Nathan Fillion said in an interview that if he won the lottery he'd buy the rights to Firefly and do a reboot himself. And the crowd cheered. It was a great show with a loyal fan base and I do think actively sabotaged by the network.
Yeah, sometimes the people in charge genuinely are that stupid. Maybe they don't like the writer or maybe they're worried success will force the studio to take on more expensive projects. But from time to time they absolutely will flush millions down the toilet in order to sabotage a project.
Wasn't there also a change in the network leadership between when the work on the show was first started and when it actually started airing? This has been a regular issue with tv series in such situations, to hear insiders tell it. A new head replaces the one who approved a show and the new management cancels it in the crib or, if it's already near completion, they make it the top priority for poor treatment. An issue of managerial egotism. Not to mention the genre biases between different people. Firefly seems to have been a victim of this tendency if the leadership did, indeed, get switched.
'Actively sabotaged' can mean different things than being intended to fail. Sometimes its due to unrealistic expectations, weird priorities, an incorrect view of the facts on the ground or how things work, and an unwillingness to listening to the people who actually know better. If you try and insist that a farm your corporation owns grows potatoes when the climate and soil would be better for corn, and ignore the actual farmers, then of course your farm will fail. Sufficient stupidity is indistinguishable from malice and should be treated the same.
Its actually a very common trope in space opera/space empire stories - the “outer rim” planets united against the inner core worlds, with the inner core being wealthy and super-industrialized and the outer worlds being less developed pastoral societies, who feel put upon or oppressed by their more developed inners. The Expanse uses the same premise just within the Solar System, with the Belters versus the Inners.
The idea of the Clone Wars in Star Wars deals with this too. You have the wealthy (and human-dominated core worlds) vs the poorer outer & mid rim worlds of mostly aliens and some humans.
@@crusader2112 That's not exactly true. The CIS was superwealthy contrast to those of the Republic. But CIS also carry themselves like space nobles. Unless you refer to Hutt-space and the likes.
He’s a little more artful about how he says it because he’s being interrogated by an Alliance officer. “May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”
Excellent analysis of the Civil War and the Lost Cause. My uncles were blue-collar factory boys drafted and sent to Vietnam. They weren't there to fight to halt the Domino Effect or spread of communism. They were fighting for their survival and the man next to them. When I received my draft card, my favorite uncle told me, 'Keep your head down and remember the Vietnamese rice farmer doesn't want you there either. He only sees us driving through the rice paddies fcuking up, which he works on all year. So it was with the Yeoman farmer turned Rebel soldier.
Farmer turned *collaborationist soldier. The VC were pawns of North Vietnam (and by extension) China, they weren't an organic revolutionary movement like the Continental Army or the IRA, they were more like pro Nazi militias that popped up in Europe during WW2.
There were differences, though. Union soldiers were fighting a war started by the Confederates and in Vietnam American soldiers were, to the Vietnamese, outsiders (from an inaccessible part of the world) that had no excuse for imposing themselves on their country and interfering in their civil war. And more: vast numbers of Vietnamese civilians were blasted out of existence by American bombs; millions died. Casualties in our civil war were very high, but on BOTH sides, and not in the millions.
The Vietnamese rice farmer didn't want Left fascist conscripts from the north driving through his rice paddies either. The big difference is that the Left fascists don't care, and happily slaughtered the population in order to terrorize the south into a state of total subservience. Socialism in action.
Most people don't know the story behind FIREFLY's cancellation. The show was dead-on-arrival. The decision to cancel the show was made while Joss was still in pre-production. Firefly was greenlit by an executive who'd worked with Joss before and wanted another project from him, but shortly after handing Joss the check to start production ( we're talking a few days to at most 2 or 3 weeks here ) she took a higher paying, more responsible position at another company ( Paramount, I think ) . The character who filled her empty chair had another show he was shepherding through the acceptance process, there was room for only one show, so he did the political thing of torpedoing his predecessor's show. Yes, the decision to cancel the show was made while Joss was still polishing scripts and hiring actors, and scouting shooting locations. The reason we got 14 episodes was there was a contract for half a season. Unlike what some people say, ratings never had anything to do with it. Despite their attempts to torpedo it they knew it was number one on TIVO. ( Which advertisers ignored because on tivo adds could be blocked/skipped/or easily edited. ) Also, ironically, in test marketing, the show tested more popular with women than men which confused Fox executives greatly. " OF ALL THE WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, THE SADDEST THREE HAVE TO BE MIGHT HAVE BEEN. "
Ohhhhhhh that makes so much sense. It’s the reason hbos streaming service keeps changing names. Executives want to maximize credit to themselves for successes.
Oh I knew it was cancelled before the show even aired, and the final 3 episodes were never actually aired on TV (fans had to wait for the DVD to see them), I didn't realize how early into production it was cancelled
General Patton's grandfather was a Colonel in the Confederacy from Virginia. The family moved to California after his death. If I remember right, General Patton said he grew up praying to paintings of who he assumed were Jesus and God the Father, on either side of the family fireplace mantel. The paintings were actually of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
In a sense getting canceled was the best thing that could have happened to firefly. Wedon has a reputation for going hard at the beginning of projects then tapering off over time. Maybe he could have kept up the pace for a couple seasons but probably would have lost interest in the series after awhile. Then of course is all the behind the scenes drama around Wedon. So yes, probably best that it went out on a high note.
While I basically agree, it’s worth noting that Firefly’s greatness also derived from other brilliant creatives on the team as well (Ben Edlund, Jane Espenson, Tim Minear). Heck, even the composer, Greg Edmonson (without whom, the film version seemed off). It truly was lightning in a bottle, beyond just Joss; even if, there’s a good chance it would have degraded into confused mediocrity, or worse, given enough time. I’m just grateful for what we got.
@@ObiwanNekody Nighttime operations have always been overly dangerous. It's only in the last 2 decades (since NVG got good) that it hasn't been as dangerous.
Reminds me of the Joaquin Sabina song Contigo. The only way for love to live is for it to die. "And to die for you if you kill me. And to die with you if you kill yourself. And to kill myself along with you if you die, Because love kills when it doesn't die away. Because killing love never dies."
That quote from Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley ignores the context that Lincoln was trying to hold a coalition together, and rumors were rife that he planned to free the slaves. As it turns out those fears were well founded, since he'd already drafted the Emancipation Proclamation and issued it a month after he wrote this letter. It's fashionable nowadays to paint Lincoln as ambivalent on slavery, but he wasn't: he well understood both the political and the moral necessity of emancipation. He was slower to evolve on the subject of citizenship and Black suffrage, but he got there.
I just discovered this channel a couple of days ago and have been almost binge watching your previous shows. Excellent stuff. I don't know how it came up on my radar but I have been enjoying it immensely. I am a Viet-Nam vet and an amateur historian just turned 80 this year. I find this show and your take on movies and how they apply to our world fascinating. I also understand that sometimes you have to kick the Hornets Nest not because you don't know what's going to come out but because you want to know how others respond. You can learn a lot from other people that you never thought about. Although sometimes it does sting a little. Keep up the good work.
@@Mr.Ambrose_Dyer_Armitage_Esq. No actually the first one I watched was the Mad Max one. I felt like seemed to strike a little close to the times we seem to be going into. I also pray that in fact it isn't going to happen. Hope springs eternal.
@@colinmcclelland1361 My first was his examination of theocratic monarchy in the NBC series _Kings._ Really liked his take and he seems to have an intuitive way of drawing human sociopolitical and spiritual phenomena from fiction. He still has his biases, of course, and is clearly the product of a liberal democratic era but, I like how he can step outside our system in its late stage of decay and admit its shortcomings. Hope springs eternal, reality carries on, the observant are real and improve in hopes of not making the same mistakes as their precursors, the blindly hopeful entrench and are buried under human nature and history. Either way, Feral Historian's got the good stuff.
@@Mr.Ambrose_Dyer_Armitage_Esq. I concur. You seem to be quite a good analyst on your own. This is the first time I have ever answered back to a reply so it's all rather new to me but I have enjoyed your observations. I'm quite sure it doesn't always end up this nicely. Stay well sir it's been a pleasure.
I watched the show and while the Alliance definitely comes across as authoritarian, I think I caught glimpses of life in the Outer Worlds before the war. In the pilot, a woman who owns most everything on a moon in mentioned. Even after the war, we see petty tyrants managing their own fiefdoms. I suspect there were outer world folks who were tired of being subject to the whims of a local despot, poor local law enforcement, and having no central government counter these problems. Sure, probably were outer worlds that had good government, but I suspect that wasn't always the case.
Yet that makes me wonder if those petty tyrants on the frontier were the goal of the Brown Coats in Firefly. Obviously those petty frontier tyrants are still there after the Alliance victory. We only see the situation under Alliance rule. What was it like before? It's a bit difficult to believe that was a major issue for the war if the Alliance hasn't bothered to change it. Sounds like they didn't care about that since it's still present and little or no effort given to change it.
@@Seth9809 Most of them are business owners, merchants from the core worlds, and crime lords who got rich selling guns narcotics and medicine to neglected outer worlds. One episode has a town of mud farmers working like slaves for next to nothing because one man owns the whole town like an old fashioned steel baron.
@@Seth9809 I think you'd have a case where some depots set themselves up when deterrents were gone and others just stayed in place. I remember in one episode that the Alliance was having trooper and personnel shortages. Bit off more than they could chew.
I agree. It's like a short story -- people will read a story they like and want it to be expanded -- novel, series, movie -- but have no idea how to do that. They're just thinking "MORE", like children. So someone turns the 10-page story into a 400-page novel... by adding a hook-up subplot, doing a lot of tedious background lore, adding some action sequences, adding some extra characters to DO the action sequences, then more hook-up plots for them... and the same people who wanted the expansion complain that it was better before. Some things are just the right size to begin with. I was telling a friend the other day about Stephen King's short story "The Jaunt", so I'll use that. Read it -- it's in "Skeleton Crew". I dare you to add a single page to that story without ruining it. It's the size it needs to be. Ironically, considering King is one of the worst offenders in the "2000 pages of padding" category ever since he got off drugs.
I don't buy the "but individual soldiers weren't fighter for slavery" argument, because there were whole regions of the south which effectively seceded from the south over the issue, that's one of those lost cause parables, ironically enough, "our brave boys didn't fight to keep other men down, but to preserve freedom." As a white southerner, reconstruction didn't go far enough. Instead of reconstruction we got army bases and tanks and shit named after the ringleaders of a slaver revolt. That, should be seen as shameful, like if Germany started rolling out "Guderian" tanks to "heal".
History may initially be written by the victors, but the popular vision of past events is often subsequently edited to serve other ends, among them things like nation building mythology and helping the losing side in war, and especially in civil wars, make psychological peace with the outcome in a manner that avoids ongoing social disruption or a future repeat of the same conflict. The collective myth of the past and the available evidence of what actually happened are, as a result, often at pretty stark variance with one another.
I have yet to read history books written by the Victors. So far I have only came across one written by survivors of said events and or compilations of historians / authors based on materials that survived.
@@sep0319 History books are only written later, long after the initial narrative of a given series of events is set by those who have the power and influence to see it done, which in any situation of conflict will usually be the victors, at least in cases where a clear victor can be identified. Perhaps that narrative is strong enough to influence later historical texts, perhaps it falls out of favour to be replaced by some other reading in the interim (one that most likely suits the needs and ends of those who hold the balance of power in their society at the time when the new interpretation rises to prominence), but it is naïve to assume that there is no intersection whatever between the framing of historical events and the interests of the powerful and wealthy. Most historical texts are not written by survivors of the actual events, but instead are written far, far later, many decades or even centuries removed from the events being described, based upon surviving sources of varying strength and credibility (and who is able to get rid of narratives, and the sources associated with those narratives, that compete with their own through censorship and the destruction of inconvenient accounts if not the powerful? And the powerful are usually also the victors one way or another) by academics who are human and so have their own pet theories, prejudices and agendas (not to mention patrons they are answerable to) that do not map neatly onto some ideal, perfectly objective crusade for the factual truth of past events.
@@gregorygreenwood-nimmo4954Hence "history" otherwise it would be current. Sooo.. Any examples on History Books commisioned by and or actually written by the victors? On my end I have "Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan" which was the template for everything Midway until "Shattered Sword" showed up. :D and please dont get to serious with this - it is meant to be light hearted.
@@sep0319 History as a discipline does not exist independent of the social and political forces that predominated at the time of the original events being described, nor those that are dominant at the time the historian is writing their account. The idea of the perfectly objective historian demigod parsing through the events of the past with what amounts to omniscience in order to arrive at the shining holy grail of the objectively unimpeachable truth just doesn't reflect reality. Yes, in a strictly literal, who-actually-puts-pen-to-paper-or-finger-to-keyboard sense, the historical victors do not reach across centuries from beyond the grave to possess historians to force them to write their preferred accounts, but they do hold power in the aftermath of events and so can greatly influence which sources become accepted and prominent, which are marginalised and buried, and which even survive at all, and have influence over shaping the initial narrative of events in a way that cannot easily be magically corrected for by a historian writing many decades or even centuries later and necessarily working from sources that are themselves likely to contain biases and misconceptions even if the original creators of those sources made Herculean efforts toward objectivity, human nature being as fallible as it is.
I love your presentation. Plainly spoken yet refined with a sprinkle of blunt gruffness, filtered through a real understanding of modern cultural speaking norms. Nothing over scripted or trace of airy poshness
Anyone who isnt biased towards the confederacy or rage-baiting right wingers/southerners knows that the war was way more nuanced than the simplified good guys vs evil racists narrative.
It didn't help that the network showed it out of order and moved it around the schedule. It also didn't help that it had such a slow burn. Only in the very last episode did we get more than a glimpse through a glass darkly at what River Tam actually was. Had Whedon shown a bit more urgency in character development, more people may have come on board. Perhaps enough to keep the show going.
People don't remember how antagonistic Hollyweird used to be to sci-fi because they considered it uncool and it was also expensive to produce. The first X-men movie changed the narrative because it demonstrated thar the average viewer liked it.
I was always under the impression that the cause of the War of Central System Aggression was because the rim worlds were owned by individuals or oligarchies. When the purple-bellies started bringing them into the fold they rebelled. My evidence is practically every rim world the crew goes to is ran by an individual first, the government second. I also got the impression that Mal's family was one of those planet-ruling cliques from when he talks about being raised by servants on Shadow.
While I didn't agree with every point made in this, I do appreciate you doing your best to be fair and impartial, and being implicit about this show being a clear analogy for the American Civil War set in space. It was very inspiration and hard-hitting in ways most science fiction shows failed to be.
As a fellow historian, a friend of mine also a history major who is a New Orleans native dubbing himself Ignatius Reilly made flesh. Argues and I think successfully that the Lost Cause is only really used today as a rhetorical tactic to dismiss the Dunning School via guilt by association. You would think almost 150 years after these events we would be mature enough to say: "The South fought to preserve slavery and Southern civilians were treated horribly during Reconstruction. The North fought to preserve the Union and later to end slavery. Partially out of morality and most certainly out of revenge for the casualties suffered. They also didn't really care if their Vengeance fell upon the guilty in the South or just some poor Southern farmer turn day labor who never owned slaves. Who had the temerity to stand up to you. While you were trying to steal the family cow. With your measured response was to shoot him dead, burn the house down and do unspeakable things to his wife and daughters" Nor is this some particular evil of the Union Army. Occupying armies tend to behave badly towards the civilians. As if for some reason fighting to end slavery and being a brute to people who don't deserve it are mutually exclusive claims.
It gets even more confusing when you start looking into both sides' view of race. There are plenty of quotes from Southerns in the Antebellum period supporting slavery but denouncing racism in the same breath. At the same time, Southerners were very open about the fact that several masters treated their slaves horribly but they had no right to force them to treat their slaves better. Meanwhile, many of the northern abolitionist wanted to end slavery explicitly because they wanted America to become a white ethnostate. (In fact, the Southerners who made comments supporting racism [e.g. Alexander Stephens] were usually educated in northern colleges.) Some of the most radical abolitionists went so far as to openly call for the extermination of everyone in the South, white and black, and for the region to be repopulated with Northerners. While those radicals were in the minority, their rhetoric was well-known at the time. That's why so many Southerners hated abolitionist. There were more anti-slavery societies in the South than the North until the abolitionists became the dominant anti-slavery faction. It's only then that the South started doubling down on the righteousness of slavery. That doesn't make it right, of course, but it does give you a more nuanced understanding of the situation. The more I look into that era, the more I understand why the war tore families apart and why we're still debating it to this day. No matter which angle you come at it from, you always find something that upsets your understanding of which side was the "good guys".
@@benjamingrist6539 You're correct of course. But you're forgetting the free soilers who was the functional base of the Republican Party. They opposed slavery for the same reason they opposed immigration slaves and immigrants undercut their ability to negotiate wages. Though my professor at the time didn't like my hypothesis of the free soilers being the Proto labor movement. I suspect if you went to a bar with a lot of these guys they would talk about the slave power like working class guys today talk about corporations or the government.
It’s overall such a complex and nuanced topic and it’s why I really hate when people overgeneralize to paint every single southerner as a racist traitor while viewing the north as a lot more saintly.
Plenty of Northers owned slaves and didn't want to give up their property. There were even plenty of free blacks who owned black slaves, and those were amongst the cruelest and most brutal of slave owners. Slavery was one of many reasons for the war. Tensions were rising for near enough a decade before things kicked off, and if one were to look at all the alleged grieveances the South listed for seceeding, there is a clear throughline: Encroaching "juristiction" of the Federal government infringing upon and erroding State authority. The legislation that everybody cites as the "abolishment of slavery" that caused the war didn't actually abolish slavery, it merely locked in that any State that didn't currently at the time have legal slavery would not be allowed to legalise slavery and any State that wished to join the Union would only be allowed to do so if they didn't have legalised slavery. There was nothing in the legislation demanding that Member States with legal slavery had to ban it, which means, the Federal legislation did not affect slave owners at all, since before the war it would still be a State matter wether to abolish slavery or not. The blanket abolishment of slavery happend during/after the war. Originally, slavery was always a State Law matter, but the Federal government made it a matter of Federal Law. With the recent years carrying whispers of some States looking at seceeding again, no matter the true cause, History books would in the future claim that it was purely for no other reason than because the seceeding States wanting to turn women into rightless breeding machines, despite the WvR overturn being merely one tiny concern in a whole slew of issues (I heard of new musings about seceeding in soem states during the WvC controversy, so I assume/forecast, that would be the scapegoat.). (I am assuming that the seceeding State(s) would loose any new independence war, since that is the statistically most probable outcome)
@@celiacresswell6909 The joys of having a weapon made by the lowest bidder. I knew some Vietnam vets who wouldn't even TOUCH an AR15 until the day they died, they had such bad memories of it.
I think a ton of them were made for SST and so it was easy to outfit a lot of extras with them. They also showed up in the power rangers and imposter with gary sinise.
I've actually got a draft of a sci-fi story that starts as a memorandum of the 'Frontier Wars' - the popular image of which is about outer-rim freedom fighters standing up in a noble but doomed struggle for freedom against the fiendish long arm of Earth governance. Only, over the course of a series of interviews with an old Earth-Gov vet it shifts the idea of some Space-Yeomen rebellion ground down by Earth's industrial might to like 3 mining companies in a trench coat, and the valiant post-war clawing back of Spacer's Rights is in fact a mass disenfranchisement of guest workers that the handful of space colony administrators and the like live off the backs of. (The working title was 'A Spacer's Right to What?")
I wonder if a good portion of America’s love of Lost Cause is a development of a much deeper love of the American love of underdogs and outlaws. There’s a certain romance to striking out and raising one’s own flag, especially when it’s you against the world. Cf. Jesse James for example.
Definitely But there’s also some truth to it as he says. Aswell as the term lost cause being used to basically shut down discussion of the dunning schools findings which basically show not the lost cause narrative but that reconstruction was insane and reconciliation happening . Birth of a nation the literal klansmen movie no matter what people seethe about actually lines up historically with what the dunning school found.
Not convinced that the love of underdogs and losers is a particularly American thing. You should see some traditional British historical narratives. It's practically a stock joke that we can only win when we're outnumbered (because we don't talk about the battles we won through greater numbers and firepower). If anything, the stereotype is surely that America is obsessed with winners and being "Number 1".
I was just thinking the other day that, for a capital-P Progressive who _believes_ in using the power of the state to Make People Better, Joss Whedon's writing has some pretty surprising themes when examined closely.
It was a different time. Sorry for le politicks but, the time was Bush Jr's time, the neoconservative moment. Whedon and maybe more-so Minear found an opportunity to hit Bushism from the libertarian Right, even if Whedon himself didn't believe in it.
@@zimriel this is probably right, although as a former leftist, I can tell you the left has always seen itself fundamentally the people's party, and its use of government power was a counter to capitalism and other institutions that reinforce hierarchy. Just about everyone in Western politics thinks they're fighting for the bottom of the pyramid against the top.
He's also a lot less committed to those progressive views than he originally portrayed himself as. One cannot be a feminist and fire a woman for getting pregnant.
Atun-Shei is an ahole on this topic. In his world, if you study the Civil War you have to spend most of your time providing disclaimers that you know the Confederates were the bad guys, or else you're suspected of being a neo-Confederate yourself. We already know what he would say about the Browncoats being the good guys and the Alliance the bad guys in Firefly.
Ya definitely about the average Joe not fighting to preserve slavery a position I personally oppose. There is enough evidence that a large number of Boys in Brown/Gray willingly fought and even agreed on the slavery issue. For the same reason the Irish were so hated. "THEY TOOK OUR JERRRBS!" Even if they had no quarrel with slaves as individuals. But if they were freed, the average Joe would financially be hit the hardest and had all the reasons in the world to want that Peculiar Institution to remain.
@@samsonvlogging1202 I can see it now. Feral giving a nuanced and complicated insights about the Civil War analyzing the historiography and how it developed. Atun-Shei, giving a pseudo diatribe using a lot of words but ultimately reinforcing the moving goal posts of current acceptable opinion. Feral pausing for a moment trying to figure out if he's doing a bit. Furrowing his brow asking Atun-Shei to repeat himself. Atun-Shei, does so but with less confidence this time not sure how to gauge the interaction. Feral, just stays quiet one part disappointment in the intellectual caliber of the man before him. The other part is pity understanding the lack of a reciprocal relationship with this man and the institutions he slavishly devotes his self-worth in. Knowing they do not care for him in the slightest. The silence continues on uncomfortable now. Feral cracks open a beer drink it. Smashes it, puts it in his pocket to throw away and walks away without elaboration.
@@Alte.Kameradenin the age of civil society, soldiers fight for their country regardless of their nations cause, whether they agree or disagree doesn’t add to much hooey. Motivations to serve are ultimately subjective and hard to structure into a hierarchy of values that would give any one answer of why a person is actually there as a participant of war. The simplest answer ever given by a rebel soldier when asked was “cuz yall’re down here”
@@ramblinbob1918 Well, good and all. But them rebs invaded Federal Land before the first shots were fired, then launched large offensive on three different fronts with mixed results. Sounds a lot different than what you described. Sure, maybe after the CAS started losing, but they still started the fight. It's like complaining that it's raining but they created the weather in the first place.
I seem to recall plans for upcoming episodes leaking out at some point that upset Firefly fans, so it's possible the show was really killed just in the nick of time. There's at least one video floating around of a very old Confederate veteran interviewed in the early 20th century in which he clearly states that he and his mates weren't fighting for slavery. The comments section was peppered with young people calling him a liar.
Well, I certainly had different aims in mind than the historical reality when I enlisted to go to Iraq. Tough luck, that. One can (make oneself believe they) fight for one thing and have something else happen.
Admitting you fought for slavery decades after everyone decided that was horrible, is a bad look, so you simply don't admit that you fought for it and come up with 'alternative' explanations for why you fought.
As an aside, I think that it’s helpful to view “slavery” as an economic system rather than just a repugnant practice. As an analogy, we can use capitalism and communism (at least, before the viability of communism was empirically disproven). Imagine the federal government trying to impose communism by force - it’s for an abstract “better future”, but it entails all of your property being seized and everything in society being upended unpredictably. That should give you an idea of the visceral reaction that many Southerners had to the North, and why they might fight even though they personally didn’t benefit from slavery (and probably never would).
to be clear, communisms viability has never been empirically disprove, it can't be. you can't prove a negative. it has simply yet to be *proven* viable, but that is not the same thing.
I had the impression that the repression of the outer planets of the empire was primarily that they were restricted technologically. they were not allowed to make their own versions of newer technology and were forced to buy super expensive items from the core planets. This was from watching the show. Any core planet representation was like Coruscant from Star Wars, everything is big, shiny (likely where that bit of slang came from - I've even worked with teens who had picked up shiny to use for something they like, when questioned, they had no idea where it came from and objected to the idea it was from fantasy science fiction), and extremely high tech. The outer planets meanwhile are using animals for labor or to get around. the only tech they get is what is actually cheaper than the non tech version. For example the windows that do not break because they are actually a force field. By the way, the version the outer planets get looks like filthy glass with cheaply painted signs on it. Right there, that single item, creates a very large grudge against the core planets. The tech they get is second rate, yet they certainly paid through the nose for it.
I loved Firefly. After it was cancelled, it was a disappointment. However, a few years later I started watching Deadwood, and found that that show scratched the same itch as Firefly, despite the fact that it's a straight western with no sci-fi elements. But it does have a lot of excellent story telling, tremendously witty dialogue (once you get past the excessive profanity), and some great characters played by some fantastic actors.
@@stevenscott2136 Hell on Wheels was a pretty solid show, and Colm Meaney (sp?) does an excellent job in it. But I found the dialogue and characters less interesting than in Deadwood. Still, that's a high bar to cross, and I agree that HoW is pretty solid.
As a British person i always think that we have our own lost cause myth, the Battle of Britain. Despite being on the winning side in the end, it helped British people handle the slide into near irrelevance from the worlds superpower. But equally, i think it's held us back because, as a nation, we held onto exceptionalism when we should have given up on that decades earlier.
The biggest issue is that the UK has had stupid low growth for decades and decades. Also the UK only recently has been producing entertaining culture that crosses over to other places.
Maybe you should have tried HARDER at exceptionalism. You DID build the world's largest empire... that's pretty exceptional. Some grand goal to rally around after WW2 might have been just what you needed. You could have pitched in with us on the space program?
The problem being, of course, that we did actually win the Battle of Britain. And as sources of national pride go, it's not a bad one. But we're certainly not immune to Lost Cause myths. The classic instance, predating the ACW, would be the Jacobite Rebellions, the legend of which has a *lot* in common with the American Lost Cause narrative. A bloody-minded marginal rural community rebels against centralised authority, puts up a good fight, loses, and ends up providing many of the foot-soldiers for the State's subsequent colonial adventures. Sir Walter Scott pretty well invented the game. And, as with the ACW, the legend hides the fact that those romantic rural rebels had actually been suckered into fighting for an aristocratic leadership with a poor grasp of hard logistical realities and a reliance on unreliable foreign associates.
The Torries lionize the old British Empire as a mighty force that fell after WW2, but it was declining as it could not afford the expenses of running and plundering 57 countries.
@@CosmoShidan Every nation romanticises and b*llsh*ts about its past. But specific Lost Cause myths are about great and noble struggles which were lost, but where the dream continues. The Confederacy is a clear example, but the Jacobite Rebellion was very similar. Fortunately, even the most romantic Scots don’t seem to want to excavate that particular daftness these days. I’ll grant that dreaming about the Glories of the British Empire is a comparable bad habit, but it doesn’t come with quite the same sense of romantic defeat. I get a nasty feeling that Russia is developing a Lost Cause fantasy about the Communist era, which is already leading to trouble.
The mythology around the civil war fascinates me. In the old west the war largely continued between competition between different businesses, gangs, bands if lawmen and vigilantes, and rival landowners. But we frame it as a taming of unruly boomtowns. And after moving to the south I've heard even flamboyant gay men blame "the north" for the native grasslands being replaced by pine forests, which all seem to be owned by the most traditional southerners you'll ever meet.
There has been a lot of discussion around statues and monuments in recent years. I think both sides of the issue would benefit from watching this video.
The algorithm led me to you, and over the last two weeks I binged many of your videos. I'll enjoy my stay, I think. I haven't watched all of your videos yet, so I don't know for sure, if you did Blindsight from Peter Watts, but in case you haven't - well, I would suggest adding it to your reading list. I think it's the best sci-fi book of the XXIst century so far.
People love the "Lost cause stories" because they ike to root for the underdog. It sells. "...War was not glorious, it was a desperate, messy business. But it had been his business, one in which he had excelled..." - Corvus Corax, after the Isstvan V Massacre.
I was pretty hyped when I started watching Firefly because everybody on the Internet seemed to be crazy about it; and then the very first scene established a crystal-clear parallel between the guy I was supposed to root for and the fucking _confederates_ of all people. Didn't make me stop watching the show, but boy did it make my enthusiasm cool down 🙄
I recommend Starhunter, which is like a live-action version of Cowboy Bebop, but with 2 seasons spanning 44 episodes. Though two of its episodes appear similar to Firefly/Serenity's plot.
Truly enjoyed the movie and the series We need a cable channel that could provide this type of high quality programming Not many people are super science fiction fans In my opinion to generate high quality science fiction and adventure blend. the majority of love reality t v and romantic connections unscripted television programs with people who are from different countries
The funny thing is, the idea that the south fought better, had better tactics and better generals and only lost due to being out supplyed is thoroughly trounced by the Battle of Gettysburg Robert E Lee made more decisions throughout the battle, poorly communicated his plans, his generals did terrible jobs enacting those plans, fell into multiple obvious traps and murder zones, and even had more ammo than the union did to the point entire batalions were told to affix bayonets and charge as that arm of the union forces was completely out of ammo They lost due to grand incompetence and what some people believe was a bought of momentary insanity by robert e lee or even intentional sabotage as many of the decisions Lee made were that nonsensical Key example- telling one of his generals to "take the high ground if applicable" was such a weird way of giving an order that the commanding officer was so thoroughly confused he thought the decision was up to him and he stood his men down, losing valuable territory in the battle Or of course, Pickets charge Having pickets division march straight toward a cannon line? In an open field? And then afterword lee was confused as to why "general picket why arent you seeing to your division?" "Sir i have no division left" Genuinely some of the most moronic commands given in any battle in american history And yet the stupid lost causers will still say "wE fOuGhT bEtTeR bEsT gEnErAlS"
Upvoted. It is similar to myths about Germany in WWII. How Germany "almost" won the war at Moscow in 1941 (they got beaten badly), or had Stalingrad gone differently, or had they turned the tide at Kursk. They could never understand that they got outplayed and out-maneuvered in this battles. Mannstein's Lost Battles/Lost Victories might as well have been written by Robert E. Lee. Always making the same excuses (blame Hitler, blame the CSA government) rather than taking responsibility for poor choices such as Case Blue's changed plan, or even going to the USSR in the first place! If you fight and you lost, you have to own it and deal with it, but myth-making wants to say that 159 years ago the world changed and one side got cheated. Doesn't work that way.......
The American Civil War was incredibly complicated, and for some reason everyone just boils it down to slavery. Found out I had ancestors on both sides of the conflict, I think one was a Captain in the Union Army. But the one that I found most interesting was a great-great-great-uncle (I think, family trees are weird). His diaries and letters were found years ago and a member of our family went through them and traced out his life. I can't remember all the details, but he lived in Virginia, was a staunch abolitionist, spent his adult life helping slaves any way he could. Then, once the war started, a force of Union troops came through his town and ransacked the place. Stole food, ammo, and other things TH-cam doesn't like mentioned. This man who spent years helping slaves and fighting for them wound up fighting for the Confederacy against the Union until Appomattox. He just wanted to end slavery, and sit on his porch on his farm and live his life. And wound up joining the "bad guys" because of what the "good guys" did. Like I said, complicated. I should really contact my uncle and see if he has the papers now. Would be an interesting story to delve into now that I'm not a kid and can understand a lot more of it.
Because it is. From the Confederate Constitution to all the Declarations of Secession, slavery is the center of it. If you can't trust what even the Confederates said, why ask here?
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 So by that logic, you can argue WWI only happened because some dude got shot on his Sunday drive. War is a very complex event with years, if not decades, of many things happening that don't even seem related at the time. Claiming just one thing is the whole reason is not accurate or helpful. It's just lazy. And I've read all the Secessions, there are a couple that don't even mention slavery as a cause. But, lets just go with what you said as accurate. You are 100% right and the war was all about slavery. So, all Lincoln would have to do to keep the Union together was keep all the slaves. Which, as shown in the video, he claimed he was willing to do. Then why was there a war?
@@Plaprad Something doesn't have to be the whole reason for it to be at the top of the list of reasons. It's like when people argue that ultimately the civil war was about states rights. Okay, a states right to do what?
From what i can gather in the Firefly universe, the outer worlds were never part of any union, essentially they were more or less independently colonised and terraformed(hence the many problems with the terraforming) and when they got proplsperous enough the inner planets attacks them for the purpose of getting more colonies.
It's almost like you can draw inspiration from historical events without endorsing them.... As for the why the Browncoats fought the war, based on the world building I always had the feeling that the Alliance treated the outer planets like resource colonies. Harsh - almost colonial- law, suppression of workers rights, over taxation and tithing, underinvestment in infrastructure. Basically keeping it a frontier while exploiting the shit out of it and preventing them really growing. Like how China treats minority regions, and the USSR treated satellite states. Aside from that, history also shows that the farther from the seat of power, the more colonies try to rebel. I think this puts Firefly well into the camp of "what if the American Revolution had failed?"
I do get an "east India company" vibe from the Alliance. There is a LOT of economic exploitation. Possibly - headcanon here - the Alliance that started the war had to deal with rogue corporations almost as much as, or more than, the outnumbered "inbred pecker-woods". Over the course of the war the corporations were brought to heel. Eventually by formally enrolling their leaders in the Parliament.
What you're forgetting is that the outer worlds were already independent when the War Between the Planets began. It was a war of conquest, not a failed rebellion. In that light, the Browncoats' reason for fighting is obvious, even if it does gloss over a lot of other things. However, the show offers zero explanation why the Alliance was so determined to annex the outer planets, or why some characters, such as Inara, supported unification. Even if it was just a land-grab at its heart, the Alliance must have had some sort of moral justification for why they felt the need to absorb the outer worlds by force. If I had to guess, it was probably to bring law, order, and prosperity to the lawless and impoverished frontier, sort of like how the colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries justified themselves. A Coreworlder's burden, if you will. But again, this is just pure speculation on my part. The show itself gives us nothing. Maybe it would have, had it been allowed to continue longer.
TH-cam censored my comment. Yaaaay. (Can't wait for DJT's upcoming bill-o'-rights.) I was going to bring up the East India Company, and how - due to the sepoy mutiny - Britain formally brought its lands into the Empire. Firefly's 'Verse feels like that, lots of corporations with oligarchic levels of power. Suppose the Browncoat dustup was like the mutiny. They lost, but the Alliance was forced to take over the offending corporations and curb their excesses.
@@RobAzula Huh, what year did you graduate? Because I’m from Alabama and graduated last year, and I’ve never seen the Civil War called anything but the Civil War.
@@nono-lz9qr I graduated 1989, when "The Lost Cause" was still in vogue and people kept going around saying the Civil War was caused by "states' rights." Which is kinda like saying lung cancer is caused by cancer cells, which yes, is true, but ignoring the 3 packs a day cigarette smoking.
I love this channel and your insights! I share them with all my friends and we have our own discussions around these topics. You are very intellectually inspiring. Thank you for your work.
At one point I said that it's clearly the Confederacy except it wasn't about slavery, except we seen a number of episodes there is definitely slavery going on in the still independent states, such as the Mudders
The Browncoat's were not fighting for slavery, but it seems like the Alliance was. We know what they did to River and others. We know what they did to Miranda. We saw the kind of power they gave The Operative. To quote Mal: May have been the losing side. Still not convinced ti was the wrong one.
After watching the movie, do you agree that the War of Independence had been instigated by the Union of Allied Planets to cover up their mass murder on Miranda. Give the people something else to talk about, instead of wondering why their former neighbor who moved there isn't replying to their broadwaves.
They'd literally 1984'd a planet and hid the Reavers origins for over a decade. Starting a war to continue a cover up like that would be the last thing they'd want to do. Because eventually someone would find Miranda by accident when running away from Reavers, the Union, or somone else if they were in a big enough panic.
@@michaelwalker7400 _Because eventually someone would find Miranda by accident when running away from Reavers, the Union, or somone else if they were in a big enough panic._ Anyone running _towards_ Miranda would be killed by the fuck-huge swarm of Reavers that orbits it.
@@CanadianPale but someone else will start looking for them. But I guess the Union is counting on the Reavers to keep people away, a small group can still sneak by.
@@michaelwalker7400 No, by my reckoning of the Firefly timeline, the war didn't happen ten years after Miranda, the two were almost concurrent. The war was instigated as part of the Miranda coverup.
Grand Army of the Republic is definately a reference, but I'm not sure what else. Big issue with military comparisons is the military of both sides aren't drawn from the population (being clones and robots) so alot of the normal commonalities simply aren't there.
@@samuelskinner7704 The Grand Army of the Republic being composed of clones seems intended to resonate with the feelings of many Northerners about Irish-born soldiers in the Union military. Also, the opposing side is literally called a "Confederacy," both of the belligerents are in wrong in various ways and the whole thing is ultimately used as a springboard to convert a relatively peaceful Republic into a brutal and highly-militarized Empire spreading its influence all over the Galaxy.
@@samuelskinner7704 _Grand Army of the Republic is definately a reference, but I'm not sure what else._ As @Seth9809 mentioned, the Republic's opposing number is literally called the Confederacy, which wants to secede from the Republic. I also get the sense that the Grand Army being comprised of clones is supposed to invoke the feelings of many Northerners at the time towards the large numbers of Irish immigrant recruits in the Union military. And of course, the whole conflict is ultimately used to springboard the transformation of a mostly-peaceful Republic into a brutal and highly-militarized Empire that controls damn near the entire Galaxy.
ACW is the strangest case of "winners writing history". When war started, the future winners (North) insisted that war isn't about slavery. And for the next two centuries, a whole lot of people were saying that ACW wasn't about slavery.
It’s better to have the saying “History is written by the writers” which would explain why the Romans would be bodied in Germania but it was the Romans who wrote how they lost. The Chinese talk of how they lost the north to nomadic barbarians but it’s the Chinese who wrote it down.
Your post doesn’t make sense. The video states, as does the historical record, that Lincoln’s primary objective when the war started was preserving the Union. Ending slavery became a political narrative in the latter half of the war when it was convenient, but like he said it was incidental to the main causes.
If people can point to Lincoln's letter then Stephens' Cornerstone speech very clearly outlines that the Confederate government was established to expand and sustain the institution of slavery and white supremacy.
Honestly, a great show, but I hope they leave it alone. Sure, it's nice in a way to revisit the characters and see where they wound up or whatever, but it's so often a disappointment. A show or movie isn't just about what's on screen, but also the time in which it was created and shown. Not just culturally, but also for the actors involved. They grow and change in the intervening years, and often can't convincingly reinhabit those roles. It's sad when a good show doesn't get a chance to go on, but reunions often just feel like beating a dead horse.
Let's be honest. If they rebooted Firefly, it'd end up being terrible, like practically every single sequel, reboot, soft-reboot, re-imagining, or continuation of practically every story for the last ten years or so.
my history teacher, who i encountered 25 yearws after i graduated, i asked waht caused the civl war. He said "all wars are the same. People who want to be left alone, versus people who can't leave damnfool alone" God rest his soul.....anytime i look at any infighting, i see that. Thanks Mr. Ford. Because i am a man who wants to be left alone.
@@mattis-me7780 slavery was just the same as taxes on cotton. It wasn't the point. 'how can a man iv ermont, who does not grow the crop, till the land, care for the plant, harvest it, and must wash it and take it to town and sell it...tell me how to do my business?" Hence "those that want to be left alone versus those who cant leave others alone." he was speaking broadly about historical issues, and he was right. You can pick a thread, i prefer the whole wool blanket. you can now leave the room, it might be too big in here and your agrophobia of ideas may flare up.
@@mattis-me7780 Which is why _the propaganda_ sold it as a Holy War against slavery. The Battle Hymn of the Republic, lyrics set to the tune of "John Brown's Body", sung in remembrance of the Martyr of Bleeding Kansas.
@@dotwarner2983 The federals didn't represent it as a war against slavery early in the war, but to preserve the Union. It was only when people understood (correctly) that slavery would perpetually threaten the country that it could be presented that way.
@@TheFranchiseCA How would slavery threaten the country? It was already a dying practice. About 2% of Americans owned slaves prior to the secession. Bring some farming machines to the south that can handle cotton and the practice would end very quickly.
I picked up on the 'Lost Cause' narrative of Firefly at the time too. It kept me from watching the show at the time and kinda kept me from enjoying it years later. There's a narrative tie between Firefly, this video and Ninti's Gate, if you feel like making a followup video.
I like to think that Ninti's Gate takes a little poke at the Lost Cause, among other things, with its _We won, but we also kinda lost somehow_ element.
I believe this week in reality has shown us that "lost causes" are not so "lost" if there are still those that belief and fight for such "causes". On a side note, given what happened in the movie Serenity, between the actions/orders of the agent (scorching several planets to flush out the crew of the Firefly) and the truth about the reavers, the restart of the Unification Wars is not that far off.
Alternatively: the social function of the lost cause myth to aid reconciliation has a cost, both to perpetuating the narrative to future generations who lack direct experience, and a potential social cost to those who would destroy the myth and villify its adherents.
My g-g-g-grandfather was not a slave owner. He marched away from his business, two daughters, and a pregnant wife as an infantry captain, knowing very well what he faced, as he had ridden with Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War. From his circumstances and a letter, I'm pretty sure he fought not for an economic system but because his country faced an invasion.
Damn, this is brilliant, thank you! I remain a lover of Firefly, though I've never been able to articulate the longevity of its effect on me. I would say you've verbalised that effect perfectly. There's nothing quite like the power of the Noble Lost Cause, it would seem. Cheers!
Let's not forget that there were riots in northern states over conscription because the ordinary yankees mostly did not care to fight. Further, there were many confederates who were not interested in the cause of secessionism and only signed on when the federal armies invaded their home states. Most of the battles took place in the south, and the war affected the ordinary people who did not own slaves as much as it did the wealthy planters. So the lost cause narrative is not merely a means to heal - there is a dark grudge that remains hidden in there. Mal in Firefly bears the same grudge too, beneath the stoic face he puts on.
The Confederates also introduced conscription, and that it was hugely unpopular. Many noting it was akin to slavery, They also introduced it first. I should also be noted that only around 5pc of the Union was made up of conscripts. And Non slave owning whites did join because the idea of emancipation was appalling to them. We know this because of letters, dairies and articles. And the South cant complain too much about its land being used as the battleground in a war they started.
@@tisFrancesfault The North started the war. It's very well known that Lincoln intentionally antagonized the South and instigated the attack on Fort Sumter so he'd have an excuse to go to war.
While it is unfortunate that many Southerners who were not interested in secession went on to die or suffer because of it, their haste to join the war for it is ultimately what allowed it to go on for so long. Were they to oppose it on the Union's side, the war would have surely ended with so much less destruction.
@@tisFrancesfault They were told to get their military out of Confederate territory, and they refused to do so. If the Confederate States were to be independent country then they could not tolerate a foreign army occupying a fort in their territory. This is how foreign policy works. One needn't fire the first shot to start a war.
@@frenchsoldier8485 "these guys are invading my land, destroying my home, and raping and pillaging all the while, let me join them so that the destruction is faster!" Is not a thought that any sane man would think. Say what you want about the morality of the two sides, but that doesn't change the reasons for enlistment.
Anyone who discusses this topic needs to address the cornerstone speech expressing the Confederacy's purpose of secession to found a government on "it's foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery - subordination to the superior race - is his natural and normal condition." [Applause*] *The Applause tag is from the transcript recorded in the Savannah Republican in March, 1861.
_Anyone who discusses this topic needs to address the cornerstone speech expressing the Confederacy's purpose of secession to found a government on_ Eh, not really. Such statements would have been completely uncontroversial at the time to all but the most rabid Abolitionists.
Lincoln had the same view in regards to the african slave population. Read the speech he made on September 18th, 1858, in Charleston. Or look into his reasons as to why he wanted to repatriate all africans.
If only we could locate a single nation in the world to point to as a counter to that. Somewhere, someplace, there must be an example that supports our modern ideals.
@@greenfrogbad Politicians lie to get elected, before enacting more progressive things in office. Look at the way Obama discussed gay marriage, JFK spoke of civil rights, or how FDR talked of policies that would most certainly have been called Marxist before he took office.
Regardless of the actual veracity of the lost cause, it is a very powerful narrative. Taking the best parts of that myth and using them for storytelling was and still is a good idea.
As a Civil War buff, the first time I saw the Firefly episode featuring a black character named Jubal Early my reaction was "Well, that's certainly an interesting and deliberate choice." I want to note that the Union was not simply trying to "retain territory." Preserving the Union was about preserving a basic fundamental concept of a republic: states aren't allowed to secede, especially not unilaterally, because the majority of their residents disliked the outcome of a presidential election.
"sabotaged by the network" We hear that a lot about several other shows as well. Can you perhaps talk a bit more about that topic and the reasons behind producing shows only to put them parallel to the SuperBowl or so?
Early on Fox was pretty schizophrenic in their programming. They'd green light all kinds of high concept, or strange shows, only to put them in odd time slots in order to kill them off.
Regime changes within a network are a typical culprit. The new boss wants to make changes, so a bunch of stuff from the previous regime gets axed in favor of new stuff. The Babylon 5 spinoff "Crusade" was hit by that. It was greenlit and shot under a friendly regime, but by the time it was airing, TNT was under new management who hated it.
I've been going through your video catalog all day and really like your channel. And I've been wondering would make a video about Farscape? I would love to see and hear your preceptive on the show.
Someone once mentioned that Firefly feels empty because it's "Star Wars Without Jedi"--and the Prequels feel flat because it's "Star Wars Without Hans Solo". 🤔
Disagree. Firefly didn't need magical space wizards. It barely needed the whole "kid with psychic powers" trope, which has been so overdone I just assume it's a crutch for the writers every time it shows up. Frankly, I think it would be nice to see more sci-fi that doesn't need to rely on weaving woo-woo stuff into the storyline to be entertaining.
@@zimriel Firefly implied that they have vehicles that can travel a significant fraction of C. Similar to the Epstein Drive from The Expanse. Way faster than what we have now, but much slower than Warp Speed from Star Trek.
Towards the end you mentioned it will come back... With the cash grabs going on now for nostalgia I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to reboot it for real except do a hack job just for the cash a soulless clone with all the trappings and none of the heart I bet you. Think probably fall out but worse as far as quality maybe we would get The Witcher quality
Actually, the US civil war had a couple of causes: apart from the obvious division between abolitionists and anti-abolitionists, there were also many trade factors both local and international which played a significant role. Add to that sectarianism between rival geographic power blocs for control of congress, and that’s just getting started.
@@thedragondemands5186 a major point that is not discuss enough is the literal breakdown of the Democratic Party. Hitting critical mass of the factions that made up the party in the South, with the old school radical anti-federalist wanting secession since the 1830s. In the wake of the 1860 election finally being able to win over the Slave Power along with other minor factions like the Southern whigs who wanted to industrialize the South seeing the war as their opportunity to do so. Building a broad enough coalition within the South to make succession possible.
far and away the best media channel on youtube. Please never waste your time with popculture critics like nerdrotic/midnight's edge and just stick to this format!
Maybe the key difference is that I only talk about media that on some level I like. I'll dig into the flaws, but there's still a fondness for it. I'm not interested in just trashing something and there's plenty of people doing that already.
Nathan Fillion said in an interview that if he won the lottery he'd buy the rights to Firefly and do a reboot himself. And the crowd cheered. It was a great show with a loyal fan base and I do think actively sabotaged by the network.
Yeah, sometimes the people in charge genuinely are that stupid. Maybe they don't like the writer or maybe they're worried success will force the studio to take on more expensive projects. But from time to time they absolutely will flush millions down the toilet in order to sabotage a project.
Wasn't there also a change in the network leadership between when the work on the show was first started and when it actually started airing?
This has been a regular issue with tv series in such situations, to hear insiders tell it. A new head replaces the one who approved a show and the new management cancels it in the crib or, if it's already near completion, they make it the top priority for poor treatment. An issue of managerial egotism. Not to mention the genre biases between different people.
Firefly seems to have been a victim of this tendency if the leadership did, indeed, get switched.
'Actively sabotaged' can mean different things than being intended to fail. Sometimes its due to unrealistic expectations, weird priorities, an incorrect view of the facts on the ground or how things work, and an unwillingness to listening to the people who actually know better. If you try and insist that a farm your corporation owns grows potatoes when the climate and soil would be better for corn, and ignore the actual farmers, then of course your farm will fail. Sufficient stupidity is indistinguishable from malice and should be treated the same.
After this the American Lottery presented him with a paid ticket in the next draw.
I feel like at this point, if they wanted to keep the same actors where they could, it would likely work best as an animated show.
Its actually a very common trope in space opera/space empire stories - the “outer rim” planets united against the inner core worlds, with the inner core being wealthy and super-industrialized and the outer worlds being less developed pastoral societies, who feel put upon or oppressed by their more developed inners. The Expanse uses the same premise just within the Solar System, with the Belters versus the Inners.
The idea of the Clone Wars in Star Wars deals with this too. You have the wealthy (and human-dominated core worlds) vs the poorer outer & mid rim worlds of mostly aliens and some humans.
@@crusader2112well it’s basically “Roman Empire - In Space”. The rot starts at the fringes.
almost as if it's a common theme in history
@@crusader2112 That's not exactly true.
The CIS was superwealthy contrast to those of the Republic.
But CIS also carry themselves like space nobles.
Unless you refer to Hutt-space and the likes.
@@Zeithri The CIS leadership may have been more of a nobility, but their were genuine calls for Independence from planets in the Outer Rim.
I wasn't on the wrong side. Just the losing one. - Capt. Mal Reynolds.
Sergeant Reynolds, sir. His self promotion was never confirmed to my knowledge, so he’s still an NCO.
@@craig.a.glesner He runs a ship, he's captain. Same as aeroplane pilots go by "captain".
@@craig.a.glesner Nathan Fillion voiced a "Sergeant Reynolds" in Halo 3, which was two years later before he played Buck in ODST.
@@craig.a.glesnerduring the war, he was a sergeant. During the sequence of Firefly, he was the captain of a ship.
He’s a little more artful about how he says it because he’s being interrogated by an Alliance officer.
“May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”
Excellent analysis of the Civil War and the Lost Cause. My uncles were blue-collar factory boys drafted and sent to Vietnam. They weren't there to fight to halt the Domino Effect or spread of communism. They were fighting for their survival and the man next to them. When I received my draft card, my favorite uncle told me, 'Keep your head down and remember the Vietnamese rice farmer doesn't want you there either. He only sees us driving through the rice paddies fcuking up, which he works on all year. So it was with the Yeoman farmer turned Rebel soldier.
"Why you fighting this war, Johnny?"
"Because you're down here, Billy."
Farmer turned *collaborationist soldier. The VC were pawns of North Vietnam (and by extension) China, they weren't an organic revolutionary movement like the Continental Army or the IRA, they were more like pro Nazi militias that popped up in Europe during WW2.
There were differences, though. Union soldiers were fighting a war started by the Confederates and in Vietnam American soldiers were, to the Vietnamese, outsiders (from an inaccessible part of the world) that had no excuse for imposing themselves on their country and interfering in their civil war. And more: vast numbers of Vietnamese civilians were blasted out of existence by American bombs; millions died. Casualties in our civil war were very high, but on BOTH sides, and not in the millions.
@@moonrock41wars are started by politicians, not the ones who die.
The Vietnamese rice farmer didn't want Left fascist conscripts from the north driving through his rice paddies either. The big difference is that the Left fascists don't care, and happily slaughtered the population in order to terrorize the south into a state of total subservience. Socialism in action.
You can't take the sky from me.
Laughs in F-22
F35
Su37
Fox: *takes the sky from you*
@@Fred-rv2tu "Would you intercept me? I'd intercept me."
Most people don't know the story behind FIREFLY's cancellation. The show was dead-on-arrival. The decision to cancel the show was made while
Joss was still in pre-production. Firefly was greenlit by an executive who'd worked with Joss before and wanted another project from him, but shortly
after handing Joss the check to start production ( we're talking a few days to at most 2 or 3 weeks here ) she took a higher paying, more responsible
position at another company ( Paramount, I think ) . The character who filled her empty chair had another show he was shepherding through the
acceptance process, there was room for only one show, so he did the political thing of torpedoing his predecessor's show.
Yes, the decision to cancel the show was made while Joss was still polishing scripts and hiring actors, and scouting shooting locations. The reason
we got 14 episodes was there was a contract for half a season. Unlike what some people say, ratings never had anything to do with it. Despite their
attempts to torpedo it they knew it was number one on TIVO. ( Which advertisers ignored because on tivo adds could be blocked/skipped/or easily
edited. ) Also, ironically, in test marketing, the show tested more popular with women than men which confused Fox executives greatly.
" OF ALL THE WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, THE SADDEST THREE HAVE TO BE MIGHT HAVE BEEN. "
What show came through? Do you know?
Ohhhhhhh that makes so much sense.
It’s the reason hbos streaming service keeps changing names. Executives want to maximize credit to themselves for successes.
8:28 It's funny how false this is with the info you just gave
Oh I knew it was cancelled before the show even aired, and the final 3 episodes were never actually aired on TV (fans had to wait for the DVD to see them), I didn't realize how early into production it was cancelled
@@jbjstyx It was some "reality tv show ( I don't know the name ) that only lasted 4 months itself.
Joss Whedon: "we love losers."
George Patton has entered the chat.
General Patton's grandfather was a Colonel in the Confederacy from Virginia. The family moved to California after his death. If I remember right, General Patton said he grew up praying to paintings of who he assumed were Jesus and God the Father, on either side of the family fireplace mantel. The paintings were actually of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
In a sense getting canceled was the best thing that could have happened to firefly.
Wedon has a reputation for going hard at the beginning of projects then tapering off over time.
Maybe he could have kept up the pace for a couple seasons but probably would have lost interest in the series after awhile.
Then of course is all the behind the scenes drama around Wedon.
So yes, probably best that it went out on a high note.
Also it's one of (if not the only) popular single season show.
Most people can't even name more than one show they like (with only 1 season)
While I basically agree, it’s worth noting that Firefly’s greatness also derived from other brilliant creatives on the team as well (Ben Edlund, Jane Espenson, Tim Minear). Heck, even the composer, Greg Edmonson (without whom, the film version seemed off). It truly was lightning in a bottle, beyond just Joss; even if, there’s a good chance it would have degraded into confused mediocrity, or worse, given enough time. I’m just grateful for what we got.
Kinda like how Stonewall Jackson getting shot by his own men prevented his mistakes being able to overshadow his shining moments.
@@ObiwanNekody Nighttime operations have always been overly dangerous.
It's only in the last 2 decades (since NVG got good) that it hasn't been as dangerous.
Reminds me of the Joaquin Sabina song Contigo.
The only way for love to live is for it to die.
"And to die for you if you kill me.
And to die with you if you kill yourself.
And to kill myself along with you if you die,
Because love kills when it doesn't die away.
Because killing love never dies."
CHECKMATE SPACE-LINCOLNITES!
God I hate that cuck.
How'd that go for you Mr. John Orbital-Wilkes Booth?
You obviously haven't seen the end of that series, have you?
@@GregPrice-ep2dk Firefly or Atun-Shei’s Checkmate Lincolnites?
@@andyleach3625 Atun-Shei
That quote from Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley ignores the context that Lincoln was trying to hold a coalition together, and rumors were rife that he planned to free the slaves. As it turns out those fears were well founded, since he'd already drafted the Emancipation Proclamation and issued it a month after he wrote this letter. It's fashionable nowadays to paint Lincoln as ambivalent on slavery, but he wasn't: he well understood both the political and the moral necessity of emancipation. He was slower to evolve on the subject of citizenship and Black suffrage, but he got there.
I just discovered this channel a couple of days ago and have been almost binge watching your previous shows. Excellent stuff. I don't know how it came up on my radar but I have been enjoying it immensely. I am a Viet-Nam vet and an amateur historian just turned 80 this year. I find this show and your take on movies and how they apply to our world fascinating. I also understand that sometimes you have to kick the Hornets Nest not because you don't know what's going to come out but because you want to know how others respond. You can learn a lot from other people that you never thought about. Although sometimes it does sting a little. Keep up the good work.
Pilgrim's Pass reference to the _Domination of the Draka_ series in his _The Four Types of Dystopia_ bring you here?
@@Mr.Ambrose_Dyer_Armitage_Esq. No actually the first one I watched was the Mad Max one. I felt like seemed to strike a little close to the times we seem to be going into. I also pray that in fact it isn't going to happen. Hope springs eternal.
@@colinmcclelland1361
My first was his examination of theocratic monarchy in the NBC series _Kings._ Really liked his take and he seems to have an intuitive way of drawing human sociopolitical and spiritual phenomena from fiction. He still has his biases, of course, and is clearly the product of a liberal democratic era but, I like how he can step outside our system in its late stage of decay and admit its shortcomings.
Hope springs eternal, reality carries on, the observant are real and improve in hopes of not making the same mistakes as their precursors, the blindly hopeful entrench and are buried under human nature and history.
Either way, Feral Historian's got the good stuff.
@@Mr.Ambrose_Dyer_Armitage_Esq. I concur. You seem to be quite a good analyst on your own. This is the first time I have ever answered back to a reply so it's all rather new to me but I have enjoyed your observations. I'm quite sure it doesn't always end up this nicely. Stay well sir it's been a pleasure.
@@colinmcclelland1361
You as well, sir; the pleasure was mine.
Pilgrims pass recommended your channel, I've been watching your videos this evening and I gotta say that I am a fan now.
Pilgrim's Pass is good stuff.
I watched the show and while the Alliance definitely comes across as authoritarian, I think I caught glimpses of life in the Outer Worlds before the war. In the pilot, a woman who owns most everything on a moon in mentioned. Even after the war, we see petty tyrants managing their own fiefdoms. I suspect there were outer world folks who were tired of being subject to the whims of a local despot, poor local law enforcement, and having no central government counter these problems. Sure, probably were outer worlds that had good government, but I suspect that wasn't always the case.
The corrupt landowner/rancher is another common thing in westerns.
Yet that makes me wonder if those petty tyrants on the frontier were the goal of the Brown Coats in Firefly. Obviously those petty frontier tyrants are still there after the Alliance victory. We only see the situation under Alliance rule. What was it like before? It's a bit difficult to believe that was a major issue for the war if the Alliance hasn't bothered to change it. Sounds like they didn't care about that since it's still present and little or no effort given to change it.
Who put these people in power? Did they seize power after those who could stop them died in the war?
@@Seth9809 Most of them are business owners, merchants from the core worlds, and crime lords who got rich selling guns narcotics and medicine to neglected outer worlds. One episode has a town of mud farmers working like slaves for next to nothing because one man owns the whole town like an old fashioned steel baron.
@@Seth9809 I think you'd have a case where some depots set themselves up when deterrents were gone and others just stayed in place. I remember in one episode that the Alliance was having trooper and personnel shortages. Bit off more than they could chew.
As a fan, I'm glad it got cancelled because it never had a chance to be bad.
Exactly what most "fans" of the show missed in their nostalgia
Firefly was a good enough setup that it could have pretty easily had at least 3 or 4 solidly good seasons.
Good point. They maintain their dignity when the story ends.
I agree. It's like a short story -- people will read a story they like and want it to be expanded -- novel, series, movie -- but have no idea how to do that. They're just thinking "MORE", like children.
So someone turns the 10-page story into a 400-page novel... by adding a hook-up subplot, doing a lot of tedious background lore, adding some action sequences, adding some extra characters to DO the action sequences, then more hook-up plots for them... and the same people who wanted the expansion complain that it was better before.
Some things are just the right size to begin with.
I was telling a friend the other day about Stephen King's short story "The Jaunt", so I'll use that. Read it -- it's in "Skeleton Crew". I dare you to add a single page to that story without ruining it. It's the size it needs to be.
Ironically, considering King is one of the worst offenders in the "2000 pages of padding" category ever since he got off drugs.
Imagine if the stuff about Wheddon being human garbage came out while the show was going on.
I don't buy the "but individual soldiers weren't fighter for slavery" argument, because there were whole regions of the south which effectively seceded from the south over the issue, that's one of those lost cause parables, ironically enough, "our brave boys didn't fight to keep other men down, but to preserve freedom."
As a white southerner, reconstruction didn't go far enough. Instead of reconstruction we got army bases and tanks and shit named after the ringleaders of a slaver revolt. That, should be seen as shameful, like if Germany started rolling out "Guderian" tanks to "heal".
“I aim to misbehave” - Jayne Cobb “Hero of Canton”
Jayne didn't say that. Mal said it in the movie after finding Miranda.
"This must be what going mad feels like"
@@ptonpc"We gotta go to the crappy town where I'M a hero!"
History may initially be written by the victors, but the popular vision of past events is often subsequently edited to serve other ends, among them things like nation building mythology and helping the losing side in war, and especially in civil wars, make psychological peace with the outcome in a manner that avoids ongoing social disruption or a future repeat of the same conflict. The collective myth of the past and the available evidence of what actually happened are, as a result, often at pretty stark variance with one another.
And sometimes it's there to nurse grudges ad nauseam (*cough*, Balkans, cough)
I have yet to read history books written by the Victors. So far I have only came across one written by survivors of said events and or compilations of historians / authors based on materials that survived.
@@sep0319 History books are only written later, long after the initial narrative of a given series of events is set by those who have the power and influence to see it done, which in any situation of conflict will usually be the victors, at least in cases where a clear victor can be identified. Perhaps that narrative is strong enough to influence later historical texts, perhaps it falls out of favour to be replaced by some other reading in the interim (one that most likely suits the needs and ends of those who hold the balance of power in their society at the time when the new interpretation rises to prominence), but it is naïve to assume that there is no intersection whatever between the framing of historical events and the interests of the powerful and wealthy.
Most historical texts are not written by survivors of the actual events, but instead are written far, far later, many decades or even centuries removed from the events being described, based upon surviving sources of varying strength and credibility (and who is able to get rid of narratives, and the sources associated with those narratives, that compete with their own through censorship and the destruction of inconvenient accounts if not the powerful? And the powerful are usually also the victors one way or another) by academics who are human and so have their own pet theories, prejudices and agendas (not to mention patrons they are answerable to) that do not map neatly onto some ideal, perfectly objective crusade for the factual truth of past events.
@@gregorygreenwood-nimmo4954Hence "history" otherwise it would be current. Sooo.. Any examples on History Books commisioned by and or actually written by the victors? On my end I have "Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan" which was the template for everything Midway until "Shattered Sword" showed up. :D and please dont get to serious with this - it is meant to be light hearted.
@@sep0319 History as a discipline does not exist independent of the social and political forces that predominated at the time of the original events being described, nor those that are dominant at the time the historian is writing their account. The idea of the perfectly objective historian demigod parsing through the events of the past with what amounts to omniscience in order to arrive at the shining holy grail of the objectively unimpeachable truth just doesn't reflect reality.
Yes, in a strictly literal, who-actually-puts-pen-to-paper-or-finger-to-keyboard sense, the historical victors do not reach across centuries from beyond the grave to possess historians to force them to write their preferred accounts, but they do hold power in the aftermath of events and so can greatly influence which sources become accepted and prominent, which are marginalised and buried, and which even survive at all, and have influence over shaping the initial narrative of events in a way that cannot easily be magically corrected for by a historian writing many decades or even centuries later and necessarily working from sources that are themselves likely to contain biases and misconceptions even if the original creators of those sources made Herculean efforts toward objectivity, human nature being as fallible as it is.
I love your presentation. Plainly spoken yet refined with a sprinkle of blunt gruffness, filtered through a real understanding of modern cultural speaking norms.
Nothing over scripted or trace of airy poshness
Active baiting of the chat. You have arrived sir.
most of the chat seems to be sympatico
Anyone who isnt biased towards the confederacy or rage-baiting right wingers/southerners knows that the war was way more nuanced than the simplified good guys vs evil racists narrative.
I found your channel yesterday with your other Firefly video. watched a whole bunch of them and I'm a huge fan.
I am a T34 medium tank and I was offended by your comments.
r/onejoke
“The one thing they love more than a hero… is to see him fail, fall, die trying.”
- The Green Goblin, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, 2002
If this moment in the movie had been given by something other than an actor in a rigid mask, it might be remembered better.
It didn't help that the network showed it out of order and moved it around the schedule. It also didn't help that it had such a slow burn. Only in the very last episode did we get more than a glimpse through a glass darkly at what River Tam actually was. Had Whedon shown a bit more urgency in character development, more people may have come on board. Perhaps enough to keep the show going.
I wanted to learn more about Shepherd Book but even after Serenity we get almost nothing :(
People don't remember how antagonistic Hollyweird used to be to sci-fi because they considered it uncool and it was also expensive to produce. The first X-men movie changed the narrative because it demonstrated thar the average viewer liked it.
In the UK, we got the episodes in the right order and in reliable time slots, so we could see the story threads coming together.
ANGRY COMMENT!!
PERFORMATIVE OVERREACTION!
@@thomriley1036 CONTRARIAN BOTH-SIDESING
FAILURE TO DETECT SARCASM (PROBABLY).
FACETIOUS JOKE THAT ADDS NOTHING TO THE DISCOURSE!
PERSONAL ATTACK THAT SOMEHOW MISSES THE POINT OF BOTH THE OP AND THE VIDEO!!1!
I was always under the impression that the cause of the War of Central System Aggression was because the rim worlds were owned by individuals or oligarchies. When the purple-bellies started bringing them into the fold they rebelled. My evidence is practically every rim world the crew goes to is ran by an individual first, the government second.
I also got the impression that Mal's family was one of those planet-ruling cliques from when he talks about being raised by servants on Shadow.
That's always generally been my impression as well.
While I didn't agree with every point made in this, I do appreciate you doing your best to be fair and impartial, and being implicit about this show being a clear analogy for the American Civil War set in space. It was very inspiration and hard-hitting in ways most science fiction shows failed to be.
That coat really ought to contain at least one ferret😉
As a fellow historian, a friend of mine also a history major who is a New Orleans native dubbing himself Ignatius Reilly made flesh. Argues and I think successfully that the Lost Cause is only really used today as a rhetorical tactic to dismiss the Dunning School via guilt by association. You would think almost 150 years after these events we would be mature enough to say:
"The South fought to preserve slavery and Southern civilians were treated horribly during Reconstruction. The North fought to preserve the Union and later to end slavery. Partially out of morality and most certainly out of revenge for the casualties suffered. They also didn't really care if their Vengeance fell upon the guilty in the South or just some poor Southern farmer turn day labor who never owned slaves. Who had the temerity to stand up to you. While you were trying to steal the family cow. With your measured response was to shoot him dead, burn the house down and do unspeakable things to his wife and daughters"
Nor is this some particular evil of the Union Army. Occupying armies tend to behave badly towards the civilians. As if for some reason fighting to end slavery and being a brute to people who don't deserve it are mutually exclusive claims.
It's almost as if both sides were wrong.
It gets even more confusing when you start looking into both sides' view of race. There are plenty of quotes from Southerns in the Antebellum period supporting slavery but denouncing racism in the same breath. At the same time, Southerners were very open about the fact that several masters treated their slaves horribly but they had no right to force them to treat their slaves better.
Meanwhile, many of the northern abolitionist wanted to end slavery explicitly because they wanted America to become a white ethnostate. (In fact, the Southerners who made comments supporting racism [e.g. Alexander Stephens] were usually educated in northern colleges.) Some of the most radical abolitionists went so far as to openly call for the extermination of everyone in the South, white and black, and for the region to be repopulated with Northerners. While those radicals were in the minority, their rhetoric was well-known at the time. That's why so many Southerners hated abolitionist. There were more anti-slavery societies in the South than the North until the abolitionists became the dominant anti-slavery faction. It's only then that the South started doubling down on the righteousness of slavery. That doesn't make it right, of course, but it does give you a more nuanced understanding of the situation.
The more I look into that era, the more I understand why the war tore families apart and why we're still debating it to this day. No matter which angle you come at it from, you always find something that upsets your understanding of which side was the "good guys".
@@benjamingrist6539 You're correct of course. But you're forgetting the free soilers who was the functional base of the Republican Party. They opposed slavery for the same reason they opposed immigration slaves and immigrants undercut their ability to negotiate wages. Though my professor at the time didn't like my hypothesis of the free soilers being the Proto labor movement. I suspect if you went to a bar with a lot of these guys they would talk about the slave power like working class guys today talk about corporations or the government.
It’s overall such a complex and nuanced topic and it’s why I really hate when people overgeneralize to paint every single southerner as a racist traitor while viewing the north as a lot more saintly.
Plenty of Northers owned slaves and didn't want to give up their property.
There were even plenty of free blacks who owned black slaves, and those were amongst the cruelest and most brutal of slave owners.
Slavery was one of many reasons for the war. Tensions were rising for near enough a decade before things kicked off, and if one were to look at all the alleged grieveances the South listed for seceeding, there is a clear throughline: Encroaching "juristiction" of the Federal government infringing upon and erroding State authority.
The legislation that everybody cites as the "abolishment of slavery" that caused the war didn't actually abolish slavery, it merely locked in that any State that didn't currently at the time have legal slavery would not be allowed to legalise slavery and any State that wished to join the Union would only be allowed to do so if they didn't have legalised slavery. There was nothing in the legislation demanding that Member States with legal slavery had to ban it, which means, the Federal legislation did not affect slave owners at all, since before the war it would still be a State matter wether to abolish slavery or not. The blanket abolishment of slavery happend during/after the war. Originally, slavery was always a State Law matter, but the Federal government made it a matter of Federal Law.
With the recent years carrying whispers of some States looking at seceeding again, no matter the true cause, History books would in the future claim that it was purely for no other reason than because the seceeding States wanting to turn women into rightless breeding machines, despite the WvR overturn being merely one tiny concern in a whole slew of issues (I heard of new musings about seceeding in soem states during the WvC controversy, so I assume/forecast, that would be the scapegoat.).
(I am assuming that the seceeding State(s) would loose any new independence war, since that is the statistically most probable outcome)
Always slightly bizzar seeing the starship troopers armour poping up in other shows. Guess a well-made prop can go far.
To be fair the British SA80 5.56 bull pup was there too and noons claims that was a well made prop😢
@@celiacresswell6909 The joys of having a weapon made by the lowest bidder. I knew some Vietnam vets who wouldn't even TOUCH an AR15 until the day they died, they had such bad memories of it.
They rented the Starship Trooper costumes according to the Firefly commentary track.
I think a ton of them were made for SST and so it was easy to outfit a lot of extras with them. They also showed up in the power rangers and imposter with gary sinise.
I've actually got a draft of a sci-fi story that starts as a memorandum of the 'Frontier Wars' - the popular image of which is about outer-rim freedom fighters standing up in a noble but doomed struggle for freedom against the fiendish long arm of Earth governance. Only, over the course of a series of interviews with an old Earth-Gov vet it shifts the idea of some Space-Yeomen rebellion ground down by Earth's industrial might to like 3 mining companies in a trench coat, and the valiant post-war clawing back of Spacer's Rights is in fact a mass disenfranchisement of guest workers that the handful of space colony administrators and the like live off the backs of. (The working title was 'A Spacer's Right to What?")
I wonder if a good portion of America’s love of Lost Cause is a development of a much deeper love of the American love of underdogs and outlaws. There’s a certain romance to striking out and raising one’s own flag, especially when it’s you against the world. Cf. Jesse James for example.
Definitely
But there’s also some truth to it as he says. Aswell as the term lost cause being used to basically shut down discussion of the dunning schools findings which basically show not the lost cause narrative but that reconstruction was insane and reconciliation happening . Birth of a nation the literal klansmen movie no matter what people seethe about actually lines up historically with what the dunning school found.
Not convinced that the love of underdogs and losers is a particularly American thing. You should see some traditional British historical narratives. It's practically a stock joke that we can only win when we're outnumbered (because we don't talk about the battles we won through greater numbers and firepower). If anything, the stereotype is surely that America is obsessed with winners and being "Number 1".
How have I never found your channel before. Fantastic video
I was just thinking the other day that, for a capital-P Progressive who _believes_ in using the power of the state to Make People Better, Joss Whedon's writing has some pretty surprising themes when examined closely.
It was a different time. Sorry for le politicks but, the time was Bush Jr's time, the neoconservative moment. Whedon and maybe more-so Minear found an opportunity to hit Bushism from the libertarian Right, even if Whedon himself didn't believe in it.
@zimriel But the same themes pop up in early BtVS, which first aired during Clinton's second term.
@@zimriel this is probably right, although as a former leftist, I can tell you the left has always seen itself fundamentally the people's party, and its use of government power was a counter to capitalism and other institutions that reinforce hierarchy. Just about everyone in Western politics thinks they're fighting for the bottom of the pyramid against the top.
He's also a lot less committed to those progressive views than he originally portrayed himself as. One cannot be a feminist and fire a woman for getting pregnant.
@samanthamccormick1436 Why, because feminists never throw women under the bus when it's convenient for them to do so?
I feel like Feral Historian would have a very interesting conversation with the history TH-camr Atun-Shei Films if they met. 😂
Atun-Shei is an ahole on this topic. In his world, if you study the Civil War you have to spend most of your time providing disclaimers that you know the Confederates were the bad guys, or else you're suspected of being a neo-Confederate yourself. We already know what he would say about the Browncoats being the good guys and the Alliance the bad guys in Firefly.
Ya definitely about the average Joe not fighting to preserve slavery a position I personally oppose. There is enough evidence that a large number of Boys in Brown/Gray willingly fought and even agreed on the slavery issue.
For the same reason the Irish were so hated. "THEY TOOK OUR JERRRBS!"
Even if they had no quarrel with slaves as individuals. But if they were freed, the average Joe would financially be hit the hardest and had all the reasons in the world to want that Peculiar Institution to remain.
@@samsonvlogging1202 I can see it now. Feral giving a nuanced and complicated insights about the Civil War analyzing the historiography and how it developed.
Atun-Shei, giving a pseudo diatribe using a lot of words but ultimately reinforcing the moving goal posts of current acceptable opinion.
Feral pausing for a moment trying to figure out if he's doing a bit. Furrowing his brow asking Atun-Shei to repeat himself.
Atun-Shei, does so but with less confidence this time not sure how to gauge the interaction.
Feral, just stays quiet one part disappointment in the intellectual caliber of the man before him. The other part is pity understanding the lack of a reciprocal relationship with this man and the institutions he slavishly devotes his self-worth in. Knowing they do not care for him in the slightest.
The silence continues on uncomfortable now. Feral cracks open a beer drink it. Smashes it, puts it in his pocket to throw away and walks away without elaboration.
@@Alte.Kameradenin the age of civil society, soldiers fight for their country regardless of their nations cause, whether they agree or disagree doesn’t add to much hooey. Motivations to serve are ultimately subjective and hard to structure into a hierarchy of values that would give any one answer of why a person is actually there as a participant of war. The simplest answer ever given by a rebel soldier when asked was “cuz yall’re down here”
@@ramblinbob1918 Well, good and all. But them rebs invaded Federal Land before the first shots were fired, then launched large offensive on three different fronts with mixed results.
Sounds a lot different than what you described. Sure, maybe after the CAS started losing, but they still started the fight.
It's like complaining that it's raining but they created the weather in the first place.
I seem to recall plans for upcoming episodes leaking out at some point that upset Firefly fans, so it's possible the show was really killed just in the nick of time.
There's at least one video floating around of a very old Confederate veteran interviewed in the early 20th century in which he clearly states that he and his mates weren't fighting for slavery. The comments section was peppered with young people calling him a liar.
Well, I certainly had different aims in mind than the historical reality when I enlisted to go to Iraq. Tough luck, that.
One can (make oneself believe they) fight for one thing and have something else happen.
Admitting you fought for slavery decades after everyone decided that was horrible, is a bad look, so you simply don't admit that you fought for it and come up with 'alternative' explanations for why you fought.
As an aside, I think that it’s helpful to view “slavery” as an economic system rather than just a repugnant practice.
As an analogy, we can use capitalism and communism (at least, before the viability of communism was empirically disproven). Imagine the federal government trying to impose communism by force - it’s for an abstract “better future”, but it entails all of your property being seized and everything in society being upended unpredictably. That should give you an idea of the visceral reaction that many Southerners had to the North, and why they might fight even though they personally didn’t benefit from slavery (and probably never would).
Precisely that.
to be clear, communisms viability has never been empirically disprove, it can't be. you can't prove a negative. it has simply yet to be *proven* viable, but that is not the same thing.
@@sillyking1991 Communism has been shown to work according to David Graeber and James C. Scott.
Communism exists in the real world, especially with nomadic societies in Nigeria, to the non-state lands of Chiapas and Rojava.
Btw, slavery is repugnant because it is an infringement on human autonomy and agency.
I had the impression that the repression of the outer planets of the empire was primarily that they were restricted technologically. they were not allowed to make their own versions of newer technology and were forced to buy super expensive items from the core planets.
This was from watching the show. Any core planet representation was like Coruscant from Star Wars, everything is big, shiny (likely where that bit of slang came from - I've even worked with teens who had picked up shiny to use for something they like, when questioned, they had no idea where it came from and objected to the idea it was from fantasy science fiction), and extremely high tech. The outer planets meanwhile are using animals for labor or to get around. the only tech they get is what is actually cheaper than the non tech version. For example the windows that do not break because they are actually a force field. By the way, the version the outer planets get looks like filthy glass with cheaply painted signs on it. Right there, that single item, creates a very large grudge against the core planets. The tech they get is second rate, yet they certainly paid through the nose for it.
I loved Firefly. After it was cancelled, it was a disappointment. However, a few years later I started watching Deadwood, and found that that show scratched the same itch as Firefly, despite the fact that it's a straight western with no sci-fi elements. But it does have a lot of excellent story telling, tremendously witty dialogue (once you get past the excessive profanity), and some great characters played by some fantastic actors.
100%
And now you can watch Mandalorian and see Cobb Vanth shoot down no-good outlaws in Deadwood....I mean Tatooine. :)
@@MM22966 The first two seasons of Mando were perfectly serviceable television.
That was a good show, and very few people seem to know about it. You might also try "Hell on Wheels", which is similar in most ways.
@@stevenscott2136 Hell on Wheels was a pretty solid show, and Colm Meaney (sp?) does an excellent job in it.
But I found the dialogue and characters less interesting than in Deadwood.
Still, that's a high bar to cross, and I agree that HoW is pretty solid.
As a British person i always think that we have our own lost cause myth, the Battle of Britain. Despite being on the winning side in the end, it helped British people handle the slide into near irrelevance from the worlds superpower. But equally, i think it's held us back because, as a nation, we held onto exceptionalism when we should have given up on that decades earlier.
The biggest issue is that the UK has had stupid low growth for decades and decades. Also the UK only recently has been producing entertaining culture that crosses over to other places.
Maybe you should have tried HARDER at exceptionalism. You DID build the world's largest empire... that's pretty exceptional. Some grand goal to rally around after WW2 might have been just what you needed. You could have pitched in with us on the space program?
The problem being, of course, that we did actually win the Battle of Britain. And as sources of national pride go, it's not a bad one.
But we're certainly not immune to Lost Cause myths. The classic instance, predating the ACW, would be the Jacobite Rebellions, the legend of which has a *lot* in common with the American Lost Cause narrative. A bloody-minded marginal rural community rebels against centralised authority, puts up a good fight, loses, and ends up providing many of the foot-soldiers for the State's subsequent colonial adventures. Sir Walter Scott pretty well invented the game. And, as with the ACW, the legend hides the fact that those romantic rural rebels had actually been suckered into fighting for an aristocratic leadership with a poor grasp of hard logistical realities and a reliance on unreliable foreign associates.
The Torries lionize the old British Empire as a mighty force that fell after WW2, but it was declining as it could not afford the expenses of running and plundering 57 countries.
@@CosmoShidan Every nation romanticises and b*llsh*ts about its past. But specific Lost Cause myths are about great and noble struggles which were lost, but where the dream continues. The Confederacy is a clear example, but the Jacobite Rebellion was very similar. Fortunately, even the most romantic Scots don’t seem to want to excavate that particular daftness these days.
I’ll grant that dreaming about the Glories of the British Empire is a comparable bad habit, but it doesn’t come with quite the same sense of romantic defeat. I get a nasty feeling that Russia is developing a Lost Cause fantasy about the Communist era, which is already leading to trouble.
Wedon's early efforts: Grand, interesting, and distinct
Wedon's episodic/serial efforts after the initial "shiny" wears off: Please don't.
The mythology around the civil war fascinates me. In the old west the war largely continued between competition between different businesses, gangs, bands if lawmen and vigilantes, and rival landowners. But we frame it as a taming of unruly boomtowns. And after moving to the south I've heard even flamboyant gay men blame "the north" for the native grasslands being replaced by pine forests, which all seem to be owned by the most traditional southerners you'll ever meet.
Ugh Feral Historian, run for president 😭
There has been a lot of discussion around statues and monuments in recent years. I think both sides of the issue would benefit from watching this video.
There's been a lot of crocodile tears from segregationists that statues of slavers are getting taken down
It's my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sumbitch or another. -- Malcolm Reynolds
The algorithm led me to you, and over the last two weeks I binged many of your videos. I'll enjoy my stay, I think.
I haven't watched all of your videos yet, so I don't know for sure, if you did Blindsight from Peter Watts, but in case you haven't - well, I would suggest adding it to your reading list. I think it's the best sci-fi book of the XXIst century so far.
I haven't done Blindsight yet. I'm definitely going to, but not sure exactly how yet. There's a lot to cover.
People love the "Lost cause stories" because they ike to root for the underdog. It sells.
"...War was not glorious, it was a desperate, messy business. But it had been his business, one in which he had excelled..." - Corvus Corax, after the Isstvan V Massacre.
I was pretty hyped when I started watching Firefly because everybody on the Internet seemed to be crazy about it; and then the very first scene established a crystal-clear parallel between the guy I was supposed to root for and the fucking _confederates_ of all people. Didn't make me stop watching the show, but boy did it make my enthusiasm cool down 🙄
I recommend Starhunter, which is like a live-action version of Cowboy Bebop, but with 2 seasons spanning 44 episodes. Though two of its episodes appear similar to Firefly/Serenity's plot.
Ah yes, been waiting for this one!
Truly enjoyed the movie and the series
We need a cable channel that could provide this type of high quality programming
Not many people are super science fiction fans
In my opinion to generate high quality science fiction and adventure blend.
the majority of love reality t v
and
romantic connections
unscripted television programs
with people who are from different countries
It's boarderlands-like live action series, I miss that show, like red dwarf.
Very shiny video. I'm a first time viewer, a long-time Browncoat, and a new subscriber. I'm glad I found this channel and I look forward to more
The funny thing is, the idea that the south fought better, had better tactics and better generals and only lost due to being out supplyed is thoroughly trounced by the Battle of Gettysburg
Robert E Lee made more decisions throughout the battle, poorly communicated his plans, his generals did terrible jobs enacting those plans, fell into multiple obvious traps and murder zones, and even had more ammo than the union did to the point entire batalions were told to affix bayonets and charge as that arm of the union forces was completely out of ammo
They lost due to grand incompetence and what some people believe was a bought of momentary insanity by robert e lee or even intentional sabotage as many of the decisions Lee made were that nonsensical
Key example- telling one of his generals to "take the high ground if applicable" was such a weird way of giving an order that the commanding officer was so thoroughly confused he thought the decision was up to him and he stood his men down, losing valuable territory in the battle
Or of course, Pickets charge
Having pickets division march straight toward a cannon line? In an open field?
And then afterword lee was confused as to why "general picket why arent you seeing to your division?"
"Sir i have no division left"
Genuinely some of the most moronic commands given in any battle in american history
And yet the stupid lost causers will still say "wE fOuGhT bEtTeR bEsT gEnErAlS"
Upvoted. It is similar to myths about Germany in WWII. How Germany "almost" won the war at Moscow in 1941 (they got beaten badly), or had Stalingrad gone differently, or had they turned the tide at Kursk. They could never understand that they got outplayed and out-maneuvered in this battles. Mannstein's Lost Battles/Lost Victories might as well have been written by Robert E. Lee. Always making the same excuses (blame Hitler, blame the CSA government) rather than taking responsibility for poor choices such as Case Blue's changed plan, or even going to the USSR in the first place! If you fight and you lost, you have to own it and deal with it, but myth-making wants to say that 159 years ago the world changed and one side got cheated. Doesn't work that way.......
Omg, just the title made me happy. Loved your analyst of socialism after capitalism. Very insightful
The American Civil War was incredibly complicated, and for some reason everyone just boils it down to slavery.
Found out I had ancestors on both sides of the conflict, I think one was a Captain in the Union Army. But the one that I found most interesting was a great-great-great-uncle (I think, family trees are weird). His diaries and letters were found years ago and a member of our family went through them and traced out his life.
I can't remember all the details, but he lived in Virginia, was a staunch abolitionist, spent his adult life helping slaves any way he could. Then, once the war started, a force of Union troops came through his town and ransacked the place. Stole food, ammo, and other things TH-cam doesn't like mentioned. This man who spent years helping slaves and fighting for them wound up fighting for the Confederacy against the Union until Appomattox. He just wanted to end slavery, and sit on his porch on his farm and live his life. And wound up joining the "bad guys" because of what the "good guys" did. Like I said, complicated.
I should really contact my uncle and see if he has the papers now. Would be an interesting story to delve into now that I'm not a kid and can understand a lot more of it.
Because it is. From the Confederate Constitution to all the Declarations of Secession, slavery is the center of it. If you can't trust what even the Confederates said, why ask here?
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131ok, then, what were the factors that made slavery an issue? Did you not hear him read what Lincoln wrote Greeley?
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 So by that logic, you can argue WWI only happened because some dude got shot on his Sunday drive. War is a very complex event with years, if not decades, of many things happening that don't even seem related at the time. Claiming just one thing is the whole reason is not accurate or helpful. It's just lazy. And I've read all the Secessions, there are a couple that don't even mention slavery as a cause.
But, lets just go with what you said as accurate. You are 100% right and the war was all about slavery. So, all Lincoln would have to do to keep the Union together was keep all the slaves. Which, as shown in the video, he claimed he was willing to do.
Then why was there a war?
If slavery wasn't under threat, the Civil War would not have happened when it did. Take that information and use it or just Lost Cause reality away.
@@Plaprad Something doesn't have to be the whole reason for it to be at the top of the list of reasons. It's like when people argue that ultimately the civil war was about states rights. Okay, a states right to do what?
From what i can gather in the Firefly universe, the outer worlds were never part of any union, essentially they were more or less independently colonised and terraformed(hence the many problems with the terraforming) and when they got proplsperous enough the inner planets attacks them for the purpose of getting more colonies.
It's almost like you can draw inspiration from historical events without endorsing them....
As for the why the Browncoats fought the war, based on the world building I always had the feeling that the Alliance treated the outer planets like resource colonies. Harsh - almost colonial- law, suppression of workers rights, over taxation and tithing, underinvestment in infrastructure. Basically keeping it a frontier while exploiting the shit out of it and preventing them really growing. Like how China treats minority regions, and the USSR treated satellite states. Aside from that, history also shows that the farther from the seat of power, the more colonies try to rebel. I think this puts Firefly well into the camp of "what if the American Revolution had failed?"
I do get an "east India company" vibe from the Alliance. There is a LOT of economic exploitation.
Possibly - headcanon here - the Alliance that started the war had to deal with rogue corporations almost as much as, or more than, the outnumbered "inbred pecker-woods". Over the course of the war the corporations were brought to heel. Eventually by formally enrolling their leaders in the Parliament.
What you're forgetting is that the outer worlds were already independent when the War Between the Planets began. It was a war of conquest, not a failed rebellion. In that light, the Browncoats' reason for fighting is obvious, even if it does gloss over a lot of other things. However, the show offers zero explanation why the Alliance was so determined to annex the outer planets, or why some characters, such as Inara, supported unification. Even if it was just a land-grab at its heart, the Alliance must have had some sort of moral justification for why they felt the need to absorb the outer worlds by force. If I had to guess, it was probably to bring law, order, and prosperity to the lawless and impoverished frontier, sort of like how the colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries justified themselves. A Coreworlder's burden, if you will. But again, this is just pure speculation on my part. The show itself gives us nothing. Maybe it would have, had it been allowed to continue longer.
TH-cam censored my comment. Yaaaay. (Can't wait for DJT's upcoming bill-o'-rights.)
I was going to bring up the East India Company, and how - due to the sepoy mutiny - Britain formally brought its lands into the Empire. Firefly's 'Verse feels like that, lots of corporations with oligarchic levels of power.
Suppose the Browncoat dustup was like the mutiny. They lost, but the Alliance was forced to take over the offending corporations and curb their excesses.
I find this video essay well researched and presented. Thankyou for helping to keep awareness of the show out there.
Kudos for threading the needle quite successfully on exploring the nuances of the ACW. Not an easy feat!
_*The War of Northern Aggression_
Ha! My high school US history book call its ACW chapter "The War for Southern Independence". (Cobb County, GA school district, naturally)
@@RobAzula Huh, what year did you graduate? Because I’m from Alabama and graduated last year, and I’ve never seen the Civil War called anything but the Civil War.
@@nono-lz9qr I graduated 1989, when "The Lost Cause" was still in vogue and people kept going around saying the Civil War was caused by "states' rights." Which is kinda like saying lung cancer is caused by cancer cells, which yes, is true, but ignoring the 3 packs a day cigarette smoking.
I love this channel and your insights! I share them with all my friends and we have our own discussions around these topics. You are very intellectually inspiring. Thank you for your work.
At one point I said that it's clearly the Confederacy except it wasn't about slavery, except we seen a number of episodes there is definitely slavery going on in the still independent states, such as the Mudders
Yeah, and the show buys into the myth of the border states were slaveholding northern states.
Plus Firefly uses the idea that somehow the union practiced slavery.
I adore your channel, it's like I'm back with my friends talking about this stuff on walks in the wild like we used to.
The Browncoat's were not fighting for slavery, but it seems like the Alliance was. We know what they did to River and others. We know what they did to Miranda. We saw the kind of power they gave The Operative. To quote Mal: May have been the losing side. Still not convinced ti was the wrong one.
Finally, a GOOD take on the Civil War.
After watching the movie, do you agree that the War of Independence had been instigated by the Union of Allied Planets to cover up their mass murder on Miranda. Give the people something else to talk about, instead of wondering why their former neighbor who moved there isn't replying to their broadwaves.
They'd literally 1984'd a planet and hid the Reavers origins for over a decade. Starting a war to continue a cover up like that would be the last thing they'd want to do. Because eventually someone would find Miranda by accident when running away from Reavers, the Union, or somone else if they were in a big enough panic.
@@michaelwalker7400 _Because eventually someone would find Miranda by accident when running away from Reavers, the Union, or somone else if they were in a big enough panic._
Anyone running _towards_ Miranda would be killed by the fuck-huge swarm of Reavers that orbits it.
@@CanadianPale but someone else will start looking for them. But I guess the Union is counting on the Reavers to keep people away, a small group can still sneak by.
@@michaelwalker7400 No, by my reckoning of the Firefly timeline, the war didn't happen ten years after Miranda, the two were almost concurrent. The war was instigated as part of the Miranda coverup.
Probably the most underrated sci fi show of all time. This show did something no other show ever did for me. It made me enjoy the acting of a Baldwin.
Too bad Adam Baldwin turned out to be a white nationalist in real life.
I always thought the Prequel Trilogy/The Clone Wars was just an allegory for the US Civil War or at least draws inspiration from it
Grand Army of the Republic is definately a reference, but I'm not sure what else. Big issue with military comparisons is the military of both sides aren't drawn from the population (being clones and robots) so alot of the normal commonalities simply aren't there.
@@samuelskinner7704 The Grand Army of the Republic being composed of clones seems intended to resonate with the feelings of many Northerners about Irish-born soldiers in the Union military. Also, the opposing side is literally called a "Confederacy," both of the belligerents are in wrong in various ways and the whole thing is ultimately used as a springboard to convert a relatively peaceful Republic into a brutal and highly-militarized Empire spreading its influence all over the Galaxy.
Well the Confederacy is controlled by a few rich people and that does describe the rl Confederacy.
@@Seth9809 and the Republic is led by a Sith Lord. Really makes you think...
@@samuelskinner7704 _Grand Army of the Republic is definately a reference, but I'm not sure what else._
As @Seth9809 mentioned, the Republic's opposing number is literally called the Confederacy, which wants to secede from the Republic. I also get the sense that the Grand Army being comprised of clones is supposed to invoke the feelings of many Northerners at the time towards the large numbers of Irish immigrant recruits in the Union military. And of course, the whole conflict is ultimately used to springboard the transformation of a mostly-peaceful Republic into a brutal and highly-militarized Empire that controls damn near the entire Galaxy.
I'm so glad I've found your channel! You're my new favorite, keep trucking.
ACW is the strangest case of "winners writing history". When war started, the future winners (North) insisted that war isn't about slavery. And for the next two centuries, a whole lot of people were saying that ACW wasn't about slavery.
It’s better to have the saying “History is written by the writers” which would explain why the Romans would be bodied in Germania but it was the Romans who wrote how they lost. The Chinese talk of how they lost the north to nomadic barbarians but it’s the Chinese who wrote it down.
Your post doesn’t make sense. The video states, as does the historical record, that Lincoln’s primary objective when the war started was preserving the Union. Ending slavery became a political narrative in the latter half of the war when it was convenient, but like he said it was incidental to the main causes.
@@Gatekeeper201 But why did the South want to break the Union?
If people can point to Lincoln's letter then Stephens' Cornerstone speech very clearly outlines that the Confederate government was established to expand and sustain the institution of slavery and white supremacy.
@@PhilMasters To take over the rest of the States, of course.
Really enjoyed this video 👍🏾
Congrats from Portugal
Honestly, a great show, but I hope they leave it alone. Sure, it's nice in a way to revisit the characters and see where they wound up or whatever, but it's so often a disappointment. A show or movie isn't just about what's on screen, but also the time in which it was created and shown. Not just culturally, but also for the actors involved. They grow and change in the intervening years, and often can't convincingly reinhabit those roles.
It's sad when a good show doesn't get a chance to go on, but reunions often just feel like beating a dead horse.
Let's be honest. If they rebooted Firefly, it'd end up being terrible, like practically every single sequel, reboot, soft-reboot, re-imagining, or continuation of practically every story for the last ten years or so.
@@Green_Tea_Coffee That is true.
This was fascinating- love these pop cultural explorations!
Love this channel
JAAAAAAYNE!!! The man they call Jayne!!!
(Now I am wondering if Whedon based Jayne on various Confed guerillas turned outlaws like Jesse James, etc)
my history teacher, who i encountered 25 yearws after i graduated, i asked waht caused the civl war.
He said "all wars are the same. People who want to be left alone, versus people who can't leave damnfool alone"
God rest his soul.....anytime i look at any infighting, i see that.
Thanks Mr. Ford. Because i am a man who wants to be left alone.
So did those slaves. Your history teacher seems to have been a hypocrite.
@@mattis-me7780 slavery was just the same as taxes on cotton. It wasn't the point.
'how can a man iv ermont, who does not grow the crop, till the land, care for the plant, harvest it, and must wash it and take it to town and sell it...tell me how to do my business?"
Hence "those that want to be left alone versus those who cant leave others alone."
he was speaking broadly about historical issues, and he was right. You can pick a thread, i prefer the whole wool blanket.
you can now leave the room, it might be too big in here and your agrophobia of ideas may flare up.
@@mattis-me7780 Which is why _the propaganda_ sold it as a Holy War against slavery. The Battle Hymn of the Republic, lyrics set to the tune of "John Brown's Body", sung in remembrance of the Martyr of Bleeding Kansas.
@@dotwarner2983 The federals didn't represent it as a war against slavery early in the war, but to preserve the Union. It was only when people understood (correctly) that slavery would perpetually threaten the country that it could be presented that way.
@@TheFranchiseCA How would slavery threaten the country? It was already a dying practice. About 2% of Americans owned slaves prior to the secession. Bring some farming machines to the south that can handle cotton and the practice would end very quickly.
I picked up on the 'Lost Cause' narrative of Firefly at the time too. It kept me from watching the show at the time and kinda kept me from enjoying it years later.
There's a narrative tie between Firefly, this video and Ninti's Gate, if you feel like making a followup video.
I like to think that Ninti's Gate takes a little poke at the Lost Cause, among other things, with its _We won, but we also kinda lost somehow_ element.
I believe this week in reality has shown us that "lost causes" are not so "lost" if there are still those that belief and fight for such "causes".
On a side note, given what happened in the movie Serenity, between the actions/orders of the agent (scorching several planets to flush out the crew of the Firefly) and the truth about the reavers, the restart of the Unification Wars is not that far off.
Alternatively: the social function of the lost cause myth to aid reconciliation has a cost, both to perpetuating the narrative to future generations who lack direct experience, and a potential social cost to those who would destroy the myth and villify its adherents.
@@ThreeSeatStarboard sounds like a good basis for secession.
Really interesting and thought provoking as always. Cheers!
I used to have a T-shirt with the browncoat flag on it. I got some odd looks sometimes.
I had one too. Someone asked me if it was a Viet-Cong flag once.
@@feralhistorian Maybe that’s what they thought!
Thank you for covering this subject smartly, and wonderfully.
I too have questions about the macro verse of Firefly.
My g-g-g-grandfather was not a slave owner. He marched away from his business, two daughters, and a pregnant wife as an infantry captain, knowing very well what he faced, as he had ridden with Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War. From his circumstances and a letter, I'm pretty sure he fought not for an economic system but because his country faced an invasion.
so glad i found this , good to force you to think and read for yourself. Keep up the good work.
Now I need to go find my brown coat.
Damn, this is brilliant, thank you! I remain a lover of Firefly, though I've never been able to articulate the longevity of its effect on me. I would say you've verbalised that effect perfectly. There's nothing quite like the power of the Noble Lost Cause, it would seem. Cheers!
Let's not forget that there were riots in northern states over conscription because the ordinary yankees mostly did not care to fight. Further, there were many confederates who were not interested in the cause of secessionism and only signed on when the federal armies invaded their home states. Most of the battles took place in the south, and the war affected the ordinary people who did not own slaves as much as it did the wealthy planters. So the lost cause narrative is not merely a means to heal - there is a dark grudge that remains hidden in there. Mal in Firefly bears the same grudge too, beneath the stoic face he puts on.
The Confederates also introduced conscription, and that it was hugely unpopular. Many noting it was akin to slavery, They also introduced it first. I should also be noted that only around 5pc of the Union was made up of conscripts. And Non slave owning whites did join because the idea of emancipation was appalling to them. We know this because of letters, dairies and articles.
And the South cant complain too much about its land being used as the battleground in a war they started.
@@tisFrancesfault The North started the war. It's very well known that Lincoln intentionally antagonized the South and instigated the attack on Fort Sumter so he'd have an excuse to go to war.
While it is unfortunate that many Southerners who were not interested in secession went on to die or suffer because of it, their haste to join the war for it is ultimately what allowed it to go on for so long. Were they to oppose it on the Union's side, the war would have surely ended with so much less destruction.
@@tisFrancesfault They were told to get their military out of Confederate territory, and they refused to do so. If the Confederate States were to be independent country then they could not tolerate a foreign army occupying a fort in their territory. This is how foreign policy works. One needn't fire the first shot to start a war.
@@frenchsoldier8485 "these guys are invading my land, destroying my home, and raping and pillaging all the while, let me join them so that the destruction is faster!" Is not a thought that any sane man would think. Say what you want about the morality of the two sides, but that doesn't change the reasons for enlistment.
Lots of short-run TV shows have passionate fan bases that kept the ideas alive.
Anyone who discusses this topic needs to address the cornerstone speech expressing the Confederacy's purpose of secession to found a government on "it's foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery - subordination to the superior race - is his natural and normal condition." [Applause*]
*The Applause tag is from the transcript recorded in the Savannah Republican in March, 1861.
_Anyone who discusses this topic needs to address the cornerstone speech expressing the Confederacy's purpose of secession to found a government on_
Eh, not really. Such statements would have been completely uncontroversial at the time to all but the most rabid Abolitionists.
Lincoln had the same view in regards to the african slave population. Read the speech he made on September 18th, 1858, in Charleston. Or look into his reasons as to why he wanted to repatriate all africans.
If only we could locate a single nation in the world to point to as a counter to that. Somewhere, someplace, there must be an example that supports our modern ideals.
@@greenfrogbad
Politicians lie to get elected, before enacting more progressive things in office. Look at the way Obama discussed gay marriage, JFK spoke of civil rights, or how FDR talked of policies that would most certainly have been called Marxist before he took office.
Hello, @feralhistorian ! Just found your channel, been watching several videos: I like your style and commentary.
Any plans for videos on Hyperion?
Regardless of the actual veracity of the lost cause, it is a very powerful narrative. Taking the best parts of that myth and using them for storytelling was and still is a good idea.
As a Civil War buff, the first time I saw the Firefly episode featuring a black character named Jubal Early my reaction was "Well, that's certainly an interesting and deliberate choice."
I want to note that the Union was not simply trying to "retain territory." Preserving the Union was about preserving a basic fundamental concept of a republic: states aren't allowed to secede, especially not unilaterally, because the majority of their residents disliked the outcome of a presidential election.
"sabotaged by the network"
We hear that a lot about several other shows as well. Can you perhaps talk a bit more about that topic and the reasons behind producing shows only to put them parallel to the SuperBowl or so?
Early on Fox was pretty schizophrenic in their programming. They'd green light all kinds of high concept, or strange shows, only to put them in odd time slots in order to kill them off.
Regime changes within a network are a typical culprit. The new boss wants to make changes, so a bunch of stuff from the previous regime gets axed in favor of new stuff. The Babylon 5 spinoff "Crusade" was hit by that. It was greenlit and shot under a friendly regime, but by the time it was airing, TNT was under new management who hated it.
I have wondered about that that too. Could make sense, but it can't be as common as so many keyboard warriors think it is.
A lot of time it's simply "new suits in charge" syndrome. Nobody wants someone else's pet project to be the superstar.
I've been going through your video catalog all day and really like your channel. And I've been wondering would make a video about Farscape? I would love to see and hear your preceptive on the show.
Someone once mentioned that Firefly feels empty because it's "Star Wars Without Jedi"--and the Prequels feel flat because it's "Star Wars Without Hans Solo". 🤔
Ah yes, acclaimed Norwegian firebrand "Hans Solo"
Disagree. Firefly didn't need magical space wizards. It barely needed the whole "kid with psychic powers" trope, which has been so overdone I just assume it's a crutch for the writers every time it shows up.
Frankly, I think it would be nice to see more sci-fi that doesn't need to rely on weaving woo-woo stuff into the storyline to be entertaining.
@@Emanon... What about famed space outlaw Hans Olo?
@@Green_Tea_Coffee Firefly, like Alien, doesn't even need FtL.
@@zimriel Firefly implied that they have vehicles that can travel a significant fraction of C. Similar to the Epstein Drive from The Expanse. Way faster than what we have now, but much slower than Warp Speed from Star Trek.
The Killer Angels was a phenomenal book. It really drives home some lessons.
The Killer Angels doesn't go into the Confederacy's view of slavery though, making it not entirely honest.
Towards the end you mentioned it will come back... With the cash grabs going on now for nostalgia I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to reboot it for real except do a hack job just for the cash a soulless clone with all the trappings and none of the heart I bet you. Think probably fall out but worse as far as quality maybe we would get The Witcher quality
I always felt that Firefly was a sci-fi telling of a post American Revolution where the colonists had lost the war.
Agrarian, not Pastoral lifestyle.
What's the difference?
Farming vs. Herding
Ahh the 90's-2000's, the golden age of the space western. Now all you have to do is a video on Trigun and you have completed the triple crown.
Actually, the US civil war had a couple of causes: apart from the obvious division between abolitionists and anti-abolitionists, there were also many trade factors both local and international which played a significant role. Add to that sectarianism between rival geographic power blocs for control of congress, and that’s just getting started.
Just....just say slavery.
@@benjackson1454 Life is rarely that simple. It doesn't hurt to be informed of the entire picture.
@@MrDj232 I was making a simpsons reference on what I think is a simpsons reference
@@thedragondemands5186 a major point that is not discuss enough is the literal breakdown of the Democratic Party. Hitting critical mass of the factions that made up the party in the South, with the old school radical anti-federalist wanting secession since the 1830s. In the wake of the 1860 election finally being able to win over the Slave Power along with other minor factions like the Southern whigs who wanted to industrialize the South seeing the war as their opportunity to do so. Building a broad enough coalition within the South to make succession possible.
@@benjackson1454 Slavery it is, sir!
The Feral Historian looks vaguely like Sherman. Time to burn Space Atlanta.
And make those space traitors march in space.
far and away the best media channel on youtube. Please never waste your time with popculture critics like nerdrotic/midnight's edge and just stick to this format!
Maybe the key difference is that I only talk about media that on some level I like. I'll dig into the flaws, but there's still a fondness for it. I'm not interested in just trashing something and there's plenty of people doing that already.
Feral would be an awesome addition to one of Nerdrotic's live streams.
@@feralhistorian unbelievably sick. youre the gold standard for media critics as far as Im concerned
@@Green_Tea_Coffee And share a screen with tards like Shad? Why despoil FH?
Confederate generals (particularly Lee) are hailed as geniuses, but Lee made nearly as many dumb mistakes as some of the lesser Union generals.
Lee had tactics, but lacked strategy, as he was using 18th century warfare against 19th century weapons and strategy by Grant.