Was Firefly Controversial?

[AlphaFoxtrot]

If we are going with Firefly critiques of the aughts, another one I heard was that Mal was basically a confederate soldier. It's not a strong argument, IMHO. Slavery has never been said to be an issue in Mal's lost cause, and history contains numerous examples of civil strife based on issues other than slavery.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

critiques of the aughts, what are the aughts?

Are you saying the Browncoats were basically confederate soldiers. What did the war, on that world how many centuries in the future, have to do with the American civil war?

 

[thrasherpix]

Looks like all the Unpopular Opinion threads (at least as applicable here) are in the cemetery, so...

Both sides were run by corrupt jerks. It's likely Mal realized that himself, and just his background made him choose the outer colonies as a lesser evil, while he himself tried to stay out from anyone's thumb.

But as an outsider to the Verse...there's no place there I'd want to live, and don't consider the Alliance worse than the many criminal and outright warlords that ruled the rest. I thought as Mal did at first because the story leads us that way, but on thinking about it, the Browncoats really weren't worth fighting for, though neither were the Alliance. No matter who won, life was going to suck for Mal whether he knew it or not.

I can think of a few decent places, but they were hit by cultists, Reavers, pirates, and others, on top of the Alliance taking what they had with minimal protection (probably the most protection was by the time the Alliance took their piece of the action, they weren't worth robbing, but that still left the cults and Reavers, and whatever jerk decided to set up his own fiefdom there).

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

My understanding of Firefly is that was intended to be a counterpoint to 80s Star Trek, and whereas Trek saw a very American future, Firefly envisioned a very Chinese future, the Western colonies in the core worlds have become very sinaticized, probably before the great migration, and the alliance is very much a Chinese Star Empire. It doesn't concern me that that East Asians do not appear, historically, the Chinese don't leave China. Americans, on the other hand, will leave a conformist society to plow farms with horses in underfunded colonies. No better critique of Star Trek has been offered.

I'm actually more curious regarding the lack of Africans and South Asians, who are a significant part of the current world's population. Did the alliance leave them behind? Which further begs the question, how much of the Earth That Was's population was migrated over. And who's left? Surely, you don't believe the official history? So, yes, Firefly is a pretty dark future.