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iluvroadrunner6) wrote2008-05-14 07:46 pm
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2008-05-14 07:46 pm
The Housewife and the Prostitute
This is the paper I wrote for my class concerning Inara and Saffron and their role in the traditional Western genre. It's a bit long, but I like the way it came out, and people said they wanted to read it so...here it is.
In Joss Whedon’s space opera Firefly, and the subsequent movie, Serenity, the audience follows the journeys of Captain Mal Reynolds and his crew as they find jobs and try to make a living, all the while staying under the radar of the Alliance. Most of their jobs involve smuggling or some other kind of illegal trade that require them to keep out of the government’s way. While very futuristic and space oriented, this work by Whedon fits nicely into the Western genre, with several characters who very much fit the archetypical characters of the traditional Western film on first glance. However, delving deeper, it is easily shown that these characters are more complex and three-dimensional than their traditional Western counterparts, and the same can be said of the women of the series as well. Also, in terms of certain stereotypes of the genre concerning women and their role in the new frontier of space, while some thing have remained true to their genre, having changed drastically giving women a much more equal fighting ground than that of their counterparts in the older, more classic Western films. Through the characters of Saffron and Inara, Whedon places aside the typical use for women in the genre in either their profession or position in family unit, and creates a new kind of standard for the archetypes that they’re representing.
Traditionally the women of Western films have been flat, two dimensional characters with a specific purpose. For example, there’s the chaste housewife, who takes care of the family, or there’s the woman of Mexican or Indian descent who’s on the outskirts of society, not accepted by anyone, and just meant to play the part of the troublemaker, or, of course, the prostitute, usually a gold-digger-esque character, who’s just looking to make her way up in society, rather than stay where she is. Most of these roles, including that of the prostitute, usually lack sensuality or sexuality, and are more expected just to be taken as they are, without any real development or depth. They are also seen more as property, a commodity rather than a full person in the view. They’re used as bargaining chips as well as bait, the consistent damsel in distress, always looking to be rescued. Whedon’s female characters, however, take on a much more three dimensional form, adding a much more feminine and realistic touch to the characters, making them seem more like people and less defined by their profession or who they’re expected to be on initial encounter.
One of the clearest examples of a remolding of the traditional roles is the recurring character of Saffron, who appeared in two episodes of the series, “Our Mrs. Reynolds” and “Trash.” In the former, Saffron is introduced as a con-artist, tricking a very drunk Mal Reynolds, the captain, into marrying her in order to get on board Serenity, the ship, and steal it out from under him. She originally plays herself into the traditional role of the frontier bride, shy and sheltered, not having experienced much outside of the small settlement planet that she had grown up on, and the interaction she has with Mal, her ‘husband’, is very indicative of the attitude taken towards women in this new breed of Western. In one of their initial conversations with each other, Saffron consistently refers to herself as property of the man she’s married to, to be disposed of if she isn’t pleasing to him, and to be treated as he deems fair. Reynolds quickly dispenses this idea, telling her that if someone tries to kill her she should try to kill them right back, and that she was no one’s property but her own, saying that she is “no one’s property to be tossed aside. You have the right, same as anyone, to live and try to kill people” (Our Mrs. Reynolds). Women are no longer the homemakers on the new frontier. They’re very much their own entity, making their own way in the world, same as the men—maybe not in the same ways, but the same intent is found in both of them. As Saffron’s deception is elaborated upon, she slips into the various roles she plays like a glove, showing her training in body language and artistic skill, something that hasn’t been delved into much in the films of the past. Eventually, the crew manages to thwart her intentions and keep their ship, but that doesn’t change the fact that her role in the film was different from those of the women in the past. When Saffron reappears in “Trash,” she has acquired another husband, and when she’s outted as a con-artist, she manages to convince Reynolds’s crew to work with her on a job, despite the fact that they very clearly don’t trust her. Through the course of the job, they encounter someone who Reynolds hypothesizes to be Saffron’s first husband, her real husband, and the confrontation there speaks to how the role of women has changed, or for the most part taken a turn for the ambiguous in Saffron’s hands. Her moves are not predictable to anyone who may be watching, whether they be the spectator in the audience, or someone who’s actually interacting with her. When Durran Haymer, her husband, comes face to face with who she really is, she accuses him of being naïve, and thinking more of her than she was:
The woman who’s purpose is in the home, and tending to the matters of the home, has faded from this conception of the genre, creating a new kind of woman, who’s able to branch out on her own and create her own niche on the world, where she works for what she wants, rather than having to compromise with the current man in her life.
Saffron is also not above combining her sexuality and the expected behavior of her position to her advantage. This is more clearly shown in “Our Mrs. Reynolds,” when she’s still playing the part of the shy, sheltered girl, where she places herself in situations where she can flaunt both her sexuality, and her supposed naivety all at the same time. At first she plays the part of the typical Western wife—cooking for her husband, waiting on him almost hand and foot—while slowly gaining the crews trust and in some situations, friendship, and slowly getting the captain, her sudden husband, to be more comfortable with her. On the first night that she spends aboard Serenity, she ‘prepares herself to have her wedding night with her husband’ by undressing and surprising him in his bunk. Reynolds is left both torn between his natural instinct to mate, as well as his moral compass saying that this would not be the best idea for his conscience. Saffron plays the captain with a toy, lacing her words with nuances and innuendo, as she takes the Bible, what’s supposedly an instrument of moral directionality, and turns it into a much more sensuous tool:
Saffron, as a character, takes the purity and expected moral center of the Western housewife, and turns the situation to suit her circumstances, and playing it in just the right way to cloud the judgment of those around her and what’s expected of her. The men of the ship become enamored with her, including Jayne Cobb, the hired muscle of the ship who offers to trade his best gun, Vera, in exchange for the girl, while the women of the ship, specifically Inara Serra and Zoe Washbourne, immediately peg her as trouble, not letting themselves fall for the act she’s presenting. Saffron’s character takes the role of the housewife, and manipulates it in interesting ways in order to find the advantage in a situation and spin out what she considers the best result for her.
Another character who twists their stereotypical role in an interesting way is that of Inara Serra, the ship’s companion. While ‘compainion’ at first glance, seems like a colloquial term for a high class space hooker, that is very much not the case here. Serra is less akin to a prostitute and more to that of a courtesan, adding an element of culture, refinery, and status to the service she is providing. Companions, for one, are a legal business, held highly in most societies, and companions are subjected to rigorous health and medical tests every year in order to stay licensed. Reynolds also comments on the fact that “there are plenty of planets that won’t let you dock without a decent companion on board” (Serenity). She adds an air of respectability to what may not be considered an otherwise respectable situation, as opposed to what has been shown to be the other way around—where women who are involved in forms of prostitution, whatever the case may be, take away from the respectability of the vessel. Serra is also clearly the most educated and cultured of the crew, save for Simon Tam and possibly Shepard Book, who initially are more passengers than actual members. She speaks with a very clear and distinct air, one of accomplishment and culture. What distinguishes her the most from other examples of her profession in the genre, is the way she conducts her business. Though she receives many offers to stay and be a personal companion to some of her clientele, she refuses all of them, preferring to travel and see the world rather than stay with someone for money or status. Most women in the situation of prostitution are looking to climb the social ladder, find someone with money and status and attach themselves to them, but Serra prefers to travel and make her own choices, giving her the freedom and allowances to choose both her own clients and where she would like to go in order to perform the services that she does.
However, despite her elevated position in society, she still faces some of the same pitfalls that traditional forms of prostitution have faced in the past. Though being a companion is a well respected profession, the same connections are made in the eyes of those she encounters, mostly men. Reynolds repeatedly calls her a whore to her face, and openly mocks her profession to whoever will listen, not taking it seriously despite the level it is held in most of the core planets. Also, he consistently puts his own business needs ahead of hers, keeping her away from places where she can find “respectable” clientele, but this example might be more of a combination of situation and clear unspoken attraction between her and Reynolds, rather than a side effect of her job. She is also treated more like an object than a person, a behavior most clearly illustrated in the behavior of Atherton Wing, one of her clients that appeared in the episode “Shindig,” as well as the Magistrate of Canton, who was encountered in the episode “Jaynestown.” In the situation with Wing, the man was incredibly possessive Serra, someone who he had deemed “his,” that he had bought and paid for several days, an attitude which lead to an altercation with Reynolds, bringing Serra to question her captain’s sense of nobility:
While Reynolds points out that he does, indeed, respect Inara as a human being—it’s clear at this point in their relationship that the way he conveys the fact that he does have feelings for her is to invade her personal space or cause confrontation with her—but her profession is still not one he supports or condones. In the encounter with the magistrate, Magistrate Higgins hires her to deflower his twenty-six year-old son—clearly without his sons consent or desire, for that matter—but completely disregards the intricacies of her profession, and focuses more on the sexual aspect. When he brings his son to Inara with the intent of making sure he had sex, and finds her preparing tea instead, he disregards the culture and customs that go along with procuring a companion, and thinks that she’s getting away from the point of her visit:
The companion training and experience, for lack of a better word, is more than just sex, yet it’s consistently reduced to just that, casting aside the respectability and status that come with her job, and reducing it to that of just a whore, until Inara gets fed up and throws the magistrate out, so that she can do her job as she was trained to do. Despite the fact that the job is not considered as lowly as it used to be, it still faces the same challenges and low personal opinion that it did in the days of it’s earlier counterparts.
Though, in tribute to the fact that Serra’s job is more than just sex, she also serves as something of an emotional support system for other members of the crew, especially with Shepard Book, whom she develops a distanced friendship with. Because Shepard is a member of the clergy, it’s clear he doesn’t approve of Serra’s way of life, but they soon develop a connection over their shared mission, if you will, of trying to figure out Captain Reynolds. Serra, who has been on the ship longer, tries to offer her own bit of insight to Book’s experiences with the man, but even she herself admits that she’s “not certain she’ll ever actually know the captain” (The Train Job). She and the Shepard form an emotional bond of sorts, similar to the one that she shares with other members of the crew. She’s very close friends with Kaylee Frye, the ship’s mechanic, as well as a sparring partner with Mal, and she shares a friendly relationship with Hoban “Wash” Washbourne, the ship’s pilot, and his wife Zoe, who is Reynold’s second in command. She even starts to grow close to Simon and River Tam, who seem to be the most out of place characters on the ship, bringing the whole crew together in some shape or form.
Despite the fact that both Serra and Saffron are placed into typical roles in the Western genre, it’s made clear that they play much more of an intricate role aboard Serenity than they did back in the plains of the old West. By creating characters that both play into the classic roles created for them in the Western genre as well as breaking the mold in many ways, Whedon has created a character that lives and breathes as her own three dimensional self, rather than dealing with a two dimensional, more flat character, that depends upon the actions of others in order to make her way in the world.
In Joss Whedon’s space opera Firefly, and the subsequent movie, Serenity, the audience follows the journeys of Captain Mal Reynolds and his crew as they find jobs and try to make a living, all the while staying under the radar of the Alliance. Most of their jobs involve smuggling or some other kind of illegal trade that require them to keep out of the government’s way. While very futuristic and space oriented, this work by Whedon fits nicely into the Western genre, with several characters who very much fit the archetypical characters of the traditional Western film on first glance. However, delving deeper, it is easily shown that these characters are more complex and three-dimensional than their traditional Western counterparts, and the same can be said of the women of the series as well. Also, in terms of certain stereotypes of the genre concerning women and their role in the new frontier of space, while some thing have remained true to their genre, having changed drastically giving women a much more equal fighting ground than that of their counterparts in the older, more classic Western films. Through the characters of Saffron and Inara, Whedon places aside the typical use for women in the genre in either their profession or position in family unit, and creates a new kind of standard for the archetypes that they’re representing.
Traditionally the women of Western films have been flat, two dimensional characters with a specific purpose. For example, there’s the chaste housewife, who takes care of the family, or there’s the woman of Mexican or Indian descent who’s on the outskirts of society, not accepted by anyone, and just meant to play the part of the troublemaker, or, of course, the prostitute, usually a gold-digger-esque character, who’s just looking to make her way up in society, rather than stay where she is. Most of these roles, including that of the prostitute, usually lack sensuality or sexuality, and are more expected just to be taken as they are, without any real development or depth. They are also seen more as property, a commodity rather than a full person in the view. They’re used as bargaining chips as well as bait, the consistent damsel in distress, always looking to be rescued. Whedon’s female characters, however, take on a much more three dimensional form, adding a much more feminine and realistic touch to the characters, making them seem more like people and less defined by their profession or who they’re expected to be on initial encounter.
One of the clearest examples of a remolding of the traditional roles is the recurring character of Saffron, who appeared in two episodes of the series, “Our Mrs. Reynolds” and “Trash.” In the former, Saffron is introduced as a con-artist, tricking a very drunk Mal Reynolds, the captain, into marrying her in order to get on board Serenity, the ship, and steal it out from under him. She originally plays herself into the traditional role of the frontier bride, shy and sheltered, not having experienced much outside of the small settlement planet that she had grown up on, and the interaction she has with Mal, her ‘husband’, is very indicative of the attitude taken towards women in this new breed of Western. In one of their initial conversations with each other, Saffron consistently refers to herself as property of the man she’s married to, to be disposed of if she isn’t pleasing to him, and to be treated as he deems fair. Reynolds quickly dispenses this idea, telling her that if someone tries to kill her she should try to kill them right back, and that she was no one’s property but her own, saying that she is “no one’s property to be tossed aside. You have the right, same as anyone, to live and try to kill people” (Our Mrs. Reynolds). Women are no longer the homemakers on the new frontier. They’re very much their own entity, making their own way in the world, same as the men—maybe not in the same ways, but the same intent is found in both of them. As Saffron’s deception is elaborated upon, she slips into the various roles she plays like a glove, showing her training in body language and artistic skill, something that hasn’t been delved into much in the films of the past. Eventually, the crew manages to thwart her intentions and keep their ship, but that doesn’t change the fact that her role in the film was different from those of the women in the past. When Saffron reappears in “Trash,” she has acquired another husband, and when she’s outted as a con-artist, she manages to convince Reynolds’s crew to work with her on a job, despite the fact that they very clearly don’t trust her. Through the course of the job, they encounter someone who Reynolds hypothesizes to be Saffron’s first husband, her real husband, and the confrontation there speaks to how the role of women has changed, or for the most part taken a turn for the ambiguous in Saffron’s hands. Her moves are not predictable to anyone who may be watching, whether they be the spectator in the audience, or someone who’s actually interacting with her. When Durran Haymer, her husband, comes face to face with who she really is, she accuses him of being naïve, and thinking more of her than she was:
Saffron: Did you think I was a princess? That I would stay locked up here in the tower? With you?
Haymer: I’d hoped.
Saffron: You’re a rutting fool. (Trash)
The woman who’s purpose is in the home, and tending to the matters of the home, has faded from this conception of the genre, creating a new kind of woman, who’s able to branch out on her own and create her own niche on the world, where she works for what she wants, rather than having to compromise with the current man in her life.
Saffron is also not above combining her sexuality and the expected behavior of her position to her advantage. This is more clearly shown in “Our Mrs. Reynolds,” when she’s still playing the part of the shy, sheltered girl, where she places herself in situations where she can flaunt both her sexuality, and her supposed naivety all at the same time. At first she plays the part of the typical Western wife—cooking for her husband, waiting on him almost hand and foot—while slowly gaining the crews trust and in some situations, friendship, and slowly getting the captain, her sudden husband, to be more comfortable with her. On the first night that she spends aboard Serenity, she ‘prepares herself to have her wedding night with her husband’ by undressing and surprising him in his bunk. Reynolds is left both torn between his natural instinct to mate, as well as his moral compass saying that this would not be the best idea for his conscience. Saffron plays the captain with a toy, lacing her words with nuances and innuendo, as she takes the Bible, what’s supposedly an instrument of moral directionality, and turns it into a much more sensuous tool:
Saffron: I do know my Bible sir. "On the night of their betrothal, the wife shall open to the man as the furrow to the plow and he shall work in her, in and again till she bring him to his full and rest him then upon the sweat of her breast."
Mal: Whoa, good Bible. (Our Mrs. Reynolds)
Saffron, as a character, takes the purity and expected moral center of the Western housewife, and turns the situation to suit her circumstances, and playing it in just the right way to cloud the judgment of those around her and what’s expected of her. The men of the ship become enamored with her, including Jayne Cobb, the hired muscle of the ship who offers to trade his best gun, Vera, in exchange for the girl, while the women of the ship, specifically Inara Serra and Zoe Washbourne, immediately peg her as trouble, not letting themselves fall for the act she’s presenting. Saffron’s character takes the role of the housewife, and manipulates it in interesting ways in order to find the advantage in a situation and spin out what she considers the best result for her.
Another character who twists their stereotypical role in an interesting way is that of Inara Serra, the ship’s companion. While ‘compainion’ at first glance, seems like a colloquial term for a high class space hooker, that is very much not the case here. Serra is less akin to a prostitute and more to that of a courtesan, adding an element of culture, refinery, and status to the service she is providing. Companions, for one, are a legal business, held highly in most societies, and companions are subjected to rigorous health and medical tests every year in order to stay licensed. Reynolds also comments on the fact that “there are plenty of planets that won’t let you dock without a decent companion on board” (Serenity). She adds an air of respectability to what may not be considered an otherwise respectable situation, as opposed to what has been shown to be the other way around—where women who are involved in forms of prostitution, whatever the case may be, take away from the respectability of the vessel. Serra is also clearly the most educated and cultured of the crew, save for Simon Tam and possibly Shepard Book, who initially are more passengers than actual members. She speaks with a very clear and distinct air, one of accomplishment and culture. What distinguishes her the most from other examples of her profession in the genre, is the way she conducts her business. Though she receives many offers to stay and be a personal companion to some of her clientele, she refuses all of them, preferring to travel and see the world rather than stay with someone for money or status. Most women in the situation of prostitution are looking to climb the social ladder, find someone with money and status and attach themselves to them, but Serra prefers to travel and make her own choices, giving her the freedom and allowances to choose both her own clients and where she would like to go in order to perform the services that she does.
However, despite her elevated position in society, she still faces some of the same pitfalls that traditional forms of prostitution have faced in the past. Though being a companion is a well respected profession, the same connections are made in the eyes of those she encounters, mostly men. Reynolds repeatedly calls her a whore to her face, and openly mocks her profession to whoever will listen, not taking it seriously despite the level it is held in most of the core planets. Also, he consistently puts his own business needs ahead of hers, keeping her away from places where she can find “respectable” clientele, but this example might be more of a combination of situation and clear unspoken attraction between her and Reynolds, rather than a side effect of her job. She is also treated more like an object than a person, a behavior most clearly illustrated in the behavior of Atherton Wing, one of her clients that appeared in the episode “Shindig,” as well as the Magistrate of Canton, who was encountered in the episode “Jaynestown.” In the situation with Wing, the man was incredibly possessive Serra, someone who he had deemed “his,” that he had bought and paid for several days, an attitude which lead to an altercation with Reynolds, bringing Serra to question her captain’s sense of nobility:
Inara: You have a strange sense of nobility Captain. You'll lay a man out for implying I'm a whore but you keep calling me one to my face.
Mal: I might not show respect to your job, but he didn't respect you. That's the difference. Inara, he doesn't even see you. (Shindig)
While Reynolds points out that he does, indeed, respect Inara as a human being—it’s clear at this point in their relationship that the way he conveys the fact that he does have feelings for her is to invade her personal space or cause confrontation with her—but her profession is still not one he supports or condones. In the encounter with the magistrate, Magistrate Higgins hires her to deflower his twenty-six year-old son—clearly without his sons consent or desire, for that matter—but completely disregards the intricacies of her profession, and focuses more on the sexual aspect. When he brings his son to Inara with the intent of making sure he had sex, and finds her preparing tea instead, he disregards the culture and customs that go along with procuring a companion, and thinks that she’s getting away from the point of her visit:
Inara: Mr. Higgins, this shuttle is a place of union. I’m sure you can appreciate—
Higgins: What is this? (gives her an annoyed look) I brought you here to bed my son, not throw him a tea party.
Inara: Sir, the companion greeting ceremony is a ritual with centuries of tradition and—
Higgins: My son is twenty-six years-old, and he ain’t yet a man. Twenty-six. And since he can’t find a willin’ woman—
Inara: Mr. Higgins, you’re not allowed here. (Jaynestown)
The companion training and experience, for lack of a better word, is more than just sex, yet it’s consistently reduced to just that, casting aside the respectability and status that come with her job, and reducing it to that of just a whore, until Inara gets fed up and throws the magistrate out, so that she can do her job as she was trained to do. Despite the fact that the job is not considered as lowly as it used to be, it still faces the same challenges and low personal opinion that it did in the days of it’s earlier counterparts.
Though, in tribute to the fact that Serra’s job is more than just sex, she also serves as something of an emotional support system for other members of the crew, especially with Shepard Book, whom she develops a distanced friendship with. Because Shepard is a member of the clergy, it’s clear he doesn’t approve of Serra’s way of life, but they soon develop a connection over their shared mission, if you will, of trying to figure out Captain Reynolds. Serra, who has been on the ship longer, tries to offer her own bit of insight to Book’s experiences with the man, but even she herself admits that she’s “not certain she’ll ever actually know the captain” (The Train Job). She and the Shepard form an emotional bond of sorts, similar to the one that she shares with other members of the crew. She’s very close friends with Kaylee Frye, the ship’s mechanic, as well as a sparring partner with Mal, and she shares a friendly relationship with Hoban “Wash” Washbourne, the ship’s pilot, and his wife Zoe, who is Reynold’s second in command. She even starts to grow close to Simon and River Tam, who seem to be the most out of place characters on the ship, bringing the whole crew together in some shape or form.
Despite the fact that both Serra and Saffron are placed into typical roles in the Western genre, it’s made clear that they play much more of an intricate role aboard Serenity than they did back in the plains of the old West. By creating characters that both play into the classic roles created for them in the Western genre as well as breaking the mold in many ways, Whedon has created a character that lives and breathes as her own three dimensional self, rather than dealing with a two dimensional, more flat character, that depends upon the actions of others in order to make her way in the world.
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I was taking a seminar on the American West, and we watched a lot of cowboy movies, and looked for the stereotypes in the western genre. Women didn't get much development in the Western films -- unless you're looking at Once Upon a Time in the West, where you got a housewife and a prostitute in the same sitting.
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I think the only film where it really possibly comes close is Once Upon a Time in the West, where the housewife and the prostitute, instead of being presented against each other, are one in the same.
And even in High Noon, where the housewife seemed as though she was going to abandon him and stand by her principles, she came back in the end and stood by her husband's side as she was supposed to. And while the Hispanic woman (Mrs. Ramirez?) was a very successful business woman, she was still ran away in the end searching for something(one) else to start over again.
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I don't think any of that weakens your point though. The Madonna/Whore dichotomy long predates the Western and still gets plenty of play today, when you would think that more complex portrayals of women would be standard.