Just Curious About Something I Noticed...
POSTED BY: RiveR6213
UPDATED: Sunday, December 4, 2005 00:56
VIEWED: 9311
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Why is it in Firefly, that Book and Zoe, who are fine, upstanding, and heroic characters, but just happen to be light-skinned blacks, while Early the Bounty Hunter, from "Objects in Space" and The Operative from "Serenity", and that woman from "Safe" who freaked-out and thought River was a witch are all dark-skinned blacks and are doing evil things?
Is this all by chance, and a complete accident that the light-skinned blacks are good in Firefly and the dark-skinned blacks are evil and are up to no good?
I bring this up because I'm starting to see a lot of patterns with this particular theme creeping into plenty of sci-fi movies and tv shows, which is somewhat annoying because its easy to not put it all together.
Even shows as innocent as Star Wars has this bit of a theme in it. Lando Calression we all know destroyed the 2nd Death Star and that made him a big damned hero, but, before he got around to doing that, he was hitting on Han's girlfriend (princess leia) and sold Han Solo out to Darth Vader, making him totally untrustable and a complete back-stabber. I couldnt help but notice that Lando just happened to be a dark-skinned black....is all of this by accident?
The episode "Objects in Space" Early was trying to scare the crap out of Kaylee by talking about raping her and such...now, the only time in Firefly did the words "rape" come up was when people were talking about what the Reavers would do if they caught you. And who could forget the very same Early, brutally slapping the crap out of our fair heroine Inara...Hmmm, more violence by a dark-skinned black, and more reenforcements for the viewing audience. What does this all mean?
Are writers and directors (OMG Joss?!) playing on our unspoken fears, and/or subjecting us to renforcements regarding all the racial garbage that's going on in our The-Earth-That-Currently-Is?
Lastly. I know this has been brought up many times, but I want to also mention it again because I feel it needs to be mentioned one more time just to make the point. For a 'verse where everyone is running around speaking Chinese, wearing Chinese cloths, swearing in Chinese, and you seem to see the Chinese language all over the place.....where the hell ARE the Chinese in Firefly? Sure you see a few walking around in the background in the 2nd part of Serenity(Firefly) and a few standing around in JaynesTown, but besides that, no Chinese!
I love Summer Glau, I think she's a fine, up and coming actress, and from what I've heard about her from my friends who have met her, they say she's a gem, a real human, and a total sweetheart. I also believe that she played the role River perfectly, she made you believe she was made crazy because of those alliance scientists, and she made you believe that she was sensitive..she's my hero, BUT, I think that the role for River and Simon should have gone to a Chinese couple. It would have given the show the extra kick that it needed, and it would have made the Chinese/Anglo 'verse more believable.
I've been wanting to say this for a while, but I feared you guyz and galz would hate me for even bringing it up, but now i'm feeling kinda brave, so I wrote what I wrote....sue me.
The money was too good and I got stupid...
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Quote:
Originally posted by RiveR6213:
BUT, I think that the role for River and Simon should have gone to a Chinese couple. It would have given the show the extra kick that it needed, and it would have made the Chinese/Anglo 'verse more believable.
To that end, I think B.D. Wong from Law&Order: SVU would have been a good choice for Simon.
http://burstsofstatic.blogspot.com
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I agree with that choice for Simon, and I think that Vicky (Zahao Wei) would have been a good choice for River.
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Regarding the skin colour, I was wondering about that stuff myself.
Quote:
Originally posted by RiveR6213:
BUT, I think that the role for River and Simon should have gone to a Chinese couple. It would have given the show the extra kick that it needed, and it would have made the Chinese/Anglo 'verse more believable.
Totally agree with that. Nothing against Simon and River the way they are now, but there definitely should be more Chinese people in the show.
BTW, why is it called the Anglo-Chinese Alliance (or maybe the other way around)? AMERICA and China formed the Alliance, so shouldn't it be the Sino-American Alliance, or something like that? As far as I know, Anglo refers to the Brits, as in Anglo-Boer War, etc.
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Quote:
Originally posted by RiveR6213:
Why is it in Firefly, that Book and Zoe, who are fine, upstanding, and heroic characters, but just happen to be light-skinned blacks, while Early the Bounty Hunter, from "Objects in Space" and The Operative from "Serenity", and that woman from "Safe" who freaked-out and thought River was a witch are all dark-skinned blacks and are doing evil things?
I don't think it's deliberate; just an accident of casting. The first reason is that Joss isn't a bigot, and I don't think he'd tolerate such on his staff. The second reason is more complex...
I've been the "salt" half of a salt & pepper marriage for going on twenty years now, so I've been exposed to this particular form of skin color prejudice more than most of my fellow melanin deficients.
In my experience, and with some minor exceptions, the sort of white folk who are prejudiced against blacks (ie, morons,) don't generally differentiate between light skinned and dark skinnned blacks; that peculiar bit of idiocy is mostly internal within the black community, in the same way that the mutual North Italy/South Italy rivalries don't really matter to someone who isn't of Italian ancestry.
But hell, what do I know? My wife had to explain the difference between a "mocha", a "brown sugar", and a "high yeller" to me, and between us we're still working on why "Colored Person" is insulting but "Person of Color" is politically correct...
"You know, it's a long time indeed I been wonderin' why your own folk ever gave up so gorgeous a name as The Colored--I don't understand it, be dipped if I do... I traveled the world in me youth, and I noticed yez, mocha, mahogany, chestnut and cocoa... ocher and umber and amber and gold... coffee with cream, coffee with milk, coffee with nothin' but Tullamore Dew... amber and anatase, russet and chocolate... both the siennas, the burnt and the raw, hazel and sepia, several more... an' never a black man or woman I saw." -- Spider Robinson
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I LIKE Simon and River the way they are now in the show. I love River played by Summer Glau, which goes to show what a good actress she is, but I think that her and Simon's roles SHOULD have gone to an actual asian couple; it would have made the show better even though Summer Glau did a 101% great job.
Anglo/Chinese, American/Chinese, Europe/Chinese....who knows what really works? It isnt clear to me what the war on The-Earth-That-Was was all about and who actually won it, so myself and you can't determine really WHO are all those people running around in the 'verse are and WHERE they come from, but we do know that they speak Chinese, swear in Chinese, wear chinese clothes, follow some chinese customs, and all the dark-skinned blacks are bad, and the light-skinned blacks are good.
The "verse is a confusing place, and I suspect that the writers leave out just enough for us to attempt to fill in the blanks, which we will do badly.
Look to the dead to teach you survival...
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By the way. The idea that Joss could be a bigot never entered my mind at all, so I hope you fine folks don't divine my posts heading into that undesirable direction. I just noticed a pattern, in Firefly as well as in other movies (sci-fi or whatever) and it is that pattern in which I am bringing attention.
Shows like Firefly are comfortable, and they are a reflection of our The-Earth-That-Currently-Is, of our humanity, and our current reality, and that reality is Chinese culture is felt in an all white society, but not seen.
We hear the music of the culture. We see the written language of the culture. We hear the swear words of the culture, and it sounds and looks cool & hip coming out of the mouths of our BDH, but in reality, its that Chinese people themselves, in general, are shadows, and an unspoken invisibility on The Earth That Currently Is, and the fictional Fire Fly 'Verse
Could it be a full moon?
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Ah, but if River and Simon had been Chinese, wouldn't that be perpetuating the "All Asians are smart/model minority" stereotype? A medical doctor, and a supergenius prodigy as the only Chinese people on the ship? Geez, what a cliche!
Should have cast them as something else; dark-skinnned blacks, probably, to ensure 100% political correctness.
I would have like to have seen more Asian faces in the 'Verse too, but I was pleased enough that the show had an interracial couple as part of its heroic leads--and without making a fuss about it-- to pick many nits.
Keep in mind also, Most of Firefly's guest stars were vilianous in nature--would it have pleased you if Niska, or Atherton Wing, or the superstitious schoolteacher in "Safe" had been Asian? Or if Inara had been a dark-skinned black, would you be glad to see such casting in a heroic role, or would you be upset that the dark-skinned black was made the ship's prostitute?
Oh, and as for Chinese people being invisible on modern Earth, I can only presume you don't live anywhere on the Pacific Rim.
"Oh, I'm a bad man." -- Captain Malcolm Reynolds
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I would argue 500 years from now that there will be few 'racially pure' individuals. I mean there is so much mixing of cultures and races right now, so why would it stop right?
I always thought that River looked sort of Asian, she has very almondy eyes and her coloring is very Asian. Even her face shape. I would argue that with a last name like 'Tam' that Simon and River obviously have some sort of Asian ancestry.
The dark blacks = evil and the light blacks = good, well I think that's a load of crap. Why? Cos 90% of the villians in the Firefly 'verse are WHITE. Niska (plus Niska's henchmen), Badger (plus Badger's henchmen), Fanty & Mingo, Patience, Rance Burgess, YoSaffBridge, the Blue gloved men, The guy who's after Tracy, outside of Jubal and the Operative all the villians were white.
Also, the whores at the Heart of gold pretty much represented anything you can come up with. Remember, there was an Asian one! Also the patrons of the maidenhead in Serenity pretty much covered anything you could imagine.
Whenever I see these arguements made I always think they are a load of bullshit. There are good and evil people of any race. If Joss hadn't made any black people evil someone would have an issue, if only hispanics were evil someone would have an issue. It's just crap. It's lookin' for something that isn't there.
Also about the Anglo-Sino Alliance. From Websters:
Anglo: In contemporary American usage, Anglo is used primarily in direct contrast to Hispanic or Latino. In this context it is not limited to persons of English or even British descent, but can be generally applied to any non-Hispanic white person.
Sino: Short for Sinology: The study of Chinese language, literature, or civilization.
I have a feeling the term Anglo-Sino Alliance has more to do with the merging of spoken languages (Chinese and English(non-hispanic language of choice in the USA)) than of the countries China and America. Think about it, it makes sense. Everything is a spoken mix of Chinese and English, so the name would make sense.
But that's just me, who prefers to see the wolrd in a color blind fashion, much like Joss, who doesn't care what you look like as long as you can get the job done.
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http://pluralofapocalypse.blogspot.com
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Inara: "Do aliens live among us?"
Kaylee: "Yes. One of them's a doctor."
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I agree that's it's all about Joss casting the perfect actor for each part. (And I also had a passing thought that Summer looked somewhat Asian.)
Looking throught a race-tinted lens can make it seem that there are patterns that ain't necessarily so. This is a world many generations removed from earth-that-is race relations. Humans love nothing so much as to divide themselves off from an "other," but in this world, other is Alliance/Browncoat/Reaver.
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