Inspiring Things in My Room: 9 Serenity
by tomwrightdreamer
‘There’s no place I can’t be
Since I found Serenity.
You can’t take the sky from me.’
So let’s take it as read that Firefly is 588 minutes of the best television ever made. (Sceptical? Go watch it. I’ll wait.) Also, it’s just had its tenth birthday.
Serenity represents a number of things. First up, is Freedom; it allows the characters to live a life in constant transit; all journey, no destination. A useful image for someone who’s trying to live in the moment and be less hung up on ‘getting there.’
Second, it represents Resistance. Named after the last, ill-fated battle of those who opposed the Alliance, it represents the ability to stand up and speak out against the devilish nature of authority.
Third and final, it represents family. In the story a disparate group of people come together to form a surprisingly functional family. In interviews I am often asked to say which director I would most like to emulate. The truth I would most like to be Joss Whedon; watch the Making Of: you can see the sense of playfulness and the sense of belonging Joss enabled his cast to experience. The feeling of playfulness enables the actors to go further, take risks, experiment. The safety is creatively useful for artists engaged in the incredibly difficult and pressurised process of collaborating on a piece of art. And that playfulness and camaraderie, the sense of being on a journey together, infuses the work on screen. So that once you’ve sailed on Serenity you feel like part of that family forever.
I was going to comment on the fact that the crew of Serenity don’t have much choice in their journey… but maybe that’s the whole point.
Anyhoo I encouraged Angela to watch an episode the other night and she loved it… will have to visit Ye Olde Video Shop!
Ah the joys of spreading the word!
For a lot of the crew Serenity is a choice based on challenging circumstances; Book could stay in the abbey, Mal and Zoe could have gone legit and bought into the Fed system after the war, Simon could have left River an kept his job. So it represents a difficult but independent route through life. Check me out waxing all philosophical!