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Date Posted: 11:54:21 10/06/02 Sun
Author: Grant
Subject: Re: Okay, how dumb are we supposed to be? (Spoilers through 3rd aired ep)
In reply to: Darby 's message, "Okay, how dumb are we supposed to be? (Spoilers through 3rd aired ep)" on 06:52:49 10/06/02 Sun

Well, the fact that it is a scifi show with a very strong western element is kind of the premise of the show. If you don't enjoy the western portions, the weird anachronisms of it all, I don't really think you can enjoy the show.In fact, I think that it might be a little better to think of the show as a western, with some scifi elements thrown in. Because I think that Joss's primary goal with this show was to take westerns in a new an interesting direction. In this way it is similar to Buffy, a show which takes horror shows in an interesting new direction. That's why they have silly things like holographic windows in backwater saloons. There is no way a place like that would spend money on something so useless. But it does provide the fun visual of a standard western scene--someone being thrown through a bar window--being twisted by the scifi feature of that window being a hologram. If you can't just enjoy things like that, you probably won't have a lot of fun watching the show.

The same is true with BtVS and Ats. The entire slayer concept, for example, makes no logical sense. Sure, maybe in the beginning when the slayer was there just to protect like one tribe, but how can we possibly expect a slayer to protect the entire world. The entire hellmouth concept also makes no sense. If you were a demon, why would you possibly want to hatch your evil schemes there. Sure, you would be pulled in by the hellmouth's evil energy, but you also would know that there is a slayer hanging around there who is pretty good at stopping evil demons and vampires. And are we realyl suppossed to believe that only in the last five or six years that a slayer has been there the hellmouth has suddenly become really popular among evil types. What about all those years after the master got trapped? And talking about non-observant people, the whole people tend to rationalize what they can and forget what they can't has really been running out of steam in recent years. What, all the other students just forgot how Buffy led them against a giant snake at graduation? And in the last episode, they had a fight between a vampire and a demon in the middle of a large crowd of people at the bronze. As for Angel, in California, like in pretty much every other state in the union, you need a license to be a private investigator. In one of the early episodes of Ats, they even mentioned how Angel did not have one. So who does he get to keep having a private investigations agency without a license. Sure, he has an abnormal clientele, but he certainly advertises. And even Gavin Park, evil genius of laws and regulations that he is, didn't think of getting Angel for acting as a private investigator without a license. And for more non-observant people, what about the citizenry of L.A. Could they really not notice all the demons wondering around the streets? But none of these things are really that important that they could take away from my enjoyment of any of these shows. There just the kind of problems that come from having TV shows in general, and particularly having shows in which you slay vampires or fly around through space.

There also is a certain logic to the whole western theme. It makes sense that the people on the fringes of society don't have access to the kind of technology they do on the central planets. So, they make use of whatever is best. And history has obviously shown us that the kind of clothes and equipment they are using works well on the frontier. Something like a cowboy hat is useful for keeping the son and the rain out of your face, and protecting your head, which is the main place were you can gain and lose body heat. Horses are useful because all they need for fuel is food and water, they don't require too much maintenance or equipment, and are self replicating. I also think that if you look at the show, you will see that gender equity relates mostly to situation. In higher tech areas, like on the Serenity herself, there is a lot more gender equity. Mal had a big speech about it when he was trying to convince Saffron that she wasn't just property. Zoe is the second in command and, along with Jayne and Mal, one of the three people on the ship most useful in a gunfight. Kaylee is a mechanic/engineer, thus filling a highly technical job that requires a lot of education. And the single most respectable job we have seen so far on the show is that of companion, which seems to only be available to women. And in the latest episode it was made clear that women attend "the Academy." From this we can assume that gender equality in the central planets is pretty much the same as it is now. On the frontier, however, things are a lot tougher. Technology does not give them the advantages and conveniences of life in the central planets, so they have to organize society to maximize production and survival. It thus makes sense that they would have much more strict gender roles in order to most take advantage of what each gender is naturally good at. Males are naturally better at doing physical work, so they would be out working in the fields all day. Women are naturally much better at raising children, not to mention the fact that they are the only sex that can actually bare the children. Since having lots of children is a very important requirement for the survival of a settlement, particularly in its early stages, it would make sense that women are relegated to being mothers. These are the main roles necessary for the settlement at this point, so it is logical that they would divide the genders based on their abilities in these two arenas. Once the society advances enough that mere survival is no longer the issue, then things will balance out. Not nearly as many babies are necessary, so women are no longer stuck at home rearing large groups of progeny. Instead, society needs jobs that require more intelligence and education, and thus it takes advantage of the fact that women are equally as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than men.

As for the chinese clothes, I think it all goes back to the old western motif. They want the viewers to instinctively know that this is a western. That is how they can best use and twist the standard expectations and cliches that go along with westerns. So, they dress everyone in typical western clothes. If people were wearing more chinese clothes, the audience would probably be more expecting a kung fu show than a western show, and they would be entirely confused by what was going on. The concept of a western in space is already confusing enough. They don't need to add the extra confusion of a western in space were everybody dresses like they're in China.

And as for how Saffron got into the settlement, I always just assumed that she showed up during the party. Most people were drunk (ie Jayne), there was poor lighting, and there was a lot of confusion. She could have easily just walked in, done the wedding ceremony with Mal, and then walked out only to return and sneak on Serenity the next morning. It also seems likely that her MO was hanging around backwater planets with that kind of wedding ceremony, waiting for a ship to come along that she could get aboard. That way she could take advantage of the strange wedding customs as a way to get on the ship, could use the fact that these crew were bound to not see a subservient woman from a backwater planet as a threat to accomplish her plans, and would also be mostly free from Alliance interference.

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