#firefly analysis

[homosexual--mothman]

Firefly names

I have an assignment I should be doing, but #whatever. Analysing character names and what they mean is more fun, so we're doing this instead.

Malcolm Reynolds

As River points out in The Train Job, "Mal" means "bad", in the Latin. You can see it used as a prefix in maladaptive, malicious, malnourished, etc. Malcolm, on the other hand, means "devotee of Saint Columbia". So, Mal's full name refers to devotion, and he goes by a nickname that means bad. Because he's a mean old man and he doesn't care about anyone, of course (heavily sarcastic, that man couldn't stop caring if his life was at stake. That's kind of his main issue). Interestingly, you have the protagonist of this franchise going by a nickname that means the opposite of what he is in Latin, and in Serenity (the movie) it's revealed that the Reavers were created by an adverse reaction to the chemical G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate - colloquially referred to as "the Pax", which means "peace" in Latin. Aka the opposite of what it created.

Reynolds means "son of Reynold", which seems to be an alternate version of Reginald. Reginald means "powerful ruler". We don't know a lot about Mal's father, but from how he describes his mother in Our Mrs Reynolds, it seems apt. And of course he is, in his own right, a powerful ruler.

Zoë and Hoban "Wash" Washburne

Now, the Firefly wiki seems to think Zoë's full name is Zoë Alleyne Washburne, but I have no idea where they got Alleyne from. I'm also not sure where they got the umlaut from, since the Official Firefly Companion (at least, my copy of it) has no umlauts to be seen, but it's handy for me because I know a Zoe in real life who doesn't use the umlaut, so the distinction is useful. Anyway, Alleyne seems to mean "handsome" or "noble", as a variant of Allen, but I'll disregard that.

Zoë means "life" in Greek, which is ironic because, as she states when she takes the bullet out of Simon's leg in Objects in Space, "this is really not my area of expertise, doctor. I tend to be putting these into people more than the other thing." Despite this, Zoë seems committed to living. In a deleted scene from Serenity (the episode), she says you never leave Serenity Valley, "you just learn to live there", and she says in The Message that she's not so afraid of losing a child that she won't try and have one. Mal and Zoë both keep fighting, even after the war is over, to live in spite of what's been done to them (much like Simon and River... narrative foils...)

Hoban is a fairly uncommon name, and there seems to be some debate over what it means. The definition I like the most, when it comes to Wash, is "son of Óbán", with Óbán meaning "small stick" or "young". Wash is a fairly childish character, Inara even calls him and Jayne "inconsiderate schoolboys" in Chinese in Objects in Space. This is often emphasised next to Zoë - as is his height. In real life, Alan Tudyk and Gina Torres are both 5'11, but their argument in War Stories is deliberately shot to make him look shorter than her. Jayne would probably make a comment about stick size here.

Washburne means "from the flooding brook", so, despite the common meaning, "Wash" in this context would refer to "the swift moving current of a stream". He is a leaf on the wind, after all. Watch how he soars.

Inara Serra

Fittingly, Inara means "ray of light" or "heaven sent". This one's relatively self-explanatory, but also ties into her faith and Mal's loss of his own, and how that could be affected by a relationship between the two.

Serra, depending on the language, could mean "saw" (in Latin), "greenhouse" (in Italian), or "mountain range" (in Galician, Portuguese, and Catalan). I, personally, go with "mountain range" as my preferred meaning, partially because Morena Baccarin is Brazilian (and the script for Our Mrs Reynolds describes her as "from space Brazil) so a Portuguese last name would make sense. But there's also a sense of grandeur and splendour that mountain ranges invoke, which I think is also invoked by being in Inara's presence. I also think the mix of languages that could've influenced her last name works with the character - you've got a Brazilian actress playing a Buddhist character inspired by Geishas who fairly frequently wears clothing inspired by South Asian garments. Very multicultural.

Jayne Cobb

I've already talked about how I think Jayne's name could indicate that he's trans, and the various reasons why he might not have changed it, though the existence of a seemingly cis man named Tracey does have some interesting implications as to the frequency of men with feminine names (I do like to think of Tracey as also trans, though, so. If I had a nickel). Jayne is an alternate spelling of Jane, which means "God is great/merciful". This ties into Jayne's implied Christianity, as well as providing a point of contrast between him and Mal. Jayne lives a very un-Christlike life, yet maintains his faith, while Mal's morality aligns more with Jesus, but cannot bring himself to think of God as merciful after all he's been through. Also, Jayne is very much ok with sex work (for wildly different reasons than Jesus was) and, for all his vulgar and derogatory language, is shown to be quite personable with the sex worker he sleeps with in Heart of Gold (who is apparently named Helen, though I don't think that's actually said in the episode). Mal, on the other hand, repeatedly calls Inara a whore, while being quite respectful to her as a person separate from her job - the main issue being that Inara doesn't want to be separate from her job. Similar yet different approaches to concepts discussed in religion.

As for Cobb, I couldn't find anything that means other than. Corn. So I guess he's just kind of a corny guy. I'll see myself out. Not yet though I've got more to say.

Kaywinnet Lee Frye

So! Kaywinnet seems to have been made up for Firefly, as far as I can tell, but we can break it down.

Kay could mean "pure", or "wharf", or "key". As Serenity is her beloved ship and/or boat, and her dad's a mechanic, I like to go with the "wharf" meaning, to further demonstrate how seafaring concepts have translated to spacefaring.

Kaywin is a very uncommon variant of Gaius, which means "rejoice" or "to be glad". There ain't a power in the verse that can stop Kaylee from being cheerful. And we can assume the "et" at the end is a version of the "ette" suffix, meaning either the little version or the feminine version. Either works in this case.

Lee means "meadow", which ties into all the floral patterns Kaylee likes.

Frye means "seedling" or "free". I like to go with "free", because that's more or less the whole point of the show.

Simon and River Tam

Simon can mean "listen", "hearing", or "flat-nosed". I like to go with "listen", as he's very, very observant (and his nose isn't really flat). The distinction between listening and hearing can be made with Simon and his parents - Simon listens to what River means, while his parents (willfully or otherwise) only hear what she says. In her letters. Which they read. But you get the idea.

River, of course, refers to rivers, which ties into her becoming copilot after Wash's... retirement. I also wish she and Wash got to bond more, because he's always seemed very sympathetic to her and Simon (as well as also being on the more childish side). Rivers can be quite unpredictable, and dangerous, and house all sorts of creatures, and be prone to overflowing and flooding everyone around them. But they can also be calm, and pretty, and serene, and a source of peace to those around them, and an essential agricultural and environmental feature.

Tam has a few meanings, and is also a name shared between Vietnam and Scotland (do what you will with the genius child prodigy siblings having a partially Asian last name). The most important of which, in my opinion, are "innocent", "honest", "naive", "twin", and "heart". These are also fairly self-explanatory, but they are so very dear to me.

Derrial Book

There's not a lot of room for analysis here, as "Derrial" seems to have been made up for Firefly, and everyone knows what a book is. There is some room to work, though, as you could interpret Book as referring to the Bible, or "getting booked" as in arrested, and I think that duality of meaning sums up his past life and his present life quite well.

[homosexual--mothman]

Saint Jayne, it's got a ring to it!

The highly requested character analysis of Jayne Cobb, in relation to Saint Jane Frances de Chantal (payment in limbs not necessary). Full disclosure, there's not a lot of information about Jane Frances de Chantal, so I did get most of this from Wikipedia.

Before she was a nun, she married a Baron, and she and her husband hosted hunting parties for neighbouring nobles. I don't think Jayne is ever mentioned in canon as being a hunter (ironically, though, Book is), but considering what we know about him, we can extrapolate. He's an expert marksman, he has a lot of guns that he knows a lot about, and he tracked Mal and Zoë before he joined their crew. It's unclear how many skills used in tracking Mal and Zoë could translate to tracking prey, I suspect it would largely be determined by whether he followed them from planet to planet or if it all took place on the one planet*, but it certainly gels with his character that he'd enjoy hunting. I also imagine it would be a source of food, considering pretty much everyone on Serenity is poor, and yet Jayne still sends money home to his family, indicating that his family is also not exactly well off.

*side note here, Jayne's Firefly wiki page says Jayne's old crew tried to rob Mal and Zoë on Caliban, and then on Caliban's wiki page says that it's the sole moon of Miranda, and is only occupied by Reavers? It's been a while since I've watched Serenity (the movie) so I don't remember if it's ever said when the Reavers were created, and Out of Gas never specifies when Jayne joined the crew, but that doesn't exactly gel with the events of Serenity? Also, Serenity says that Miranda is constantly surrounded by Reavers, but it orbits the edge of an occupied system? That never quite made sense to me. But anyway, I digress. Back to Jayne and Jane.

Jane's order, the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, stood out for two reasons: its acceptance of old and sick women, who'd been turned away from other orders, and it's public outreach, while the standard for nunneries was seclusion and self-discipline. And, as we all know, Jayne was hired for public relations!

When criticised for accepting sick and old women, Jane famously said "What do you want me to do? I like sick people myself; I'm on their side." We know Jayne's sibling, Mattie*, was sick with the damp lung and, presumably, had been for some time when he got that letter (given the use of "still"), and Jayne's money helped treat them, which many have interpreted as Mattie being chronically ill. In real life, there's Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, colloquially known as "wet lung", which causes severe shortness of breath, as well as everything else that comes with not getting enough oxygen. It can be caused by sepsis, pneumonia, covid, major injuries, breathing in harmful substances, and more, and is often fatal (though getting less so as treatment improves). If Mattie had a fatal illness, there likely would've been more information and a more serious tone to the letter, and "damp" tends to indicate less liquid than "wet". This leads me to believe that "damp lung" is a less fatal ailment, potentially chronic rather than acute, maybe caused by some terraforming quirk, like Bowden's malady. This is a very long-winded way of saying that Jayne obviously does help at least one sick person, and I think he'd be able to look at any sick kid and see his sibling in them. Similarly, no matter how much he pushes it down and pretends he doesn't care, he does have his own code, and has several crises of conscience throughout 14 episodes. Had he been raised in a world that allowed room for empathy, where survival was more of a given and didn't have to take precedence, I think his attitude would be similar to Jane's.

*another side note - presumably this was intended to be a nickname for Matthew, but it occurred to me the other night that it could also be short for Matilda, and now that's stuck with me.

The idea of accepting specifically outcasted women also ties in well to my trans Jayne headcanon. While I think Jayne leans into misogyny in order to try and pass (more common than it should be), I do think growing up as a girl and seeing how the women around him were treated would have affected him, as well as the period of time a lot of trans men and trans mascs go through where we've transitioned socially and maybe we've started transitioning medically, but we don't pass, so we're just seen as dysfunctional women - not to mention growing up as a girl and knowing there's something "wrong" with you, and hearing it described as a sickness.

Also, the name Jane means "God is great/merciful", which goes well with Jayne having faith despite living a very un-Christlike life, while Mal's morality is much more aligned with Jesus, but, due to his experiences in the war, he does not think God is merciful. At all. I should do a full post about their names actually.

Honestly I didn't think I was going to get much out of this analysis, because of the lack of information about Jane Frances de Chantal and because Jayne is.... not very saintly, but anything can relate back to my hyperfixation if I try hard enough.

[homosexual--mothman]

Melted away: The slow loneliness of Ozu's Late Spring and Whedon's Firefly

(this is an essay I wrote for uni, that I thought might be of interest to people here too. It's the first draft before I had to cut things down because I was 200 words over the limit, so it's unrefined and a bit rambly. Enjoy!)

Yasujirô Ozu’s Late Spring (1949) is a classic example of slow cinema, about a young woman named Noriko who lives with her father, Shukichi, and must move out and get married because, despite this going against both of their wishes, both believe that this is the best choice for the other. It demonstrates loneliness, societal misogyny, and emphasises the importance of communication to maintain healthy relationships.

Firefly is a space Western about a firefly-class spaceship called Serenity and her crew. Its eighth episode, Out of Gas (Minear & Solomon, 2002), and fourteenth episode, Objects in Space (Whedon, 2002), both deal with the physical and emotional isolation of two of the show’s main characters – the ship’s Captain Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds, a war veteran, and fugitive River Tam, a traumatised teenager who was tortured in a government facility.

On the surface, these seem to be very different stories. Ozu’s films tend to focus on the mundanity of family life in post-war Japan, while, by the very nature of Firefly, something dramatic is always happening, and someone ends up either at gunpoint or actually shot every episode. However, they both deal with loneliness in similar ways, utilising score and cinematography as well as narrative to display this. Additionally, Late Spring’s setting of post-war Japan, occupied by the Allied forces, allows for comparisons to Firefly’s Allied Government, which Mal and his crew spend the show trying to avoid. In Late Spring, Noriko is recovering from health issues caused by forced labour during the war, while River is recovering from government experimentation, both being forced into lives that would appear miserable to others, but make them the happiest they’ll ever be – Noriko taking care of Shukichi and River on the run.

Ozu utilises long, frequent shots of the exterior in Late Spring, emphasizing the isolated nature of his characters’ ambitions – Noriko and Shukichi are both happy where they are, but are led to believe they must change because their wants go against the wishes of society. Similarly, in Out of Gas, there are many shots of broken-down Serenity – the usually lively, lit up ship is no longer soaring through space, it no longer shows the characteristic fire that gives the ship its insect-esque appearance and name. Williams (2009) notes the emphasis on interior and exterior as a key motif in Late Spring, alongside the beauty of movement - which, in Out of Gas is highlighted by the fact that Serenity is not moving, using what is not there to remind you of what should be.

These long shots also create what Pigott refers to as the “continuous present” (2008), emphasising key moments in the narrative through the movement of time. Out of Gas presents the story out of order, oscillating between Mal’s struggle to repair the ship, the events that brought him to this point, and how he met the people he came to call his crew. This creates narrative parallels between the characters and their relationships – specifically, how important these specific people are. Any old pilot, mechanic, or hired gun would not have created the family Mal has today – nor would they have risked their own lives to save his.

Late Spring also features the famous Vase shot – an ornate creation shown in two long cutaway shots. Noriko looks at her sleeping father, the camera cuts to the vase, it cuts to Noriko staring at the ceiling, it cuts back to the vase, and back to Noriko, this time crying. Nornes (2007) discusses different interpretations of the vase, suggesting that it represents another reality through stasis, or perhaps acts as a container for the viewer’s emotions, and concluding that to definitively define the vase “would perhaps signify the end of the discipline itself” (Nornes, 2007). In this way, the derelict Serenity serves the same functions as the vase – static, holding, and completely subjective. Kerimov & Kerimov (2014) suggest that the vase represents several dichotomies, such as between life and death. Serenity shows this through the contrast between her usual colourful, glowing self, and the broken-down husk drifting across the screen.

Firefly’s loneliest episodes both focus on one central facet of loneliness – you’re all alone, and no one can help you, directly referred to in both by Mal. This can be seen on two levels – physical and emotional. In Out of Gas, a key part of Serenity breaks down, knocking Mal’s fellow veteran Zoe unconscious and leaving the ship with no life support, so Mal sends the crew off in shuttles while he stays with the ship, just in case someone picks up their distress signal. He successfully fixes the ship, but gets injured in the process, and passes out before he can call them back. When Zoe wakes up, she demands her shuttle returns, saving Mal’s life. In Objects in Space, bounty hunter Jubal Early parks his ship just out of view of Serenity and infiltrates the ship to capture River, holding her brother Simon hostage for his help, while she sneaks her way onto his ship, and has to covertly use the crew to enact her plan.

On a physical level, the loneliness of the episodes is reliant on the vastness of space. When the ship breaks down in Out of Gas, they can’t call for help or get a spare part, because they’re the only ship for miles, and only a fluke chance gets them what they need – and also gets Mal shot. In Objects in Space, Jubal Early’s appearance comes directly after Mal says “We’re deep in space, corner of No and Where… we’re very much alone out here.” Firefly does something rare and scientifically accurate when it comes to shots of space – it’s completely silent, allowing only for the score and any communication between spacesuits. There’s no whooshing ships, no loud bangs of weapons firing or explosions, just the vacuum – after all, in space, no one can hear you scream.

This is emphasized in Out of Gas through Serenity’s breakdown. It is simply drifting, devoid of all light and life, and shots inside show only Mal in cold blue light trying to save his dying ship while maintaining his own life. In addition, the score of the episode utilises haunting strings with long, slow notes, in contrast with the usual fast fiddle and guitar emblematic of the show’s Western aesthetic, mirroring the shot lengths of Ozu’s slow cinema.

In Objects in Space, the loneliness of space is emphasised through bounty hunter Jubal Early’s entrance – they’re supposed to be all alone out there, and the horror comes from the revelation that they’re not. Kristeva’s conception of the abject (1980/1982) describes it as the subversion of societal boundaries and expectations; “It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection, but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.” (p. 4). To apply this to Firefly, the definition must be twisted, only a little – Jubal Early’s appearance on Serenity is disturbing because he’s not supposed to be there; he subverts the idea that there’s no one around, the safety of empty space.

In Out of Gas, Mal’s emotional loneliness is exemplified through his trauma, and attachment to the ship he named after the battle in which he thinks he lost everything that made him, him – he’s found this again in his crew, but the one person who went through that battle with him, his fellow veteran Zoe, spends the episode unconscious. When she wakes up, it’s her return that saves his life. Without her, he’s emotionally isolated with no one to understand his experiences, and no one to help him live with them.

River, on the other hand, has no one who shares her traumas, and very limited ability to communicate them. In Objects in Space, she is alone on Early’s ship, and while she can communicate with the rest of the crew, she is cut off from the one person who comes closest to understanding her; she cannot communicate her plan to Simon without alerting Early, leading to his distress and attempt to save her, getting shot in the leg as a result. Her plan coming together requires the entire crew to trust her, even if they don’t understand why she’s asking them to act, or not act, and believe that she knows what she’s doing. Her insecurities plague the episode, believing she is a burden on the crew, especially her brother, and these insecurities get reinforced with the other characters’ fear of her – but, when push comes to shove, they are all more than willing to endanger themselves to save her life. The happy ending requires the correction of her insecurities, the idea that while no one on the ship knows for sure how to help her, they will do their best regardless.

In contrast, Noriko’s plight is emphasized by the societal expectations that she settle down and get married. She struggles, in part, because even the women around her believe that marriage is her best option, and manages to convince her father of that too. While Firefly shows nine people living together outside of society and finding happiness in that, Late Spring shows the damage that society can do to both families and individuals. In a way, Noriko and River are two sides of the same coin – one embraced by the people around her despite the expectations otherwise, and one sent away in an attempt to protect her. Parks (2016) suggests that Noriko represents an “uneasy co-existence of pervasive national nostalgia and the drive for social (as well as technological and economic) progress” that defined post-war Japan. Following this, in the context of Firefly’s worldbuilding, River – as a child prodigy from a wealthy family – represents the better life promised by the Alliance, while the torment she has endured represents the cost of that life, creating a sense of dissonance in the characters around her. Unlike Late Spring, where Noriko is coerced to change, River is embraced and accepted by her newfound crew.

As such, Mal’s loneliness in Out of Gas is reflected in Shukichi’s loneliness in Late Spring. Mal pushes his crew away because he believes he has to, or they will get hurt because of him, and Shukichi pushes Noriko away because he believes marriage will be her best option, and to keep her at home would do her a disservice. Iles (2008) writes that Ozu’s films “centre around the figure of the father as the patriarchal figure of the family” and “examine the social/temporal forces causing change in both that pillar and the family as a whole”. Though the crew of Serenity are not a nuclear family and are largely unrelated, Mal – both as the Captain and through his parallels with River’s biological father – is shown as the patriarchal figure of the show. The main social force affecting his particular situation include his own past as a war veteran – on the losing side, no less – which has marred his ability to trust others and let people in. In Late Spring, of course, the main social force is the expectation of marriage, but the reason Noriko has remained unmarried for so long is due to her poor health after forced labour during the war. Bock (1978) and Bordwell (1988) both discuss the Japanese concept of amae, the dependency of a child on a parent, and Ozu’s emphasis on the necessary severance of that dependency, while still acknowledging that the pain of growing up may be inevitable, it is pain, nonetheless.