Firefly/Serenity Fans Raise Money for Charity
Joss Whedon fans have a reputation for being ardent followers of the renowned television producer—from building thriving online communities around his shows to passionately voicing their support for his projects—while likewise demonstrating a flair for “giving back” to the world at large. In 1998, for instance, fans from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Bronze Posting Board organized a get-together that turned into an annual event throughout the show’s seven-year run. Dubbed the PBP (Posting Board Party), the weekend extravaganza featured hundreds of Buffy aficionados mingling with the cast and crew of the series while raising money for the Los Angeles Chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In 2004, blood drives were organized as part of a campaign to save spin-off Angel from cancellation, and in 2007 pizzas were delivered to the picket lines of striking members of the Writers Guild of America courtesy of the weblog Whedonesque.
Arguably the most impressive example of this ongoing sense of “community, support and service,” however, centers on Whedon’s third television outing, the short-lived Firefly. Since 2006, fans from around the world have organized a series of Can't Stop the Serenity (CSTS) fundraisers benefiting women’s rights advocacy organization Equality Now and featuring viewings of Serenity, the big-screen adaptation that Whedon wrote and directed in 2005.
Both a stand-alone story as well as a continuation of the Firefly narrative, the film (like the series) follows a rag-tag group of space-scavengers 500 years in the future who live on a Firefly-class ship called Serenity. Their captain, Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, served in a civil war between the Alliance, who sought greater control over the numerous planets the human race had populated, and the Independents, who wanted more autonomous freedom. Reynolds was on the losing side of the Independents and now keeps the “autonomous freedom” flame burning by adopting a mantra of “find a crew, find a job, keep flying” while trying to remain outside the reaches of the Alliance.
The series makes an apt metaphor for the online fanbase the show has attracted. The FOX network mishandled Firefly from the start, advertising the series as a “quirky adventure” when, in reality, it was a stark psychological examination of surviving on the edges of society and civilization. The series was also given a Friday night death-slot, and FOX’s commitment to Major League Baseball led to a disruption of the show’s schedule. Firefly was eventually cancelled in December 2001, after only eleven aired episodes. But where most television stories end, Firefly’s had barely begun. A “Save Firefly” movement quickly developed—with fans even adopting the term “Browncoats,” as the Independents were known, for themselves—and Whedon became just as determined to not let the series die. International markets soon contacted FOX about acquiring Firefly despite the cancellation, and the complete series DVD collection went on to sell over 500,000 copies upon its release in December 2002. Swayed by the intense fan support, as well as Whedon’s own passion, Universal Pictures gave a greenlight for Serenity, the movie. Although far from a motion picture blockbuster, the film gained even more fans and became a best-selling DVD of its own.
Again, most stories would end there. But Christopher Frankonis, a Firefly fan and blogger who goes by the moniker One True b!X, had different plans. “Late in 2005, a group of Browncoats were leaving one of the last big screen showings of Serenity,” Anna Snyder, herself a Browncoat, told the Portland Mercury of how the fundraiser began. “And the One True b!X was thinking, ‘Hey, maybe there’s a way we could get the movie on the big screen again, just for fun.’ And that morphed into, ‘Well, if we could do it to raise some money, that would be great.’ Which then became, ‘Hey, let’s organize a charity screening and let’s see if we can get other cities involved.’”
Arguably the most impressive example of this ongoing sense of “community, support and service,” however, centers on Whedon’s third television outing, the short-lived Firefly. Since 2006, fans from around the world have organized a series of Can't Stop the Serenity (CSTS) fundraisers benefiting women’s rights advocacy organization Equality Now and featuring viewings of Serenity, the big-screen adaptation that Whedon wrote and directed in 2005.
Both a stand-alone story as well as a continuation of the Firefly narrative, the film (like the series) follows a rag-tag group of space-scavengers 500 years in the future who live on a Firefly-class ship called Serenity. Their captain, Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, served in a civil war between the Alliance, who sought greater control over the numerous planets the human race had populated, and the Independents, who wanted more autonomous freedom. Reynolds was on the losing side of the Independents and now keeps the “autonomous freedom” flame burning by adopting a mantra of “find a crew, find a job, keep flying” while trying to remain outside the reaches of the Alliance.
The series makes an apt metaphor for the online fanbase the show has attracted. The FOX network mishandled Firefly from the start, advertising the series as a “quirky adventure” when, in reality, it was a stark psychological examination of surviving on the edges of society and civilization. The series was also given a Friday night death-slot, and FOX’s commitment to Major League Baseball led to a disruption of the show’s schedule. Firefly was eventually cancelled in December 2001, after only eleven aired episodes. But where most television stories end, Firefly’s had barely begun. A “Save Firefly” movement quickly developed—with fans even adopting the term “Browncoats,” as the Independents were known, for themselves—and Whedon became just as determined to not let the series die. International markets soon contacted FOX about acquiring Firefly despite the cancellation, and the complete series DVD collection went on to sell over 500,000 copies upon its release in December 2002. Swayed by the intense fan support, as well as Whedon’s own passion, Universal Pictures gave a greenlight for Serenity, the movie. Although far from a motion picture blockbuster, the film gained even more fans and became a best-selling DVD of its own.
Again, most stories would end there. But Christopher Frankonis, a Firefly fan and blogger who goes by the moniker One True b!X, had different plans. “Late in 2005, a group of Browncoats were leaving one of the last big screen showings of Serenity,” Anna Snyder, herself a Browncoat, told the Portland Mercury of how the fundraiser began. “And the One True b!X was thinking, ‘Hey, maybe there’s a way we could get the movie on the big screen again, just for fun.’ And that morphed into, ‘Well, if we could do it to raise some money, that would be great.’ Which then became, ‘Hey, let’s organize a charity screening and let’s see if we can get other cities involved.’”
Can’t Stop the Serenity featured forty-seven showings of the film in five countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and United States) in its initial year and raised $65,000 for Equality Now, a personal favorite of Whedon. The event continued in 2007 with forty-six cities participating and $115,000 raised, while fifty-five CSTS events were planned in 2008 with the goal of raising an additional $155,000. Most were held the weekend of June 20th in order to coincide with Whedon’s birthday, which falls on June 23rd.
The recipient of the funds—Equality Now—was founded in 1992 by Jessica Neuwirth, Navanethem Pillay and Feryal Gharahi to bring attention to the gender disparity in the human rights movement. The organization addresses such women-centric issues as domestic violence, rape, female genital mutilation, trafficking, and reproductive rights. Neuwirth was a former student of Lee Stearns, the founder of the first Amnesty International chapter run exclusively by high school students and the mother of Joss Whedon.
“They’re pretty young,” Cate Steven-Davis, who organized multiple Pittsburgh CSTS events, says of Equality Now. “They just started in ’92, but they have really come behind us in a big way. Equality Now is the type of organization that doesn’t tip-toe around things. They say ‘this is a problem, what can we do’ and they do it. And I admire that.”
So how does a little-watched television show cancelled after only eleven episodes in 2002 attract such a large fanbase and become an annual fundraising forum for women’s rights? The credit obviously goes to Joss Whedon, who—while never creating a television-rating hit—has garnered a reputation for intelligent and realistic narratives that resonate with both fans and critics alike. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, despite the name and concept of a female high school student fighting vampires, was in actuality a metaphor for both growing up and coming of age. The show’s spin-off, Angel, centered around the concept of redemption as well as surviving in the world once one sets out on their own. The characters, albeit “supernatural,” were the types that the audience could relate and learn from. The same holds true for Firefly.
The biggest testament of Whedon’s ability to craft such narratives is the fact that his extensively large fanbase is not “all-inclusive.” Buffy fans, for instance, did not necessarily become Firefly fans, and many Firefly fans have never watched Buffy. Even some of the most actively-involved Browncoats had not seen a single episode of any Joss Whedon television show before Serenity was released. Pittsburgher Cate Steven-Davis is one of them.
“I had never seen Firefly and saw the movie and said ‘That was great. I here there’s a TV show, I should check that out,’” she says with a laugh. “And I did and got involved in the fan community and just kind of fell in love with everything and really wanted to be as involved as possible.”
When Cate Steven-Davis first heard about CSTS in 2006, she teamed up with another local fan, Kiersten Ball, to organize the Pittsburgh version. The two repeated the process in 2007, with Steven-Davis flying solo in 2008. “It’s a lot of work, more than I anticipated,” she says of organizing the local event. “We have a global organizer who helps a lot, getting sponsors. And a lot of the stuff you see in the raffle was donated from the global sponsors. But there was a lot of work. Just pulling it all together, trying to raise money and not lose money. It’s challenging but at the end of the night every drop of sweat was worth it.”
Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of Serenity have found a way to beat the odds with the simple philosophy of “find a crew, find a job, keep flying.” Firefly/Serenity fans, meanwhile, have likewise defied conventional-wisdom by building a flourishing online community centered on a failed television show. A popular slogan among Browncoats is “Done the Impossible,” which is the title of a DVD documentary that tells the story of how the motion picture Serenity became reality through the efforts of that community. As the annual CSTS charity events demonstrate, however, Firefly/Serenity fans are far from “done” with the “impossible.”
Anthony Letizia (June 23, 2008)
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