I feel like what it does is bring up a reading of Firefly that I've seen a number of people articulate -- that it's something of a "What if the confederacy was actually the good guys?" story. You've got the huge empire that's trying to take away people's unspecified rights and freedoms to do what they want to do, you've got the rebellion that breaks away from that and gets crushed, and the deliberate references to tropes and settings from westerns connects with that. (A lot of heroes in genre Westerns are ex-Confederates who prefer the "wild west" to the occupied South : http://richardswheeler.blogspot.com/2011/05/who-reads-genre-westerns.html)
This is a civil war -- plucky underdogs against an autocratic regime that has the economic and industrial power, the noble lost cause -- that is really in keeping with racist narratives about the US civil war, and both completely elide the issue of slavery. So I think that confederate flag makes the connection explicit -- and how Firefly is telling a "What if the confederacy was actually the good guys?" story by positing an Evil Empire that just happens to be dominated by Chinese culture.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-05-31 03:06 pm (UTC)This is a civil war -- plucky underdogs against an autocratic regime that has the economic and industrial power, the noble lost cause -- that is really in keeping with racist narratives about the US civil war, and both completely elide the issue of slavery. So I think that confederate flag makes the connection explicit -- and how Firefly is telling a "What if the confederacy was actually the good guys?" story by positing an Evil Empire that just happens to be dominated by Chinese culture.