Today I watched the 6th episode of Firefly, ‘Our Mrs. Reynolds’. In this episode, Mal gets drunk and apparently gets married (the whole wedding ceremony is kind of suspect if you ask me) to a young woman. It is funny the way the crew of Serenity reacts to the news of Mal’s marriage. Most of the crew makes fun of Mal when they hear of it. Later on, the shepherd Book tells him that ‘that there is a special place in hell for men who take advantage of young girls’ making it very clear that Mal should not even think about taking advantage of his new ‘wife’, Saffron.
It is nice to see how Mal does the opposite of what most men would do in that situation. Instead of just taking advantage of the situation, Mal tries to help Saffron, telling her to stand up for herself and not allow anyone else to control her. As he says ‘Anybody try and kill you, you try and kill them right back’ He also arranges to drop her off on a planet where she will able to find honest work and live a good life. The usual approach to this kind of situation is embodied by Jayne in this episode who even tries to trade Saffron for his best gun.
In the end, the joke is on Mal because he is the one taken advantage of. Saffron charms almost everyone on board the Serenity. Only Zoe keeps to her opinion that Saffron is trouble, and in the end she is right. Saffron puts the ship on course for a ‘net’ that would dismantle the ship, and kill everyone on board. They manage to get by this thanks to some quick thinking.
Mal also shows great character later on by not killing Saffron when he finds her. He is more interested in finding out why she behaved the way she did. Her response is basically that everybody plays everybody. Mal gives her an instance of how the members of his crew trust each other and that is why they survive. And I guess that is that the moral of this episode: Although people play each other, we all have some people that we can trust completely, whether family or friends. And those people keep us sane in this dog eat dog world.
Yes, it's totally a dog eat dog world, but with the right people in your life you can persevere and be sucessful
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be saying that through "Our Mrs.Reynolds" the writers of Firefly are argueing that everyoen has a central group of people you can trust allthough we live in a dog eat dog world. The main evidence for this arguement seems to be the scene when Saffron betrays everything Mal has done for her and leads the ship into a path of destruction. This argument is timely because especially now in tough economic times people are tying to find that one central group to which they can relate and of whom they can trust. It is essentially like networking because if you don't have people you turst in today's society you're not going top be able to anywhere. Have you thought about connecting this arguement to unemployment or government policy.I see the two things connecting because for example, the unemployment rate is on the rise. This forces people to look to the ones they trust in order to help them squeze into some kind of job position. Also along the lines of government policy, we are a country at war. If people dont find someone to trust within the government then their opinions will not be heard. They will also not feel safe with the way things are happening, kind of like how the members of Serenity probably did not feel safe when Saffron took it over and was going to destroy them all. I think analyzing this episode and economics could be fruitful because it revolves around things happening now which is a better way to get people to see your point of view. You have a good arguement you just need something to help people understand.
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