Miranda - when she says "I'm OK now" or similar.

I had assumed when youse guys said "insane" you meant a permanent condition, irreversible. Of course, since River does come around, it is obviously not permanent - but that does not mean we will understnad her fully now.

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Sunday, January 6, 2008 9:51 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:
Originally posted by RiverFlan:
Gee, that sounds like me. I was tested for IQ when I was in preschool, and I got 180. Serious. But I also had Asperger's syndrom, or autism, so I had to get a lot of training, and it was only when I hit high school when I completely outgrew my autistic symptoms.

My grade-school teachers were, most of the time, stupider than me, and I'd always suggest better ways to do the lesson, because I got what they were trying to show, and the teachers would then label me as stupid because I obviously didn't know what they were talking about. One of them, my first grade teacher, even landed me in ISS because she was an athletic type and was just reading the textbook most of the time. Which is pitiful.

So I understand what JewelStaiteFan was trying to say. But that doesn't mean she isn't insane. She definately isn't fully in touch in reality, and that could be classified as insane. Insanity doesn't automatically mean stupid, and smarts don't mean sanity. Indeed, there is a fine line between genius and insanity, and River is walking directly on that line.


What is ISS?
In second grade we were taught multiplication in math class. I didn't like the extra writing and pencil/paper usage the way it was taught (long form), so I just wrote the answer and figured the intermediary calculations in my head. I also mentioned my method to my teacher, who said that method will not work and I was not allowed to do it. In 7th or 8th grade my math teacher caught me multiplying my way (I always did, just didn't tell anybody) and asked about it. She wouldn't tell me what it was, but said I would learn about it in 9th grade. The method I had developed was more formally known as algebraic multiplication. My 2nd grade math teacher (and many in between) were convinced I was stupid. My 9th grade teacher (who accelerated me through courses) said I would forget more about math than most people would ever learn. (He also made a wager against another of my math teachers - both became advocates of mine - that I would ace the math section of the PSAT, this was back before it was dumbed down, and the average number per state who aced the math section was less than 1.)

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Sunday, January 6, 2008 10:30 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:
Originally posted by PonyXpressInc:
Quote:
"I think the only practical definition of crazy is "I don't get it, and no one I like gets/would get it".


Hit the nail on the head there.

I think the meaning of the IQ scores varies a little, there is a percentile table here http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQtable.aspx. Enjoy .


It is widely understood that the IQ number is essentially meaningless without specifying the scale it is referenced to (the scale it was scored on). In the linky above, the 2 scales (Weschler and Stanford/Binet) are the 2 closest scoring scales. Most other scales are very widely varying in comparison of numerical scores.
The best "level field comparison" is to use the percentile. Find the test your IQ number was scored on, and find the percentile of that score.

I did not realize so many here were well versed in psychometry discussion. When I referred to IQ numbers in the thread starter, it was for Stanford-Binet, where Standard Deviation was 15 points.
On GCT scale, it would be 12 points.
On Cattell, about 27.

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Monday, January 7, 2008 4:46 AM

PONYXPRESSINC


Quote:
"In response to this and other posts, we should remember that River does eventually regain control over herself, regarding reality/memory, etc. Joss specifically says this in the BDM commentary, after she vomits on Miranda - when she says "I'm OK now" or similar."


Out of curiosity I went to check the commentary on my DVD. As River did the vomiting and over the top of the next scene Joss complemented David Newman for music that made it clear that "...she really is saner..." Is he more firm about her sanity on a different commentary, or elsewhere? I only have the UK version.

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Monday, January 7, 2008 5:05 PM

RIVERFLAN


Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
What is ISS?


It's an acronym for In School Suspension, which basically meant locking me up in a room where I'd be isolated all day, doing homework, no recess, not eating lunch in the cafeteria. Which sucked, especially since I didn't commit any crime other than being smarter than the teacher.

As you were folks, sorry for the hijacking.

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Wednesday, January 9, 2008 9:08 PM

LEXAN


Quote:
Hey - we should all have our wardrobes color-coordinated for our IQ ranges. That way, I wouldn't waste time trying to communicate with folks who are too smart or too stupid for me! Maybe just hats. My IQ group could be green, and I'd only socialize with other green hat-ers. The blue hats can clean my floors and hang out in seedy bars, and the red hats can design my cell phone and meet their red hat mates over chat groups for smarties. It'd be perfect!


Hahaha. LMAO!

Though I don't consider IQ to be the deciding factor to a person's intelligence by any means, I assumed River's IQ to be in the range of 200+; basically inhuman intelligence.


I have always questioned River's 'insanity', for current lack of a better word, for I had defined the term as a state of mental derangement and distortion of sociological, physical and psychological reality. Even this definition is questionable, as many individuals who have been classified as mentally insane over the years have seemed to have a heightened sense of reality, assumedly due to their genius. There is an indubitable connection. 'There is a fine line between genius and insanity'. This quote demonstrates the fact that a person's perception can be enhanced by intellectual superiority in such a way that it transcends the comprehension of a person within the normal range of intelligence. Physical, visual and auditory information can be interpreted, and proximately confabulated, by such an individual in a way that could not be understood by the general populace. These unconventional and transcendental methods of communication and expression could manifest in the form of analogies and metaphores, or even, in River's case, obscure poetry (which contains the prior).

River is, quite undeniably I think, inimitably exceptional. Her personality, which many believe to be changeable and not constant, was not clearly defined in Firefly or Serenity but her character was ever present. I think she is one of the inconceivable few (if she were real...) who has an enhanced sense of clarity and cognition, which is regularly confused with mental derangement (I won't say quite yet that she isn't insane, because even though the word is associated with a 'false' sense of reality, I believe we could perhaps 'translate' this to mean 'transcendental'). Many of her statements are delivered as though the literal meaning of the words is how they should be taken, despite their abstract and irregular quality. However, what is a 'literal' inference or statement? To answer that question, one would have to provide the many meanings of words and what their dubious further meanings are. By this I am reminded of the episode Objects in Space, in which River chooses not to imbue certain objects with meaning. In this case, the theory is applied to the words and how they can be thought of in the same way as the objects. This raises the question of whether River perhaps applies different meaning to the words and sentence structure she uses, to create an entirely different implication, perhaps devoid of meaning as we know it! This is getting a little abstract but it makes sense if you apply the 'objects in space' idea to word usage.

I don't think the fact that River is indeed disturbed and mentally unstable could really be contradicted, which is mainly because of the harmful inflictions that were dispensed to her brain. It is possible that this made her enhanced cognizability a burden in some way, obviously causing psychological and consequently physical pain.

Aaaah, I love River. Such a challenging and richly diverse character!



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Wednesday, January 9, 2008 10:29 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


To insert comparisons here, we might consider among the above arguments that most of you would consider:
Bruce Willis and Madeline Stowe characters are insane in 12 Monkeys.
Sarah Connor, Kyle are insane in Terminator.
Sarah and later John Connor are insane in T2.
Michael Duncan Clark and Tom Hanks and other guards characters in The Green Mile are insane.
Galileo was insane - EVERYBODY KNOWS the world is flat, and the sun revolves around the Earth.
Wilbur and Orville Wright were insane - EVERYBODY KNOWS man cannot take flight in a plane.
Thomas Edison was insane - EVERYBODY KNOWS you cannot harness the energy of electricity.
Every charactrer on the team was insane in Predator.
Ripley was insane in Aliens, plus anybody else who saw an alien.
In summary, almost every protangonist in SciFi is insane because they see or know something that EVERYBODY KNOWS does not exist.


Wish I could recall the original author: When faced with a choice of conforming to the world around him or making the world conform to him, the reasonable man will choose to conform to the world around him. Thus all progress in human history is accomplished by the most unreasonable of men.

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Wednesday, January 9, 2008 11:44 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Also, I realize John Glenn is also insane because everybody knows the world is flat, but upon his return after orbiting in Friendship 7 (IIRC), he found waiting for him a telegram from The Flat Earth Society. The message: "Wise guy."

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Thursday, January 10, 2008 6:27 AM

AGENTROUKA


Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
To insert comparisons here, we might consider among the above arguments that most of you would consider:
Bruce Willis and Madeline Stowe characters are insane in 12 Monkeys.
Sarah Connor, Kyle are insane in Terminator.
Sarah and later John Connor are insane in T2.
Michael Duncan Clark and Tom Hanks and other guards characters in The Green Mile are insane.
Galileo was insane - EVERYBODY KNOWS the world is flat, and the sun revolves around the Earth.
Wilbur and Orville Wright were insane - EVERYBODY KNOWS man cannot take flight in a plane.
Thomas Edison was insane - EVERYBODY KNOWS you cannot harness the energy of electricity.
Every charactrer on the team was insane in Predator.
Ripley was insane in Aliens, plus anybody else who saw an alien.
In summary, almost every protangonist in SciFi is insane because they see or know something that EVERYBODY KNOWS does not exist.


Wish I could recall the original author: When faced with a choice of conforming to the world around him or making the world conform to him, the reasonable man will choose to conform to the world around him. Thus all progress in human history is accomplished by the most unreasonable of men.


I'm not finding it in the thread, so maybe you can help me out. Where was it argued that River (or anyone) is insane because she disputed something everyone "knows"?

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Thursday, January 10, 2008 1:38 PM

ASARIAN


Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:

I'm not finding it in the thread, so maybe you can help me out. Where was it argued that River (or anyone) is insane because she disputed something everyone "knows"?

I think right here, when jewelstaitefan wrote opened with:

"2. She sees things differently, not only because of her intellect, but additionally because of her Extra Sensory gifts and talents."

Jewelstaitefan, I ask you, though, that we first have an understanding between us on what "insane" really means; or what we say it will mean in this thread. For example, I, and others too, have argued that the clinical definition for insanity is closer to "The inability to stay within reality." (add extra qualifiers when desired: that was just a very loose definition). The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, for instance, says:

-- 1: a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia)

Like "paranoid schizophrenia" (what Simon diagnosed her with having).

The French have a good saying: "Pour discuter, il faut être d'accord." Roughly translated: "To argue, you (first) have to agree." Agree on the definitions, that is. There's really no point in discussing whether or not River is insane -- or, for that matter, more "sane" than you -- without us first agreeing on what definition of "insane" we'll be using here. For instance, you could use this one:

-- 3 a: extreme folly or unreasonableness b: something utterly foolish or unreasonable

But, obviously, you then get a completely different discussion. :)


--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Thursday, January 10, 2008 7:58 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Ability to stay within reality, I agree with. Ability to stay within YOUR reality, no. To limit sanity to be to stay within your limited view of reality is unreasonable.

Agentrouka: Some have argued here and elsewhere that River is insane because she does not stay within the reality that others view. Because "a large number" or "most" others percieve a limited sensory intake, then THEY should be the measure by which River should be compared, and not using the full capacity of human senses to mesure River against.
Again, just because YOU (not specifically you) do not understand River, does not mean SHE is the one who is not sane.
In some of my examples, the listed insane are aware of something that the others have not seen, therefore do not believe in, therefore it does not exist, and the protagonist is insane - not stying within reality.

I'm wondering if I should have clearly stated that my thread title was somewhat tongue in cheek.
I did hope to get people to open up a little regarding River's view, and lighten up a bit when accusing her of being different than others.

Many people quote Simon's diagnosis. Not only do I think Simon's quotes might be mistaking symptoms for actual diagnosis, but he cannot sense all that River can, so his limited knowledge also hampers his ability to understand that all that River senses is real, because it is not real to him - he can't sense it. Simon considering River insane is akin to the Madeline Stowe character diagnosing the Bruce Willis character insane in 12 Monkeys.
Simon is also trying out different diagnostic assumptions. He tries to see if River is a multiple personality with Miranda - River says I'm not a double, dumbo. Simon's diagnosis does impress me NOT.

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Friday, January 11, 2008 12:05 AM

ASARIAN


Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:

Ability to stay within reality, I agree with. Ability to stay within YOUR reality, no. To limit sanity to be to stay within your limited view of reality is unreasonable.

Personally, I think you might be taking this a mite too personally.

Quote:

Agentrouka: Some have argued here and elsewhere that River is insane because she does not stay within the reality that others view.

(...)
I did hope to get people to open up a little regarding River's view, and lighten up a bit when accusing her of being different than others.

There ain't no one in the 'Verse says River is insane, no less "accusing" her of anything, merely because she's different or not conforming to their reality -- I wonder why you keep hearing that. You might wanna look to that.

Quote:

Many people quote Simon's diagnosis. Not only do I think Simon's quotes might be mistaking symptoms for actual diagnosis, but he cannot sense all that River can, so his limited knowledge also hampers his ability to understand that all that River senses is real, because it is not real to him - he can't sense it. Simon considering River insane is akin to the Madeline Stowe character diagnosing the Bruce Willis character insane in 12 Monkeys.
Simon is also trying out different diagnostic assumptions. He tries to see if River is a multiple personality with Miranda - River says I'm not a double, dumbo. Simon's diagnosis does impress me NOT.

It's your good right to dismiss, or doubt, the good Doctor's diagnosis. But, in terms of internal consistency, there's nothing in the series or otherwise that points to him being anything else than "gifted" -- top three percent and all -- and knowing exactly what he's doing. See Ariel. And as for River being MPD, he doesn't make that diagnosis, now, don't he? :)

But if you won't take Simon's word for it, will you consider River's?

"Played with Kaylee. The sun came out, and I walked on my feet and heard with my ears. I hate the bits, the bits that stay down and I work, I function like I'm a girl. I hate it because I know it'll go away! The sun grows dark and chaos has come again. It's... fluids. What am I?"

See, it ain't about staying within the reality of others at all. It's the walls of her OWN reality that she cannot maintain. Not always. She has her good moments. Notice, if you will, the part where River says: "(...) and I walked on my feet and heard with my ears." Meaning: at times she takes in sensory input the way other humans do: no voices (Early! beginning of OiS), no echoes of the past, no hitching on to psychic frequencies, etc.

I reckon part why River cannot keep reality focussed, is because of "The memory, it isn't mine. And I shouldn't have to carry it. It isn't mine." (BDM). It's hard for her as it is, since she cannot not feel; but on top of that she has to contend with superimposed memories that keep haunting her like the nasty flashbacks that they... aren't, really -- but which she has to deal with nonetheless.

At Miranda itself, River is finally able to largely release, or disown, those memories. This cannot compensate, in full, for her missing amygdala, but at least these 'ghosts' are no longer throwing a (space) monkey-wrench in her mind. Simon said:

"The medications are erratic, there's not one that her system can't eventually break down, and you have to recalibrate."

It's my estimation that this goes for River's mending process, too: highly adaptive as River's system is, eventually her brain will recalibrate and try and make up for the damage done. A job which she'll find a lot easier now, having unloaded the Miranda crap.

Finally, on a personal note, I witness your frustration levels rising a bit. You took the position that River is special: sees more, knows more, etc. And therefore is more "sane" than others. I doubt there be many would disagree with the former: River IS highly gifted, and unique. But, to be frank, I think you painted yourself a bit in the corner when you tied said specialness to "sanity" -- a somewhat unfortunately chosen stance: primarily so because it proves a mite less tenable than you figured. You can dig your heels in, of course, and that'd be perfectly fine: it's a free 'Verse after all, right? But MY reality don't conform to yours, either -- anything else would be... insane. :)


--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Friday, January 11, 2008 12:08 AM

AGENTROUKA


Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:

Agentrouka: Some have argued here and elsewhere that River is insane because she does not stay within the reality that others view.


I haven't really seen that, though. I've seen people argue the point that River is unable to control her behavior and communicate with others because she is unable to expand her perceived reality to that which most share. (Note: not leave her own, just expand to include the others.) She has no touching point with the common space where most people's realities intersect. Or, say, very few touching points. Does that not figure into the equation? You can call it something other than insane if you want, but it doesn't remove the facts, AND in that case I would like to know what YOUR definition of insanity is, to separate it from River's condition.

If a person's reality includes the certainty that they can fly by flapping their arms and they jump off a building.. how valid does that aspect of their reality rate? Similarly to River's twigs and leaves in the cargo bay?

If a person stabs and eats babies because their reality demands it, are we wrong to classify them as insane?


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Friday, January 11, 2008 12:52 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:

Agentrouka: Some have argued here and elsewhere that River is insane because she does not stay within the reality that others view.


I haven't really seen that, though. I've seen people argue the point that River is unable to control her behavior and communicate with others because she is unable to expand her perceived reality to that which most share.

I must have been unclear about this. River, now exposed to the real world again without Institute controls and commands, must now constrain her reality to reduce it to what other around her percieve. River sees much more than the rest of us, so now to relate to us she must filter out what we cannot see. The persons needing expansion of perception would be everybody, not River.
Quote:

(Note: not leave her own, just expand to include the others.) She has no touching point with the common space where most people's realities intersect. Or, say, very few touching points. Does that not figure into the equation? You can call it something other than insane if you want, but it doesn't remove the facts, AND in that case I would like to know what YOUR definition of insanity is, to separate it from River's condition.

If a person's reality includes the certainty that they can fly by flapping their arms and they jump off a building.. how valid does that aspect of their reality rate? Similarly to River's twigs and leaves in the cargo bay?

If they really can fly, then they would be insane to succumb to ideas that they could not.
River can sense these things that nobody else does, she's not delusional. She knows they are ghosts in Bushwhacked before anybody else does. She knows the reavers are rage driven at the end of BDM, even though nobody else can sense their thougths like she can. She knows the problem with Serenity is Fire before anybody else knows in Out of Gas. She knows what happened to silent Ruby in Safe, and how the Patron murdered the previous Patron, even though nobody else byut Ruby and the Patron understand this. She knows where the 3 targets are without opening her eyes to shoot in War Stories. She knows the Hands of Blue have arrived before anybody else knows in Ariel. She knows Saffron is a thief before anybody else knows in OMR. She knows which girls Simon likes when nobody else knows. She knows the Miranda memory is not hers, and that she was triggered in Maidenhead - "to show her off like a dog", even when others take a while to finally learn it.
River's view IS reality, but she's surrounded by those who cannot expand their perception enough to understand her.
Throughout the BDS and BDM it is proven, time and time again, that what River senses IS reality, and is proven to be reality, regardless of what the others around her can't understand.
Quote:

If a person stabs and eats babies because their reality demands it, are we wrong to classify them as insane?

She does not stab or eat babies when she is in reality - but I did point out she is programmed to when subliminally triggered. However, slashing a bit of Jayne might be reasonable at times.

Also, in general terms, I did not equate intellect with sanity. The intellect causes the discommunication factor, so we cannot fully understand what she says and it's context no matter how sane she is. The sanity factor is her trying to learn what others around her can see (and cannot see) so she can find common points of reference to communicate with them. These are 2 different factors in the dialogue that we (and other BDH) find confusing.

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Friday, January 11, 2008 5:22 AM

MAL4PREZ


Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Many people quote Simon's diagnosis. Not only do I think Simon's quotes might be mistaking symptoms for actual diagnosis, but he cannot sense all that River can, so his limited knowledge...
OK, you may say Simon's knowledge is limited. If you want. But Joss is the expert, right? He created the character River Tam, he knows her inside out, he defines her.

You'll note that in the movie commentary, I forget exactly where it is, but in a scene where River is spouting nonsense, Joss says that he wanted to show that she really was off, that there was something really *wrong* with this girl. I forget his exact words, but the impression I got was that it's just not being a reader that gets to her, but she's actually a bit nuts.

Now, that's enough to convince me!

As for the idea that if what a person's doing makes sense to them, they are by definition sane...

1) Most insane people do things that make perfect sense to them! Many a sober alcoholic will refer to their past selves as insane, because while drinking they did some crazy shit. While they were drinking it made sense, but their minds were all twisted up. Once they're dried out and thinking straight, they realize how off they were.

2) River's actions often don't even make sense to her. "I don't know what I'm saying, I never know what I'm saying..." "The voices, they talk to me..." etc... She is not in control of herself.

And I think that's the key: during the series and most of the movie, River is unable to be her true self, to pursue the things that make her happy. She is incapable of inhabiting her own brain and her own emotions, of forming relationships that she would like. And she knows this, during her short periods of lucidity. ("You found me broken") Really, I think she's the first person who would label herself insane.

JSF - this not a judgement of River, or a dismissal of her abilities. She is still a very bright girl. But she is damaged. She is not herself. This has been stated by damn near every character, including River, and it's been spelled out by Joss. It doesn't mean we don't love and respect River, it's just how it is.

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Friday, January 11, 2008 6:17 AM

MAL4PREZ


Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
River's view IS reality, but she's surrounded by those who cannot expand their perception enough to understand her.
Your argument seems to be that because River has this ESP thing, she is automatically sane and everyone is insane... until they learn to read her mind as well. It's like you're defining sanity based on River's state.

Hey, the fact that River knows of true things is beside the point - it's her inability to express and act on this information that pushes her out of the realm of sanity. Which - yeah, with good reason! What she's been through would make me stark raving nuts too!

I think there is a sane River. It's the little girl we see in the beginning of Safe, the teenager in the earliest of the River Tam Chronicle things, the young woman in the bridge of Serenity at the end of the BDM, telling Mal: "[Yes I know what you're thinking...] but I like to hear you say it..." Those are the sane River.

A sane River would have said: "Jayne, I don't like your tshirt because it's Blue Sun and Blue Sun does bad things." The insane River goes at him with a knife.

A sane River would have said: "Be careful going onto that wreck, because there are a bunch of dead bodies." The insane River just wondered about until she found the source of the "noise" or whatever she sensed.

A sane River would have told the crew that the creepy men in blue gloves were coming after her. The insane River just hid in a corner and chanted to herself.

A sane River would have told Simon: "Jayne turned us in on Ariel, the rat bastard!" The insane River just babbled about the things she sensed until she finally found a way to express herself: "Afraid we'll know..." (And it's not even clear to me that she meant to tell Simon, she seemed to be kind of thinking out loud as she often does.)

Not one of these is a situation where "intellect causes the discommunication factor." It has nothing to do with her smarts - River is truly incapable of functioning. With medical treatment and therapy (therapy being the jaunt to Miranda LOL!) she gets her functionality back. She returns to sanity. Still smart, still ESPgirl, but able to act on it rationally.

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Friday, January 11, 2008 6:59 AM

ASARIAN


Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:

JSF - this not a judgement of River, or a dismissal of her abilities. She is still a very bright girl. But she is damaged. She is not herself. This has been stated by damn near every character, including River, and it's been spelled out by Joss. It doesn't mean we don't love and respect River, it's just how it is.

You hit the nail right on the head. After all, it's River herself who said: "You found me broken." Can't argue with that.

Also, insisting, at all cost, that River ain't broken is almost tantamount to saying she can't be loved otherwise. And I think one of the things that makes Firefly so special, is precisely the fact that Joss wrote it in such a way that we feel compelled to tap into our deep reservoirs of love and care, and direct those, with extreme prejudice, at not-so-well River. I still get choked up when I think back to the first time I saw the pilot. Sigh.

Yesterday I saw a character called Fran, on Stargate Atlantis. Heck, even posted about her. :) But I bring it up because all this reminds me of this one thing she said:

"One always wishes to fulfill one's purpose."

River, in all her brokenness, I think is the perfect catalyst to realizing our true purpose; to know that the human soul was created to love. One look at River, and you cannot help but have your entire being converge on the desire to help her. Powerfull stuff this is.

Not that I/we want to see River broken, of course. I'd love for her to be healed and lead a normal life (after all, we're teleological beings, too: we seek a purposeful development toward an end). But I'm saying, the fact that she IS broken is by no means a reason to love her any less.


--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to only love
A person whole, and see her sane against outrageous evidence,
Or to find her broken in a sea of troubles,
And by your unending love, end them.

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Friday, January 11, 2008 7:20 AM

ASARIAN


Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:

I think there is a sane River. It's the little girl we see in the beginning of Safe, the teenager in the earliest of the River Tam Chronicle things, ...

Oops. :) Wee Freudian slip? A contraction of the "River Tam Sessions" and the "Sarah Conner Chronicles" perhaps? :)

Ennyhows, keep posting!


--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Friday, January 11, 2008 7:35 AM

MAL4PREZ


Quote:
Originally posted by asarian:
Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
I think there is a sane River. It's the little girl we see in the beginning of Safe, the teenager in the earliest of the River Tam Chronicle things, ...

Oops. :) Wee Freudian slip? A contraction of the "River Tam Sessions" and the "Sarah Conner Chronicles" perhaps? :)
Naaa, I know it wasn't right and was too lazy to look it up. Hence the "things" tacked on.

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Friday, January 11, 2008 1:53 PM

ASARIAN


Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:

Hey, the fact that River knows of true things is beside the point - it's her inability to express and act on this information that pushes her out of the realm of sanity. Which - yeah, with good reason! What she's been through would make me stark raving nuts too!

Precisely. Let's have two doctors do the talking, about reality and sanity (caps mine):

DR MATHIAS
The neural stripping
does tend to fragment...

THEIR OWN REALITY MATRIX.

(...)

SIMON
What use do we have...
for a psychic
if she's INSANE?

I rest my case.


--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008 4:14 PM

LEXAN


Quote:
If a person's reality includes the certainty that they can fly by flapping their arms and they jump off a building.. how valid does that aspect of their reality rate? Similarly to River's twigs and leaves in the cargo bay?

If a person stabs and eats babies because their reality demands it, are we wrong to classify them as insane?


Did you not understand the ideology of Objects in Space at all? River *knows* what the material reality that is being induced by the individuals surrounding her entails but she also has a sense of the innate meaninglessness that encompasses objects and is able to apply this awareness to confabulate an entirely different meaning. Physical objects are, ultimately, meaningless, unless organised minds classify and imbue them with certain connotations and create a classification system by which to perceive them. River's visual and conceptual processing is so advanced that she can see beyond the classification and create a 'new meaning' with said objects, regardless of their size, shape and phenotypic composition, because these attributes are only superficial contrivances conceived by the human psyche for it to be able to understand its physical reality. The twig represented this by visually conveying how the conceived phenotypic composition and imbued definition is totally impertinent; the physical reality only consists of 'objects in space' which can and have been manipulated by the individuals urge to create meaning in his or her immediate environment.

Quote:
OK, you may say Simon's knowledge is limited. If you want. But Joss is the expert, right? He created the character River Tam, he knows her inside out, he defines her.

You'll note that in the movie commentary, I forget exactly where it is, but in a scene where River is spouting nonsense, Joss says that he wanted to show that she really was off, that there was something really *wrong* with this girl. I forget his exact words, but the impression I got was that it's just not being a reader that gets to her, but she's actually a bit nuts.

Now, that's enough to convince me!



Okay, for one thing, River would never spout nonsense; her expressions are always communicating something in some way, no matter how obscure they may seem to be. Many of River's statements give the impression that something is 'wrong' with her. In fact, pretty much all of them do. These comments, however, are not insane or nonsensical. There is clearly something dramatically wrong with River; otherwise she wouldn't act the way she does.

Quote:
As for the idea that if what a person's doing makes sense to them, they are by definition sane...

1) Most insane people do things that make perfect sense to them! Many a sober alcoholic will refer to their past selves as insane, because while drinking they did some crazy shit. While they were drinking it made sense, but their minds were all twisted up. Once they're dried out and thinking straight, they realize how off they were.

2) River's actions often don't even make sense to her. "I don't know what I'm saying, I never know what I'm saying..." "The voices, they talk to me..." etc... She is not in control of herself.



Those two statements contradict each other. You say that a person is insane if the illogical or irrational thing they are saying or doing makes perfect sense and seems absolutely sane to them. Then you say 'River's actions often don't even make sense to her'. That wouldn't imply that she’s insane but, yes, it does support the argument that she is not in control of herself, with which I agree. I think before her brain was tampered with she still understood the 'objects in space' theory and had the intuitiveness, along with other enhanced abilities, but, somehow, an area which helped control the maintenance of these notions and abilities was damaged and she lost control of them.

Quote:
And I think that's the key: during the series and most of the movie, River is unable to be her true self, to pursue the things that make her happy. She is incapable of inhabiting her own brain and her own emotions, of forming relationships that she would like. And she knows this, during her short periods of lucidity. ("You found me broken") Really, I think she's the first person who would label herself insane.


I agree, though I still couldn't use that term with no apprehension to describe River. As I said before, River’s character, which is what's important, is always the same but her personality, which encompasses her temperament, is not constant (this is mainly due to her having to put up with the temperaments of others, so she is rarely able to penetrate her own), so we never really saw River's superficial tendencies and attributes, in other words her normal, ‘sane’ behaviour clearly defined. Personality is supposed to be the temperament of an individual, while character is how the individual affects other people’s temperament. At times, we can obviously see how River can make the other characters feel, especially Simon, despite her desensitised condition.

Quote:

Hey, the fact that River knows of true things is beside the point - it's her inability to express and act on this information that pushes her out of the realm of sanity. Which - yeah, with good reason! What she's been through would make me stark raving nuts too!


She expresses and acts on the information in ways that she feels she can. Psychologically, she’s obviously not in control of what she can and what she can’t communicate. Resultantly, she uses other, often transcendental means of communication. Saying this is what ‘pushes her out of the realm of sanity’, is perhaps the most plausible argument supporting River’s insanity I’ve encountered but it still isn’t enough evidence to make this assumption. If you define insanity as ‘severe mental malfunction’ and dismiss other meanings, I would almost be inclined to say that the term is applicable to River.

Quote:
I think there is a sane River. It's the little girl we see in the beginning of Safe, the teenager in the earliest of the River Tam Chronicle things, the young woman in the bridge of Serenity at the end of the BDM, telling Mal: "[Yes I know what you're thinking...] but I like to hear you say it..." Those are the sane River.

A sane River would have said: "Jayne, I don't like your tshirt because it's Blue Sun and Blue Sun does bad things." The insane River goes at him with a knife.

A sane River would have said: "Be careful going onto that wreck, because there are a bunch of dead bodies." The insane River just wondered about until she found the source of the "noise" or whatever she sensed.

A sane River would have told the crew that the creepy men in blue gloves were coming after her. The insane River just hid in a corner and chanted to herself.

A sane River would have told Simon: "Jayne turned us in on Ariel, the rat bastard!" The insane River just babbled about the things she sensed until she finally found a way to express herself: "Afraid we'll know..." (And it's not even clear to me that she meant to tell Simon, she seemed to be kind of thinking out loud as she often does.)

Not one of these is a situation where "intellect causes the discommunication factor." It has nothing to do with her smarts - River is truly incapable of functioning. With medical treatment and therapy (therapy being the jaunt to Miranda LOL!) she gets her functionality back. She returns to sanity. Still smart, still ESPgirl, but able to act on it rationally.


While I’m not sure if that is actually what River would have said , had her mental state not have been malfunctioning it is true that she would communicated differently. But as I said before, she has an enhanced clarity and cognition which is so intense that it distracts her from other things, like telling the crew about the dead bodies, blue gloved men and Jayne’s dishonesty. Intellectuality is a factor, it’s just not as prominent because all these situations and what a normal person would have done and said did not require it.

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008 7:15 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:
Originally posted by Lexan:

Okay, for one thing, River would never spout nonsense; her expressions are always communicating something in some way, no matter how obscure they may seem to be. Many of River's statements give the impression that something is 'wrong' with her. In fact, pretty much all of them do. These comments, however, are not insane or nonsensical. There is clearly something dramatically wrong with River; otherwise she wouldn't act the way she does.

Quote:
....


Those two statements contradict each other. You say that a person is insane if the illogical or irrational thing they are saying or doing makes perfect sense and seems absolutely sane to them. Then you say 'River's actions often don't even make sense to her'. That wouldn't imply that she’s insane but, yes, it does support the argument that she is not in control of herself, with which I agree. I think before her brain was tampered with she still understood the 'objects in space' theory and had the intuitiveness, along with other enhanced abilities, but, somehow, an area which helped control the maintenance of these notions and abilities was damaged and she lost control of them.

Quote:
...


I agree, though I still couldn't use that term with no apprehension to describe River. As I said before, River’s character, which is what's important, is always the same but her personality, which encompasses her temperament, is not constant (this is mainly due to her having to put up with the temperaments of others, so she is rarely able to penetrate her own), so we never really saw River's superficial tendencies and attributes, in other words her normal, ‘sane’ behaviour clearly defined. Personality is supposed to be the temperament of an individual, while character is how the individual affects other people’s temperament. At times, we can obviously see how River can make the other characters feel, especially Simon, despite her desensitised condition.

Quote:
...


She expresses and acts on the information in ways that she feels she can. Psychologically, she’s obviously not in control of what she can and what she can’t communicate. Resultantly, she uses other, often transcendental means of communication. Saying this is what ‘pushes her out of the realm of sanity’, is perhaps the most plausible argument supporting River’s insanity I’ve encountered but it still isn’t enough evidence to make this assumption. If you define insanity as ‘severe mental malfunction’ and dismiss other meanings, I would almost be inclined to say that the term is applicable to River.

Quote:
...


While I’m not sure if that is actually what River would have said , had her mental state not have been malfunctioning it is true that she would communicated differently. But as I said before, she has an enhanced clarity and cognition which is so intense that it distracts her from other things, like telling the crew about the dead bodies, blue gloved men and Jayne’s dishonesty. Intellectuality is a factor, it’s just not as prominent because all these situations and what a normal person would have done and said did not require it.


Thanks for reading this thread and contributing. I think you have understood many of my points and helped express some of them more clearly.

Regarding one of the exchanges above, I don't think River would classify herself as insane, but she would wonder if she was insane at times - because everybody around her was in a different world of perception and could not understand her.

I also may have neglected to point out that, besides having no family around during her Institute captivity, no stability for self, and then being released/thrust into a crew who does not understand what she says, she also has been going through all of these sensory and conceptual developments while developing physically, during and after puberty. The onslaught of hormones also creates confusion, and this is a seperate development from mental capacity and physical or emotional control.

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008 9:46 PM

AGENTROUKA


Quote:
Originally posted by Lexan:
Quote:
If a person's reality includes the certainty that they can fly by flapping their arms and they jump off a building.. how valid does that aspect of their reality rate? Similarly to River's twigs and leaves in the cargo bay?

If a person stabs and eats babies because their reality demands it, are we wrong to classify them as insane?


Did you not understand the ideology of Objects in Space at all?


Oh, trust me I do. I wouldn't call it an "ideology", for certain, but I do know what the episode is about.

I do not think that this has any impact on whether River is sane, though.

Nor do I think that "Objects are meaningless" is supposed to imply that they do not have a physical reality at all. What she ends up holding is still an object that really exists. She sees it differently, but it has a phyical reality and THAT is the point, not the dozens of other twigs and leaves that she also sees but that ARE NOT THERE. The imbued meaning is the point where they all have a chance at communicating, where River's reality intersects with the physical world, not the completely halucinated other twigs and leaves that have no representation in the physical world.

We do share a physical reality that we experience in similar ways and it is what enables us to communicate at all. River is unable to communicate fully (whether you choose to "blame" the others for being unable to understand her or whether you allow it to be a neutral fact that doesn't require constant qualifying) and that is what makes her insane.

I brought up the quantity of the twigs because for all of River's perception, she couldn't beat someone with one of those imaginary twigs because they are not there. They are a way of River's mind speaking to River but it is not something she could use to communicate. She is, essentially, a prisoner of her own mind's images because they are so far removed from the physical reality she needs to inhabit in order to connect with other people.

I find it interesting that no one so far has bothered to comment on the fact that flappy-arm person would be splattered on the ground and what this means for the twigs-image.



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Wednesday, January 16, 2008 3:20 PM

ASARIAN


Lexan, I want a lot of philosophical jargon thrown at me, I'll talk to a philosopher. :) In earnest, we all listened to Joss's Director's Commentary for this ep. In short, Joss explains that both River and Early "imbue" meaning to objects: Early in nasty ways, and River, as Joss puts it, because she has a good heart, "imbues them with kindness." River's famous "Just an object. It doesn't mean what you think." line is akin to what Joss said: "A ball is to be thrown, but it's also just a round thing." It still, as Early would say, has purpose.

Now, all the existentialism notwithstanding, kindnesss != sanity. River's choice of meaning is benign one. But it don't say nuttin' about the WHY of it. Now, I say for the twig we need to visit those layers of psychosis. The crackling sound, heard the moment she steps on that twig, immediately triggers an association with the cocking of a gun. Or rather the other way around, actually, seen from River's perspective: when she loads the gun (Jayne: "I don't leave my guns around, Mal. And I don't leave 'em loaded."), her highly associative mind connects the sound to stepping on a branch, and suddenly she's off to fairy land again, holding a gun-shaped twig in her hand. Possibly she's dissociating at the time.

I'd say OiS is already giving us a glimpse into what the Alliance did to her:

DR. MATHIAS
We can monitor and direct
their subconscious...

implant suggestions.

It's a little startling
to see at first,
but results are spectacular.

(...)

She'll be ideal
for defense deployment...

It's entirely possible the whole twig scene is part of her military conditioning. Like how she sees a pen shoved in her forehead, but which is, in fact, a nasty, big-ass needle. I wouldn't put it past them that they used similar tricks to have her handle guns, and assassinate folks, while having her think something else is happening.

Now, it's River who chooses to imbue a friendly meaning to a gun. And that's a commentary on her. But WHY it is happening, and WHY she's suddenly walking around with a gun in her hand, that's got nothing to do with Jean-Paul Sartre and his florid prose. But I say the relationship between that twig and the gun is as far away from "innate meaninglessness" as Jiangyin is from a Core planet.


--

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Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:34 AM

MAL4PREZ


I said: "You'll note that in the movie commentary, I forget exactly where it is, but in a scene where River is spouting nonsense, Joss says that he wanted to show that she really was off, that there was something really *wrong* with this girl."

Lexan replied: "Okay, for one thing, River would never spout nonsense; her expressions are always communicating something in some way, no matter how obscure they may seem to be."

Easy with the getting literal, Lexan! You're nitpicking at the wrong thing. My point is - Joss made an effort to show us that there is something fundamentally wrong with River. The Man came right out and said it. Um... are you saying he was wrong?

As for "nonsense" - recall the bit with the food can labels. To the regular viewing audience and the other characters in the scene, River is spewing nonsense. Sure, those of us who later study the script find out that there's information in her words, but in the scene it's nonsense. So... I may refer to the spells where words that make no sense in the moment come bubbling out as the "spewage of nonsense." Give it no more weight than that my friend.

Quote:
Those two statements contradict each other.
I wasn't trying to have two points that build on each other logically. I was showing two reasons why JSF's assumption is flawed. The fact that a person's internal reasoning makes sense to that person cannot be equated with sanity OR insanity. It made sense to River to cut Jayne's chest. Does that make her action sane?

You and JSF seem to define River's sanity based on her "enhanced" knowledge and abilities. (Well... and JSF is adding points about superior intelligence that are just... well... out there. ) Sure, River acts on true information. The odd things she says and does have a reason and may follow some kind of logic - whether the crew understands it or she understands it herself. If we the viewers understand it, then it's sane. Is that really what you're saying?

So... people get institutionalized because their brain chemicals are so inbalanced that they're slaves to their emotional impulses. The emotions are completely reasonable, but acting on them - not so much. These people are missing the ability to control themselves. It seems to me that, by your logic, none of these people are actually insane. Or do the special rules only apply to River?

As for my personal definition of insanity , let's turn to dictionary.com.

Insanity
1. Mental illness or derangement. No longer in scientific use.
2. Law
1. Unsoundness of mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health facility.
2. In most criminal jurisdictions, a degree of mental malfunctioning sufficient to relieve the accused of legal responsibility for the act committed.
3. Extreme foolishness; folly.
4. Something that is extremely foolish.
3.
1. Extreme foolishness; folly.
2. Something that is extremely foolish.

An inherently non-violent person (which I believe River to be) coming at a man with a knife because of associations she has with his tshirt.... I think that fits the above. It's not sane. Or should she be held criminally accountable for that action?

Quote:
If you define insanity as ‘severe mental malfunction’ and dismiss other meanings, I would almost be inclined to say that the term is applicable to River.
See, I think we're going to find that we're in argeement once the terms are better defined. What are your other meanings to "insanity"?


-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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