“Objects in Space,” Firefly 1.10 (December 13, 2002. Written and Directed by Joss Whedon Brunel Science Fiction Club,

1. “Objects in Space,” Firefly 1.10 (December 13, 2002. Written and Directed by Joss WhedonBrunel Science Fiction Club, December 4th, 2007

2. “Rat Saw God” (Veronica Mars 2.6)

17. Whedon and Science Fiction

21. Runaways

22. 2003

24. 2002

25. 2005

26. “Objects in Space”: Talking Points

27. Race in “Objects in Space”

29. Buffy the Vampire Slayer presents “debilitating images and ideas about people of color.”--Kent Ono in Fantasy Girls

30. “ “Early’s systematic accompaniment with this ominous bass clarinet melody follows in the tradition of not just the ways that Hollywood musically accompanies villains, but more specifically, it follows some traditions in the ways that black rapists get represented. To go back to what most film historians consider the first Hollywood blockbuster, consider how the two black would-be rapists in The Birth of a Nation (1915) are accompanied by Joseph Carl Breil’s musical score that he put together specifically for that film. Breil’s score, a pastiche of both borrowed and original elements, opens with an original melody titled (in a 1916 edition of sheet music from the film) ‘The Motif of Barbarism’” (Gaines and Lerner 252). Neil Lerner, “Music, Race, and Paradoxes of Representation: Jubal Early’s Musical Motif of Barbarism in ‘Objects in Space’”

31. The “Motif of Barbarism” accompanies the first sequence in the entire film with a title card that reads, “The Bringing of the African to America planted the first seed of disunion.” Breil’s music specifies that a tom tom should beat with the pentatonic melody; the music has a simplicity and texture that connote something primitive, especially as compared to the music that accompanies many of the white characters in the film. The Motif of Barbarism returns several times in Breil’s film score, notably during the two attempted rape scenes. Neil Lerner, “Music, Race, and Paradoxes of Representation: Jubal Early’s Musical Motif of Barbarism in ‘Objects in Space’”

32. As Gus, the renegade ex-slave, threatens the Little Sister character with rape, Breil’s motif works to establish Gus as a threatening presence; we see him leering in the background of scenes where we watch Little Sister playing, underscored by the melody first announced to us in connection to the “seeds of disunion.” Later in the film, Silas Lynch (another African-American character who, like Gus, is played by a white actor in blackface) makes sexual advances towards Elsie Stoneman, in a sequence that also calls for the musical “Motif of Barbarism” in the score. In The Birth of a Nation, both of these would-be rapists have their plans foiled by members of the Ku Klux Klan, who are meant to be understood in this film as the heroes; the film has been used as a recruiting tool for this terrorist group ever since. Neil Lerner, “Music, Race, and Paradoxes of Representation: Jubal Early’s Musical Motif of Barbarism in ‘Objects in Space’”

33. “While Edmonson tends to avoid a pure leitmotivic system for his musical characterizations throughout his scoring of Firefly—that is to say, he does not employ recurring and developing melodies that symbolize all of the characters and ideas—he does on occasion attach characters and ideas to specific timbres and even to specific melodic shapes and gestures. The distinctive music that accompanies Early occurs thirteen times throughout the episode, all but once played on a bass clarinet (the other occurrence happens on the guitar), and each time tracing out the interval of a rising perfect fifth (usually between E and B, but at times transposed to other keys); it also, as with many of Edmonson’s melodies in this series, gets accompanied by a drone, or pedal point.” Neil Lerner, “Music, Race, and Paradoxes of Representation: Jubal Early’s Musical Motif of Barbarism in ‘Objects in Space’”

34. “Kaylee is someone that he approaches a different way, through a really horrible form of sexual intimidation. This is one of those scenes, that, you know, you write and then you worry that maybe you’re not as good a person as you hoped you were. You film this scene and everybody kind of wants to avoid you for the rest of the day. It really is just as creepy as possible.”--Joss Whedon, “Objects in Space” DVD Commentary

35. Given the largely progressive ideology one finds in so much of Whedon’s work, it feels counterintuitive to imagine Whedon wanting to recruit members for the Klan, even though Whedon presents us with what seem the same racist stories that one finds in Birth of a Nation (i.e., that African American men will rape white women unless heroic white men—in “Objects,” men guided by a woman--protect them). As he often does, Whedon complicates the matter beyond simple binaries like black and white. Whedon has a tremendous gift for words and ideas, and his character’s names reflect that. Whether it be the ironic combining of Buffy with Vampire Slayer, the revealing signifier Cordelia, or a character with the same name as film scholar Robin Wood, Whedon’s names often possess multiple layers of meaning.--Neil Lerner, “Music, Race, and Paradoxes of Representation: Jubal Early’s Musical Motif of Barbarism in ‘Objects in Space’”

36. Sometimes he has his characters muse on the meaning of the names, as when River notices that Mal’s name means “bad” (“The Train Job,” 1.2). One of his slyest tricks may be the complicated layering present in the name of his Boba Fett-like bounty hunter, Jubal Early. In a brilliantly perverse twist of historical name-dropping, Whedon names his potential rapist after a particularly nasty Confederate States of America general. Jubal Early of the C.S.A. led several successful campaigns against Union forces, including a raid on Washington in 1864, that rather concerned the federal government workers. Early also is credited with being one of the architects of the Lost Cause, the belief by some in the South that the Confederacy had not lost the war but rather had simply been overwhelmed by the Union’s greater numbers (Nolan 11-34). Neil Lerner, “Music, Race, and Paradoxes of Representation: Jubal Early’s Musical Motif of Barbarism in ‘Objects in Space’”

37. Whedon’s Directorial Style in “Objects in Space”

38. Whedon Auteur Signatures: Dream Sequences

39. Whedon Auteur Signatures: The Big Finish

40. Whedon Auteur Signatures: Fight Scenes

41. Whedon Auteur Signatures: Cross-Cutting

42. Whedon Auteur Signatures: Tricks of the Trade/Unusual Framing

43. Whedon Auteur Signatures: Depth of Focus

44. Whedon Auteur Signatures: One-ers

45. Whedon Auteur Signatures: Dream Sequences The Big Finish Fight Scenes Cross-Cutting Tricks of the Trade/Unusual Framing Depth of Focus One-ers

46. Influences on “Objects in Space”