bz316 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2023 11:54 amMeanwhile, the only things we explicitly know about the Alliance (based on what we see and hear) are that they have parliamentary democracy, freedom of religion, and a robustly-patrolled network of interstellar trade.
And River's being abducted by people who cut up her brain. I grant you, you shouldn't judge American society by the actions of the CIA, or the Alliance by its equivalent, but we see Alliance people doing all sorts of unsympathetic things in the show, and they're clearly not virtuous and heroic either.
To be clear, I never said the Alliance was "good," just that the degree to which it was "bad" was an open question. I'm not saying what was done to River was okay, but as you point out we don't know the extent to which it was actually authorized (or even known) by the wider government until the movie, nor the reasons for it. All we really know about River, beyond her being a genius, is that she is also apparently some kind of telepath (something that does not appear to be widespread in this universe). Was the impetus for what was done to her some kind of nefarious military experiment? Was it some kind of attempt to contain her and understand how her abilities might be a threat to the wider population (i.e., well-intentioned extremism)?
Again, the main reason I liked the show was this ambiguity. How bad was the Alliance? How good were our protagonists? Were the Browncoats heroes fighting for freedom, or was that a self-serving cover for a vile political philosophy? Was River the victim of an evil black-ops organization trying to increase their power, or by a group of people who were using extreme (and unethical) methods to prevent a threat to the wider population? All of this marvelous ambiguity was wiped away by the black and white moralizing of the movie...
I agree with you. I think an excellent real world example would be the ''Tuskegee Syphilis Study'' where hundreds of black men with syphilis were left to die basically just to see what would happen - the worst part of it being that by the end of the study syphilis was curable and yet the poor bastards involved in the study weren't told. And if this sounds like something the Nazi's would do then you're wrong - it was the US Public Health Service between 1932 and 1972.
Now... picture for a moment that the US was a fictional country and you were writing a story with this experiment as the focal point. No one would argue that this country you've created MUST be a vicious and tyrannical state with no freedom because no decent and moral country would allow such a thing to happen. And yet in real life, this was an experiment conducted by relatively few people and when it was made public (through investigative journalism and not via official release it should be noted) the majority response was outrage.
The fact is that one or two grossly shitty things does not mean that your entire country is gross and shitty. It just means that there are forces within it that need to be stopped. And I think that the series conveyed this far better than the film.
I find it funny, that the show heavily leans on the US Civil War in terms of setup and, possibly unintentionally, effectively picks up stuff like the Lost Cause myth, the War of Northern Agression and Lincoln being an authoritarian dictator by proxy. Funnily enough, this means that Mel and the Browncoats are the Confederates, with everything this implies about who the good guys actually were. Hint: The hicks who prefered the wild west, where they can shoot first and ask questions later and can treat people however they like, quite likely aren't the good ones.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
A comparison to the Confederacy would be inappropriate, though - only people who had an axe to grind insisted that there was a connection, as viewers of the show were well aware it was spurious.
It was the Alliance that decided to settle new worldlets as cheaply as possible by dumping people off with limited supplies and pioneer-level tools and wait a hundred years for them to build up an industrial base by themselves. If they didn't want people to resent them, and develop their own sense of ownership of their worldlets, they should have engaged with their development more actively.
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- George Orwell, 1984
Frustration wrote: ↑Sat Feb 18, 2023 9:12 pm
A comparison to the Confederacy would be inappropriate, though - only people who had an axe to grind insisted that there was a connection, as viewers of the show were well aware it was spurious.
It was the Alliance that decided to settle new worldlets as cheaply as possible by dumping people off with limited supplies and pioneer-level tools and wait a hundred years for them to build up an industrial base by themselves. If they didn't want people to resent them, and develop their own sense of ownership of their worldlets, they should have engaged with their development more actively.
Depends on the circumstances. If the people settling them knew what they were signing up for and weren't being coerced it doesn't sound so bad.
The Alliance is modeled after the worst aspects of both the US and China. All of the interactions with the Alliance in the show are negative. It doesn't care about the good of the settlers; the only difference between it and the slaveholding jerks are that the slaveholders get a more immediate benefit from the people they're using.
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- George Orwell, 1984
Frustration wrote: ↑Sat Feb 18, 2023 9:12 pm
A comparison to the Confederacy would be inappropriate, though - only people who had an axe to grind insisted that there was a connection, as viewers of the show were well aware it was spurious.
It was the Alliance that decided to settle new worldlets as cheaply as possible by dumping people off with limited supplies and pioneer-level tools and wait a hundred years for them to build up an industrial base by themselves. If they didn't want people to resent them, and develop their own sense of ownership of their worldlets, they should have engaged with their development more actively.
And who is our source for that? Mel? Other Browncoats or Browncoat-sympathisers...
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
