Westerns always have tons of stereotypes, and it seems that space Westerns are no exception. I watched “Out of Gas” and “Jaynestown” from the series Firefly. In these episodes, the main character are Mal, Inara, Jayne, Kaylee, Simon, and Derrial. Mal is the stereotype of a captain; handsome, hot blooded when necessary, loyal to his crew mates, with the gaff worthy of Kirk to say “just fix it”. Jayne is the strong-man of the group, imposing in muscle far more than in intelligence. Inara is a “companion”, aka a classy prostitute who is the sexual goddess/priestess character. Kaylee is the ship mechanic, fulfilling the sweet little Southern girl role. Simon, the ship’s doctor, is the respectful, respectable gentleman of the group that’s always picked on for his good manners. Derrial is a pastor - the guy who has lots of quotes with deep religious morals.
Yay! Lots of stereotypical characters already! Then of course there is the pervading romantic tension between the characters and the morals laid out nice and simple, with no subtlety, in glossy one-liners throughout the dialogue. To top this stale supermarket cake with a rotten cherry, the cheesy fake Southern dialogue does the trick. Maybe this is just some stick-it-to-the-man angst of mine, but I laughed multiple times at how simplified and stereotypical the characters, plot and morals were.
This is not an isolated issue. While there are many incredible movies (I don’t know about TV shows) that are legitimately intellectually stimulating, this practice of force feeding morals to the audience is present in lots of mainstream TV and movie dramas. It’s frustrating to me because these over-simplifications of theological concepts and clumsy attempts to answer life’s questions miss the point; they can’t be answered by any one person from any one perspective. Ah well, I guess I’ll have to turn to more boring adult stuff for my intellectual stimulation (sigh).
I wonder if you would like the movie more? By the time they make it, a lot of the accents have smoothed out (they're still there, but not quite as strongly, and they sound much more natural). Most of the western elements disappear, because they just don't have time for everything. (The horror movie elements are more prominent.) There are still some heart-to-hearts, but they aren't as blatant as they were. I think Joss Whedon takes a while to get going, and he didn't have a while in Firefly.
ReplyDeleteThis time around, I also noticed the easy morality more than I had in the past. Not sure why I didn't think of it before.