Serenity: A Question

[butterfly]

Okay, how is the Operative like Jubal Early? I do not get it. To me, they seemed like completely, utterly different characters.

Jubal was a bounty hunter who was clearly nuts and who liked causing pain and threatening people, the Operative was an assassin who was very rational and straight-forward. And Jubal didn't Believe in much of anything (is it still River's room if River isn't in it?), much less a better world. And the Operative was exceedingly polite and open-minded, even while killing people (Young miss?). I can't picture the Operative threatening to rape Kaylee. And Jubal tried to deny to himself that he was a monster, tried to claim that it was just his job, whereas the Operative was just doing his job and was aware that that choice did make him a monster.

Seriously, I just really want someone to explain to me how they're alike.

Comments

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

They're similar mainly in their preoccupation with what's right and wrong, and with sin, in their philosophizing to their quarries and the combination of quite horrific violence with a conversational tone. I thought Early was reasonably polite while threatening Kaylee with rape, no abusive terms involved, very goal oriented. Much like the Operative killing men and then expecting the young miss to go to work. (I don't see him threatening rape, because he doesn't much go in for threats, but I think he would commit it without a blink if he thought it was necessary to achieve his goals.)

Also both are aware that the violence they commit is wrong, and profess not to like it, but feel it is necessary to their job.

They're not completely identical, of course. Early hunts for profit, the Operative from conviction. We are given reason to doubt that Early's professed distaste for the violence is real, but no reason to think the Operative's is, given that he countermands the kill order. It's hard to see Early ever unquestioningly accepting authority to the point of taking orders, let alone giving up his name.

But they do remind me of each other, in that way that criminals and cops often come from almost identical backgrounds, even sometimes the same family. If Early had had something to believe in, he might have become something like the Operative -- his own turn for violence harnessed and disciplined, but also given a justified outlet, turned into a Holy War instead of eating him up inside until there was little left.

It's harder for me to think the Operative without belief would have turned into something like Early, but that's because I can only picture the Operative having lost belief, not who he would have been if he'd never had it. It's too much of what he was, or at least what we saw.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

But Early also smacked Inara just for talking to him, which is never a polite thing to do. The Operative killed the doctor for failure and the guards because he extended the courtesy of believing that they would die to protect the other dude.

Early hunts for profit, the Operative from conviction.

Hmm. I guess that this is such a profound difference to me (this and the whole 'but Early was nuts' thing), that it really does pretty much outweigh any of the possible similarities. The difference between someone who fights because they believe (or are capable of that level of belief) in something and someone who fights just to get a quick buck... well, in my mind, that's the difference between Mal and the captain who shot him in Out of Gas. And that's a really big difference for me.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Jubal smacked Inara for getting in the way of his job. So did the Operative.

well, in my mind, that's the difference between Mal and the captain who shot him in Out of Gas.

Sure. But if the captain from Out of Gas had been a wisecracking man who took care of his crew first and only, wore tight pants and was in love with a whore whose job he didn't respect, I would say he and Mal had some substantial things in common, despite the one big glaring difference. I would feel like the similarities were there to both highlight the differences and to suggest the road not taken, not that the difference made the similarity not count.

I guess also I feel like there's something intrinsic about the kind of person who believes you *can* make a better world by killing innocent children that is not too dissimilar in its monstrosity and its egotism from believing it's okay to rape strangers to make you money. He may do it for his belief in what's right, but part of me thinks part of him has to want it -- just like Jubal -- underneath all the justifications. Because if he purely hated it, he couldn't stay sane. Not for so long, not with no doubts, not without proof that he really was making things better of the kind he explicitly denies having or wanting.

Either that or he didn't stay sane. To me to believe so hard as that, with no cracks and no doubts and giving up your whole self to it, is almost a form of crazy in itself. And when you add the twistedness of *what* he believes on top of it, that he thinks you can make a right if you just pile the wrongs up high enough... yeah. I don't think crazy is one of the ways in which Jubal and the Operative are different. The Operative's just a lot quieter and more methodical about it.

The Operative doesn't just fight, he kills the innocent and the helpless. He's more like a terrorist than a soldier. And Jubal, in this analogy, would be like a hired assassin. Obviously professional killers and suicide bombers aren't the same thing, but they do have some things in common that I think are worth considering.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Maybe the biggest difference, to me, when it comes down to it, is in my reaction to them -- Jubal scared me. The Operative didn't. I thought they were both interesting characters, but I was glad to see Jubal floating out to a slow death, and equally glad that the Operative's life was spared. That's how very differently they struck me.

As for the Operative being nuts... I don't think that he could have changed his mind at the end, if he'd been so far gone. He was able to take in new evidence and adjust his beliefs accordingly. I just... I do believe that otherwise smart people can do stupid things because of something that they believe and that it doesn't make them crazy. Particularly not if they can manage to break out of the cycle.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

They both scared me. Actually, the Operative scared me way more, even though I also liked him better. Jubal was freaky, but petty. I could get a handle on him, 'cause he was broadcasting his desires all over the place. Respect, fear, money, status, pride, justification. Unsavory, but human in scale.

Whereas the Operative scared the piss out of me because he couldn't be angered, couldn't be distracted, couldn't even be made to question by anything short of the most extreme measures -- and even then, if Mal had shown him the tape *without* at the same time broadcasting it, so that the Operative had to choose whether to contain the damage and kill the Tams or switch sides, I'm not at all sure which he'd have chosen.

I thought they were both interesting characters too, and I wasn't sorry to see the Operative's life spared because I was convinced he was broken -- but he had to *be* pretty well completely broken to be safe to leave alive. And in fact, I was convinced he was so broken that unless somebody stepped in stat, I assumed he was gonna go fall on his sword as soon as Serenity broke orbit.

Jubal -- I was satisfied by the ending, but I wasn't particularly invested in it. If they'd had enough cash to buy him off, that would've struck me as just as fine. He's not a good man, but in a world with Niska in it he's a long way from the worst they've encountered. At least he didn't really rape. At least he felt he *needed* justification. I didn't feel like, in the normal way of things, he was much of a threat -- to individuals, until sooner or later some individual brought him down, but the Operative could topple worlds.

I don't believe crazy is something you can't come back from. (Just look at River). Therefore I don't believe coming back is proof that you weren't crazy. And I think stupid things are things that don't work. Things that do work by me aren't stupid, but rather scary-smart in a closed-system logic that doesn't allow for the reality and legitimacy of other people's point of view, and I think that's one of the main definitions of crazy. (Clinical narcissism, solipsism, sociopathy, borderline, all boil down to various forms of "my POV is the only one that matters, or even exists.")

I think the fact that it took the death of millions and his own complete immobility *and* the fact that he was too late to do anything about it to open the Operative's mind to even the possibility that the Alliance might be wrong is pretty extreme -- way past electricity on the scale of shock treatments, and even then, he didn't so much adjust his beliefs as lose them completely, and his very sense of self with them. That, by me, is not so sane. It's only saner than being exposed to the same evidence and not doing it. Which makes him arguably a kind of hero, but not therefore well-balanced.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Sure. But if the captain from Out of Gas had been a wisecracking man who took care of his crew first and only, wore tight pants and was in love with a whore whose job he didn't respect, I would say he and Mal had some substantial things in common, despite the one big glaring difference.

All I really see in common with Jubal and the Operative, even now, is a certain matter-of-fact way of doing their job. They didn't dress alike (Jubal had that dark red, spider-like space suit, while the Operative dressed in blues/greys), didn't approach the case anything similiar (above, mentions that Jubal's attack is all from the inside, like an infection, while the one place that the Operative doesn't get is inside the ship), didn't have the same relationship to the Alliance.

Jubal smacked Inara for getting in the way of his job. So did the Operative.

Jubal smacked Inara for getting into his head, 'visiting his intentions'. The Operative smacked Inara for, well, attacking him first. I just really see those as different.