Tyree's Tuppence

by Tyree Campbell

Eta Kooram Nah Smech!

Okay, for those of you still awake, let's have a quick show of hands:  how many of you liked the Firefly series and its culminative movie Serenity?

One, two, three, four, . . . wow, 28,337,868.  That's a popular show/movie.  Add me to the list, please.  And indeed, what's not to like?  It's classic science fiction [i.e., about actual persons, whole and entire].  It's societal iconoclasm.  It's disrespectful and subversive.  It has all the qualities we admire and wish we could emulate. 

. . . wish we could emulate, if we but had the cojones.

Didn't you just love some of the scenes?  Omg!

Simon Tam, about to repeat the subliminal sleep command that knocks River Tam out, and Jayne Cobb standing up and backing away nervously, saying "Don't say it!" and Zoe telling Jayne that it only works on River.  "Well, now I know that," says Jayne, mollified.

As the disabled ship Serenity approaches a planet, Wash [the pilot] says this is going to get interesting, and Mal [the captain] says, "Define interesting."  Wash replies, "Oh God oh God we're all gonna die?"  Mal:  "Just get us on the ground."  Wash:  "That part'll happen pretty definitely."

Jayne Cobb, the show's resident badass ruffian ["I'll kill a man in a fair fight.  Or if I think he's going to start a fair fight."], in the episode Jaynestown, struggling to come to grips with an understanding of himself and realizing his limitations:  that there are things about people, about what motivates them, including himself, that he can never understand, they are beyond his ken, and yet he wants soooo badly to understand them . . . and the great tragedy is that he cannot.  He does not possess that particular synapse in his brain that will connect events to understandings.  He is a man out of his depth, lost now.  What a great, great portrayal by Adam Baldwin, and what a magnificent job director Joss Whedon did to pull that portrayal out of him.

Mal, upon seeing a shrine in Inara's home [she's a highly educated courtesan]:  "Dear Buddha, please bring me a pony and a plastic rocket."  [Oh, did you miss that?  It's in the scene in Serenity where he comes to rescue her from The Operative].

River Tam, standing with blooded sword and battleaxe, the light from the exploding wall behind her shining through her translucent clothing, and she looks so vulnerable and yet utterly the most dangerous living thing in the 'Verse.  Freeze-frame that one scene for all time.  Print that poster.  You probably will never see anything more lambent with raw emotional power. 

The scene where Jayne Cobb finally comes to accept Simon Tam.  At the planning conference, when Mal has decided what they will do about the planet Miranda, and asks them to participate--and Jayne says he's in, and takes a swig from a bottle of beer . . . and then slides it across the table to Simon Tam.  [Oh, you missed that, too?  Well, you know where to find it now].

And so many more.  So, do these bring back memories?  I hope so.  Because now the question is:  what was Firefly/Serenity about?

Oh, dear.  Was that a huh? I heard?

Well, you might say, it was about this collection of smugglers, see, different sorts of people with different backgrounds, doing smuggling stuff and staying clear of the authorities as best they could.  The leader, Malcolm Reynolds, was a member of the losing side in the war between the Alliance and the Outer Planets.  Now he's scuffling money, any way he can, just so he and his crew can keep on keepin' on.  The Alliance is after them because the runaway River Tam is a secret weapon against the bad guys [the Reavers, who are, for lack of a better description, men gone completely mad] and because she is a psychic who knows some of the Alliance's secrets.  And all y'all know how politicians is about their dirty little secrets, right?

Well . . . sorry, that's not what Firefly/Serenity was about.  That was merely the vehicle by which the theme was presented.

Firefly/Serenity is an archetypical, quintessential confrontation between the free individual and tyranny.  Firefly/Serenity is "everyman" Malcolm Reynolds, the captain of the firefly-class ship Serenity, defiantly proclaiming to the powers-that-be in the 'Verse:  "You will not tell me how to live!"

Well, now.  One of the purposes of science fiction is, simply, this:  to "see" the present, and from it project what could happen in the future.

Let's start by looking at the present.  Let's consider the issue of smoking cigarettes as it relates to freedom and democracy. 

First, freedom and democracy, as Heinlein pointed out, are not parallel concepts.  Rather, democracy and tyranny are parallel concepts.  In tyranny, one person rules and is always right, by force of arms.  In democracy, the majority rules and is always right, by force of numbers.  Freedom in either system is at best an illusion, for it is totally dependent upon the good will and benevolence of the one or of the many who hold power.

Second, for the purposes of this essay please set aside all your prejudices, biases, and antipathies for those who smoke cigarettes [no, I don't smoke either, but that's hardly the point].  Remember, we're looking at smoking as it relates to freedom and democracy.

There is at the present time a major effort on the part of the several States in the U.S. to reduce smoking by raising the cigarette tax to exorbitant rates.  The stated goal is to discourage the young from smoking by making it too expensive, but this is a straw argument [laws already prohibit people under 18 from buying, possessing, or smoking cigarettes; enforcement of these laws will suffice to discourage them].  The real purpose is to obliterate the habit.  More specifically, the purpose is to enable those who a, do not smoke and b, who do not think others should smoke, and c, who have power, to prevent those who do smoke [a legal activity, incidentally] from doing so, by pulling an economic gun on them.

With me so far?

Now, each state has a legislature.  The citizens of each state elect representatives to their respective legislatures.  In theory these representatives represent the interests of their constituents--the citizens of their respective districts--in the legislature. 

The constituents of any district include non-smokers and smokers.  The rough figures I recall seeing hold that about 1/3 of adults of smoking age actually smoke, so I feel safe in saying that, across the board, in any given district, non-smokers outnumber smokers by two to one. 

Legislators, representing their constituents, vote on laws to increase the state tax on cigarettes.  But non-smokers have no material or economic interests to represent in the matter of a tax on cigarettes, because regardless of the increase, it will not . . . it cannot affect them, because they do not purchase cigarettes.  Non-smokers, then, have no material or economic interests for the legislator to represent.  In breve, the elected representative cannot represent his or her non-smoking constituents, because there is nothing to represent. 

In the matter of a state cigarette tax, only the smokers have material and economic interests to be represented by their respective representatives. 

Most of these state cigarette tax increases either have been passed or are about to be passed.

Passage means that the majority of elected representatives in the various legislatures not only have utterly failed to represent the interests of the only constituents who have a material and economic interest in the matter--those elected officials have in effect disrepresented those constituents.  Those elected officials have in effect chosen to do the opposite of representing the only constituents who have a material and economic interest in the matter.  Those constituents have been denied the representation to which they are entitled.

Now, go back to what I said earlier about the motives of those who empower the increase in cigarette taxes.  The purpose of the tax is to enable those who do not smoke and who do not think anyone else should smoke to prevent others from smoking. 

It is, apparently, no longer up to the individual to decide whether he or she will smoke. 

Smokers are easy targets, however.  Everybody hates them.  They are the n-worders of the 21^st Century.  It’s easy to legislate against them.  What's next?  Chocolate?  Big Macs?  Beer?  Do you think taxing these items is absurd?  Already there's a movement toward a "fat tax" against fattening fast foods found in the burger franchises.  It's not so absurd.  And the movement against smokers is setting the precedent.   We are well on our way to compulsory social engineering.  No smoking.  No Big Macs.  No chocolate. 

No beef?  No cheese?  No cookies?

No sex?

If we are in the middle of a great grand experiment in social engineering [and yes, we are], what is the projected end result?  Firefly/Serenity poses one answer to that question.

See, here's what happens in the future.  These are the opening words from Serenity, spoken by a teacher of what might be the equivalent of a 4th or 5th grade class:

"Earth that was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many. We found a new solar system, dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Each one terraformed, a process taking decades, to support human life, to be new Earths. The Central Planets formed the Alliance. Ruled by an interplanetary parliament, the Alliance was a beacon of civilization. The savage outer planets were not so enlightened and refused Alliance control. The war was devastating, but the Alliance's victory over the Independents ensured a safer universe. And now everyone can enjoy the comfort and enlightenment of our civilization."

River Tam, a precocious young girl whose abilities soon attract the attention of those who run the Alliance, disagrees.  She says, "People don't like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome."

To which the teacher responds that the Alliance doesn't want to tell people what to think, it "just wants to show them how." 

You'll note that any time anyone tries to minimize what he or she does by limiting it with the word "just," mendacity and deception are involved somewhere.

[Mother:  Timmy, how did the lamp get broken?

Timmy:  I was just rolling the ball to the doggie.]

Been there . . .

Later in the movie we see the horrible extent of the Alliance's "meddling."  The crew of Serenity finds a world called Miranda, where a great grand social experiment had taken place some years before--where there are now some thirty million corpses.  A holographic record has been made of the last minutes of this experiment.  Here's what the recorder has to say:

"These are just a few of the images we've recorded. And you can see, it wasn't what we thought. There's been no war here and no terraforming event. The environment is stable. It's the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's 30 million people here, and they all just let themselves die."

That's social engineering.  That's the future of non-smoking.  Here's what Malcolm Reynolds has to say about it, to drive that point home:

"Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."

That's what Serenity was about.

Anyone else out there beside me want to misbehave?

Past Tuppence:
June 2007
March 2007
December 2006
September 2006
June 2006
March 2006
December 2005
September 2005
June 2005
March 2005
December 2004
September 2004
June 2004
March 2004
December 2003
September 2003
June 2003
March 2003
December 2002
October 2002
August 2002
June 2002
April 2002
February 2002
December 2001
October 2001
August 2001

Read more from Tyree Campbell in any of the following:

The Dog at the Foot of the Bed
by Tyree Campbell

Wondrouse Web Worlds Vol. 6

The Martian Women
by Tyree Campbell

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 5

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 4

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 3

Sex and the Single Alien
An anthology

Nyx
A novel by Tyree Campbell

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 2