Jayne's character, sexism in Firefly and other series'

Television, Movies Games and Books Firefly
#1

“This one’s a bit rambly” ™

Anyhoo… listening to podcast #86 and reading that thread sparked me to thinking… and then i looked at the length of my post and i thought - yikes - too darn big for the podcast thread… so here it is - its nearly all firefly with a hint of BSG/general

:slight_smile:

Firefly’s a funny one in this respect. For my 2cents, I’d say this would be the realistic reaction I’d expect from Jayne… for my part, speaking personally, I don’t get the gorge rising but it does get the ‘euw, I could have lived without that’ response.

On the whole I agree with what you saying, and (and I’m ready to get roasted here), for all that everyone says on where shows are at nowadays, I still see an awful lot of crossover in the portrayals in TV series’ with the view that yes, we can now have strong female characters… they just better also be hot, and whether it makes sense or not for the show, there will be towel scenes (m and f), naked tai chi, and so on (btw IMO the tai chi rates for me at this moment as THE most gratuitous nekkedness in the show, as unlike towelee adama, IIRC it didn’t do anything for the storyline… I forgive it only because Boomer is hot… and thus fall into the sexist trap set by the studio - gah!)

Back on Firefly though… the trouble with Jayne to the largest extent, but to some extent with all the characters in Firefly I think, is that in creating their characters a deliberate decision got made for them to be not in the traditional categorisations which are all in the ‘good’ end of the spectrum. Jayne is pretty heavily flawed - IMO this is one of the things which makes his character interesting to watch rather than boring - was he more like the FOX version of this sort of character, I’d just be rooting for him Mal to airlock him (or cargo door, whatever you want to call it) ASAP. Against his ‘better’ judgement though, and with some real self-hate, Jayne does, sometimes, do the right thing.

In fact he reminds me a bit of my dog. My dog is great, he obeys commands, he doesn’t pee in the house, he never sits on the furniture. But on a good portion of mornings, I will go downstairs and find he’s rifled through the waste paper (snotty tissues and all - euw), and either eaten or chewed it and scattered paper all over the floor near his bed… and the thing is… he knows its wrong… he knows he’s gonna be in trouble… and frankly, he radiates embarassment, because he knews he’s been weak and done a wrong thing. Which IMO is just like Jayne every time he gots noticed (caught) either outright betrays Mal etc, or of not that, then at the least expresses views which expose the nature of his Jayne-centric view on the world. I think he knows he’s weak and a bit of a weasel, and sticks with Mal’s crew because its the only way he can see for his tendencies to be kept in check - without that he’d screw over people one time too many and end up in a pine box

I wonder a little the extent to which Joss Whedon pushing the boat out with having more interesting characters though, was something we’ll look back on in year to come and see as a key factor in why the show got newked. If it had been able to just go in the direction Joss had wanted, I suspect it may have stood more chance. If it had been straight out what FOX (pfbt) wanted, it would have stood more chance (but been lame). Sadly it was getting pulled both ways like a child in a divorce case, and ultimately IMO the thing which suffered was the show.

With BSG (as is said variously in this thread), on the whole I get the impression that the representation of female characters is, on average somewhat less done with half an eye to titillating the male audience than the norm on TV… but its still happening.

…erm… anyway… that’s my 2p on this… probably more like 1/2p :smiley:

#2

Hmm… I like Jayne. I love Jayne. And I have a dog too, so I get the compare contrast. I think with Jayne he’s very in the moment- much like a dog. My husband always wants to scold the dog for hours after an infraction, even though I insist that the dog has moved on (believe me she has- I have a used paper products shredder too). But you know, I know my dog would do anything for me in a pinch, and I believe Jayne would too. So I think this take on Jayne is good, but I can’t agree that these characters contributed to the show’s demise. I think the network did it’s own work on schedule, the episodes they showed, etc. I think it was a show before it’s time on regular a network that didn’t understand the mesh of humor/philosophy of the show.

With sexism, you can’t have men and women not being being men and women. In Firefly we see Zoe as tough, but it’s balanced with tender moments between her and Wash. Kaylee can fit in a man’s world of machines but still loves the look of a frilly dress. I would really only call Six “hot” between the two shows, the other women in BSG are very attractive, but they offer more. Head Six, by nature of us not really knowing what she is or isn’t, is more effective in her sexy state I think. Is she a fantasy? Plus she is engineered, so she’d better look perfect. I’m okay with it.

Anyway, that’s my two cents on these interesting topics.

#3

I’m so glad I found this thread… I’ll try to keep this restricted to Firefly, though I have a lot to say about women/feminism/gender roles and representations and BSG as well.

One of the reasons I like Firefly and BSG so much better than most other things on TV is that there are reasonably complex characters of all genders. I think BSG actually does a better job with it, but again this isn’t the thread to talk about that in.

I find that for the most part the women on Firefly are well-crafted characters. I’m a bit bothered by the portrayal of Companions - supposedly it’s an OK, legitimate, respectful job, but Mal treats Inara badly, or at least constantly insults her, based on her job. Mal is set up as sympathetic and as the highest authority on the ship, and he degrades sex work in a society that supposedly does not do so. That disconnect jars me and makes me a bit nervous to see what Whedon’s doing with the whole Dollhouse enterprise.

Kaylee as the mechanic is just lovely, I particularly enjoy the flashback that shows how she got hired in the first place. Zoe is just awesome. She can be a strong woman who maintains friendships with a man (yes, it’s possible, and I wish people would stop saying it isn’t) and has a loving marriage with Wash. I think I mentioned this on another thread, but how many positive portrayals of a relatively equal marriage do we get on TV? The only one that occurs to me is Wash and Zoe, but I’ll admit that I’m not a huge TV junkie.

River is a bit more problematic for me as well, I’m not sure how to read her yet, particularly if I’m only looking at Firefly (read: no Serenity).

Anyways yeah. This is a bit jumbled, but it’s something that really draws me to the show. I also admit that my views on these characters is very informed by conversations I have with other people who watch the shows and share my feminist perspective, and also, I’ve really benefited from reading the commentary at the Hathor Legacy (http://www.thehathorlegacy.info), though I don’t agree with the characterizations of some of the Women of BSG series…

#4

I think Kaylee was enjoying the sex, but basically using the guy to see the ship.

We need to be careful to distinguish between Firefly is sexist and Jayne is sexist. I think we can all agree Jayne is sexist. (“Her name is Vera.”) But is the show?

#5

Interesting discussion.

My Firefly issue regarding gender issues has always been the following - and don’t get me wrong, I still love the show- but here it is:

There seems to be an assumption that women will automatically take a subservient role the farther from the Core the planet is - and the least developed the planet/world is. What we see are cultures and groups of people “returning” to a state of pre-industrial ways of being, and always in a same and predictable manner - covered wagons, the clothes they wear, women (Saffron) being used as payment and being married off, religion, etc., as if this were the natural order of things. However, this is just the way it has developed in our own history, of the western world, and not the way it has developed in other cultures, even here on Earth. To say that people would naturally and automatically regress in such a way is at best just overly simplistic. One would think that, given what we already know about how societies function best, and being in a position to choose how a new colony would be run, that at least some new ways of being might spring up.

I realize that not all planets/worlds in the Firefly universe are the same, and that Inara does hold a respected position - but as stated in previous posts, there still is enough of a scarlet tinge around it for Mal to look down on her.

#6

I actually found the explanation given in the show, that colonists often get dumped on newly terraformed worlds with little more than the clothes on their backs, convincing. If you’ve got no technology and no support from the Alliance, wouldn’t you have to “rough it”? And as far as I know, we know nothing about how long these outer planets have been settled. After a couple of generations living in rustic conditions, isn’t it possible the settlers just assimilated their new culture in much the same way that children of immigrants do? The further removed they are from the original settlers (who may or may not have had much access to the core lifestyle, since they didn’t have the means to maintain it), the less likely they are to know how to emulate it.

As for the women in subservient roles thing, there’s at least one example to the contrary: Patience, who ran the colony on Whitefall (?) in the pilot. But I think it’s all part of illustrating the "backward"ness of the worlds on the rim.

#7

These are interesting ideas that I hadn’t considered given my penchant for examining the ways that sexism (and oh yes is Jayne sexist…) and gender roles affect individual female characters (and male characters too even though that’s not what I was writing about up above). I suppose part of my resistance to the “roughing it” argument that the show seems to put forward is that in my mind “roughing it” should not by its very essence preclude ideals of gender equality present in the colonizing populations. I think the explanation of the perpetuation of “backwardness” is sound, but I just don’t buy the initial gender disparities, at least not if one accepts the premise of gender equality in the Core system.

As a related point - are any of the blue hand people women? When we do see Alliance power structures, what are their compositions? I might be missing some details, but the PTB that I recall from the series tend to be older white men (of course, racial minorities can serve as their representatives, read: Serenity). If that is indeed the case, perhaps there isn’t as much of a change when the colonizers head out to the rim planets.

This is also making me think about colonized/colonizers, decolonization projects, core/periphery theories… but I’ll have to get back to you all on that.

#8

Ah and speak of the devil, I came across this take (The Hathor Legacy) on Saffron’s character which you all might find interesting.

There’s also been a really good and interesting discussion here (Feminist FSF) on Firefly and gender/race/class issues that people reading this thread might enjoy.