I’ll start:
Idaho - when people think “racism in the United States” their minds go to the Deep South. The Deep South is absolutely pretty bad, and there’s of course the whole history with the confederacy so it makes sense that’s what we think of, but Idaho is let off the hook way too much given that it’s a hotbed of Nazis and Christian nationalists trying to form a white ethnostate. Idaho needs to be more closely linked to virulent racism like the Deep South currently is. And tbh I’ve been to the Deep South, I like it down there, it’s actually pretty diverse in many areas, if I had to live there it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. You couldn’t pay me to set foot in Idaho.
Gen X - look, if we’re gonna do generational warfare gen x needs a lot more hate. Sorry to any xers out there but boomers have been punching bags for a while, millenials are starting to get a good amount of hate, and they’ve always been made fun of for their Harry Potter and office love, tbh a lot of millennial shit is just considered cringe these days, gen z obviously gets all the “ugh what’s wrong with the youth” hate and this new media cycle has them being portrayed as pretty much the new hitler youth. Gen x needs to start getting some more hate, especially now with all these weird gen x venture capitalists influencing the trump admin trying to realize their vision of a neo fascist network state
What?
In the audio commentary of the pilot episode (it’s been 10,000 years so might be a different episode) Whedon talks about the war being space US Civil War and Mal is inspired by the confederate soldiers who went west after the war because the inner planets = manufacturing power and center of government like the north, and outer planets = agrarians who are having their ‘rights’ trampled like the south. Obviously it’s a prime time show from 2001 written entirely by white people so there’s no discussion of slavery, the closest it gets is one episode does feature an outer planet guy who ‘owns’ people via their debts to him
I’ll be damned
There’s a whole lot of dogwhistle language that “Confederate history buffs” would recognize. For example, how Mal occasionally talks about his side rising again.
I think that’s less dogwhistle and more Whedon is just a bit stupid. It’s very bog standard evil sleek shiny empire vs. ragtag bunch of loveable misfits, more in line with Star Wars. The entire crew is way too progressive, excluding Jayne who is explicitly the asshole, for them to be reactionary US confederates.