Please put a full stop after your headline, cheers.

Simon | September 24, 23:51 CET

That's the cool article.

Mack | September 25, 00:02 CET

Okay, mindless trivia from ZZ9. I was in the Toronto Star once. Front page. Okay, I was six months old and staring at a Christmas tree while dribbling but still, who hoo!

I was actually thinking about the politics of Mal the other day. I would have described him, and Serenity as a whole, as being more right wing than left. It tends to be the liberals who think they should meddle in everyones lives and control, advise, supervise and monitor everyone while the right wingers don't care if you buy cigarettes, alchol and guns at a drive through window and use them all up on the way home.

zz9 | September 25, 00:03 CET

zz9, as a self-described conservative, I've always found a problem with the left-center-right political spectrum construct...I've always seen it as more of a circular, rather than linear configuration, with total freedom (with no repercussions for anything, up to and including murder, and such) at one point of the circle, and total enslavement 180 degrees away...the trick is to find the proper, decent, humane, and humanistic balance of liberty and order. Mal seems to be closer degree-wise to the 0 degree total freedom...hell, he's nearly already there!....Simon, on the other hand, was perhaps 90 degrees away from total enslavement (so long as he was in the enslaving class), but the depradations visited upon River have pushed him further toward liberty.

"Liberals" and "conservatives" in American society can be equally meddlesome, albeit in very different ways.

Chris inVirginia | September 25, 03:15 CET

Interesting concept Chris, and as I think about it I remain in awe that Joss can write a action space flic with explosions and gunfights that actually poses some deep political questions. The Aliance has never been portrayed as "Evil" or "Bad" but as a government that more or less believes in what it's doing and believes it's justified in using some strong tactics to futher their aims. (As a ruling system I'd rather live under them than the current European Union.) Just as we've seen on Buffy and Angel there are rarely "white hats" and "black hats" but shades of grey, making the characters and the stories far more enjoyable, unpredictable and realistic than most stuff around these days.

zz9 | September 25, 03:29 CET

So the article (or Google) suggests that the Coen Brothers as a single entity are 9.7% more 'genius' than Joss. On the other hand, since he is but one man whereas they are two, Joss is 44.6% more of a genius than a single Coen Brother.

Jon | September 25, 04:16 CET

Funny math, Jon...reminds me of my formulation:

"99% of all dogs are better than 99% of all people, and 1% of my dog is better than everybody."

And 1% of Whedon is better than 99% of everybody else, too. In my occasionally humble opinion.

Chris inVirginia | September 25, 04:55 CET

zz9, as a self-described progressive/bleeding heart liberal, let me say that I really don't have a problem with your purchase of guns (with bullets, n'est ce-pas?), cigarettes, and alcohol and using them all on the way home. I simply insist that you give 2/5 of them to a government agency for distribution to less fortunate gun-toting, out-of-breath alcoholics. ;)

bobster | September 25, 05:50 CET

Interesting political take Chris, but that would mean that there was a total separation between to schools of thought with absolute freedom separating them on one side and absolute slavery on the other. I'm not getting that. I do, however agree that all groups in the US have the ability and even tendency to be meddlesome in people's lives.

newcj | September 25, 05:52 CET

To get back to the article, a big cheer for the reporter - Malene Arpe, who is a Whedon fan from way back. And kudos to her for getting Joss to admit he is a god - just as many of us suspected.
In the tv guide section of the same newspaper, another Whedon fan, Raju Mudhar snuck in a Serenity mention while talking about what various Buffy alums were up to on TV.

[ edited by Lioness on 2009-09-04 21:31 ]

Lioness | September 25, 09:12 CET

Joss admits that he is a god. Joss also says he is an atheist.

Discuss.

bobster | September 25, 22:40 CET

Joss is an object in space.

It's not what you think it is.

(Not really loving the whole existentialist thing...just me, is all. Read one of the brain numbing essays in Finding Serenity and am still not happy with the sterility and childishness of existentalism...my perspective, obviously.)

Chris inVirginia | September 26, 01:07 CET

I thought that since nature hated a vacuum, atheists would assume the position of god needed to be filled by someone.

Chris, had a bad experience with existentialism in my early twenties and still find myself getting cranky at the mention of it. In all fairness I probably should just get cranky at the mention of undergraduate philosophy majors instead. ; -) (...but I don't.)

newcj | September 26, 06:04 CET