The thing is, the failed rebels were around in written SF long before Firefly, and sometimes buying into the same Hollywood version of the Civil War. There were several Westerns involving groups of Confederate soldiers who were isolated from the slavery, and former Confederate soldiers in the US Army on the frontier.
It's a pretty pervasive thing in the US landscape. I wouldn't like to overemphasise Hollywood in Whedon's sources.
On the other hand, when you put it in Space, with the sort of authoritarian government which was the Big Bad of the Cold War, it's hard to avoid the sympathetic rebels, and maybe we shouldn't forget the Soviet-dominated countries of Eastern Europe. But the guys aren't being picked on for being rebels, not in a blatant gulag sort of way.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-09-02 01:58 pm (UTC)It's a pretty pervasive thing in the US landscape. I wouldn't like to overemphasise Hollywood in Whedon's sources.
On the other hand, when you put it in Space, with the sort of authoritarian government which was the Big Bad of the Cold War, it's hard to avoid the sympathetic rebels, and maybe we shouldn't forget the Soviet-dominated countries of Eastern Europe. But the guys aren't being picked on for being rebels, not in a blatant gulag sort of way.
It's not quite so simple.