The intended ethnicity of the Tams?

POSTED BY: deigaman
UPDATED: Thursday, July 30, 2009 00:49
VIEWED: 9100
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ZAROVE

Friday, July 24, 2009 7:22 AM

Actually, I intended Peter Tam to marry a woman whose Grandfather was a veit, and prodiced her mother. Her mother has half Asian and half white, and her Father white. This resulted in Jessica Thai Ly being only a Quarter veit. (But taking her mothers name, for legal reasons.) When she married Peter Tam, who was half Chinese, the resulting offspring where more white than Asian.

This is bcause Peter is half white and Jessica is 75 percent white. The offspring would be 3/8ths Asian.

Also, Im being general with whites, precicely because they are alreayd pretty mixed. Im not tryign to sound like some sort of Eugenisist, Im just not going into too many details. its bad enough I invented a family line, complete with names, for the Tams.

AGENTROUKA

Friday, July 24, 2009 7:33 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
JSF,

but even if such a thing as a parallel/separate Asian society existed, that chooses to confine itself to Sihnon and not intermix with others... that still wouldn't explain the discrepancy of having lots and lots of non-speaking, clearly Asian background characters in the same low-level places where Mal and all the speaking non-Asian roles hang out.

Why wouldn't some of these poor Asians have been Independents, why couldn't they be part of Mal's crew or his business associates? And if the divide ran so deep, that even the poor kept themselves strictly seggregated along heritage lines, why wouldn't it have been mentioned on the show?

Honestly, I think there is no way to rationalize the weirdness of the lack of Asian speaking roles on the show.

The only reason people often ignore it is that the image of a space western, where Asians aren't necessarily expected to feature prominently, trumps the cultural implications of the show's premise, which would be... some Asians featuring prominently!

You mean like the Zen Western with asian David Carradine (Kung Fu)?

Well, Carradine wasn't Asian. So I guess it is a little bit like that. We have some Asian elements in the show's culture, but actual people of Asian descent are relegated to the background.

I wouldn't change anything about the show, I would just consider it more credible if they had given some of the prominent roles, crew or recurring business interest, or even villain of the week, to someone of actual Asian descent. Instead of "women sitting on train, holding chicken" or "man riding bike through Eavesdown Docks" roles.

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Friday, July 24, 2009 7:44 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ZAROVE:
Actually, I intended Peter Tam to marry a woman whose Grandfather was a veit, and prodiced her mother. Her mother has half Asian and half white, and her Father white. This resulted in Jessica Thai Ly being only a Quarter veit. (But taking her mothers name, for legal reasons.) When she married Peter Tam, who was half Chinese, the resulting offspring where more white than Asian.

This is bcause Peter is half white and Jessica is 75 percent white. The offspring would be 3/8ths Asian.

Also, Im being general with whites, precicely because they are alreayd pretty mixed. Im not tryign to sound like some sort of Eugenisist, Im just not going into too many details. its bad enough I invented a family line, complete with names, for the Tams.

Thanks for the reply. I had missed that Jessica was 1/4 asian instead of half asian.
However, I have wondered if the asian genetics and features will be more dominant than the non-asian traits, or less dominant and resilient, or about the same. This is one reason I said we will need to wait until we've seen 500 years of widespreqd intermixing to know the difference. Those who've seen only a few generations of racial mixing between Hispanics, Africans, Scots, Germans, Scandanavians can note how much or little the traits caqn become muted, and which traits are most resilient.
I wasn't denying that pure or predominantly asian characters existed. But did you notice how many of the "background" asians seemed to be in groups, some apparently gang-like, and others merely congregating with fellow asians. Perhaps the political fallout from China being the other half of the exodus group created yet another social barrier for freely intermixing. Would Japan have been part of the Chinese side, or the American side? How about South Koreans? Taiwanese?

BIGWOLF18

Friday, July 24, 2009 11:36 AM

perhaps there was no thought put into this at all, maybe it really was just the best actors for the parts. could you imagien it not having the actors it does and being just as good?

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"of course i've gone mad with power, ya ever tried going mad without power? its no fun, nobody listens to you!" The Simpsons Movie

AGENTROUKA

Friday, July 24, 2009 11:57 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by bigwolf18:
perhaps there was no thought put into this at all, maybe it really was just the best actors for the parts. could you imagien it not having the actors it does and being just as good?

Yes, I can imagine it.

I'd say it's not really possible to disregard race in certain casting decisions. If you cast for a movie set in China, you'll be casting actors of Chinese heritage, unless there's a very good reason for the characters not to be Chinese. If you make a movie dealing with American slavery, you're going to let race play a role in your casting choices, right?

Similarly, I figure they certainly picked great actors, but I can't imagine for the life of me why the Chinese half of the verse's culture wasn't made part of the choice. I sincerely doubt that no good actors of Chinese descend were available at the time.

I'm not saying I don't love the actors they chose, but who says I couldn't have loved another actor in one of the roles. Why couldn't the bad cop in "The Message" have been of Asian descend? Or Atherton Wing? Or Nandi? Or Tracey? Or Sir Warrick Harrow? Patience?

I think it's a case of inconsistency. They wanted some Asian elements without fully committing to their own scenario. Is there a stigma attached to casting Asians that they wanted to avoid? I just don't understand.

NCBROWNCOAT

Friday, July 24, 2009 2:03 PM

I would have liked to see more Asian actors too.

As to a separate society, the RPG book (I consider it almost canon since Joss gave his blessing to it) does mention that "Tongs" or Asian Miafia still exist and are very influential on some planets and moons so a parallel society may exist to some extent.

There is till a lot of prejudice in Asian society to "mixed race" children, not necessarily in the US or Europe but in the Asian countries themselves. A lot of Vietnamese/American children have emigrated to the US in the past 40 years because of the prejudice. And I remember a Pearl Buck story about 4 Korean/American orphans and the prejudice that they faced after the Korean War (I think it was called "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John").

The Asian characteristics seem to predominate in mixed race children for some genetic reason. The children of my Chinese/American friend are 3/4 white, yet they look remarkably Asian. The same of what I've seen of the Gosslin twins and sextuplets on TV.

I'm not sure what further mixing would look like and only time will tell. I do think that society, in the US at least, is mixing more and more as our prejudices go away and we judge each other by character and not by skin color (my ideal world).

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

ZAROVE

Saturday, July 25, 2009 6:34 PM

Well, the genetic reason for that is likely because white features are actually a lack of features. Except the Characteristic "White nose" and hair and eye colour, whites have basically no predominate features that stand out. The reason whites have white skin is because of a lack of Melanin, for example.

White features are plain, and white white genetics are just as strong as Asian, they express themselves differently and on an internal basis, such as blood type. Appearancewise, whites simply have no remarkable Characteristics to pass along.

In fact, some theories that whites got their start by Albonis intermarrying each other simply because they where shunned from more coloured communities due to their appearance, though this thery is not universlly accpeted, and generlaly people think the white race came from the mild skies of Europe, with its cold, and damp environment makign plainer features adaptively more benificial.

Just as black skin is adaptively better for Africa.

Asian features ar emroe a mystery to me, as I dont understand what adaptive function they served for their environment, bu perhaos thats just me not seeing the obvious.

KAOSIUM

Saturday, July 25, 2009 8:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
JSF,

Honestly, I think there is no way to rationalize the weirdness of the lack of Asian speaking roles on the show.

Sure there is, it's called demographics. Asians make up all of 4% of the American population. Probably less in Canada. This is the pool of actors most American shows have to pull from. As education is generally highly prized in Asian-American culture, the best and the brightest are busy becoming engineers and doctors, not actors.

AGENTROUKA

Saturday, July 25, 2009 9:02 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kaosium:
Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
JSF,

Honestly, I think there is no way to rationalize the weirdness of the lack of Asian speaking roles on the show.

Sure there is, it's called demographics. Asians make up all of 4% of the American population. Probably less in Canada. This is the pool of actors most American shows have to pull from. As education is generally highly prized in Asian-American culture, the best and the brightest are busy becoming engineers and doctors, not actors.

So you are honestly saying that NO qualified Asian actors would have been available to act in the show..? I don't find that credible.

KAOSIUM

Saturday, July 25, 2009 9:20 PM

So you are honestly saying that NO qualified Asian actors would have been available to act in the show..? I don't find that credible.

Not exactly, just none that were able to beat out the ones that eventually were cast. Kaylee was originally supposed to be Asian in origin, but Jewel Strait won the role instead. There's simply *not* that many Asian-American actors out there, mainly because Asian-Americans are the single richest and best educated demographic and go to the best schools and learn things that get them lots more promising work than acting. My brother is/was an 'actor.' He spent 20k dollars twenty years ago at a prestigious New York acting academy. His wife went there too. He never made much more than a dime off it. He uses that expertise now to produce and direct (and occasionally star if he can't cast someone else) plays for a local theater group with the aid of his wife. His *real* job is as a union journeymen painter, his wife works at a casino as a teller.

Acting is a terribly risky profession, it's hard to make a living doing it full-time. It's not the sort of thing someone getting straight A's with the chance to go to Berkeley or MIT is going to get into. Seriously, stop and think about it, how many top Asian-American actors can you think of? With that kind of cultural imperatives and that tiny proportion of the population it's tough to find Asian-American actors.

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