Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

Firefly and/or Joss Whedon

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Akima:

--- Quote from: ayvah on 04 Mar 2011, 18:51 ---I certainly agree that it would have been beneficial for the show to have had a Chinese actor in a prominent role. However, I think that where we differ is in how we perceive these other shows who have Asian actors in them.
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You may agree that it might have been beneficial. I might agree. The makers of Firefly plainly did not, since they hardly cast any Chinese or other East Asian actors at all, never mind in prominent roles. The only reason I raised the other shows that do include East Asian actors is to show that some exist and it is possible to cast them, even when the background of the show's universe has nothing to do with China.


--- Quote ---I have this impression that you consider Asians to be "the" oppressed minority in the US and/or Hollywood.
--- End quote ---
This isn't about me, it's about Firefly and the people who made the show. If Whedon had set a TV series in Kenya and cast only one African actor in the entire run, that would be just as bad. The issue here is that Whedon chose to define the imaginary world of Firefly as part Chinese, and then he and his team chose to push East Asian people into the background as anonymous extras. They chose to give lines to only one single East Asian actor in the entire series. I see that as a serious issue for Firefly, and Joss Whedon and his team. You don't. We'll have to agree to differ.


--- Quote from: shiroihikari on 04 Mar 2011, 21:34 ---I guess if race is relevant to the character's backstory somehow, it might be okay to tell an actor, "you're the wrong color for this character", but if they want an actor of a certain race for a part, then they should specify that from the beginning.
--- End quote ---
The backstory of Firefly's entire universe is supposed to be part Chinese. This doesn't mean that any one particular character should be played by an East Asian actor, but I believe that there is a serious problem with only having one minor East Asian character in the entire series. As I said above, if you were setting a TV series in Kenya, it wouldn't mean that any particular role should be played by an black actor, but if you only gave lines to one black actor in the entire series, and otherwise limited black people to extras, I'd say you were on the wrong track. Badly wrong.

ayvah:

--- Quote from: shiroihikari on 04 Mar 2011, 21:34 ---Regarding the appropriation/misappropriation of various cultures in fictional settings: American culture and the English language get butchered all the damn time in anime, and it doesn't really bother me that much.  I don't get mad when Japanese voice actors can't speak intelligible English (and they often can't).  In fact, sometimes the "funny white guy" characters are pretty awesome.  Maybe I'm too laid-back or something.  *shrug*
--- End quote ---
What's that? I couldn't hear you, I was too busy being an American.


--- Quote ---Anyways, back on the subject of Firefly: Could some of you specify some of these shortcomings the series supposedly has?  I've seen it five times and have yet to spot any real flaws worth mentioning.
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I said I was "open to the idea" that the show has shortcomings, but the worst I can come up with on my own is just a technical nitpick. In one episode where the ship lost power, the ship suffered rapid heat loss (in a vacuum, where you'll only lose heat via radiation) but never lost its artificial gravity. Physicists everywhere must have cried themselves to sleep. :P

I'm going to need someone else to come up with real shortcomings, because I love the acting and the scriptwriting and the visuals. With perhaps the exception of the old war buddy. He kinda annoyed me.


--- Quote from: Akima on 05 Mar 2011, 04:31 ---This isn't about me, it's about Firefly and the people who made the show. If Whedon had set a TV series in Kenya and cast only one African actor in the entire run, that would be just as bad.
[...]
The issue here is that Whedon chose to define the imaginary world of Firefly as part Chinese, and then he and his team chose to push East Asian people into the background as anonymous extras. They chose to give lines to only one single East Asian actor in the entire series.
--- End quote ---
Your argument is that while they had black and Latin American actors in major roles and wanted to cast at least one major character as Asian, the show is racist because they ended up casting non-Asian actors.

And to clarify: You believe that when they found a good actor who could play the part -- they should have turned that actor down and actively looked for someone Chinese. You believe that their failure to do this makes the show racist. Is this accurate?


On a related note:
It could easily be the US that's responsible for the majority of space-faring while China became the dominant superpower on Earth. All that's really made clear is that the Alliance is formed from a combination of the US and China, and that Western culture has been influenced by bleed-through from Chinese and other South-East Asian cultures. They use Chinese to swear, but that's just colourful censorship. The show never had the chance to explore the multicultural aspects of the setting so it's hard for me to argue about how Chinese the setting really was.

Still, there's really nothing about the show that's overtly Chinese. In Japan, for instance, you'd find you're very likely to see signs in English. Japanese people also use plenty of English words. They will even quote lines from films and songs, like the famous, "I'll be back." Other times they'll use English just because they feel like it.

Is it cold in here?:
I just did a search for the word "racist" in this thread, and Akima has never used it unless I missed an occurrence.

"Colonialist" is a related and overlapping concept, but it's not the same.

(moderator)Everyone's being civil and focusing on the topic. Pat yourselves on the back!(/moderator)

Akima:

--- Quote from: ayvah on 05 Mar 2011, 14:47 ---Your argument is that while they had black and Latin American actors in major roles and wanted to cast at least one major character as Asian, the show is racist because they ended up casting non-Asian actors.
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I do believe that the result of the casting process is the only important thing, because I believe that what people do is more important than what they say they intended to do. Good intentions that are never put into practice don't count. I judge Firefly simply by what I see on the screen, and the result of multiple casting decisions, made throughout the production of Firefly, was one solitary East Asian character in the entire series. It apparently never occurred to anybody that there was any problem with including Chinese "stuff" while all but excluding Chinese characters. I don't claim they set out with a sinister plan to exclude Chinese characters, but their decisions certainly had that effect. No alarm bells went off. Nobody apparently said: "Wait a minute... Y'know films and TV have a long history of yellowface... And we're putting in all this Chinese stuff... Giving characters names like Tam and Wing... Maybe it would be a good idea if we cast some East Asian actors?" Or at least, if anyone did, it had little effect.


--- Quote ---Still, there's really nothing about the show that's overtly Chinese.
--- End quote ---
So Chinese language, written and spoken, is not "overtly" Chinese? But in a way, you are quite correct. Firefly never did anything important with the Chinese "stuff" it scattered about in the background. None of the stories really brought the Chinese fusion thing into the foreground, or did anything interesting with it. I don't think any of the stories would be changed if you stripped Firefly of its Chinese trappings, replaced the "Mandarin" dialogue and Chinese writing with Farscape-style gobbledegook, took out the paper fans, big "Asian" hats etc. That's why, in my first posting in this thread, I called the ripping-off of Chinese culture in Firefly "pointless". If it was ever intended to be more than cool set-dressing and family-friendly swearwords, nothing in the show gave any evidence of it. That's why I said in an earlier post that the creators of Firefly never expressed any real interest in Chinese culture.

Who knows, maybe Firefly would have addressed these issues if it had run longer, but it's difficult to see how, when the creative team never seems to have thought there was a problem with the casting or the cultural appropriation. I see the problems as linked. If the creators had not included the Chinese stuff in the back-story and set-dressing, the casting would not have been problematic. If the cast had included more East Asian characters/actors, the Chinese stuff wouldn't have seemed so pointlessly appropriated. Stories fleshing out the background could certainly have been rolled out in later episodes, but Firefly had deep structural flaws right from the outset.

ayvah:
It's racist to set a film in Kenya, and then say you want actors from Kenya, just as it's racist to set a film in medieval Europe, and say you want European actors. It's a racism we accept as necessary, because we want the films to seem realistic. One of the problems we have is that we have a history of white-male dominated literature that we can't escape. Make a film about King Arthur, and you can pick whatever hair colour you like, but don't you dare make him black... or female. Only recently have we reached the point where we could portray God as a woman (Dogma), or a black man (Bruce Almighty). It's a good trend.

Roll a die 50 times. No matter how you change your attitude, or how you choose to roll the dice, you can't choose the outcome. There isn't a 1:1 relationship between actions and results. There are great Asian actors out there, but that doesn't mean they'll be at your audition.

I'm pretty neutral about positive discrimination, generally. It's a bad solution to a bad problem, but I accept it may be necessary to help us move forward. If you see Firefly as a missed opportunity for some positive discrimination, then I can appreciate that. But I don't believe that at any moment, they chose to not cast Chinese actors. Their fault is their lack of racial discrimination.

But realistically, think about the drooling, smelly Browncoats that everyone's complaining about. After seeing characters use Chinese in their favourite show, they're likely to show an interest in learning the language. I, myself, am more likely to show an interest in learning Chinese. Considering this means Chinese people are more likely to be stuck in a conversation with a drooling, smelly Browncoat, I can certainly appreciate why a Chinese person might prefer the show featured no Chinese whatsoever.

Firefly is a low-budget sci-fi show, and thinking that they'd be in a position to pick and choose actors is optimistic. If you expect Firefly to be the Martin Luther King of TV shows, then maybe you expect too much.

Edit: Made some minor changes to improve clarity.

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