Where are the Asians?
POSTED BY: mojoeca
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 8, 2009 12:36
VIEWED: 18913
PAGE 1 of 6
We know Chinese culture will feature prominently alongside Western culture in FIREFLY. The characters even speak Chinese! (Which is way cool). But why aren't any of the regulars Asian? I've been thinking which characters could have been ...
MAL: I may be cynical, but I don't think FOX would have accepted an Asian male lead. OTOH, Joss may not have either simply because the heavy Western motif almost demanded that Reynolds be white.
JAYNE: I don't see many hulking Asians who are good actors on TV and in movies. Either there aren't any in Hollywood, or no one has parts for them.
WASH: It's the anti-Star Trek. You can't have an Asian pilot. OTOH, a prominent Asian/Black married couple might have been a television first.
ZOE: Definitely could have been Asian. But since Gina Torres is the hottest woman in Sci-Fi, there's no way I'm going to allow a (pseudo) cast change.
BOOK: Replacing Ron Glass makes Torres a "token black." So let's switch out one of the remaining white actors.
KAYLEE: She was described in the casting sides as "chubby and sexy as hell." My last girlfriend was Chinese, chubby and sexy as hell. So Kaylee's a possibility.
INARA: I think there were some Asian prostitutes in the Old West -- if YOUNG GUNS is accurate at all.
SIMON: An Asian doctor! There you go. Cliched casting for the man who thinks cliches are awesome ... for him to poop on! Heh. That also means his sister ...
RIVER: ... must be Asian. Summer Glau even looks kinda Asian in some of the casting shots, so it's not hard to imagine at all.
Okay, then. I think Simon and River should have been Asian in the interest of diversity, in a universe that's supposedly diverse. But now we need a Hispanic character! Ooh, and an Eskimo!
AN EXTREMELY BELATED EDIT: Turns out Morena Baccarin is Italian-Brazilian, so there's our hispanic, or South-American, or non-Anglo European, or whatever the hell she would check on a census survey...
--- Joe
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Well, one thing for sure, Mal swears in Mandarin in the pilot (Serenity).
His Mandarin is terrible, but I could have swore that he said "Ta Ma Da", which basically means "motherf
ker" in Mandarin.
And really, enough with the "Aiyah" because no Chinese would say that in the particular situation that they were in. It sounds really out of place.
As for Simon and River, "Tam" is a Chinese surname.
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Quote:
Originally posted by mojoeca:
Ooh, and an Eskimo!
Aren't we supposed to refer to Eskimo as Inuit instead?
Is there a plural for Eskimo?..... Or Inuit for that matter!?
Phil
"I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age. Nerds are in. They're still in, right?" -Willow
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Quote:
Originally posted by mojoeca:
But now we need a Hispanic character!
Sean Maher (Simon) is said to be from Pleasantville NY, but Summer Glau (River) is from San Antonio as far as I can tell.... So she might be your Hispanic anyway, its certainly possible its in her background somewhere.
Still puts the Asian thing up the spout again!
But I have to say for 400 years in the future I think its entirely possible that most 'white' americans will be somewhat Hispanic..... since Spanish is meant to be fast approaching the second most popular language in America.
Phil
"I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age. Nerds are in. They're still in, right?" -Willow
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"Send in the clowns"
"They're already here..."
After 400 years and no Earth left, everybody should have a bit of everything remaining of geographically isolated "racial differences."
Toss in Genetic engineering of children, "But Lee, blonds are in this year!" and you get a very human race.
Jeff
Who is betting on the Koreans to form early star colonies.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
Well, one thing for sure, Mal swears in Mandarin in the pilot (Serenity).
And really, enough with the "Aiyah" because no Chinese would say that in the particular situation that they were in.
But after 400 years of Linguistic drift what would it mean? If I take my 1602 English dictionary and my 2002 English dictionary..humm one hand's a bit empty here....
Quote:
As for Simon and River, "Tam" is a Chinese surname.
And in several other languages.
Jeff Timm
Who notes Awful quite recently meant "So impressive it filled one with Awe!"
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Quote:What Warren Beatty said (in BULWORTH): "We should all just keep f*cking each other 'til we're all the same color."
Originally posted by TinyTimm:
"Send in the clowns"
"They're already here..."
After 400 years and no Earth left, everybody should have a bit of everything remaining of geographically isolated "racial differences."
Toss in Genetic engineering of children, "But Lee, blonds are in this year!" and you get a very human race.
--- Joe
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Quote:
Originally posted by TinyTimm:
But after 400 years of Linguistic drift what would it mean? If I take my 1602 English dictionary and my 2002 English dictionary..humm one hand's a bit empty here....
Except, well, they happen to drift back to the Old West in Firefly as far as the English language goes. One then wonders what the Chinese language sounds like.
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Quote:Plural for Eskimo is Eskimos. The origins of the word are controversial, so there's no "original" language to enforce silly rules. Though I have heard "Eskimo" used as a plural.
Originally posted by Guantes:Quote:
Originally posted by mojoeca:
Ooh, and an Eskimo!
Aren't we supposed to refer to Eskimo as Inuit instead?
Is there a plural for Eskimo?..... Or Inuit for that matter!?
Inuit is plural, for inuk ("human being"). Though people often say "Inuits". And the word is only used in Canada and Greenland. (And "Eskimo" is only considered offensive by Canadian Inuit.) Related peoples in North Alaska use the word slightly differently, and their cousins in West Alaska and Siberia don't use it at all.
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Quote:Try comparing English as used in 1602 with that used in 1202. I won't tell you to compare dictionaries, because they didn't have them in 1202 -- they're weren't enough literate people to use them, and there was no body of printed literature to base them on. Anyway, you'll find that English in 1602 was a lot closer to that of 2002 than it was to that of 1202. People still read Shakespeare (died 1612), but how many can make sense of this verse, written in 1300?
Originally posted by TinyTimm:
If I take my 1602 English dictionary and my 2002 English dictionary..humm one hand's a bit empty here....
Ich libbe in love-longinge
For semlokes of alle thynge,
He may me blisse bringe
Ich am in hire baundoun.
Hey, I know a language joke from the 1200s! A guy from southern England goes into an inn in northern England and asks for a plate of "egges". Yep, he meant "eggs," though he would have pronounced the second e. The innkeeper says, "Sorry, I don't speak French". Get it? No? Oh well. Any way, the local usage was "eggen".
Anyway, technology has a way of slowing down linguistic change. Printing, moving to an industrial economy (meaning more people were literate), and finally broadcasting.
Broadcasting was the biggie, but even before radio was invented, language change was slowing down. Which is why the Declaration of Independence is still readable, more than two centuries after it was written.
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