Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Firefly and/or Joss Whedon
Odin:
Considering they couldn't even get correct British accents in the characters that had them, the Chinese stuff isn't even in the cards for me.
ayvah:
--- Quote from: Odin on 03 Mar 2011, 18:14 ---It was horribly, horribly wrong from the standpoint of someone supposedly reverting to that language when swearing (as one would if it was the first language you learned growing up), and when it comes to languages, horrible mispronunciation in that context is a terribly condemning point against any possibility of realism or whatever you want to call it.
--- End quote ---
As I understand, the Chinese used in Firefly was all quite good on paper, but unfortunately the actors couldn't handle pronouncing it. But it's not alone. This is DEFINITELY a problem in Evangelion and 90% of anime that involve English in any capacity whatsoever. The new Rebuild of Evangelion movies had excellent translations to English, but the actor who played Kaji (the character was apparently fluent in English) mangled it so badly when speaking it, that no one who understands English has any idea what he's saying. Lots of Japanese TV shows, songs and movies love to inject a bit of English here and there, and get it wrong. I'm sure you've all heard of the website Engrish.
I'm not going to get offended by their failure to use English properly. I laugh and I move on. I don't see a need to use my serious face.
--- Quote from: cabbagehut on 03 Mar 2011, 18:02 ---IIRC, the show focused on the Japanese branch of Nerv - I think I remember them mentioning various branches in Germany, China, and the US. I haven't seen the show in a while, but I was always under the impression that there were a lot of branches of Nerv, and we only got to see the one, which just so happened to have founded the organization and has all the interesting things happen to it. Correct me if I'm wrong, please!
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In addition to tender's comments: Nerv originated from the Katsuragi Expedition, which was lead by a Japanese guy who is a father to one of the main characters. They were all employees of Gehirn (a private organisation contracted by the UN). Gendo, who would later be the boss of Gehirn's successor Nerv, was part of the expedition, but left before things turned ugly, with all of the critical research that would later lead to the construction of the Evangelions. Also, they happened to find the geo-front in Japan, leading to the construction of Tokyo-3 (a fortress) in that location.
--- Quote ---As for unlucky casting, I don't really believe in the "getting unlucky" thing. If you want a specific ethnicity, you can find it. The debacle with The Last Airbender showed that it's pretty easy to whitewash a cast when you feel like it.
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I may have missed the "debacle" you're speaking of, so I might need you to fill me in. I remember there was quite a lot of controversy about the actors not all being Asian, and to an extent I agree, but I don't know whether you're saying they actually did something that specifically limited their ability to choose Asian actors. If so, please elaborate.
Anyway, while I do agree that Avatar didn't do a great job of casting people racially, at the same time I'm cautious because it can be a double-edged sword. After all, you don't have to be Asian to learn karate and I'm wary of casting decisions that help to encourage stereotypes and typecasting, like "All Asians know martial arts". In all honesty, in Avatar, race was never really explored or even mentioned. To an extent, the assumption that Aang was Chinese was slightly racist too. Especially considering there's no China.
But it really was such a bad film to make out of such a groundbreaking TV series.
--- Quote ---I don't think he was evilly cackling away, going, "MWAR HAR HAR HAR, I SHALL ONLY HAVE THE WHITE PEOPLE IN HERE!", but when you've got so many East Asian influences in your work, it seems weird not to have a single main cast member that's Asian. Akima makes these points more saliently than I do.
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Ah, finally we've touched something where my Evangelion reference actually fits a bit better. Eva is littered with Christian and Jewish references, intended to feel exotic to the show's Japanese audience. The UN is also technically in charge. It's the UN military forces who constantly get their arses handed to them by the Angels. Firefly shows a strong interest in Chinese culture, just as Evangelion shows a strong interest in Western culture. Does the fact that Asuka is 3/4 not Japanese make any difference to my perception of the show? Not really.
cabbagehut:
Thanks for the info on NERV! I had forgotten so much of that.
As for The Last Airbender thing, the casting calls asked for "caucasian and other races", which puts a preference on the caucasian part. The East-West Players protested this, along with other groups, saying that it wasn't a fair casting call. The people who did the casting itself used some less-than-accurate racial terms (not slurs or anything, just some stereotypes).
I'll keep this short so I don't thread-jack, but the creators of the cartoon have specifically stated that the characters are intended to be Asian - you can see it in their world. The whole thing is basically Asia and some Inuit-inspired characters. At the very least, they could have cast darker-skinned actors for Katara and Sokka. The very least.
A site that is clearly biased in my opinion, but has a lot of information is racebending.com, which explains in more detail about the timelines and why people consider it racist.
My arguments on Firefly are weak, since I haven't seen the show. However, it's my understanding that they actually use the Chinese language and parts of the culture. It's not just bits and pieces, but an integral part of the story? That lens, to me, feels different than NGE, which acknowledged a world, but focused on a part of it. The culture of the UN wasn't important to the story - they're there, but lack the technology to fight Angels, so instead, it's about the company that DOES have the technology. I should probably bow out of this, because I'm obviously not equipped to make any good arguments!
I could see the haphazardly-used religious imagery bothering people, and I think that's legitimate, but I don't have the theoretical background to really present a case on that. I do think the religious imagery is different than cultural imagery, though.
Akima:
--- Quote from: Nodaisho on 03 Mar 2011, 02:49 ---Akima, read that last paragraph again. You just accused a large group of people of conspiratorial, malicious racism rather than merely accidental lack of casting diversity. This is why you have the reputation of being that person that only ever posts when she has a chance to yell about racism. It isn't true, I know you post about a lot of other stuff, but the most notable ones are when you do a backflip off the deep end.
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I am fully aware that the makers of Firefly are not the only ones who prefer Chinese people to stay in the background. If people are sufficiently bothered by my comments to resort to misrepresenting my posting history, it says far more about them than about me.
Speaking of misrepresentation, I made no accusation of conspiracy or malice in my final paragraph. I described what I see on the screen when I watch Firefly. I don't imagine the creators of the show sat around cackling evilly in a dark room when they made the collective decisions that resulted in what appeared on the screen, but I do hold them accountable for the result of those decisions. Television casting decisions are not "accidental". They are made by professional people making choices about what they think is important to put on the screen. The makers of Firefly made choices that put Asian actors and Asian people in the background. I can see that on the screen, because that is what they put there. I don't need to imagine conspiracy or malign intent to think that is a problem. I assume that what the Firefly creative team put on the screen is what they intended, or at least what they thought was "good enough".
Akima:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 03 Mar 2011, 17:06 ---Was the background Chinese in Firefly wrong, or just different? In other words, was in in the realm of stupid and careless mistakes, or was it a conceivable variant, as was the show's English?
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As regards spoken language pronunciation, the Chinese was many orders of magnitude more "variant" (to put it kindly) from modern Standard Mandarin than the show's English was from modern American English. The spoken Chinese is simply bad, and is where the show really falls down in terms of in-world realism and suspension of disbelief. For example, the cast didn't come close to getting the tones right (which is crucial to meaning), or mastering retroflex consonants (notoriously tricky). Their bad pronunciation makes them very hard to understand in places, but you know what? I don't blame them at all. Chinese is difficult for English-speakers, and the actors just didn't have time to learn the sounds. In terms of what was said, rather than how, the record is mixed. Some phrases are correct and idiomatic, some are "dictionary correct" but sound unnatural, some phrases sound like gibberish even on multiple listenings. In at least one episode, some of the "Mandarin" was actually Cantonese.
Written Chinese in Firefly is also a mixed bag. Some is correct. Some is actually Japanese. Sometimes the creators couldn't make their minds up which characters to use and used different ones for the same meaning in different places. In the TV series the ship had 平静 (píngjěng) painted on the side, while in the movie it was 宁静 (níngjěng). The words have slightly different meanings in Chinese, but both can be translated as "Serenity". "Blue Suns" was sometimes written with characters that mean "Green Suns". Then there are the real blunders like characters written back to front, upside down, lying on their sides (particularly on signs with the characters written top-to-bottom, but then hung sideways by the set-dressers, and vice-versa). And some of the characters are just gibberish pseudo-characters as far as I can tell, with no meaning at all.
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