Just Curious About Something I Noticed...
POSTED BY: RiveR6213
UPDATED: Sunday, December 4, 2005 00:56
VIEWED: 9311
PAGE 2 of 4
Anglo-
Originally from Anglo-Saxon (the major tribes of the British isles) but it's changed to mean English speaking nations. Churchil reffered to an Anglo-sphere in reference to America and the Commonwealth.
Personally I had never really thought of the Jubal/Operative thing that way. I can see where your coming from but I don't agree.
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I had long thought about the two black villians, but was comforted by the two black heroes. Had not examined the skin tones that carefully.
The asian thing seems truly nonsensical. I offer two explanations - Maybe China colonized in one direction, predominantly, and we just aint there in the show? Or maybe Joss reckoned that Asians drawling like this would seem strange like? Personally I thought Cho Chang's Scottish brogue was totally cool, wish she had more to say.
I do take objection to the classification of the character in "Safe" as a villian. She was a very compassionate, caring person. In the context of her backward society, she was behaving appropriately.
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Quote:
Originally posted by weichi:
I do take objection to the classification of the character in "Safe" as a villian. She was a very compassionate, caring person. In the context of her backward society, she was behaving appropriately.
I agree, I was going to post that, but I forgot...
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I agree that for a 'verse in which roughly half the population is supposed to be Chinese, there was a massive shortage of actual Asians in evidence. I consider it a big oversight, and have yet to see an rationalizations to change my mind. Sure, the Asian population may have predominantly settled elsewhere, but the majority of Chinese people on this world live on the opposite side of the planet from me, and yet I see Asians on a fairly regular basis.
I also agree that in 500 years, ethnicities will probably be much more mixed. I imagine a more realistic version of the future would contain a whole lot of people in variouse shades of brown. And I would have bought the reality of the 'verse a bit more if it was a little less white-washed.
But I don't attribute any of this to bigotry of any other nefariouse agenda. Like I said above, just a big ol' oversight - probably reached in the process of casting the best possible actor in the role.
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle."
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Quote:
Originally posted by BlackEyedGirl:
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.
Thanks for that. I thought "anglo" had a narrower definition. But this way the name of the Alliance it makes sense to me. I also see the Alliance originating as a result of a predominantly cultural, as opposed to political, meshing, but American culture differs vastly from "British" culture, so in the narrow sense of "anglo" (the one I thought was right), the name of the Alliance still wouldn't have made sense even in the cultural sense. But thanks for clearing all that up.
Quote:
Originally posted by BlackEyedGirl:
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.
Either you misunderstood the point that was raised or I did. I thought the poster was referring to the fact that those villians that are black happen to be dark-skinned blacks; he/she wasn't saying that all villians were black.
Quote:
Originally posted by BlackEyedGirl:
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.
I'd also like to say that they're bullshit, but I think there's a bit of naivité in doing that.
I think it's important to keep in mind that the poster wasn't saying that he/she had an issue with black people being cast as bad guys. In fact he/she wasn't having an issue with anything in my opinion, just pointing something out, namely that it seems that there are more dark-skinned blacks cast as bad guys than light-skinned blacks, something that MAY be an issue to some people (people not me).
BTW, I haven't read all of the above posts, so if you're in fact referring to something that somebody else said, then I'm sorry for responding in terms of what the original poster said.
Quote:
Originally posted by BlackEyedGirl:
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 agree with that. Of course it's hard to have a cast consisting only of "mixed" actors, so one should compromise by instead having a "mixed" cast in order to represent the 'verse one is trying to portray in a more realistic fashion.
Quote:
Originally posted by BlackEyedGirl:
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.
There's nothing wrong with seeing colour and different races, as long as it's not from a racist point of view. In fact I believe that being truly colour blind can be a form of ignorance (in some cases). Of course, when two people of different races have a similar cultural background, then their skin colour won't make a difference, but not all of the world works that way and very often a different skin colour implies a different cultural background, and it would be stupid to just see past that and treat that person the same as you treat everybody else.
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No need to transform this into something that it isnt. I was just pointing out what I and everyone I know noticed, but it didnt in anyway wreck the show for us because Firefly and Serenity are very good shows, but it was noticable that's all, and getting all hot, or upset about it doesnt change that.
Regardless how you attempt to argue this, the fact is that in the show that seems to have a very large asian feel to it, asians are not present at all really, and the 3 dark-skinned blacks are engaging in a certain amount of unpleasentness, and our BDHs Zoe and Book, who just happen to be light-skinned blacks are engaging in acts of heroics and goodness; this is in the show, which you and I have watched...not something I made up, so you can't explain it, nor argue it away.
Mine and a few other's observations has nothing to do with being politically correct, we just noticed a few things within the show itself, and I of course, decided to mention it to all of you nice people just to see what you had to say about it, and a lot of your answers are somewhat in the defensive catagory, which is understandable because Firefly is such a good show and it is very comfortable if you know what I mean.
Like I mentioned before in earlier posts. The roles of Simon and River were done very well, and if you have read my past posts, you would know that I really like Summer Glau's performance as River and gave her a 101% rating of a job well done, BUT, placing an asian in the role of River along with simon would have added a bit of a twist to the show, and would have given the asian/caucasian 'verse a little bit more reality.
The trouble with some people is when they hear or read something about race, they seem to jump to all the wrong conclusions and get all defensive or offensive, when in this particular case, it was a simple matter of wanting to know if this sort of thing in Firefly and Serenity, or even a few other shows that this pattern seems to come up, was deliberate (gasp!) or just that's how the pieces fell when they wrote, directed, and produced the show.
We could reverse the situation. Lets say in China, they came out with a Show called "FireBug" or some name like that. The show deals with the happenings of earth people 500 years in the future where it appears that there had been some dreadful war on the planet so the Earth people had to go and find another place to live, and they found a whole bunch of moons and planets to live on.
In this show, the episodes center around this ship called FireBug, where the crew of this ship are all Chinese, but their clothes, their mannerism, their customs, and their swearing are all in European (German, French etc.), or American english. There is a lot of English wording written everywhere you go, but you almost never see any white people, though they are mentioned, and their art is everywhere, their music is everywher, but you never see them, so it starts to become somewhat clear, that for this particular show, white culture provides the background minus the actual culture themselves.
This is how Firefly presents itself, and personally, I think that this was done by accident and was not by design, so don't give me grief for noticing it.
Anyway, Firefly/Serenity is a wonderful show and I'm glad that I lived to see it even though it was short-lived, and got cancelled, it will be on the shelf along with all of my other favorite shows and movies.
With that, back to work I go
FOX proved that You CAN stop the Signal
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Hmm... I had noticed the lack of orientals too. Yes, they could have cast various rolls of the "Prime 9" as oriental actors but we wouldn't have the show we love today. What about changing Mal to a Chinese actor? The show would have had a very different "flavor". Maybe worse, maybe better. Nothing right or wrong about that, it just would have been different because there would have been a different talent and interpretation of the script involved in portraying the captain. The same goes for any other character in the show.
As to the light/dark skin of the actors in various rolls, I hadn't noticed that but now that you have pointed it out...
Aside from anything else, the concept of "other" tends to be a bit scary. There was an outcry about the bad guys in Matrix II being albinos. "Why are albinos always cast as bad guys?" Well, they look different and being twins just put the icing on the cake of their "otherness"!.
The unknown/unfamiliar is much more scary than the familiar. While there is a very broad scpectrum of skin tones in the world, the very lightest and the very darkest are the rarest as racial mixing takes place more and more and brown becomes the predominant skin tone the everyone is most familiar with. By simple statistics, those individuals at the far ends of the spectrum are the least familar to the most people who would view the show. Therefore the most ominous. Not saying it's right, just that it's generaly how it works.
For the most part, someone exactly like or very similar to yourself is not very interesting. Someone just noticeably different in one or two features is often atractive. Someone VERY different from yourself is scary. Goes all the way back to cavePerson ;) instincts. Genetics dictates that it's best to find someone outside the tribe to breed with, but not someone TOO FAR outside the tribe where cultural differences, looks, etc, might be so great that they may cause problems for your new mate and or descendants within the tribe.
dc4bs
Grrr, Argh!
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Chill chill.
Just saying that I didn't see what you saw, re. The dark black villains etc. I don't think it's fair to call the nurse from Safe a villain, maybe the guys who carried Simon and River off, and defiantly the Village patron, but not the nurse.
Yeah, there could be a lot more Asians in FireFly. If you want to know why I think that is, then here goes:
There's no where near as many Asian actors, so far less likely to find actors that were right for the roles.
The actors that were cast were perfect for the roles if different people had been cast it would be a radically different dynamic, and a radically different show (this is backed up by stuff that is said by cast members.
Basically I'm saying it was probably simply down to picking who was best for the part, and none of them happened to be Oriental.
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Is it me or are the two men with blue gloves, white? The last time I checked, they were not black, and believe me, they could freak out the bounty hunter?
You are probably noticing something which is just pure luck
Anyone who mentions Shakespeare will get a .50 in their ass
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