A Rant by Jonathan Quince
Once upon a time, I purchased this domain name with the intent of building a site here. The premise was simple: Kill Jayne, redeem Mal & Co., and save Firefly. A plot was hatched, the premises fleshed out, and I had a few hard-hitting polemics written to get my point across.
The site, however, languished for over a year with a blank homepage and no content. Eventually, I realized the cause of my procrastination: In my heart, I knew there was nothing in Firefly left worthy of salvation. Therefore, I have discarded my original work and thrown together this quick-and-dirty page in its stead.
Spoiler alert: If you have not seen Firefly’s first season, I will probably give lots of stuff away. I don’t really care anymore; but if you are looking forward to Firefly, you might want to watch it (and weep) before coming back and reading this page.
Jayne committed two basic crimes. One was treason, and the other was the actual act of selling River to the Evil Men With Blue Hands.
As to treason, I oughtn’t need give any explanation at all. Treachery has been recognized throughout history as the most heinous of crimes. The American public (and wider world-at-large) may have lost this moral (cf. the collective public shrug towards “Jihad Johnny”); but nonetheless, the very fact of Jayne’s betrayal should speak of its own sickly accord.
The other major crime Jayne committed is worse than murder, worse than rape. He knowingly and wilfully condemned an innocent 16-year-old girl to torture beyond imagining; he sold her into slavery and endless torment not of the body, but of the mind. If there is a Hell, he condemned her to it in exchange for a bit of cold cash.
If Jayne had instead sold River onto the international sex-slave market, people would be suitably appalled. Since her captors were bent on violating her brain instead of her vagina, I guess that people simply don’t care. It seems that “two by two with hands of blue” is just not titillating enough to get people self-righteously riled.
Simon would never have forgiven Jayne.
Here we have a brother who had, in a very real sense, already laid down his life to save his sister. For her sake, he had gone straight from being a prestigious and highly respected up-and-coming star to being the ultimate outlaw, Public Enemy No. 1; for a man such as he who had striven for years to achieve his position by dint of merit, it would probably have been easier to simply get himself killed than to sacrifice as he did. This is not, of course, to say that he didn’t give up his survival for her: That may be only a matter of time, since he is perpetually on the run and death (or imprisonment with torture) surely awaits him if he is apprehended by the authorities.
Simon is not a stupid man. He knows all this, and he simply accepts it without a second thought. River’s life and well-being overwhelm all other considerations in his mind.
The motive behind Simon’s acts bespeaks a paragon of love so deep and so pure that nothing—nothing—could ever stand in its way. Simon had already pretty much walked off the edge of the universe for his sister, and—what? He easily and casually forgave the very Judas who tried to sell his dear sister for money? This turn from epic heroism to “let’s link hands and sing Kumbyah” violates the very core of Simon’s character.
The latitude and license given authors of fiction is not unlimited in any sense. Both plots and characters must have some element of internal self-consistency that makes them plausible. Here, in approximately three minutes of one episode, the writers so thoroughly contradicted the psychological profile they had already built for this character that the effect is not even an outrage—rather, it is sadly whimsical, rather like so much of the low-quality fan fic out there on the Internet.
I cannot condemn Simon’s (fictional) character since plausibility, and thus suspension of disbelief, were totally shattered. Rather, I must lay some harsh words on the abilities of the writers who slapped together this shoddy abomination. And if there is one ill I loathe almost as much as I do corruption, it must be stupidity.
If the absurdity of Simon’s betrayal raises eyebrows, that of River’s forgiving Jayne invokes condescending laughter. A person who had been hideously tortured and brain-bent to the point of psychosis, and who lives with nightmares of it every day, simply does not (and cannot) forgive someone who attempts to send them bodily back to the nightmare. Here, plausibility is not merely shattered: It is run through a woodchipper, beaten with a hammer, puréed, and repackaged for the market as Soylent Indigo.
This whole sorry subplot is too implausible to offend my moral sense; rather—and I speak as a writer—its implausibility offends my intellect. Firefly’s raison d’être is quality storytelling; for the crime of crappy writing, therefore, I cannot let Firefly’s progenitors be so easily excused.
Some might posit that I am overreacting to what is, after all, a work of fiction. Fiction, however, is a deep reflection of what we are made of on the inside. Fiction mirrors our fantasies, our desires and our fears, our loves and hatreds and moral judgments.
Few dispute the impact of fictional characters when it comes to “the blackest villain in all of literature”: Shakespeare’s Iago. Now, Firefly, of course, is somewhat rather less than Shakespearean in quality; but regardless, the serious attitude of moral judgment we focus on Iago sheds light on our attitudes toward all particularly heinous fictional characters. If we take Iago seriously, fictional as he is, it is proof by demonstration of how fiction can reflect upon the demons of humanity and our condemnation thereof.
Iago was an evil, evil fellow. To the best of my knowledge, however, he never sold an innocent sixteen-year-old ultimate-genius-of-the-Universe girl to have her brain rewired in unceasing torment.
By that single repugnant act—an act next to which most vile acts of villainy do pale by comparison—Jayne has marked himself as an Iago-class scumbag. Jayne may be stupider than Iago; but I am rather certain that part of Iago’s punishment in Hell’s prison will be sharing an infernal cell with Jayne. And this criminal cohabitation may as well start right now with our recognition of Jayne as a character whose crimes we should take seriously, fictional ’though he may be.
If you are a Jayne fan, let me put it to you simply:
You are a piece of subhuman filth and a threat to civil society. You are supportive of—or, arguably worse, indifferent to—crimes worse than rape or murder. You would bat nary an eyelash while countenancing the consignment of an innocent sixteen-year-old girl to a fate of hopelessness and brutal torment; when faced by the prospect of treachery, you simply shrug (or clap your hands with glee). You may well be mentally unstable, and you certainly are not possessed of a coherent moral system or of any integrity whatsoever. You deserve to be locked away in the very harshest of prisons—although even there, you would suffer less than River would have, had Jayne’s vile plans gone aright.
Since you are stupid enough to like Jayne, you may not be able to comprehend the above. Therefore, allow me to summarize it in very small words: You are a bad person. Please turn yourself in to the authorities before you kill somebody—or better yet, just go jump off a bridge.
Once again, Iago was just a fictional character, too. Jayne is worse than Iago.
Let’s put it this way: You wouldn’t exactly want to be friends with somebody who idolized Iago, now would you? (Well, if you like Jayne, you are probably an Iago fanboy or fangirl par excellence.)
I sympathize. Expunge the entire subplot concerned with Jayne’s treason, and
Firefly is an excellent show. It’s a damn shame; sometimes, I honestly
almost wish that I could just blind myself temporarily, forget about the
whole Jayne-related mess, and enjoy all the rest. (Particularly Mal, Inara,
Shepherd Book, and of course, Simon and the all-important River. They
are were great!)
My avoidance of Firefly is less of a principled boycott and more an example of principle-in-practice. I simply cannot ignore the Jayne issue: If I were to sit down and watch Firefly now, I would be able to think of nothing but that whole unpleasant episode (or two). Sadly, I have been rendered incapable of enjoying Firefly for even a moment. The show is quite thoroughly ruined for me, as would be the Serenity movie and anything else Firefly-related.
When I originally conceived of this site, I wanted to save Firefly; this implies, of course, that I did once think that there was something worthwhile to save. A plan was being hatched to bring Jayne to justice, redeem Mal (and Simon and…), and let the whole affair be subsequently written off as a fixable plot screw-up. I even had a replacement crewmember waiting in the wings to take over Jayne’s job as security strongman aboard Serenity.
(If you must inquire, it was a non-evil clone of Crow: Shrewd, sexy, and hard enough to mark steel. A dangerous man with far more bad-boy panache than the pitiful, dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks Jayne could ever muster. Someone who could kick some serious ass—and who would be super-loyal, naturally! Hey, it could work if delivered with decent writing.)
I did watch until the end of the Season One DVD set; this is amazing in itself, since I am one of those weird types who tends to despise all television, period. I even looked forward to the Serenity movie with some enthusiasm. But as time wore on and I had a chance to think, I came to realize that the Jayne episode had stripped Firefly of its magic.
So yes, I do fully understand the allure of Firefly’s siren song. If you can just close one eye whilst Jayne is onscreen, well, what can I say? I feel your pain if you can feel mine.
When a failure of monstrous proportions is foisted on the world, the man to take the most blame is the man in charge. Joss Whedon is the visionary behind Firefly and the boss who oversaw every part of its creation. Whether or not he was the originator of the idea behind this whole plot snafu, he was the proud parent without whose approval, I am quite certain, not even the most minor detail could be committed to the script.
Since I saw Firefly, every other piece of Mr. Whedon’s work has been soaked in the oily ooze of Jayne’s presence. I can no longer enjoy even a single episode of anything Mr. Whedon has touched, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer; when Sarah Michelle Gellar’s boobs flash onto the screen, I can see only Jayne’s decrepit form selling River for thirty pieces of silver. This is quite a shame, since evidently Mr. Whedon is otherwise a pretty talented guy.
If you agree with what I say hereinabove, spread the word! Send your buddies a link to this page. Googlebomb it so that it pops up on any Firefly- or Serenity-related search. Kidnap Joss Whedon and tattoo the URL on his forehead. Link it, blog it, and staple it onto the radio signals of all the prime number patterns you’re sending out to communicate with aliens.
I no longer use e-mail as a form of personal communication. However, if you want to snail-mail me, my postal address is readily available.
Please note that if you send me anything related to this site, I may (or may not) post it here at my whimsy. Also, be advised that I reject packages from unknown sources.
Copyright ©2005 Jonathan Quince. All rights reserved.
Cf. Sopef.org & Code Harem