Cowboys in Space: Firefly and a New Mythos of the Old West Classical westerns dominated television during the

1950s and 60s, and even Bonanza ran until 1973. In 1966, Gene Roddenberry identified space as the final frontier, putting a science fiction spin on the myths and themes of the classical Western. Most recently, the Space Western became a separate recognizable genre, with shows such as Firefly that utilize obvious icons of Western mythology. The cult popularity of Firefly, years after its short TV run and cancellation, make it an especially interesting object of analysis; the themes present in the show resonate with audiences. Richard Slotkin says that We are in the process of giving up a myth/ideology that no longer helps us see our way through the modern world, but lack a comparably authoritative system of beliefs to replace what we have lost (654). Since, as David Mogen proclaims, there is an organic relationship between myths about the past and imagined futures [] (7), the imagined future of the Space Western is our way of trying to structure new ideologies to fill the gap Slotkin identifies, giving us a fictive environment in which to imagine those ideologies in play. The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways Firefly (and its movie-sequel, Serenity) formulate a new American ideology on a framework very representative of the Western. I will apply Slotkins test to determine if that ideology is valid. Defining Space Western Its fairly simple to say that Firefly is an adaptation of a Western, due to the use of Western icons. However, it is not the first to adapt the Western by setting it in Space. There is an emerging genre of work which has been labeled by the popular discourse as Space Western and Firefly is simply the first major network Space Western that takes the Western metaphor literally (Bernstein et. al., 74). I will discuss the use of the Western icons later, but to understand the series, we must first understand what it is were comparing the series to that is, other Space Westerns as a genre. To define the genre of Space Western, I look not to academia, where there is a surprising lack of information regarding it, but to popular culture, where the genre is talked about and defined readily by different participants in that discourse. One important participant is Nathan Lilly, editor of the e-zine SpaceWesterns.com. In an attempt to describe what type of material he is seeking for publication on the site, Lilly describes the Space Western as follows: works with themes from the Western genre set in Outer-space, or having some element of extra-terrestrial travel (submissions). In this description, the Space part of the name is the easy part its fairly straightforward to say that a Space Western must involve the universe outside of our own world. It requires that the themes originally created during the Old West delineated by land area that is mostly within the United States, west of the Mississippi River, and by time as occurring in the last half of the 19th century must exist in a story context detached in time and/or place[1]. Another popular source of popular culture discourse is Wikipedia, which, while it has been written by people of unknown merit, carries a definition of Space Western that is worth mentioning because it is
1

I say time and/or place because, while the majority of fiction in the genre occurs in a future setting in outer space, it would be theoretically possible under this definition to set the fiction in the same time but provide a plot vehicle in which to move people out of the Old West and into outer-space (the best example I can think of being Jules Vernes From the Earth to the Moon). It would also be possible to provide the same physical location at a future point in time (similar to Planet of the Apes).

popular and referenced readily by those participating in the discourse, including Lilly (submissions): Space Western is a subgenre of science fiction, primarily grounded in film and television, that transposes themes of American Western books and film to a backdrop of futuristic space frontiers [] (Space Western). This definition is more limiting because it denies the possibility that the Space Western could exist in a context detached only in place and because it requires a technology component by which mankind is able to enter into this space frontier. That technology must in some way be integral to the plot; however, for some of these works[2] the technology merely exists as a part of the setting. Such works could not be considered science fiction. What the Wikipedia author means then is not that the works must all be science fiction, but rather that the works all contain an element of technology that enables characters travel in and through Outer-space. The one academic work that comes near a definition of Space Western is David Mogens Wilderness Visions. Mogen offers the concepts of space opera western and science-fiction western, (Mogen, 11-14), but a working definition of Space Western should encompass both and go even further. We can define such a work in terms of space by merely limiting the topic to works that involve travel in and through Outer-space, even if that travel occurs outside the events of the story. The more difficult portion of each definition is that each assumes an understanding of Western themes. Both sites provide listings of example works that fit the Space Western genre, including Star Trek, Star Wars, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Firefly. While the latter three use icons of the Old West (such as revolvers and long coats), Star Trek and Star Wars offer no obvious icons and thus allow us to examine what is meant by theme. Star Trek, as it explains in the opening credits, is set in Space, the Final Frontier. It immediately explains its setting in terms of the Western, comparing the unexplored reaches of space with the unexplored American West. Understanding the other elements of the show in terms of a classical Western yields several other surprising relationships: Captain Kirk is easily identifiable as a frontier lawman that upholds the law generally but upholds first his own moral code; McCoy is the frontier doctor with a relatively limited medical office, far removed from the advanced medicines and facilities of civilization, but who manages to save lives regardless (often by sheer tenacity), a phaser is a six-shooter, and the Enterprise is both the captains horse and town (including, in The Next Generation, a barbershop). The theme, in this case, is that of frontier exploration. Deep Space Nine further extends the metaphor by utilizing a space station that closely resembles a frontier fort city, complete with trading posts and bar, so that the theme changes from frontier exploration to frontier life. Star Wars, however, contains much more tenuous connections to the Western genre. While parallels can be drawn between character archetypes of Westerns and Star Wars, such as the scoundrel with a heart of gold, these archetypes could exist outside of the Western genre as well. The fundamental battle of good against evil, the growth of a boy into a man, the redemption of an evil figure these are all themes that transcend genres rather than themes that exist solely within the realm of the Western. The themes of frontier exploration and frontier life are not utilized as important story elements, but as with the only frontier-like planet, Tatooine, they only exist for background ambiance rather than as important plot devices in the story. As quickly as possible, events move the heroes away from Tatooine and onto spaceships or other planets; when they return, it is never to stay, but always to move away again. It could be better categorized as a space epic, taking specific character archetypes from place to place around an
2

A good argument can be made for considering Star Wars as a Space Fantasy rather than a work of Science Fiction.

infinitely-changing galaxy. Whereas Star Trek explores these other worlds, Star Wars only briefly visits them to play out another sequence in the great struggle of good versus evil. It is clear from the identification of Star Wars as a Space Western that either the identification is faulty, and Star Wars should not be considered a Space Western despite its inclusion in the popular discourse, or the definition of Western theme actually means to include elements not traditionally thematic in nature, such as the inclusion of character archetypes or Western icons. What is desperately needed, then, is a finer definition of what is meant by a Western theme. To a certain extent, no definition is necessary: most people in America have a general idea of what it means to be a Western. Because of this, it has become a commonplace in the American mind. We see Bonanza on the screen, and can immediately identify it as a Western, largely due to its setting. With the Space Western, we can sometimes do the same (such as is the case with Firefly); however, when the Space Western is not only removed in time and place but also stripped of the symbols of the Old West, we must look to the elements presented in Western literature that have nothing to do with symbol and everything to do with idea. In fact, what were really looking at when we look at Western themes are the ways in which a novel of the Old West deals with our Western ideology. According to Dr. Richard Slotkin, Olin Professor of English at Wesleyan University, In any given society certain expressive forms or genres [] provide ways of articulating ideological concepts directly and explicitly (5). The Western as a genre is merely an expression of American ideology made through symbolic narratives of mythology (5). Thus, what is meant by the concept of Western theme is not the thematic elements of a Western, but rather its mythological elements. Now a new definition emerges: a Space Western is a story that utilizes elements of Western mythology and involves travel in or through Outer-space. Firefly and the Space Western Like all Space Westerns, Firefly features elements of Western mythology apart from the simple symbols of the Old West (which it does have in abundance). The very first example of such mythology is the War of Unification an attempt by civilized central worlds to bring all colonized planets under a single government. The hero of the story, Malcolm Mal Reynolds, is pictured as a commanding officer of ground troops for the resistance against unification in the last battle of the war at Serenity Valley. This war, and its residual effects, fills for this story the mythological role of the subjugation of the Native Americans in U.S. history. As Slotkin explains, The premise of savage war is that ineluctable political and social differences rooted in some combination of blood and culture make coexistence between primitive natives and civilized Europeans impossible on any basis other than that of subjugation. (12) In this story, the civilized Europeans are the members of the central worlds, and the primitive natives are the people of the outer worlds. This event only occurs in the action of the show in the pilot episode, and then only in the first few minutes. In this scene, Mal and Zo are pictured as soldiers with significant fighting prowess, but the resistance is defeated regardless of their ability. The civilized worlds completely subjugate the primitive ones, and the war ends. The rest of the events of the television series take place approximately five years later. The War of Unification can also be compared to the American Civil War. Most Westerns take place in the aftermath of the Civil War, and often their heroes are men who fought in the war. One story with this common theme is the outlaw story, typified in the Jesse James or

Deadwood Dick novels of the late nineteenth century. James had originally been a member of William C. Quantrills guerillas during the Civil War (Slotkin, 133). When the Civil War ended, James and his gang had definitely turned to robbery and had been identified as outlaws (Slotkin, 134). In this way, Mal and his crew are similar to James and his gang. Mal is a man still at war with the Alliance, only carrying out unlawful acts as a personal way of fighting back against a government he finds repulsive; much like the fictional account of Deadwood Dick: [] Dick has been driven over the border by the desire to avenge his victimization. However, the agents of victimization are not Indians but rich White men, and Dicks vengeance is not enacted through Indian-killing but through stagecoach robbery (Slotkin, 144). Another important element of Western myth is the concept that problems can be solved through brutal acts, a process Slotkin calls regeneration through violence (Slotkin, 12). Within Firefly, this behavior is played out repeatedly. In the pilot, when Mal and Zo meet Patience, a potential buyer of their stolen merchandise with whom theyve had dealings in the past, they realize quickly that the situation Could be messy when Patience threatens to kill them (Serenity). Mal gives back Patiences money and tells her where to find the goods he brought, but she still threatens to kill him. Ultimately, though, it is Mal that decides to shoot first (by signaling Jayne, who is on the ridge, to fire). When the shootout is finished, Patiences posse are all dead, and Mal retrieves the money Patience had promised him. In this way, he has solved the problem through violence. However, just as in Westerns that utilize violent men as heroes, people outside the crew in Firefly are considerably more violent. One of the most violent of these is Niska, a man that is pictured as enjoying torturing people. In War Stories, he takes Mal and Wash hostage, tying them to a pole together and using an electrical current to induce pain. When Zo comes to try to purchase their freedom, she is only able to purchase Wash, her husband, and Niska sends her back to the ship with Mals ear. Juxtaposing the actions of the Serenity crew to others more violent serves the same purpose as showing the outlaw hero against more brutal enemies. Such juxtaposition in Outlaw novels helped mitigate [the outlaws] villainy by showing them as the objects of violence by social organizations more violent than themselves (Slotkin, 138). The setting of Firefly has just as much to do with its Western mythology as its characterization does. Many of the scenes in Firefly are set in deep space, far away from civilization. This is how each episode ends as well: a shot of the ship floating in space. Joss Whedon, creator of the show, says that with such an ending he was trying to convey the idea were still all alone out here (Bernstein et. al., 12). This is an example of the distinction between the wilderness and civilization that Slotkin points to for The moral landscape of the Frontier Myth (14). In Westerns, part of both the freedom and the conflict comes from being far removed from civilization: Freedom, because the laws of the civilized world have little application where there are no lawmen to uphold them; Conflict, often for the same reason, and often for the lack of useful elements of civilization (such as medical care). Deep in space, the crew of Serenity has the same challenges. This is perhaps best epitomized in the episode Out of Gas. In this episode, the ships engine fails, and with it their life support system. Theyre out of range of anyone or anything as Wash says (Out of Gas), and have to rely on themselves alone to survive. A New Ideology

This paper started with the question of whether the mythology of Firefly reflects a change in American ideology regarding the Western. Slotkins book, written in 1992 and republished in 1998, tells us about that time, We are in a liminal moment in our cultural history. We are in the process of giving up a myth/ideology that no longer helps us see our way through the modern world, but lack a comparably authoritative system of beliefs to replace what we have lost. (654) He also provides us a test by which to determine if a mythology accomplishes this task: A viable, functioning mythology is one whose truth seems validated by the apparent accuracy with which it accounts for experience and facilitates the design of successful actions. (655) To determine whether this test validates the ideology of Firefly as a valid mythological system, I will first examine what that mythological system is and then apply the tests to it. Important to the Western myth is the idea that it is representative of something in the culture of the moment. In the past, these have included strongly democratic ideas (Slotkin, 125) and progressivism (Slotkin, 127), but the ideology of the American West has slowly been spread out and replaced. Slotkin argues, What has been lost is not the underlying myth but a particular set of historical references that tied a scenario of historic action to a particular version of American national history (642). Based on this statement, the reemergence of strongly Western symbolism is not a function of the ideology, but rather what Slotkin calls genre nostalgia, which disarms audience skepticism by its overt and playful appeal to the conventionality of movie genres (640). Understanding that genre nostalgia is responsible for all the standard Western trappings in Firefly, whats important is how the show treats the Western myth differently than Westerns of our past. The Western myth is closely tied to the idea of hero. The Western hero is someone who takes matters into his own hands, who solves his problems through violence but maintains his moral compass. For Firefly, a hero is something else. As Zo says, Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed (Serenity). Indeed, this is a recurring theme in the show rather than simply being violent to stop the enemy no matter the cost, Mal carefully chooses his fights, even backing down when he knows the odds are against him. He is, however, willing to sacrifice himself, as shown in the episode Out of Gas when he stays behind on the ship while sending the others to safety in two small shuttles. While he does have a sense of self-preservation, his main focus is on his crew. This is perhaps best shown in the episode Safe: SIMON: Captain, why did you come back for us? MAL: Youre on my crew. SIMON: You dont even like me. Why did you come back? MAL: Youre on my crew. Why are we still talking about this? For Mal, the simple fact of the matter is that his crew is his responsibility, and he will not take chances with their safety. Zo behaves in exactly the same manner. When she is in charge, as in War Stories, she does not risk the safety of the crew; rather, it is the crewmembers that volunteer to risk themselves to save their captain. Even Jayne, who originally mocks the suggestion of an armed assault as suicide, and whose alliances are often depicted as being owed to whoever pays the most, arms himself to the teeth and joins the assault. While this All for one, one for all mentality is obviously not new, it is reflective of a difference in ideology from the movies of the American West, where the gunslinger would come

into town and save the day, but ultimately he would remain alone (Slotkin, 400). While in older movies and series the family was the important social network that allowed a man to survive[3], newer series such as The Young Riders rely on the assembled family of people who come together for a violent job and learn to rely on each other as brothers. They have learned to rely on each other because their very survival depends on it. While this does occasionally appear in other stories, the concept is considerably more common in stories about war. In Shakespeares Henry V, the King says, We few, we happy few, we band of brothers: / For he to day that sheds his blood with me, / Shall be my brother (H5 4.3.60-62). This is still a recurring theme, as evidenced by the use of this quote in the title of the miniseries Band of Brothers. There is an interesting related similarity in The Young Riders and in Firefly: there is no specific war being fought; rather, the closeness comes from their shared common mission and a need for survival. However, in Firefly, the war is only surreptitiously over, and Mal and his crew are still fighting it in their own way. This struggle against the Alliance is a key element of the ideology of Firefly. The Alliance is pictured as both a good and bad government good for the people of the central worlds, who live in a civilized utopia with government-supplied medical care, education, and entertainment; bad for the people who live on the outer worlds, who are left largely to fend for themselves, as in The Train Job. Even in this episode, the Alliance provides medical supplies to the citizens of Paradiso, but it fails to act when those supplies are stolen. While it would be easy to blame the government as a whole for this action, Shepherd Book tells us to be more careful in placing blame: BOOK: the people who did this to River. SIMON: The government did this to her. BOOK: A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned. (War Stories) For Book, blame lies not on the government as a whole but on individual people who acted (or failed to act), thereby causing harm. In fact, it is an unnamed officer who makes the call to ignore the situation on Paradiso, saying that locals can deal with it (The Train Job). The fact that Whedon and Minear chose to include this scene at all tells us that it is necessary to their mythology: it wasnt the alliance failing to act, but rather a single person. Immediately after the quoted conversation, Simon proclaims that Book is quoting the captain (War Stories), thus by implication Mal feels the same way about the people in charge. In many cases when the crew of Serenity comes up against a human obstacle, it is a single person causing their problems (ie, Niska, Patience, Dobson, Atherton, Saffron). This makes an interesting statement: no group or organization is inherently bad; rather, morality is up to the individual. The crew of Serenity, then, is made up of individuals making independent choices to act for good or evil. When crewmembers choose to act for evil and this happens most notably with Simon and Jayne it is up to the captain to find a settlement by which that behavior can be corrected. In this way, the individual choices of the crew are not whats important, but rather the individual choices of its captain. Every crewmember is merely serving a particular function on the ship. As long as their leader remains committed to morality, the crew will do the same. Additionally, the crew likes having such a leader to whom they can turn, so much so that when that leader is removed from the picture, they are willing to risk their lives to secure his return. When Mal is not available, its up to Zo to act as he would do; however, when neither Mal nor
3

Im thinking specifically of The Big Valley and Little House on the Prairie here.

Zo are available, there is no specific person in charge. The system breaks down into chaos, with each person again becoming responsible for his or her own actions. Our discussion of morality raises the question of what, in this universe, is evil. Mal and his crew are quite willing to kill and steal, yet they are the heroes of the story. We could try to argue that Mal only kills when his own safety is at stake, but in The Train Job, he kicks Crow into the ships engine when Crow is already his bound prisoner. It would perhaps be more appropriate to say that Mal kills when he feels it is necessary, and Crows promise that he will hunt [Mal] down provides that necessity. In other situations, Mal avoids killing his opponent (such as in Out of Gas and Shindig) because he is able to resolve the situation in other ways. Thus, Mal shows that he is not a great man or even a good man, but he is perhaps all right (Shindig). The difference between Mal and the heroes of the Old West is that he is willing to take a much broader definition of necessary where they would have arrested Crow to bring him to justice or sent him back to Niska assuming his punishment at Niskas hands, Mal simply kills Crow, providing his own measure of justice. When we watch the show, we see merely a bad man being killed and cheer it; we buy into the idea that this singular hero can determine justice. The moral implications of this judgment are interesting in light of the dual natures of Mals crew as both group-members and individuals. Two of the crew are unable to bring themselves to kill regardless of the situation: Book and Kaylee[4]. When Book volunteers to join the attempt to save Mal from Niska in War Stories, Zo asks him, Preacher, dont the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing? to which he replies, Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps. Thus, Book is willing to do something of a certain moral ambiguity as well, but he will not outright violate his moral standards. Kaylee, on the other hand, cant even bring herself to shoot when the man she loves is being shot at. Because she is unable to fire, she both maintains her innocence (she is always pictured as having a childlike innocence) and provides an opportunity for River to lose hers, by taking the gun and killing three of Niskas men. Where before, Kaylee and River could play together as if they were little girls (as in the beginning of the episode), Rivers betrayal of innocence makes it so that Kaylee is suddenly fearful of her. Because Kaylee and Book are able to maintain their morality despite the circumstances, we see that people can serve under a murderous captain and remain pure. They simply serve their roles on the ship. Indeed, in war, men and women tend not to act as individuals but rather follow the orders of a commanding officer. When Mal faces an evil opponent, he doesnt hesitate to kill that opponents minions if the need arises. The battle between Mal and Patience can be seen as a conflict between just those two people, even though both sides brought other people to the fight. When the battle is over, Patiences men are all dead[5] (Serenity). Thus, the only thing that matters in a conflict are the choices of the people in command; however, individual people under that command still have an obligation to retain their individual moralities. The dual nature of group self and individual self in this context means that the group self doesnt carry its evil actions to the individual self, but there is a fine line where the individual self does begin to attain evil. Kaylee, as the ships engineer, enables the ship to get from place to place, where Mal can carry out his unlawful and sometimes murderous acts, but because she doesnt carry out those
4

Many might say Simon doesnt shoot anyone, so hes still innocent but he nonetheless tries to shoot people, and therefore his innocence is tenuous. It is only restored by Books declaration that Simon hasnt shot anyone yet (War Stories) 5 I have the urge to quote Sartre here: When the rich wage war, the poor die.

acts herself, none of the blame is hers. Book shares this sentiment his role on the ship is fairly undefined, but he takes on the role of their spiritual adviser. He can accompany the ship and sometimes assist the crew without violating the sanctity of his religious vows. Thus, in Firefly, when people fulfill their particular roles, they obtain no evil from actions enabled by their roles but not performed by their roles. This may mean that a good captain will be necessary to assign them to roles in which their individual acts within those roles are tolerable to their moral code. Mal, thus, is a managerial type of person, in line with the values of the end of the 19th century as identified by Slotkin: They resolved the problem by transforming the man who knows Indians into a military aristocrat representative of managerial values and by transferring him direct from the wilderness to an urban or imperial frontier [] (125). Now weve transferred him to the Final Frontier, but he remains the same military aristocrat (Mal was a captain in the war) with managerial values (as shown with how he leads his crew and they happily follow). It is important to note that this change in the stereotypical Western at the end of the late 19th century coincided with the theory of progressivism. Slotkin notes, The ideology of managerial progressivism declared that under modern conditions civilization and perfect democracy were incompatible [] (125). This is the case in Firefly. The ship itself is a microcosm of society, showing us that as long as everyone plays their role and managers provide for them, those people will have everything they need and be perfectly happy. Its not a democracy, as Mal says, We dont vote on my ship (Serenity). The Alliance itself is a democracy on a massive scale. Each of its central planets is a vast city, and Whedon explains in the Serenity commentary that even its enormous police spaceships are designed to look like floating skyscrapers (Serenity). When that democracy is juxtaposed with the social environment of the ship, it becomes clear that life on the ship is preferable. So it would seem that Firefly does not do anything new with the genre rather, it is the genre nostalgia for the Old Western novel that drives both its politics and its appearance.

Works Cited Bernstein, Abbie, et al. Firefly: The Official Companion. Vol. 1. London: Titan Books, 2006. Lilly, N. E. Submissions. Space Westerns. 2008. 31 July 2008 <http://www.spacewesterns.com/submissions/>. Mogen, David. Wilderness Visions: The Western Theme in Science Fiction Literature. 1982. 2nd ed. N.p.: Borgo Press Wildside Press, 1993. Out of Gas. Firefly. FOX. 25 Oct. 2002. Safe. Firefly. FOX. 8 Nov. 2002. Serenity. Dir. Joss Whedon. 2005. DVD. Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 2005. Serenity. Firefly. FOX. 20 Dec. 2002. Shakespeare, William. Henry V. First Folio. Project Gutenberg. July 2000. 31 July 2008 <http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/0ws2310.txt>. Shindig. Firefly. FOX. 1 Nov. 2002. Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. 1992. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Space Western. Wikipedia. 31 July 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_western>. The Train Job. Firefly. FOX. 20 Sep. 2002. War Stories. Firefly. FOX. 6 Dec. 2002.