Values In Joss Whedon's Film Serenity

The past and future are inherently different entities. Clothing, technology, social structure, and building structure from the 19th century are characteristically different from what they are today. So imagine how vastly different the world will look in the year of 2517. This is the year in which Joss Whedon’s film Serenity is set. It is a science fiction movie with spaceships and space travel, although conversely half of it seems as if it takes place in the time of the Wild West. Having such an exaggerated contrast in the two time periods in which Whedon decided to pull inspiration from, makes it hard to be confident that such a movie would work. However, although they represent time periods on opposite ends of the spectrum, the western and science fiction genres blend seamlessly together in Joss Whedon’s film Serenity.

In the universe in which Serenity takes place there is a clear division of wealth among the planets. The Core, or the inner planets are the rich, populous, urban

The aforementioned differences in values that each genre shows how there are themes that a viewer might not even realize is present. The values presented in individual genres are not something as visible on screen as costumes and settings. A viewer has to pay more attention to films and study them to an extent to come across these generalizations about each genre. This is why these themes are easy to interchange within the film. The values presented in both westerns and science fiction are able to coexist because they are an element that are not as visually jarring and do not stand out as much as one not belonging with the other. It also helps that Joss Whedon pulls ideological design from various sources and periods and makes the hybridization between the two genres work by blending different layers (Maio 211). This way each character has varying levels of each set of