Blog 9: Prospectus

In the third episode of Firefly, “Bushwhacked” I believe that Joss Whedon makes an argument of how modern day people are able to do the right thing even when it is against the law to. In this episode Captain Reynolds’ ship was taken in by the Alliance for a routine check for any illegal goods or activities. The Serenity is a ship used for scavenging abandon goods that are in abandoned ships. Furthermore theSerenity was carrying two extremely wanted Alliance fugitives. Instead of the captain turning in the two fugitives to the Alliance so that the Serenity could escape freely, the captain decided on hiding the sibling fugitives. The captains thought process was that it was morally right even though it was lawfully wrong. In my opinion, I think that Joss Whedon placed this message in this episode purposely. A great current example is the Libyan revolution. Even though under Muammar Gaddafi’s rule Libyans are not allowed to rebel against him, the Libyan people continues to fight back because of the several decades of torture that he has inflicted on his own people. In this situation, the Libyans are morally right and obligated to stage revolution in order to get rid of an unjust Libyan government. Breaking the law is very looked down upon; it can be necessary in some situations to reach a moral right. In this case, committing an illegal activity should be encouraged if it is necessary to attain a moral right that should have been in place anyways.