Trackbacks & Pings

1. Otterday, and Open Thread (now Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse discussion) — Hoyden About Town on 16 Feb 2009 at 11:23 pm

   [...] place Dante and the Lobster Echidne of the Snakes angriest io9 Elizabeth Kate Switaj npr Racialicious Bitch [...]

2. More Than Just A Whore: Sex Work, Firefly and Audience Engagement « Whore to Culture on 23 Feb 2009 at 7:52 pm

   [...] this does not mean Whedon, as a heterosexual white man, is going to succeed fully in his efforts. People far more qualified than I have noted his failings when it comes to representation of People of Colour and certainly his [...]

3. 12th PoC Carnival | Books @ the Hathor Legacy on 02 Mar 2009 at 9:39 pm

   [...] I began with Google. The first issue I had is that I realized that I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for. I mean, seriously, if canon is declaring you non-human, how on earth does one categorize you for the purposes of anti-racist analytical work? While the non-human/ultimate alien trope isn’t mentioned in their entry on race and fandom, that entry does provide some interesting alternative questions… like, about the issue of absence and the WTFery of Firefly. [...]

4. Dollhouse Champloo with Dichen Lachman | iChamploo on 04 Mar 2009 at 5:36 am

   [...] is questionable – but that’s neither here nor there), a friend on Twitter pointed out that Whedon often misrepresents Asian characters. That’s why I am keeping a close eye on Sierra, one of the side characters who acts as a [...]

5. easyVegan.info » Blog Archive » From animal liberator to animal hunter: Life and death in the Dollhouse. on 10 Apr 2009 at 3:03 pm

   [...] for a discussion of race and racism in Whedon’s work, see joss whedon and the blurry line between homage and appropriation at Racialicious. While Wedon does an excellent job of addressing (most) gender issues, I agree that [...]

6. Whedon and orientalism « fuzzytheory on 01 May 2009 at 1:06 am

   [...] latest stink about the movie version of Last Airbender is a good example. See here for an analysis. Thea Lim at Racialicious argues that Joss Whedon suffers from a similar problem in general, and specifically in his new show [...]

7. 12th PoC Carnival | the Hathor Legacy on 08 May 2009 at 1:10 pm

   [...] I began with Google. The first issue I had is that I realized that I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for. I mean, seriously, if canon is declaring you non-human, how on earth does one categorize you for the purposes of anti-racist analytical work? While the non-human/ultimate alien trope isn’t mentioned in their entry on race and fandom, that entry does provide some interesting alternative questions… like, about the issue of absence and the WTFery of Firefly. [...]

8. Serenity Green - Push cx on 22 Jun 2009 at 8:43 am

   [...] does it depict a culture with Chinese style, language, and art without any Chinese people? Is it cultural appropriation? Outright racism? The vagaries of [...]

Comments

1. Feminist Review wrote:

   This isn’t a defense of Whedon, just a little something to add into the mix. The Buffy spinoff Angel did in fact have Daniel Dae Kim (now of LOST fame) as a significant character in 2002-2003. That is all I know, for better or for worse.

   Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 6:56 am ¶

2. Arturo wrote:

   I noticed the lack of Asians in “Chinatown,” too. But, at least one featured member of the ensemble, Dichen Lachman, is half-Tibetan. And my early vibe from the show was that the Dollhouse’s decor and activities are an affectation designed to keep their drones agents from getting too curious about what’s going on. (We know Echo will wreck all that, of course.)

   As a Whedonite, though, I can tell you that I had to step back to “let myself” get into his shows. I mean, Buffy was set in a suburb of L.A. and there was never even one recurring Latino character — at least, self-identified as such — during the entire series. And though I cheered on Angel when Charles Gunn started dating Fred and became a lawyer (through nefarious means, I know), the dialogue written for Gunn’s early appearances made me wince. Hope you’re up and around soon!

   Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 7:35 am ¶

3. Anna wrote:

   There’s a scene you didn’t even mention that leaped out at me: When Echo is being brought back to the base, she passes another active dressed as a geisha getting loaded into another van (we only see her from behind, so no way to tell if she is Japanese).

   I get that there’s a parallel he’s drawing between geisha and the “dolls” – but I also had a knee-jerk reaction of “Really? Is that where this is going?”

   Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 9:29 am ¶

4. Jess wrote:

   I’ve not watched Firelfly as closely as I might have, but let me approach this from the perspective of someone who reads and writes science fiction.

   One of the interesting exercises in world-building is how you imagine a culture very different from our own, and further, how one might imagine changes in the future that might reflect different power-relationships.

   I want to imagine a culture 500 years from now and want to show what it might be like if the dominant power was not the English-speaking West. How might I approach it?

   American/Western culture’s dominance has an odd effect, even in countries or regions where nobody has ever seen an American (except on TV) that often, is how much of our own culture gets adapted and used in ways that aren’t always “authentic.”

   That is, I have seen some takes on American pop culture and yes, language, in places as far afield as Russia, Japan, and Mexico that look awfully weird (to me as an American). For instance, (and maybe this is generational) I always think it looks a bit odd when I see a bunch of white Russian kids in hip-hop gear. And when I see them wearing it in Russia, it looks subtly wrong. I can’t always put my finger on it, but the wrongness is there.

   And when I hear some of the most bizarre (to me) English locutions adapted from American TV and imported into slang Russian, and turned into Russian rap. It’s basically unintelligible to a native English speaker. I know there’s English in there but I have a hell of a time figuring it out – and I know enough Russian to have a conversation.

   The dominance of the Western culture industry, then, can create situations where people adapt bits of it (understandably) without “getting it” in a way that an American might. So to an American, it looks odd, sort of off-kilter.

   The Japanese have been picking up on other cultures in a similar way for centuries — taking something from somewhere else and making it uniquely Japanese, making it fit their needs. Hence the takes on what are, at root, American pop-culture inventions that look so different when we see them reflected back at us.

   Now, imagine a culture in the future where Chinese is in the dominant position, where people who have never met a Chinese person (or only see them on TV) are still deeply influenced by Chinese culture and language. Tack on 500 years of linguistic change, and the cultural “seepage” that occurs in that amount of time.

   (The “Seepage” I am talking about are little things that start to crop up and become so ubiquitous nobody even mentions them. Like, everyone in the world knows about Elvis, and the conventions of narrative TV and movies are pretty similar everywhere you go — in fact, that’s why it’s notable when somebody does something different. Also, think of foods — how many “traditional” foods of Europe and Asia are made with crops from other regions of the world? Loads, but try telling an Italian that pasta isn’t “his” or a Thai that peanuts are originally African).

   I could even go backwards historically and give other examples of Chinese culture dominating an area — think of most of Eastern Asia. Most people don’t even speak any version of Chinese, yet the Chinese logographic writing system was the lingua franca for many centuries (and still is to a large extent) in the region. You can’t even begin to approach studying Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Tibet, Mongolia, or Burma without at least a passing knowledge of Chinese culture. It would be like trying to study Europe and ignoring the Greeks.

   And yet, all those countries have their own cultures, traditions and languages — even though the influence of China is perfectly clear.

   A similar situation occurred in Europe with the Latin alphabet, used in languages that have zero relation to each other (like, say, Hungarian and Spanish).

   OK, so go 500 years from now. What would such a culture look like transposed to the whole world? Would people speak Chinese? Or would the Chinese language’s influence be wide, but not necessarily deep? Might Chinese 500 years from now sound as unintelligible to a Chinese speaker today as Chaucer is to most people now? (Or, for that matter, as spoken T’ang dynasty Chinese would be to a modern Mandarin speaker). I would posit that Chinese culture would show up in a zillion little ways that to the people in that world would not merit comment — they’d be features of the landscape that are just there. Like sneakers and t-shirts (American inventions that are so common they aren’t even noticed).

   So if I am building my world, I am trying to convey that China has a cultural influence at least as pervasive as that of the West now. But that doesn’t mean things will get adopted wholesale and unchanged.

   Now, this whole long exercise isn’t to defend the kind of cultural appropriation that uses Chief Wahoo as a mascot. And lord knows, I can’t say for sure whether Whedon has thought about it so deeply.

   And in that sense, the lack of Asian characters, while too bad, almost makes an odd kind of sense. We don’t expect Chinese movies — even though many pay their homages to Westerns (hello, Ang Lee!) to have Americans cast in them. If I were writing a story about the Philippines — a country in which American cultural influence is quite strong — you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see Americans running around.

   But I cut science fiction writer a little more slack with stuff like this. The nonsensical Chinese is either a dumb decision based on lack of a dialogue coach or a deliberate one to show that the world had changed a lot. I will reserve judgment there until someone asks Whedon specifically about it.

   Also, while the IMDB page doesn’t show a lot of obviously East Asian names on it, there’s a lot of omissions there and I’d be wary of using it as an iron guide to what ethnicity everybody is — especially in LA, where there are more than anyone’s fair share of East Asians with American-sounding last names. The credit list is also incomplete as it doesn’t sow consultants and the like. A little investigation here would not hurt. Did he hire a local Asian Studies prof from UCLA for a short stint? We don’t know and it wouldn’t show up on the IMDB credits.

   Chalk it up to something that is annoying, perhaps. But I’d not switch on the outrage quite yet.

   Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 9:45 am ¶

5. Yondalla wrote:

   No disagreement, but the DVD commentaries on Firefly indicate that they were trying to speak actual Chinese and that their tutors were frustrated at how miserably the actors were at pronouncing it.

   Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 9:55 am ¶

6. Alwet wrote:

   Questions about a whitewashed Hollywood?

   Really!!?!!

   Ever seen Friends…?

   Mod Note – Ever read this blog? We talk about this all day. Next time you comment, make sure you add something to the conversation. – LDP

   Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:16 am ¶

7. Alpha Asian wrote:

   Yeah your observations of Whedon’s Chinoiserie are dead on. Reminds me of those Italian operas set in China or Japan. To me it indicates white society’s attitude towards Asians in general:

   “Our love for you is conditional. We only like your food and cultures if it’s done to our tastes.”

   I think whites are more comfortable with Asian food than with Asian people.

   Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:23 am ¶

8. jen* wrote:

   If it helps, I watched some interviews with the Firefly actors, and they talked about how they tried to get the pronunciation right, but they could tell from the look on their coach’s face that they were pretty far off. [I just finished watching the series, and I loved it. But I suspended belief in some areas, and did notice that the racial make-up of the cast remained pretty black and white.]

   Watching Dollhouse, I don’t know how I feel about it yet. I was hoping for something more. Maybe it’ll take a few episodes to get it. From what the Rolling Stone article said, Joss and FOX aren’t getting along again, so…who knows whether Dollhouse will even make it.

   Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:25 am ¶

9. Latoya Peterson wrote:

   @Jess –

   Maybe you’re fine with the fact that in most sci-fi written by whites, minorities seem to have died out in some huge ass plague, both most of us sci-fi readers/writers/fans on this site take huge issue with this.

   Need a reason to “switch on the outrage?” Go check out Ursula Le Guin’s feelings on what they did with Earthsea or Neil Gaiman’s take on why he isn’t making a movie version of American Gods or Anansi Boys and get back to me.

   Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:37 am ¶

10. blake wrote:

    Anna,

    I think the woman dressed as a geisha was just another assignment. Echo just completed an assignment where she served as a prostitute. Then she began another assignment where she served as a hostage negotiator. So, I don’t read too much into having a geisha as cultural appropriation.

    As for the decor of their base, it’s supposed to be a spa-like interior. Aren’t many spas decorated in Asian motif?

    “Firefly” and Serenity are trickier. On the one hand, I think the Chinese cultural touches should be read as the way that English and American culture touch many other countries around the world.

    If you go to Scandinavia or Latin America or parts of Asia today, you will find American style culture and English language. That is the part that Asian culture plays in Serenity.

    What is strange on the other hand is that there are no Asians playing any major roles in the Serentiy universe. They are never seen anywhere. That’s just freaky.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:38 am ¶

11. Myles wrote:

    I’m giving Dollhouse another shot. I did get a “something is missing here” ping during the opening scene, and placed it as there not being any Asian people around. And then I just assumed that they were in a location that had Asian THEMING not Asian PEOPLE.

    It will be interesting to see how the show treats the blond Asian (hapa?) woman that storms in kicking butt at the end of the show. I really wonder if she is going to get anymore speaking roles.

    And I was seriously skeeved out by none of the Active guys played a part in the first episode. I guess no one wants to see a bunch of child-like guys complacently following orders, hmmm.

    EDIT:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollhouse_(TV_series)

    Turns out Sierra probably is multiracial in the shows world, she is referred to as looking “otherworldly.” I’ll admit that she looks like an elfin princess, to me, but “otherworldly?”

    This is going to be interesting.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:47 am ¶

12. Roni wrote:

    I think I recall reading an interview, that claimed a conscious attempt to cast racially ambiguous looking actors in Firefly.

    I don’t know if any of the actors are of Asian descent, but I’m generally uncomfortable with any situation that demands investigating an actor to see if they’re the right race for a role. It’s problematic to criticize the disproportionate attention paid to finding out an actor’s racial heritage, then demand that information to justify their casting. I support more diversity in casting, in role and actor, but making it some kind of investigative matching game is heading in the wrong direction.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 11:01 am ¶

13. Jo wrote:

    The way I saw Firefly/Serenity was very similar to what Jess said re: Science Fiction. You do have to suspend some disbelief. I did find it odd that there were no Chinese people anywhere, but I did assume that the Tams were at least half. Summer Glau HAS to be half something. My assumption was that the Chinese were the super rich/powerful and that the crew of Serenity and the people they visited were not the rich and that’s why we never saw any. Again, suspension of disbelief.

    The other reasoning could be a lack of actors that fit the part. I mean, look at Memoirs of a Geisha! Halway though the movie I seriously had to remind myself that it was supposedly taking place in Japan because half the actresses were Chinese!

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 11:45 am ¶

14. Latoya Peterson wrote:

    @Jo –

    She’s Scottish/Irish/German.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 11:56 am ¶

15. Jess wrote:

    Latoya–

    I am most definitely not fine with the fact that most science fiction is written by whites, (men especially) and have posted here before on the subject. I’m also familiar with Ursula LeGuin’s problem with the way they treated Earthsea on television.

    And I have expressed in many places the problem — and why losing people like Octavia Butler was so bad.

    But with all that, I am trying to approach things by reserving judgment until I understand the background a little better.

    I mean, I try to think about this stuff in my own writing, but I also understand that I’m not going to get everything down. Is that my fault for being born who I was? There are loads of reasons why many non-whites might or might not get into science fiction writing, and it ain’t because I was a mustache twisting evil white guy.

    This doesn’t make it right, fair or good. But if we’re going to think about social change and how cultures reflect that, I have become, perhaps in my old age, a little less angry about it than I was years back.

    I started asking the question, why do so few PoC I know read much science fiction generally? What counts as genre here, and how would we measure that? Has anyone really done a decent sampling here to answer that question? What might be the structural issues here?

    On the other side, how do we approach the way we imagine other cultures? If I were positing a future world in which Chinese culture were dominant, wouldn’t it be more stereotypical to have it populated by eastern Asians?

    Ursula LeGuin makes a conscious effort to include non-whites in her fiction and talk about what that means. I think more writers should do that (interestingly, Brits such as Ian McDonald seem to have an easier time with it, but my sample isn’t big enough to tell if that’s real. I’d also suggest Mike Resnick and Kim Stanley Robinson). But I also recognize that there are historical tropes and conventions that exclude PoC from much of the genre. And I have been thinking about how to address that. Some of it has almost nothing to do with science fiction as a genre, per se.

    I find my feelings — well, put it this way. You now how in Star Wars they say “trust your feelings?” I never do. My feelings are almost always a bad guide. Maybe I’m just emotionally empty evil and stupid.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 12:01 pm ¶

16. Luis wrote:

    “No disagreement, but the DVD commentaries on Firefly indicate that they were trying to speak actual Chinese and that their tutors were frustrated at how miserably the actors were at pronouncing it.”

    I actually saw this as working out as a plus. Realistically, the loanwords borrowed from Chinese in this future would not be well pronounced by English speakers. In fact it wouldn’t be Mandarin any more, it would be a part of the English language like the words café (French), machismo (Spanish), canoe and barbecue (Taino-indigenous language of the Caribbean). These words are mangled from their original pronunciation, but it doesn’t matter. They’re English now.

    That’s probably the most realistic aspect of this concept in the show. I commend Joss for imagining what would happen if large masses of people in the future were shot of in pods to colonize different planets. If any two major language groups would pop up, it would be English as a lingua franca, and Mandarin as a language with enough native speakers to simply survive. By extension, it would influence the English spoken by colonists. Same thing with the material culture of the colonies. Fusion and appropriation are already a reality on Earth. Imagine if we had to build societies from scratch with a multiethnic group.

    My gripe is that this attention to culture never translated into important Asian characters. Quite literally, the only major Asian roles were as courtesans. No Asian gunslingers, no Asian lords or business owners. Just window-dressing extras in cities or expensive prostitutes. That’s it.

    Very disappointing omission from an otherwise very good show.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 12:10 pm ¶

17. Roxie wrote:

    @Latoya: Neil Gaiman’s take on why he isn’t making a movie version of American Gods or Anansi Boys and get back to me.

    WHAT?! I hadn’t heard of that! Those would probably be the best “book to films” of his as well. Can you tell me where I can find out why not? I tried googling it, but my skills aren’t great.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 12:11 pm ¶

18. Daomadan wrote:

    Roxie: There was article after Gaiman’s “Stardust” came out in theatres and this was in it about “Anansi Boys”:

    Gaiman had offers to make a film out of his 2005 best seller Anansi Boys, about the sons of an African god discovering their magical background while living in the corrupt modern world, but moviemakers wanted to change the lead black characters to white or drop the magical elements altogether.

    “I don’t need the money,” Gaiman says. “Not needing the money puts me in a magical place because I can say no. I like the idea of having good movies made or having no movies made.”

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 12:30 pm ¶

19. Latoya Peterson wrote:

    @Roxie –

    I’m about to head out, so I’ll need to do some digging to find it. The quick way to explain is to point you here:

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91303720

    Which is an NPR story on why Neil specifically made Fat Charlie (and many of the books characters) black. That was an intentional move.

    A little later, I read an interview with Gaiman (that’s what I can’t find right now) talking about movie adaptations. He basically said he took Anansi Boys/American Gods off the shelf because studios were so convinced that blacks don’t watch sci-fi that they wanted to change the lead to someone white. He will revisit the films later, when he finds the right director with the right vision.

    (That interview is what took me from being a fan of the Sandman, Death and the High Cost of Living, and Neverwhere to being someone who purchases anything Gaiman puts on the market. )

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 12:33 pm ¶

20. blake wrote:

    If you are interested in sci-fi by people of color, there are some newer writers of color (black & mixed-race):

    Tanarive Due
    Steve Barnes
    Nalo Hopkins
    Minister Faust
    Tobia Bucknell

    My biggest disappointment with Firefly/Serenity, again, was the utter lack of Asian characters of importance. It just seemed wrong to have that much Chinese cultural influence but no Asian people in the cast (either series regular or guest role). None. Zilch. Zippo.

    BTW, did you know that the original Cordelia was a black woman, Bianca Lawson? Lawson was hired for the role but had to turn it down because of a commitment to another series that would not let her out of her contract. Eventually, Lawson appeared in Buffy as a Jamaican slayer.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 12:34 pm ¶

21. CVT wrote:

    @Jess -
    The fact of the matter is this – 500 years in the future, in all your “envisioning,” who do you think are going to be the minorities in this world? It ain’t going to be Asian folks. It’s not going to be Latino or black, either. It’s mostly going to be WHITE FOLKS (I’m not going to break down numbers further than that, because I just don’t know about the quantity and population density and growth of other unmentioned races).

    So if it’s really just about him imagining the future, then, if anything, there should be a lot more characters of color, PERIOD. And, if China is the world superpower – then Chinese folks would be all over the place; maybe not in huge numbers in foreign countries (but likely, considering the population and the chances of them traveling for business, etc.) – which would mean they would definitely be a noticeable (i.e. “not background”) part of the world.

    Also – in terms of watching a Chinese movie and not expecting Americans – of course. But that leap to connect that to watching an “American” movie or show is exactly what pisses me off so much – there are many ASIAN-Americans, AFRICAN-Americans, LATINO-Americans. None of us are foreigners. So while I don’t expect Americans in a Chinese movie, I also expect AMERICANS in an American movie. And, I’m not so sorry to burst your bubble, but AMERICAN does not equate to WHITE.

    Sincerely,
    An Asian-AMERICAN

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 12:47 pm ¶

22. CVT wrote:

    Not to mention Native Americans. Maybe “American” movies should only consist of Native folks, if we’re going to go that angle (equating “American” with a race).

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 12:49 pm ¶

23. guante wrote:

    Was just going to write a big post on Whedon. I just finished his run on Astonishing X-Men, which was occasionally brilliant but also highlighted some of the reasons i can’t jump on his bandwagon. A few random points:

    ~Sometimes I think we give people who have good politics around one identity a pass when it comes to their questionable politics around another identity. I’ve seen a lot of people who love Whedon because of his feminism turn a blind eye to the lack of (or mishandling of) people of color in his work.

    ~He’s used the “person of color dies to teach the white hero a lesson” thing quite a bit. Kendra on Buffy, Book in Serenity, the s.w.o.r.d. agent in AXM, maybe more i’m forgetting? And when they don’t die, they’re window dressing, third-tier characters.

    ~It’s already been said, but there really needed to be at least one Chinese actor in Firefly/Serenity. I really liked that series, but could never “suspend disbelief” when it came to the idea that Chinese culture was so dominant in that world, yet a big ensemble cast didn’t include a single Chinese person. The Tams don’t count.

    All this being said, Chiwetel Ejiofor was brilliant in Serenity and I liked how his character was written. But maybe that’s the exception that proves the rule?

    And i’m not just hating on Whedon for the sake of hating. I like his work, quite a bit sometimes. But i think these things need to be pointed out; hopefully he hears some of the criticism that’s out there and takes it to heart.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 12:52 pm ¶

24. Drapetomaniac wrote:

    I don’t remember seeing a single Asian in Firefly. Maybe the mechanic was Eurasian, but if Chinese made such a dent on culture, you would think there would be some Chinese folks present.

    I could actually excuse the vice versa (an all Chinese with English phrases) because the Chinese have the population to outnumber an Anglo present on a massive scale. But a total lack of Asians is absurd given the demographics. It almost insinuates a holocaust.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 12:56 pm ¶

25. Tim Jones-Yelvington wrote:

    You’re not wrong, even as a fan I’d agree Joss Whedon has a crappy-ass track record on race (occasionally, an interesting racial metaphor would pop up on one of the series, like when the white working class-coded vampires on Angel accuse Charles Gunn’s crew of “taking over the neighborhood, but metaphor is not a substitute for complex characters of color and treatments of race and racism). Be thankful you tuned out on Firefly before enduring the last episode where the ship itself is threatened by violation at the hands of a Birth of a Nationish black male rapist.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 1:43 pm ¶

26. theboxman wrote:

    I won’t reiterate the criticisms of POC representation in Firefly/Serenity, which are spot on, but in fairness, this is not peculiar to Joss Whedon but to science fiction in general. Taking the Star Trek franchise as an example, despite positing Earth as a utopian space and often credited for what appears to be a diverse cast, nevertheless reflects an American diversity as opposed to a global one wherein Asians (and specifically Chinese and Indian) are, by far, the majority of the population.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 1:45 pm ¶

27. hvls wrote:

    I too was/am a Firefly fan. I really liked to show until I saw the last episode. As a recovering anime fan, I didn’t notice the all the Asian cultural rip off with no one in the cast was Asian. However, the show’s treatment of black men disgusted me. Both of the evil bounty hunters going after River were black men who did ruthless things to the crew, our heros. I saw Serenity and didn’t think anything of the main big bad being black because, I thought Book “balanced” him out. But seeing that last bounty hunter, my last memory of the show left a bad taste in my mouth. The way that both characters used random acts of violence to get River played on a huge fear/stereotype of black men being dangerous to white women/society.

    Another thing that bothers me about the show is Gina Torres’s character. The only time you see her a manner that is “feminine” is in the movie. In Firefly, she’s never seen in any ladylike situations. Sure, she’s strong and enjoys sex, but not girly in any way. In her role as Mal’s second in command, she’s qualified, but you can’t really see her fitting or even bending traditional gender roles. Compared to Kaylee, another women in a typically man’s role, as the ship’s mechanic, who has a soft touch, and likes to wear dresses. I don’t mean to say this in support of traditional gender roles, but to show that they can be successfully mixed, but not in this one instance. This shows me that GT’s character, a stereotypical strong black woman can be used for sex (the jezebel stereotype of black women), but lacks a feminine touch.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 1:54 pm ¶

28. Shaymer wrote:

    I’m a big Joss Whedon fan, primarily due to Buffy and Angel. However, like Arturo, my husband and I find ourselves laughing and mocking the writing style for the black characters in Angel. Gunn’s dialogue is full of ridiculous faux-hood jargon. However, Joss always manages to include some POC characters in his shows. I would love to see Bianca Lawson who played Kendra, a slayer on Buffy, in this new show. Also, I did admire the fact that the first episode of dollhouse had several POC’s in the cast.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 1:56 pm ¶

29. SlowRoll wrote:

    Hi Thea, thank you for the interesting article. I was wondering if you could elaborate further on your objections to the “Chinese” language spoken in Firefly.

    Do you categorically object on the grounds of appropriation? As in, even if there were a significant number of Chinese (or Chinese American) actors in the show, it would not be okay to have occasional “Chinese” phrases included to accent dialog? Or is it the appropriation without representation that makes it so offensive?

    As to the gibberish vs. real phrases debate, the tonal nature of Mandarin makes it incredibly easy to output gibberish without proper training. Just one mispronounced tone and a whole phrase can become unintelligible. I had this experience many times while studying in China. Just kept saying the same thing until I had pronounced the tones correctly, and bang! Comprehension. Before that, not even an inkling as to what I was attempting to say. (For clarity, I am talking about having all the right tones in the right places, but not managing to get the tones to “hit” right. This is different from having the wrong tones altogether).

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 1:57 pm ¶

30. Rob Schmidt wrote:

    I agree with those who say “Firefly” is a mixed bag in terms of racial messages. As Jess said, Whedon probably wanted to “mainstream” the Chinese culture. To make it seem pervasive–as if it extended far beyond the boundaries of ethnically Chinese regions.

    I’d say Whedon’s goal of making the dominant culture a Chinese/American hybrid was a good one. But as CVT and others said, where are all the Chinese people who made this Chinese dominance happen? In foreign countries where American culture is widespread, you’ll see Americans on movies and TV, in ads and on billboards, etc. “Firefly” had none of this “backgrounding” of Chinese faces.

    For those who started watching “Firefly” and gave up on it, I’d say give it another try. Despite the racially muddled message, the show grows on you as it progresses. It ends up being one of the best sci-fi series ever–on a par with “Battlestar Galactica.” Even though the latter is another futuristic show where white people just happen to dominate.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 2:10 pm ¶

31. Baiskeli wrote:

    @Latoya Peterson
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91303720

    Thanks for posting this. The last part of the interview concerning what is the default in Science Fiction should be required listening for those directors who always insist on writing out POCs from stories where they were central (i.e the clown who directed ‘Earthsea’).

    This is also relevant to how Ursula K. Le Guin got white readers of the Earthsea saga to identify with the protagonist before they realized what his skin color was. To quote her (a masterstroke, this has always stood in my mind). To quote her

    
    I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for “young adults”) might not identify straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees hoping that the reader would get “into Ged’s skin” and only then discover it wasn’t a white one.
    

    She was playing on the fact that in most sci-fi (and some other literature), if someone’s race is not mentioned they are meant to be white.

    I liked the Firefly series and the Serenity movie. It’s not until someone pointed out that for a series/movie that was heavily asian influenced there was nary an asian in sight. Would I have been so blase had the series/movie appropriated African culture? I doubt. So I would consider that I had a blind spot in that respect.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 2:23 pm ¶

32. Aris wrote:

    “But that leap to connect that to watching an “American” movie or show is exactly what pisses me off so much – there are many ASIAN-Americans, AFRICAN-Americans, LATINO-Americans. None of us are foreigners. So while I don’t expect Americans in a Chinese movie, I also expect AMERICANS in an American movie.”

    I agree. America is a multi-racial country so stuff like this shouldn’t be happening still. Can’t really be compared to movies in largely homogenous countries…. =/

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 2:30 pm ¶

33. Alwet wrote:

    I continue to reflect on the ironies in Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle, made over twenty years ago. What will it take for Hollywood to do more than sample “foreign” peoples and cultures?

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 2:33 pm ¶

34. Rob Schmidt wrote:

    As for Summer Glau, one Hollywood exec told me she’s part Cherokee. I discussed this interesting revelation in my blog (http://www.bluecorncomics.com/2008/12/summer-glau-cherokee.html).

    Re “I support more diversity in casting, in role and actor, but making it some kind of investigative matching game is heading in the wrong direction.” I disagree that it’s heading in the wrong direction. Hollywood has always done racial matching when it came to casting British monarchs, US presidents, and millions of other white protagonists. What it hasn’t done is use the same matching criteria when it casts minority characters such as those in “Twilight” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” Not surprisingly, Hollywood deems it “okay” for these characters to be white too.

    I just wrote an article on the subject of non-Natives cast as Natives for the Indian Country Today newspaper. Here’s a key paragraph from it:

    “These days, a good tan is the only thing that separates Indians from other Americans. Producers would never suggest a Native to play King Arthur, Superman or JFK, but it’s okay for non-Natives to play Friday, Tonto or Charles Curtis. Message to Indians: You and your culture and heritage don’t matter.”

    When Asians and other minorities get cast to play Joan of Arc, The Three Musketeers, and Martin Luther King Jr., then we can discuss the end of the racial casting era. Until then, no.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 2:33 pm ¶

35. Thomas wrote:

    @ guante,

    As a fan of Buffy and Season 2 in particular, I have to say Kendra did not die to teach Buffy a lesson. Jenny Calendar’s death was to show Buffy that she had to kill Angel.

    Kendra’s death was more a part of the finale’s theme of Buffy being alone where she is stripped of all her support: Mom throws her out of the house, Giles kidnapped, Willow hospitalized, expelled from school, etc.

    If Kendra hadn’t died the final fight against Angelus would have been too easy and lacked the emotional impact it had.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 2:55 pm ¶

36. Thea Lim wrote:

    @ All

    It’s nice to have my ill feelings towards Whedon validated…I started off blogging as a feminist, and mostly there is only love for Whedon in feminist circles.

    @ Yondalla (and others who mentioned the frustrated dialogue coaches)
    You know, if I was going to make a TV show where the actors were speaking, say, Urdu, because it was set in a future where Pakistan was the world power, if my characters couldn’t speak Urdu in a way that respected the language, I would just cut it. Yes Mandarin/Chinese is a hard language to learn (take it from someone who has a very poor grasp on the language), but most people can master it if they have to. What I figure is that it wasn’t vital for Whedon to have his actors speak it properly. So they didn’t speak it properly. I read a lot into that, in terms of how much Whedon respects actual Chinese culture and languages.

    @Roni

    Considering how few roles there are for Asian Americans on TV, I thought it was a huge shame that in a show where it would make sense to have Asian Americans there were zero. If a character is supposed to be Asian American and they cast an Asian American, it’s not exactly the kind of tokenism you were hinting at. If you look at the IMDB listing of the full cast and crew for Firefly, it is almost shocking how many of the last names are European-sounding, when you start to think that this is a show that draws heavily from East Asian culture, in a country (the US) that has so many Asian Americans.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 2:59 pm ¶

37. Persia wrote:

    I think the woman dressed as a geisha was just another assignment. Echo just completed an assignment where she served as a prostitute. Then she began another assignment where she served as a hostage negotiator. So, I don’t read too much into having a geisha as cultural appropriation.

    But why a geisha, and why as window dressing? It could have, given the show’s premise, just as easily been a flamenco dancer, or a professional skiier, or…anything.

    The Buffy spinoff Angel did in fact have Daniel Dae Kim (now of LOST fame) as a significant character in 2002-2003.

    Yep. He got zombified and beheaded, in something of an act of charity by Gunn. IIRC, If you count the comics, there have been only two signficiant/recurring black or Asian characters who’ve survived the Jossverse. Lousy record, if you ask me. And I say this as someone who loves Angel and Buffy.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 3:00 pm ¶

38. Chris wrote:

    Not that this helps (in fact it may hurt), but Kaylee was originally supposed to be Asian, until Joss became enamored with Jewel Staite. (In his defense, who wouldn’t?)

    And despite the race problems in Firefly, it was an improvement over his other shows. Joss seems to be slowly improving–there were no main cast members of color on Buffy, than one African-American on Angel, then two African-Americans on Firefly, and now we have an African-American man and an actual Asian woman as cast members on “Dollhouse!” Yeah, it’s not great, and there are still those cultural appropriation issues, but it is progress. I love Joss Whedon’s work, but I think it is important not to give him a pass on these things.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 3:05 pm ¶

39. JC wrote:

    I thought Jossh Wheden was OK until I got deeper into Firefly. At first it was a pretty fun game of trying to figure out what the heck where these white actors were saying in Chinese – some in mandarin and some in Cantonese. Since I do speak the language I can tell you that they are indeed trying to speak the language but the sentence they use make very little sense in that no one would speak that way; it’s all literal translations of English dialogs with very, very bad pronunciation. The actors didn’t even try that hard since they probably think no REAL Asians would ever watch this little white fantasy.

    After a while I realize that there was never going to be a real Asian on the show (was Summer Glau hapa or just white?), I just stop watching it. They did this in the past and it’s called Orientalism. Like George Lucas, Wheden is the master at stealing Asian culture to create a fantasy universe but fill it with Whites and a few token blacks. He’s a bit better than Lucas because he actually cast a few minor Asian characters though, George can’t even stand looking at an Asian in the background. But Firefly is still a huge slap in the Asian face… In an universe filled with Chinese speakers we find nary a single Asian. I guess some the white ancestors of the cast just stole their culture and killed them off. Whatever.

    Firefly is the reason I didn’t even bother watching Doll House… your description of Asian culture mis-appropriation is fully expected from a Joss Whedon project. I expect there will be an Asian doll or two that is just totally submissive who need to be rescued by the good, white doll or, better yet, just a white dude main character. Because in Joss’ universe, Asians only exist to serve as background noise or at best plot devices. Doll House is just another white show among a sea of white shows.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 3:08 pm ¶

40. SlowRoll wrote:

    @Thea

    “What I figure is that it wasn’t vital for Whedon to have his actors speak it properly.”

    So just to re-ask my main question, if he had shown the proper respect for the language (real phrases with correct pronunciation) and had included a significant number of characters played by Chinese or Chinese American actors, then you would not have been offended?

    I’m just wondering to what degree your objection stems from appropriation itself and what stems from appropriation done poorly and without representation.

    Also, what if the characters were meant to be culturally “Chinese” (in quotes because this is a fictional future we are talking about), but were played by descendants of other Asian ethnicities?

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 3:46 pm ¶

41. Roxie wrote:

    JC: The first episode of “Dollhouse” is racially varied and I’d suggest you take a look at it on hulu.com before you came conclusions about that show specifically.

    Because Sierra (the only Asian person so far) is neither background noise or a plot device (this is the first epi, though).
    I am interested in how they will treat Sierra through out the series.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 3:49 pm ¶

42. Thea Lim wrote:

    @Rob Schmidt

    It’s odd that Glau is part Cherokee and it’s not mentioned anywhere on the web where a regular viewer can find it (apart from your blog). In any case she’s still not East Asian. I too assumed she must be somehow East Asian. I was surprised and irritated when I read her Wikipedia page which says she is a mix of European while doing research for this piece. I just really wonder why he cast two ostensibly white actors who look a little East Asian, and then gave them a name like Tam, which is a Chinese surname. For crying out loud, would it really have killed them to cast some actual Chinese people?

    @Chris
    I did read that Kaylee was supposed to be East Asian originally, and as you anticipated that irritated me more than mollified me…

    Le sigh.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 3:50 pm ¶

43. Thea Lim wrote:

    @Slowroll

    “So just to re-ask my main question, if he had shown the proper respect for the language (real phrases with correct pronunciation) and had included a significant number of characters played by Chinese or Chinese American actors, then you would not have been offended?”

    No, I wouldn’t have been offended. I don’t know if I would’ve liked it, but I don’t think I would’ve been able to make any real case for why I didn’t like it, apart from aesthetics. To me that would’ve been showing respect for the culture, and also showing a real interest in racial equity.

    I think that’s what really gets me about appropriation – it’s an interest in the stuff of the culture (basically, the things that you can take for your own purposes) with no interest in the actual human beings who belong to the culture and make it what it is.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 3:54 pm ¶

44. Thea Lim wrote:

    @Slowroll

    Sorry, forgot your other question!

    “Also, what if the characters were meant to be culturally “Chinese” (in quotes because this is a fictional future we are talking about), but were played by descendants of other Asian ethnicities?”

    If there was some explanation or thought put into it, fine. I do get irritated though when casting agents use actors (like the actual people) of one East Asian “race” to play a different “race.”

    Like Memoirs of a Geisha starred a Chinese woman from China (Zhang Ziyi) and a Chinese woman from Malaysia (Michelle Yeoh) both playing Japanese women. I guess we all just look alike.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 3:57 pm ¶

45. Beth wrote:

    I believe Whedon is given a pass on his (mis)use of women as well as his lack of actual diversity because he talks a good game. Any time I’ve gotten into a discussion about the positives and negatives of his work with a fan, though, they alway say “well, what about Zoe?”

    Whedon gets up and says, “I talked about the concept with Equity Now” or “It’s science fiction”, as though either of those allowed him to ignore the cultural context in which he’s writing. Star Trek was not a great show and had its problematic elements for sure, but it also used “science fiction” to display more diversity than would otherwise have been accepted, not less than would otherwise have been expected. Too often I feel like Whedon wants to tell the story he wants to tell while simultaneously receiving praise for his good, liberal, progressive ideas, whether or not the story engages with them in any way. It’s more-or-less fine to write non-feminist works (as I believe Dollhouse to be), but you don’t get to also claim that they are, actually, feminist works. I don’t believe, though, that it’s ever fine to exclude cultural voices you are specifically draw on in creating your world, as he did in Firefly.

    I think often times it’s like the thing with the “difficulty” of finding models who look like the Obama kids. It’s not that they aren’t there, it’s that they’ve been systematically excluded starting at the lowest levels of the business. So if a “colorblind” casting call goes up a majority of responders will be White because that’s who the agents (who are actually responding) have in their file, and those with the longest resumes will almost certainly be white because that was who was cast last time. If Joss Whedon writes “race-blind” futures, of course they are going to be full of White actors, whether or not that makes any logical sense in the world he’s written.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 4:07 pm ¶

46. SlowRoll wrote:

    @Thea

    Thanks for clearing that up. Re: appropriation, I’m glad that you have an open mind to it being done respectfully. (But then in such an instance, maybe ‘appropriation’ fails to be the right word..?) Respect doesn’t automatically entail good taste, but certainly good taste can’t happen without respect.

    I guess from my lens as a white het male from the United States who doesn’t necessarily like any elements of (dominant) white, het, or male “culture” at all, I get all sad to think that that is a box that I was born into and that I am not allowed to deviate from the culture expected to be found in that box without automatically offending people from boxes with marginalized backgrounds. I guess it’s just my pomo-addled mash up of an identity that confuses my ability to sense the line(s) between ‘appreciation’ and ‘appropriation’. Which is tough, because those lines I definitely do not want to cross.

    So that was what I was clearing up, which is whether it is ever possible to ‘appropriate’ from another culture in a way that is not offensive or counterproductive. (Again, ‘appropriate’ is probably not a good word for this kind of action, but that is a judgment my skin color and gender don’t allow me to feel comfortable making.)

    Also, your litmus test of whether or not the people are included with the culture is thought provoking.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 4:28 pm ¶

47. June wrote:

    Check out “So Long Been Dreaming,” an awesome anthology of sci fi writing by POC edited by Jamaican Canadian sci fi writerwriter, Nalo Hopkinson:

    http://nalohopkinson.com/writing/fiction/books/so_long_been_dreaming

    She posts her new writing on her website too. Her novels are great too.

    Minister Faust, an African Canadian sci fi writer living in Edmonton Alberta, wrote the most excellent novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad:

    http://www.edmontonblackpages.com/Coyote_Kings_Main.html

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 5:32 pm ¶

48. SlowRoll wrote:

    Wow, both those suggestions sound great June!

    I really like the postcolonial premise of “So Long Been Dreaming” and that review got me amped to read it.

    Here’s one that we have here at my library that I quite enjoyed.

    Cosmos Latinos :
    http://books.google.com/books?id=THf4Dgi93xsC&dq=cosmos+latinos

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 7:03 pm ¶

49. Jo wrote:

    One of you had mentioned there were only white SciFi authors, check out Octavia Butler (dystopian-type stuff, very good if a bit disturbing at times).

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 7:05 pm ¶

50. Alwet wrote:

    @June
    Thanks very much for the recommendations, I’m adding them to my reading list immediately.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 7:14 pm ¶

51. BSK wrote:

    I am not familiar with Joss Whedon or his work. But something I have noticed is that when someone shows a certain proclivity in one are relating to social justice, we often unfairly expect them to demonstrate this same “strength” in other areas. I work with a radio personality who deals with issues of race and gender. People will often come to ask her opinion/advice on issues relating to religion or sexual orientation. They will often get incredulous if she chooses to defer on these questions or responds in a way that does not seem in line with her progressive/liberal thinking in her areas of expertise. The mindset seems to be, “You have a strong track record in supporting PoC’s and gender equity, so why the hell aren’t you a proponent of equally ‘liberal’ ideas on religion or sexual orientation or what-have-you.” It’s like when people were “disappointed” in Obama because he didn’t come out and say he supported same-sex marriage. People who believe in marriage equality obviously had a right to be upset, but there seemed to be EXTRA frustration because Barack was supposed to “get it”, because he “got it” in so many other areas.

    I think we sometimes have to accept/acknowledge that certain people may have really great ideas/strengths in one area and not in what seems to be a related area. Why can’t Whedon be a guy who “gets it” with regards to gender and “misses it” with regards to race? That does not excuse him missing; but is it fair to have an increased expectation of him getting it simply because he does get it elsewhere?

    It’s something I’ve noticed and am generally curious to hear others’ thoughts about this.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 7:43 pm ¶

52. blake wrote:

    @Guante,

    I disagree with you about Shepard Book’s (played by the great Ron Glass) death in “Serenity.” He was one of two major series characters to die in the film. The second one being a “white” character, the ship’s pilot played by Alan Tudyk.

    The death of both characters was a sad occassion.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 8:17 pm ¶

53. Nathan wrote:

    Well, the series was supposed to take place on the fringes of known space by and large, so its possible that the fringes are just where this future Chinese superpower banished everyone who spoke the language as horribly as Whedon’s crew did? (/tongue-in-cheek)

    Anyone know of any good analysis of why this imbalance amongst sci-fi authors exists? I know that there is a very strong skew to white sci-fi authors, but I’ve never really seen a look into why that is the case.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 8:28 pm ¶

54. Lyonside wrote:

    >It’s not that they aren’t there, it’s that they’ve been systematically excluded starting at the lowest levels of the business. So if a “colorblind” casting call goes up a majority of responders will be White because that’s who the agents (who are actually responding) have in their file, and those with the longest resumes will almost certainly be white because that was who was cast last time.

    WORDY McWORD, Beth. This is what my sci-fi/fantasy loving friends snarkily call “Casting… Vancouver.” So many shows in the 90s and ’00s were filmed there to cut production costs, and we got used to seeing not only the same actors on different shows, but the same actors on shows in the same franchise, sometimes within the same season (um, like we’re not going to NOTICE?) and those actors were universally pale.

    Heck, one of the redeemable aspects of a film like Pitch Black is that there is more than one non-white actor, and some of them actually survive the movie. Wow. Stunning.

    It’s not enough to say, “Well, then make your OWN films/movies/books.” We do and we have. But that’s not where the funding comes from, not just for making the piece of art, but for distribution, marketing, network or publishing deals, and the like. Bottom line, there needs to be diversity in all aspects of production, including the casting.

    As an aside, anyone else think the BBC is the opposite extreme, sometimes? Merlin, I’m looking at you, bub… you’re breaking my brain. Fantasy, sure… non-religious Moors in 400AD England? Hoo-doggy.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 8:30 pm ¶

55. blake wrote:

    hvls,

    I disagree with you that Gina Torres character was not feminine. She’s Gina Torres! She exudes sexiness and charm. Her is that of an ex-soldier! Would you expect an ex-soldier to be girly? She was a woman who had a strong, loving relationship with her husband.

    If any of you are interested in science fiction by and or about people of color, the Carl Brandon Society is a sci-fi organization that supports such writers and their works.

    http://www.carlbrandon.org/
    http://carlbrandon.org/blog/

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 8:34 pm ¶

56. Kepler wrote:

    First, thanks Latoya for some food for thought. I’m a huge fan of Firefly (have yet to see Serenity), and yet never noticed this inexplicable trend of zero Asian human presence. Yet, I feel a bit compelled to echo the sentiment that anyone who was unable to finish watching the series should consider giving it another shot. The show is not perfect, but it’s still enjoyable.

    Many people have commented on the poor pronounciation of Mandarin and Cantonese phrases, and I have to admit I’m a bit perplexed as to why. Most people I know who are not fluent in English with only a bare minimum vocabulary obtained solely from movies, TV and music, love to pepper their speech with English words and phrases (not a surpise given the dominance of English-speaking cultures). These phrases are mangled, mispronounced and incorrectly conjugated in ways that leave that native speakers momentarily baffled. I notice I do the same when I try to speak a language I have minor exposure to (French, Spanish, Italian, German, etc).

    Before anyone gets a chance to call me an apologetic, I want to clarify my point. If the characters were claiming to be fluent in Mandarin/Cantonese, or that in Firefly’s era people learned Mandarin/Cantonese in school, or that there is no way to survive without more than a cursory understanding of it, then their mispronunciations would make no sense (children attending international British schools have no trouble communicating with native English speakers). As a personal side note, I’m rather fluent in Swahili, and nothing ticks me off more than to watch a movie/show where the character is supposed to be fluent in Swahili and yet the words that come out bear little to no resemblance to what native speakers say.

    As for Gina Torres’ character living up to the Jezebel, black women are strong and only good for sex, I missed that one as well. I haven’t seen the show in nearly a year, but I could have sworn there were moments of tender love between her and her husband. Though I agree the other female characters were allowed to exhibit (traditional) masculine and feminine traits while Zoe is portrayed lacking the same balance.

    *In the interest of full disclosure Zoe is one of my favorite tv characters, alongside Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (hmm… notice a trend?)

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 9:30 pm ¶

57. SlowRoll wrote:

    I wanted to post just one more anthology, or I guess this one is called a “sampler.”

    This one’s a sweet bonus because you can read it Right This Minute.

    http://philippinespeculativefiction.com/

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 9:37 pm ¶

58. Steve wrote:

    @Kepler

    I think the big issue with Firefly is not the mispronunciation of language but the fact that Whedon felt like Chinese/Asian culture was cool but not cool enough to make any main or even side characters Chinese/Asian.

    The sad fact of the matter is that even if Josh Whedon had wanted to cast Asian characters (and, for the record, I don’t think he ever had any interest in that) I think he would have faced commercial pressure against it since there is the belief (which I personally believe is true) that its difficult (though not impossible) for non-Asians to accept and like an Asian main character but Asians will accept and watch non-Asian main characters.

    As minorities in the US that will generally be the rule — at best we can generally hope to be side kicks or maybe minor characters. We can be the sassy black lady or the swishy asian gay guy, the bad ass street hood with the heart of gold or the overstressed med student with too much parental pressure. So there’s always that. Hurray!

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:05 pm ¶

59. CelloShots wrote:

    I’m a bigtime Buffy fan, but I just want to point out another one of Joss’ most egregious racial idiocies: in the musical episode, normal life in Sunnydale is completely upended by the arrival of a black man. Sure, he also makes people dance and sing uncontrollably, and sure he’s actually bright shiny red, but it is very easy to come away with the impression that a powerful black man coming to town spells disaster for everyone in it. He even wears a Zoot Suit, in case you couldn’t guess that he was supposed to represent a racial minority.

    And yet, this episode provided an excuse to get the amazing Hinton Battle on the show, which can only be a good thing. What do we do with that?

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:12 pm ¶

60. Madame Zenobia wrote:

    @ blake #20,

    Thanks for that tidbit about Biana Lawson. I had no idea. Also, thanks for the list of writers. I’ve read Minister Faust and his The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad was an excellent sci-fi novel. I loved it.

    Won’t comment on “Dollhouse” as I’ve read different things and have been told different things about it. The observations most of you are making about “Firefly” are things I hadn’t taken notice of. Great discussion.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:23 pm ¶

61. Madame Zenobia wrote:

    @ guante #23,

    Not on Chiwetel Ejiofor but I felt the character of “Jubal Early”, though he met his end, was an intriguing character for that final episode; helped set in motion (along with the plot of course) the extension from the show to the film.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:27 pm ¶

62. Madame Zenobia wrote:

    Woah I should’ve really read everyone’s comments about “Jubal” before posting my above response. LOL. Woah. Okay, I think I’ll sit in the corner and ponder that character a little more before responding again.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:29 pm ¶

63. cocolamala wrote:

    @Gina Torres in Sci-Fi

    sam raimi wrote a show called Cleopatra 2525, in which Torres gets top billing, but the show is actually named after another female character…

    it’s kind of a futuristic Charlie’s Angels, but Torres name always comes first in the credits.

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 10:45 pm ¶

64. Medusa wrote:

    Luis, are you serious? The show is the end result of the two super powers taking over the world, not America over-taking everyone, in which case no, English would not become the main language with some Chinese words sprinkled in, the Chinese language would be just as prevalent as the English language and it Chinese words would not “become English.”

    CVT- Right on. It is pretty ridiculous that they had no Asian cast-members, considering that China’s population is more than 3 times that of the United States. I’m kind of embarrassed to say that the first time I watched Firefly, it didn’t even occur to me. I went back and watched some episodes a few weeks ago and I thought “wait, why aren’t there any Asians on this show?”

    I also have my other issues with it, like how even 500 years in the future where women have finally reached some kind of equality- fighting on the front lines of a war, being hired as mechanics and are supposedly as strong and intelligent as men, the crew is still run by a white man, and women are STILL selling their bodies to men (”companions”).

    Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 11:21 pm ¶

65. Shawn wrote:

    On the subject of Star Trek: Has anyone else noticed that the DS9 series with the character of Benjamin Sisko was the only one with episodes dealing with race? The two alternate reality episodes where he was a black man in Chicago in the 50’s and getting beat down by cops, etc. and the episode with the bar in the holodeck in which he spoke of how people like he and Cassidy weren’t allowed in those kinds of clubs back in the day. No other command characters really had their skin color made the subject of an episode.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 12:26 am ¶

66. Liz L wrote:

    Hmmm… Jubal Early. Genius being the ability to hold two opposing ideas at once and all that, I simultaneously love and loath the character. When I first watched it in the back of my head I kept going ‘WTF I can’t believe they pulled out a scary black man rapist’ for the last episode. The character embodies that media scare stereotpye of the dark and bad strange man who will come through your bedroom window, little girl! On the other hand, I thought that the actor was fantastic and genuinely terrifying in his own quiet way and loved the character even though it bumped up against all of my warning bells.

    Also, there’s a solid essay that tackles the same questions rased in the post above in the half fanzine/half good analysis anthology ‘Finding Serenity’ ed Epenson and Yeffeth.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 3:36 am ¶

67. Lxy wrote:

    Hmmm … a SciFi fantasy vision of the future in which there are very few if any Asians or other people of color, and White people are numerically dominant.

    For some reason, I am reminded of the title of Ward Churchill’s book _Fantasies of the Master Race_.

    http://www.amazon.com/Fantasies-Master-Race-Literature-Colonization/dp/0872863484

    I think a more important issue than getting more Asian faces or actors in Firefly (or any other Hollyweird production) is the politics of representation.

    That is, Anglo-American media depictions of China, Asia, and the non-Western Other in general have very little to do with their putative subjects.

    Instead, these media depictions reveal much more about American/Western delusions, insecurities, paranoid anxieties, or fantasies about China, Asia, or the non-Western Other.

    Meet the new Orientalism.

    Same as the old Orientalism.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 5:35 am ¶

68. Jess wrote:

    @CVT (#21)
    Sorry to be so long here. Look, the point I was making was that if I were describing in the future a non-Chinese culture in a future that had been heavily influenced by China politically, culturally and otherwise, it doesn’t necessarily follow that that “world” (or really, that part of it) should be populated by Chinese people.

    See Wasteland of Flint — (not great as books go, unfortunately) for an example — we have a world in which the Aztecs essentially won, but the main character is Norwegian (there are really specific reasons for this, the whole point is that Norway was one of the last holdouts and thus Scandinavians suffer much bigotry). The story is not populated with Aztecs (though they do show up in important roles). And you wouldn’t expect it, any more than I would expect Japan to be populated with Chinese people even though the culture is deeply, deeply influenced by China.

    Anyhow, that’s a bit beside the point you made. White people are already a minority in the world anyway. And I wasn’t saying that there should not be more PoC in the casting. Offering an explanation that is an alternative to Joss Whedon — or anyone else — just itching to oppress a PoC is not the same as endorsing such behavior.

    It isn’t like I’m a Joss Whedon fanboy either. My big issues with Buffy were more class-based, is all.

    Just that Thea’s post had a few points in it that might be clarified– and her positions changed– if the answers to a few questions were different. For example, she specifically said there didn’t seem to be many Asians of any stripe in the production staff. I haven’t checked on the ethnicities of everyone involved. Since she doesn’t know and I don’t know, maybe we ought to find out.

    In the US your last name doesn’t always indicate ethnicity or race. Carmen Van Kerckhove, hello? She must be white! Now, that sounds pretty stupid, right?

    Also, I don’t know if Joss Whedon hired a consultant or something. Lim doesn’t know either. Would her opinion change if that were the case? And what kind of expert? An Asian American who happens to be of Chinese descent who studied art for a semester (and what percentage descent is acceptable?) or a guy with a Masters in Asian Studies who speaks fluent Mandarin Cantonese, and can sight-read Confucian dialogues?

    All of this might affect the way she reacted to the show. This is why I reserve judgment on many things like this in a way I didn’t used to. I don’t know enough facts, and until I know them I am uncomfortable imputing motive.

    If I found that Joss Whedon didn’t hire anybody to get into Asian culture a bit, then I’d be more on board with Thea’s reaction. If I knew that his art director never studied Asian art, and never looked anything up beyond a visit to a Chinese restaurant, then I’d be saying the same thing she did.

    Absent that information I try to tease out other explanations, other possibilities for why I or anyone else might react to something a certain way. I ask myself “What’s really bothering me, and would more knowledge of the background facts change my opinion?”

    I once judged Latoya Peterson — wrongly — because I wasn’t in possession of all the facts. I made assumptions. That was wrong, wrong wrong, and she called me out on it — rightly. I see no reason why that shouldn’t apply to others. Asking that people take a step back, you know?

    There’s a whole other issue with the default position being that people are white (in science fiction especially). But the same could be said for fiction generally in the US.

    LeGuin in particular does a good job of bringing out characters who aren’t white — but the thing I like is that she isn’t ham-handed about it. When I read her stuff I am not thinking about the black or white character, I am thinking about the character, the person.

    I don’t think white should be the default position, but then I wondered how much of that is us, the readers, rather than the writers or if the effect is synergistic. For instance, in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy I always imagined one character, the terraforming scientist Sax Russell, as a black man. Re-reading it, I can’t figure out why. His race, as far as I can tell, isn’t mentioned. So why did I imagine him looking like a skinnier James Earl Jones? And why did I assume Lucky Starr (a character from Asimov’s work in the 50s) was a white guy?

    I want to see more PoC writers in science fiction in particular, a genre that I really love reading. I want to see more PoC characters because they are the people I often identify with more, and because science fiction deals so often with the theme of other-ness, of outsiders, and of imagining worlds that might be different as a way to think about the way ours is built.

    But sometimes I have mixed feelings about this kind of discussion I don’t feel like I’m getting to the root of the problem. Something about it feels incomplete. Maybe I am different from every other poster here, but I am not entirely sure what that means. I am not certain. I am not so sure.

    And maybe because mixed-race people like myself, who come from many cultures, who can’t lay claim to one or be claimed by it, have a whole other set of issues with “appropriation” discussions. I don’t know.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 9:31 am ¶

69. Persia wrote:

    The show is the end result of the two super powers taking over the world, not America over-taking everyone, in which case no, English would not become the main language with some Chinese words sprinkled in, the Chinese language would be just as prevalent as the English language and it Chinese words would not “become English.”

    I’ll disagree a little, simply because English has a long history of stealing words from other cultures and using them as their own. But if that were the case, there would be different Mandarin/Chinese borrowed words, not just profanity.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 10:03 am ¶

70. PatrickInBeijing wrote:

    I appreciate all the tips about tv shows and books that I might miss over here (though I have read Nalo Hopkins and am a big fan).

    CVT is correct, 500 years from now, white folks are going to be scarce if not extinct. (This of course is partly because so many white folks are marrying and having kids with non-white folks, and those kids count as non-white, and gee that combined with low birth rates suggests that 500 years from now….. well). After all, the US will be less than 50% white this century, so imagine in 4 more…….

    I have to admit, all of you make me curious to see at least one episode of any of the fore-mentioned series…… (my students are in love with 24, friends, Prison Break, Desperate Housewives, The Apprentice… and i dunno). I am going to work on getting them to watch Homicide (other ideas??? I just can’t see Hero). (And I apologize if I am wandering off thread….)

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 10:44 am ¶

71. SlowRoll wrote:

    @PatrickInBeijing

    Though the language is often extremely challenging to even native English speakers (not sure what and to whom you are teaching), The Wire is probably the best show I have ever seen. Though I am not personally from Baltimore, everything I have read that discusses the realism level of The Wire ranks it extremely high.

    And please, do whatever you can to get them to stop watching those other shows

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 11:33 am ¶

72. Anonymous wrote:

    I agree about the ignorant cultural appropriation—it’s frustrating that he could be so sloppy about it. I also find that Whedon tends get really close to the border of what’s an homage to an earlier film and what is ‘copying’. With ‘Firefly’, I felt irritated that it basically felt like a combination between ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Blade Runner’, both visually and conceptually. Just too close to home. The captain even looks/dresses like Han Solo!

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 5:08 pm ¶

73. MapMaker wrote:

    I always thought that the Mandarin swearing in Firefly was a joking reference to the way Chinese characters in Chinese action films often burst into English when they swear or become agitated.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 5:15 pm ¶

74. Laura V wrote:

    There are a couple of Firefly fanvids that explicitly critique the handling of the racial issues in the series.

    I can’t recall the second one’s name — it focuses on geisha-ism — but one of them is Shati’s Secret Asian Man, which is about the lack of actual Asian characters.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 5:51 pm ¶

75. Reiter wrote:

    OMG, thank you for writing this! I thought I was the only one who thought this of Whedon and Firefly! While I like the premise behind the show (I’m a big fan of Cowboy Bebop and the obvious homage and influences of that series is really quite evident in this show) and the quirky characters, it always bugged the HELL out of me that they would suddenly break into gibberish Chinese and made passing references to Asian culture and how it supposedly pervades the entire universe of Firefly, but we don’t actually see ANY Asian faces (unless you count maybe that one Asian prostitute in that ep where the crew help defend a brothel from bandits). Appropriate much, Mr. Whedon?

    My white friend turned me on to the show after pestering me to watch it finally, and he doesn’t really notice this, of course, but speaking as a Chinese American, it really bothers me. I can only brace myself in dread for what Hollywood (and Keanu Reeves) is going to do with the upcoming Cowboy Bebop movie.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 6:01 pm ¶

76. Joseph wrote:

    Gina Torres=hotness.

    She was awesome in Serenity and was amazing as the Big Bad Jasmine in Angel. (I can’t believe I just wrote that. is it possible to have your virginity re-instated?)

    The whiteness of Buffy never bothered me because I thought it was central to the premise of the show: Stereotypic, suburban, blond cheerleader is also a vampire slayer. The LA-set Angel was a different story though and I was actually really pleased with Gunn’s character. I think he dramatized the longing to fit in without wanting to give up who you are–and the price you sometimes pay anyway–really beautifully. Plus, he wrote Gina Torres the roles of her career (see above). So I am not ready to toss out the baby with the bathwater re: Joss Whedon and PoC.

    But.

    Thea makes excellent points re: the use of Oriental objects in the absence of Asian people in Firefly. That is an Orientalist trope that has a particular history for the Chinese in the West. (Which is why Americans coveted fired porcelain–still called “China”–in the 19th century even as actual Chinese people were routinely demonized.) I didn’t see enough of Firefly to make an intelligent comment about the show (and I missed the Dollhouse premiere completely) although I enjoyed the movie Serenity. I wasn’t very aware of the whole China-as-a-world-power thing when I saw it though so I’d be interested to see it again in light of this discussion.

    Interesting post.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 6:33 pm ¶

77. Zahra wrote:

    @Thea Lim:

    Two words: THANK YOU!

    It just does my heart good to hear other people critique Whedon. I have a love-hate relationship with him myself, and it’s often the race problems that tip the scale for me. I remember well the way that the Chinese influence in Firefly went from a cool concept–I’d love to see more future worlds that mark the influence of non-white cultures in visible ways–to an increasing irritant as the episodes went on and the characters of Chinese descent didn’t appear.

    Your comments about how badly the language was mangled are much appreciated.

    It’s a shame, as some of the problems could have been solved (so easily!) by casting Simon & River Tam with Asian actors. (And swapping Book & Inara’s plotlines, because the sexy Indian prostitute & the Black Man Voice of Conscience gets old.)

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 6:33 pm ¶

78. Kaonashi wrote:

    I don’t need the money,” Gaiman says. “Not needing the money puts me in a magical place because I can say no. I like the idea of having good movies made or having no movies made.”

    Seriously? He said this?

    Thank god SOME people have integrity and refuse to have their work whitewashed for movies! Even more interesting, he didn’t have similar problems for Neverwhere which makes me wonder if this passion for whitewashing everything in sight is more of an “American” thing. You would think that studios would have gotten the message by now, but I guess not!

    Then again, I’m probably still disgusted by the news that Hollywood is remaking “House of Flying Daggers.” WTF?

    *brb, buying Anansi Boys*

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 7:46 pm ¶

79. Medusa wrote:

    Why did my other comment get deleted?

    Mod Note - According to the other moderator, generalizing about certain groups. Please review our comment mod policy and resubmit. – LDP

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 8:13 pm ¶

80. Starlet Harlot wrote:

    Very much enjoyed reading this as I have just finished a critique of Whedon and Firefly from a sex worker perspective. The racial problems (recurring, throughout his work) are others I have noticed and I would love to link to this article when I publish mine if that’s agreeable?

    I enjoy a lot of Whedon’s work, but think he gets a free pass because he’s a white het male claiming interest and advocacy of feminism. Personally, as a feminist, I think he kinda sucks. His efforts should not mean his failings are overlooked, and he fails a great deal in busting misogynistic stereotypes.

    But greater than that is his issues around race and representation of racial diversity in his shows. It’s extremely irritating to be lectured to on one issue when another of equal importance is going so thoroughly overlooked and so repeatedly. Reading through the comments here, several salient and vital points are made in his appropriation of cultures for his white starring cast and then absolute disregard and neglect of them.

    And as a sex worker, though other sex workers I know disagree on some points, he makes me see vivid blood red.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 8:22 pm ¶

81. Thea Lim wrote:

    @Starlet Harlot

    I’d be really interested to read a critique of Firefly from a sex worker perspective! I was confused by Inara. On the one hand I thought it was kinda neat that in Whedon’s Firefly Future, sex workers and sex work is respected. On the other hand I didn’t understand in that case then why Mal implies (or outright says?) at different points that Inara is a whore, and how inconsistently she is respected by clients. I really felt like Mal’s point of view in the end was the one we, as audience, were supposed to share or approve of, and I came away airing on the side of “do not like” in terms of the sex worker storyline.

    @BSK and Whedon getting a free pass around race: BSK mentions that we shouldn’t expect people who’ve got good analysis in one area to have good analysis in all areas.

    I disagree – I have much higher expectations of “good” politics when it comes to people whose art or values I admire. In terms of Whedon, it makes me angry that he is obviously a very intelligent person with a strong understanding of power and privilege – but that he still makes shows with arguably racist undertones.

    Because he clearly has the capacity to understand why it’s important to share power, and why it’s hurtful when people don’t. And yet he still chooses to make f-ed up choices in his art. To me this seems almost worst than the way the makers of 24 act. Knowing what we do about his level of analysis, it almost feels as if he is going out of his way to ignore the importance of racial equity.

    As well, he gets a lot of adulation for being “progressive”, and I think he is quite happy representing himself as a thoughtful, radical-ish writer/producer.

    When someone represents themself as progressive (and benefits from that reputation) at the same time as they are doing things that are not at all progressive, I get more exasperated than I would if they had never bothered with equity.

    I know this is a little contradictory…I guess I have low tolerance for hypocrisy.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 9:03 pm ¶

82. Starlet Harlot wrote:

    Thank you, Thea, I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s up. Another sex worker friend of mine has written a great rebuttal to my draft article too, and I’m hoping she’ll allow me to publish it as well.

    I agree absolutely on your statements regarding holding Whedon to higher standards across issues and not giving him excuses because he rings the feminist bell. People who present themselves as progressive have, to my mind, MORE responsibility to ensure that takes place across the board.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 10:00 pm ¶

83. Lisa wrote:

    A bit late to the table here. As a Mandarin-speaker, I had the hardest time watching Firefly for its pathetic mangling of the language. Cringe/drink-inducing. Then I watched the interviews at the end of the DVD: they DID have a Chinese-American advising them – only she barely spoke Mandarin, wouldn’t pass a first year class, and what was teaching/advising them was mostly wrong!

    I thought that was actually rather hilarious. They hired a Chinese tutor/translator who didn’t actually speak Chinese – just looked Chinese. That says a lot, hey.

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 10:33 pm ¶

84. Janine deManda wrote:

    I’m a pretty huge fan of the Whedon oevre, and I think that all the props he gets for being progressive and feminist are rendered essentially shite by the dearth of balanced critique accompanying them. {No, I haven’t read the anthologies yet, so I’m just talking general discourse.}

    Yes, he has contributed some “strong female” role models and some “men who can be both articulate and emotive” role models. Yes, that should get positive recognition, but as Thea Lim and Starlet Harlot and others pointed out, I’m of a mind that such praise should be accompanied by discussion of the flaws in what he’s put out there.

    As some folks have already mentioned, his gender politics have some serious issues. There’s the total patholigization of pregnancy including the woman as vessel crap. There’s the incredible shrinking women both in the sense of actually getting thinner over the course of Buffy and Angel and in the sense of fuckin’ dying off – Harmony is the only female of any stripe to survive Angel the series intact, and that’s prolly just ‘cuz she was already a vampire. The awesome evolution of Cordelia across both series is totally undercut when it’s rendered a mere manipulation of Jasmine’s plan for incarnation. And the list could go on . . .

    Another poster mentioned class, and I have some serious bones to pick with Mr. Whedon in that regard. In both Buffy and rather incongruously, in Angel, middle class mentalities are the given. The only two characters in either series who have anything resembling my formative class experience {Faith and Lindsey} are borderline psychotics who frequently choose the evil door in the great price is right of life. And could they be more stereotypical? Faith with her tight clothes and tats and drunken mother and intimacy issues? And Lindsey with his fuckin’ trashed pick up truck and guitar pickin’? Faith’s potential to choose the good door for, um, good means she got to survive into the comics, but Lindsey just had to be put down like the trashboy dog he is. Yes, I know I’m oversimplifying, and Faith is among my favorite characters, but that shit just galls me.

    Many of my issues with Whedon’s portrayal of race were raised above along with some I hadn’t thought of, but something that really got me about the potential presence of mixed blood characters among the central characters was the utter lack of acknowledgment thereof. When I first watched Firefly, I was inclined to answer representation critiques with the idea that the characters of the Tams and Kaylee were hapa, but in thinking about it further, I’d say that even if they were, there’d be some cultural resonance to it. 500 years of “cultural melding” hasn’t rendered the panoply of mixed race tropes in the Western Hemisphere moot, so I’m not thinking 500 more years and some interstellar travel would make the Sino-American Alliance an unremarked homogeny either. And of course, my whole hapa theory is shot to hell by the genetic improbability of all the children of the Sino-American Alliance looking not terribly East Asian.

    Nonetheless, I still really enjoy watching Buffy and Firefly and will probably give Dollhouse a looksee, though I have been boycotting Angel since Cordelia got emptied and Fred’s soul got “burned out”. I enjoy the shit that rocks, and I enjoy critically engaging the shit that sucks.

    Thanks for the great post and thread!

    Posted 17 Feb 2009 at 11:04 pm ¶

85. Nathan wrote:

    @Zahra “It’s a shame, as some of the problems could have been solved (so easily!) by casting Simon & River Tam with Asian actors. (And swapping Book & Inara’s plotlines, because the sexy Indian prostitute & the Black Man Voice of Conscience gets old.)”

    I don’t know about that…

    I can somehow imagine that making someone so dysfunctional (in so many ways), and already so fey and “exotically other” as River into a person of Asian descent would have driven a few people up the wall. As well, casting her brother as such a model, goody-two-shoes, family-minded doctor would have been another little gem on the stereotype tree. Would these really have been a pair of casting choices you would have been comfortable with?

    I don’t really see too many possibilities I’d like unless we could have made Mal himself Chinese.

    And swapping Book and Inara would have given us the equally old roles of wise Indian religious guru and black prostitute; not sure we’d be trading up with that swap.

    My wife’s take on the issue was Joss Whedon must have bought into some very serious model minority stereotypes if he was portraying not a single asian person out in the way-wrong-side-of-the-tracks areas of space the cast frequented. And then somehow were so model they also didn’t get involved in Miranda and other devious little bits of political intrigue.

    My take, though, upon looking back at the show, is that Joss either can’t think through his own background material or really does go for the “likes the Chinese flavouring, but doesn’t care so much for the people” because there is absolutely nothing to explain the fact that the Fleet in that series is not chockers with people of Chinese descent.

    If they had at least a sizeable chunk of the Fleet personnel as Chinese (sorry other Asian nations) and I would have been mollified by the series being at least somewhat consistant to its own backstory. If they had cast Mal as a Chinese person, well I would have been happy as a clam with the series and Whedon.

    Posted 18 Feb 2009 at 2:29 am ¶

86. Nathan wrote:

    Second thought, probably could have recast Wash as black and Zoe as Asian to shake up the ethnic balance rather effectively. Still fancy the idea of recasting Mal better, though I daresay you’d wouldn’t have got it through studio executives without indulging in murder and blackmail.

    Posted 18 Feb 2009 at 2:44 am ¶

87. Persia wrote:

    Wash as black and Zoe as Asian would’ve been kickass, though Gina Torres is so wonderful I have trouble seeing anyone else in that part. Because Gina Torres.

    I thought that was actually rather hilarious. They hired a Chinese tutor/translator who didn’t actually speak Chinese – just looked Chinese. That says a lot, hey.

    That’s pretty amazing. I hope she talked a damn good game on her resume.

    Posted 18 Feb 2009 at 10:16 am ¶

88. Joseph wrote:

    @Janine deManda

    Not trying to be a Whedon apologist here–I agree with most of your points, especially in regard to Firefly–but I think Cordy’s final storyline on Angel was ultimately defined by Charisma Carpenter’s real-life pregnancy. My impression is that the whole Cordy-as-vessel thing was them writing around Carpenter’s growing belly to accommodate the actress without derailing the storyline. They left it open with her coma so that she might return but she didn’t come back after her child was born (except for that lame farewell) so Cordy just faded away. I share your frustration and disappointment–she was one of my favorite characters–but I don’t know how much of what became of her was part of the plan for the character vs. the writers responding to what the actress needed.

    I very much agree that there was no excuse for what became of Fred though.

    Posted 18 Feb 2009 at 11:20 am ¶

89. CVT wrote:

    @ Jess -
    I happen to be one of those mixed folks with white last name – and that doesn’t do anything to change the fact that there should be more PoC in ANY imaginary “future.” I’m not judging motives or background research or any of that. Because none of that matters when the end result is still a white-washed world. He could have been a “Chinese Studies” major with “Chinese friends” all over the place, a love for Chinese food and impeccable Shanghai-ese (Shanghai-nese? I never know), and none of that would change the simple fact that:

    Asians are missing from his future world (as well as other non-white folks). And that’s that. And if there was a very conscious reason for that being the case, then he should have very consciously explained it or made it clear.

    I don’t judge people based on imagined thoughts or facts. But I will react to their end result – and if their end result conveniently erases the facts of the presence of folks like me in this world? I’m in my right to call bullsh–.

    The “I reserve judgment” line is way too easy of a cop-out in situations involving race. It’s a very standard, privileged position to take. If folks of color aren’t represented – that’s a problem – and “reserving judgment” definitely is not going to do anything at all in promoting change. It’s only active questioning and action that will move us along. Otherwise, the future could, indeed, look like the one scifi authors so often depict – as white-washed as (or more than) the world we currently inhabit.

    Posted 18 Feb 2009 at 11:32 am ¶

90. Thea wrote:

    @ CVT

    It’s Shanghainese

    Posted 18 Feb 2009 at 1:17 pm ¶

91. d wrote:

    I’ve watched (and I own) both the series Firefly, as well as the movie Serenity. I’ve also began wading through the Buffy series, but I am still in the early years. I’ve also read a good portion of Joss’s run on X-Men.

    I’d have to say while he is absolutely AWESOME when it come to gender issues, he is not so great, and at times really, really bad when it comes to ethnic issues. And so many people have given him kudos for it, but more often than not it just makes me shake my head.

    I’d like to think positively, so I think his heart is in the right place perhaps, but his execution can be poor. I could overlook it somewhat in Firefly, even though the lack of noticeable asian characters was hard not to notice. I tried looking for them, which of course made it worse. But it’s almost unbearable in Buffy- and I’m sloshing through it because so many of my friends simply adore this show. It’s tough because it seems to simmer under the surface – it’s not quite as in your face as other things, but it’s constantly there and it’s there for all ethnicities too.

    I’d say more, but I want to read the other 90 posts on this thread! But I just wanted to say you’re not alone in being weary of a Whedon universe.

    Posted 19 Feb 2009 at 12:19 pm ¶

92. Katie wrote:

    Yeah, I just don’t get why otherwise progressive types loooooove Whedon when his race issues are so in-your-face.

    I mean, that whole First Slayer/Buffy thing where she was fighting a dirty/primitive/animalistic black woman while herself a blond white woman wearing a business suit – ugh. And re: the lack of Asian representation, I will not choose my sex over my race, and I will not support that show.

    Posted 19 Feb 2009 at 1:59 pm ¶

93. Lisa wrote:

    Carmen, Thea is correct, it’s “Shanghainese” in English; in Mandarin Shanghai Hua for the language and Shanghai Ren for the people; in Shanghainese it’s Sanghei wu for the language and Sanghei Ning for the language. Sanghei Venho for the culture. Etc. Sorry, Sanghei yiminning geek talking.

    Regardless, any non-ethnic Asian genuinely seeped and comfortable/fluent in an Asian culture is first, really used to if not more used to the company and friendship of ethnic Asians; probably, second, to the point of being uncomfortable in groups that are not predominately ethnic Asian (which is racist in its own way, my problem).

    I recently read on Angry Asian Man about the Caucasian-American congresswoman who’d studied briefly in Hongkong, and who is courting the Chinese-American vote because she speaks a bit of Mandarin and Cantonese and “has an affinity for Asians”. That’s kinda creepily reductionist and Whedonesque.

    Mod Note: Lisa, though you made a good point regarding language, I took the liberty of taking out a non-appropriate term you used later in the comment. Please keep in mind our CMP in the future — AG

    Posted 19 Feb 2009 at 2:46 pm ¶

94. Laura V wrote:

    @Kaonashi re: Neverwhere. I think Neverwhere is a bit of a different situation, because it was written as a miniseries (by Gaiman) and then novelized (by Gaiman, from his screenplay), rather than being a novel that was adapted. *And* it has a nearly-all-white cast, with one of the nonwhite characters (at least) nonhuman. The other major nonwhite character is only debatably human. Now, if _Richard_ had been nonwhite…

    In other news, I remembered the other fanvid I wanted to mention: Lierdumoa’s How Much is that Geisha in the Window?

    Posted 19 Feb 2009 at 4:58 pm ¶

95. Medusa wrote:

    Uh, okay. Thea wrote

    I do get irritated though when casting agents use actors (like the actual people) of one East Asian “race” to play a different “race.” Like Memoirs of a Geisha starred a Chinese woman from China (Zhang Ziyi) and a Chinese woman from Malaysia (Michelle Yeoh) both playing Japanese women. I guess we all just look alike.

    I’ve heard so many people complain about this, that it’s offensive to use people of a different nationality, but of the same race to play a part. I remember a lot of people coming out and saying Memoirs of a Geisha was offensive, insensitive, etc. for casting a Chinese person to play a Japanese woman, and yet, I NEVER heard any of those SAME people complain about Don Cheadle playing Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda. Don Cheadle is not a Hutu. I also did not hear any concern AT ALL about Forest Whitaker or Kerry Washington playing Ugandans in The Last King of Scotland. Or is it just black people who all look alike?

    Persia- I know that English has a history of doing that. We also don’t live 500 years in the future after a big war in which China and America are the big superpowers. Additionally, they did use Mandarin for different words besides swearing. They also say “Thank you” and “Do you understand me?” in Mandarin. Possibly other phrases in Cantonese, but I don’t understand Cantonese.

    Posted 19 Feb 2009 at 8:40 pm ¶

96. Anna wrote:

    I’m a different Anna than the one above.

    I was also goig to recommend “How Much Is That Geisha In The Window” as a fanvid that talks about the lack of Asian characters in Firefly.

    There is also another one that’s more tongue in cheek called Secret Asian Man, which asks how you vid about someone who isn’t there.

    Another good vid that looks at race issues in Whedon’s work is Origin Stories, which looks very bluntly at the way Spike’s story is told at the expense of so many PoC in Buffy. You can read the vidding notes and the response of the person who requested it as well.

    Posted 20 Feb 2009 at 12:42 am ¶

97. Starlet Harlot wrote:

    Thea, if you’re interested I got up my look into Whedon’s view of sex work:
    http://whoretoculture.net/2009/02/21/more-than-just-a-whore-sex-work-firefly-and-audience-engagement/

    

    Posted 21 Feb 2009 at 8:39 am ¶

98. RSDavis wrote:

    The Asians, as the dominant culture, are all in the inner planets, where it is rich and the Alliance is strong. Our crew sticks to the outer planets, where they can avoid the Alliance.

    How many Asians in Appalachia?

    – Rick

    Posted 21 Feb 2009 at 6:22 pm ¶

99. Jav wrote:

    @RSDavis

    That smacks of segregation as opposed to assimilation of culture. If it’s a dominant culture, it’s a culture that has a presence across every socioeconomic level. There would be Asians from the inner Core to the outer planets; that said, we actually did see places like Ariel’s hospital and some creepier higher-ups, none of which reflected this abundance of mixed culture. Also, I’m not entirely convinced there would be such a divide between Asians and non-Asians, as I’m sure there would be a lot more racial mixing and ambiguity by 500 years from now.

    I loved the casting of Firefly’s crew and can’t really wish others in their place, but when investing so much in the authenticity of the ‘verse (its very human characters, the thoughtfully crafted futureverse), a focus toward some realism in the casting would’ve truly strengthened it.

    Posted 22 Feb 2009 at 4:36 am ¶

100. Reiter wrote:

     Meh, I would have been happier if Wash was Asian and kept Zoe as she was. I keep hearing about how Asian men should “get down with the brown” and this would have been a fun pairing to watch on Firefly. The stereotypes of Asian women in action/sci-fi/fantasty as killer dragon ladies or exoticized damsels in distress is off putting enough (an Asian River Tam would have fit this mold to a degree), and we need more Asian guys to represent (outside of martial arts or gangster villains). And just think of all the bad Asian driver or kamikaze jokes they could have zinged with a hotshot Asian pilot flying the Serenity!

     If they had made the Tams both Asian, that would have made much more sense (the brother as the intelligent, bookish doctor), but from what gather from the series, the Tams’ family was some sort of weird mish mash of European nobility and Asian something-or-other. I like Summer Glau, and enjoy her role in the Terminator TV series, but I can’t help but feel there were a lot of missed opportunities by the definite lack of Asian faces from the Whedonverse.

     Posted 22 Feb 2009 at 9:01 am ¶

101. jyl wrote:

     It’s been awhile since I’ve seen Firefly and I don’t own it so it would take a bit for me to get my hands on it to refresh my memory.
     On the whole Mal calling Inara a whore and uneven treatment from her clients, a possible explanation:
     Mal was raised religious (Christian or whatever religion Book was), wasn’t he? That level of hate of religion is usually from some one who got turned off a religion. Religions tend to despise prostitution. Mal might have turned away from religion but the things learned in childhood are not easy to unlearn, and Mal doesn’t seem the type to have re-examined all the things he was taught just because he has given up his faith.
     Also, nothing that I recall indicated a lack of freedom of religion so different people would have varied upbringings, and while it was politically correct that a Companion was respected that didn’t mean that translated to actual respect all across the board. (Which I’m sure most if not all of us can understand.)
     Of course, they might not have nuanced it out that finely, I might be giving them too much credit.
     (Although, the bad clients I recall seemed more along the lines of rich and entitled, surprised that money wasn’t buying them everything and lashing out in whatever way they could. Which is a whole other issue.)

     As for casting of Firefly, didn’t notice the lack of Asian/Chinese actors the first time because the cast is talented and has great chemistry, bothered me a lot the second time. It really was a missed opportunity. Although this wouldn’t have made up for it, if they had said that Kaylee was hapa I would have believed them. I would not have believed Simon as being Asian descent unless they were going back a lot of generations, a lot. River a little more believable then Simon but not by much. Then again, I am pretty bad at guessing ethnicities of people, these are my perceptions of possible ancestry that I am sure most people would disagree with. Even though I do it too at times, assuming that an Asian phenotype would be dominant over Caucasian phenotype is not correct. My sister and I are ‘hapa’. We are clearly sisters in appearance but she looks predominately white and I look predominately Asian.

     On a re-casting of Firefly with an eye towards more Asians/living up to the back story: Asian Mal, really cool idea, unlikely to happen without nefarious deeds as mentioned above.
     Personally I’d prefer not to have Zoe cast as Asian female whatever race Walsh is. I’d much rather stick with Zoe as is and cast an Asian male husband. Asian female in an interracial couple, over done and problematic. Asian male in an interracial couple, would probably have problems of it’s own but at least it would be relatively new. (Ooh, and Reiter@100 has some good points about other Asian stereotyping being broken with an Asian Walsh)
     The Tams as Asian would have made sense for the story. Casting Simon as Asian has the perpetuating the ‘model minority myth’ in his back story as mentioned, but he is rebelling from it at the same time, defying his parents and authority. Technically River is supposed to be even smarter so that could also have been objectionable on the ‘model minority myth’ thing. Although River as Asian wouldn’t have bothered me because of the damsel in distress thing because she is also kick-ass at times and it makes sense for the story.
     As for the suggestion of swapping the Inara and Book roles, I somehow assumed a gender swap not a race swap. I think a gender swap would have been interesting because sex workers are still predominately (assumed?) to be female and clergy is still predominately male.
     Curious on what people would say if Jayne had been cast Asian.

     Dollhouse: I don’t recall seeing Sierra at all on the second episode, if she was in the background I didn’t notice. Of all the so called main cast she is the only one that didn’t make it into the second episode???

     Posted 22 Feb 2009 at 1:34 pm ¶

102. Chen wrote:

     i liked buffy and angel, but I never got into firefly.

     it doesnt bother me that there are no asian characters there. If they were, they’d probably not be shown in a positive light.

     DDK’s character in angel beat up a woman and he was a bad guy.

     cut them some slack. Chinese is hard to a non-native speaker.

     Posted 22 Feb 2009 at 4:39 pm ¶

103. Robespierre wrote:

     Strangely enough, I don’t mean this pejoratively or with intended irony: Whedon is a good liberal who tries to be sensitive to disenfranchisement. His instincts are sometimes off for the simple reason his experience has been insufficiently diverse to allow for certain kinds of self-awareness.

     I say, point out the lack of Asian characters in Whedon’s series, but don’t beat him up for being racist. If the goal is to make better art by adding diversity, then don’t destroy humor and spontaneity in the process. He’s a wealthy Hollywood lord. You’re going to have to endure his series whether they’re humorous or not.

     When Silence of the Lamb’s director, Johnathan Demme, learned his careful references to gay culture had been construed as indictments of the killer’s homosexuality by Voice columnist, Michael Musto, Demme was traumatized. After all, the book had made it clear the killer was neither gay nor a true transvestite, but rather a psychopath who had found an improbable and pulpy way to channel viciousness. Demme hadn’t bothered to flesh out the distinction because he thought it was obvious and assumed his audience was too hip for homophobia. All he wanted was to telegraph to San Francisco that he’d been chic enough to visit a few clubs on Folsom Street — that, and to relive some early 80s synth pop for which he had an apparent weakness.

     Ever since his fall from liberal grace, Demme has tried to repent in public, making one hideously humorless film after another in the attempt to emphasize conscience. Sadly, those films have been as wish-fulfillment-generated as pornography, and the spontaneity and lightness of his earlier films is now nonexistent.

     By all means, let Whedon know he ought to create more ethnically diverse characters. Tell him to review the horror films of Ji-woon Kim and play Wild Arms II, Persona 3 FES and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne before he conceives of yet another dystopian future populated with dislocated youths. Then let it go and wait to see what he writes. Odds are he won’t try to justify what he’s done in the past, but will try to be better next time (I hope).

     Morally purposeful motives can play hell with a writer’s sense of fun, which is especially pertinent in Whedon’s case. Judging from his last three series, his sense of humor grows ever thinner, like his hair.

     (Three minute episodes of The Guild contain more of the lightness of Buffy than anything J.W.’s done since.)

     Posted 22 Feb 2009 at 8:27 pm ¶

104. Lxy wrote:

     Begging Hollywood or the White Mainstream in general for the inclusion of more minority actors is ultimately a limited–if not futile–goal in general.

     White people will be happy to include minority characters in a film or TV show–just as long as they fit into a White supremacist worldview (i.e. Asians as either exoticized sexual objects or Yellow Peril villains; Blacks as either criminals or Magical Negro advisors to the Great White hero, etc.).

     Ultimately, it’s an issue of POWER–not inclusion or diversity.

     As long as White people are the master … sorry … hegemonic race, they will exercise control over the media such that they have the power to impose their perspectives on everyone else and present their narrow viewpoint as universal.

     As I said before, much Western pop culture putatively about Asia or China has nothing to do with this region or people–except as a source of cultural appropriation.

     Instead, this pop culture reflects White delusions, paranoia, and fantasies about Asia.

     _Firefly_ is not about Asian people representing themselves.

     It is about White people–once again–attempting to (mis)represent and speak for the Other.

     In fact, the very premise of _Firefly_ about China as the “global superpower” implicitly–though subtly–reiterates actual Yellow Peril hysteria that America and the West increasingly hold about China in real life.

     Indeed, Hollywood in many ways can be said to reflect the mind of the American Empire–in all its perversity and sickness.

     And beyond all the rationalizations above about why _Firefly_ is so Whitewashed, science fiction examples like this one are interesting as they reveal deeper cultural anxieties, fears, and delusions that the White Mainstream possesses in real life.

     To borrow a phrase from Public Enemy, the vision of a Universally White future often presented by certain science fiction could be described as … Fear of a Colored Planet.

     Posted 22 Feb 2009 at 9:36 pm ¶

105. whatsername wrote:

     I’m surprised that no one mentioned that one of his writers is of Asian descent (specifically she has said her last name is Thai). Maurissa Tancharoen wrote next week’s episode and is listed as a writer in general for the show. She also co-wrote Dr. Horrible, and given her song on Commentary! if he wasn’t aware of issues of appropriation…he is now.

     That’s not to deny the criticisms of how many white people he uses for his productions or the conspicuous lack of Chinese people in a show where they are scripted as the dominant culture, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

     Posted 22 Feb 2009 at 10:04 pm ¶

106. Robespierre wrote:

     “Begging Hollywood or the White Mainstream in general for the inclusion of more minority actors is ultimately a limited–if not futile–goal in general. . . . White people will be happy to include [insert random category] when [insert random precondition] [further baseless conclusions implied by omission]. . . .”

     “Begging” only enters the picture when one believes that respect for someone else’s creative process is inherently demeaning. Your idea of “begging” is that of the mythical Salieri currying favor from Mozart, a composer to whom he feels superior and inferior simultaneously: His perception of the relationship is his problem, not the composer’s If you truly believe it is your right to demand that others write scripts according to your whims, then you’re not a social critic — you’re a fanboy, whatever your gender, expecting the external works you consume to be about you. If you really want that sort of control, then write your own series.

     Do you actually believe that respect for an entire racial subset (physical or sociological) is inherently demeaning based on arbitrary characteristics believed to result in permanent and ineluctable social distinctions? You could easily be talking about Lilliputians rather than caucasians: “White people eat their eggs from the little end! They can’t be trusted to depict anyone else truthfully!”

     Generalizations so sweeping that they confuse one individual (Joss Whedon) for the whole of “White Hollywood” are symptomatic of stereotyping at its worst. To saddle strangers with such baggage is to criticize in others what you fail to recognize in yourself. The moment you say that “white people” universally write about Asians in terms of circumscribed exoticism, you fail your own test for sensitivity to particularity and nuance.

     Posted 22 Feb 2009 at 11:33 pm ¶

107. Nathan wrote:

     @ Reiter:
     “Meh, I would have been happier if Wash was Asian and kept Zoe as she was. I keep hearing about how Asian men should “get down with the brown” and this would have been a fun pairing to watch on Firefly. The stereotypes of Asian women in action/sci-fi/fantasty as killer dragon ladies or exoticized damsels in distress is off putting enough (an Asian River Tam would have fit this mold to a degree), and we need more Asian guys to represent (outside of martial arts or gangster villains). And just think of all the bad Asian driver or kamikaze jokes they could have zinged with a hotshot Asian pilot flying the Serenity!”

     Point in fact, that’s actually why I shied away from suggesting Wash as the Asian angle xD

     Too many street racer stereotypes and movies came to mind.

     But I can see the rationale, and it does have the virtue of keeping Zoe as is.

     @ jyl
     “Curious on what people would say if Jayne had been cast Asian.”

     Ha, Jayne totally slipped my mind. I can’t quite help but feel that the character of Jayne was going to inevitably be an insult to whatever unlucky people group received him, and if you’re going to inflict him on anybody, well, may as well keep him as is.

     As far as Inara being recast as male, well, dunno, that’s something to mull over.

     I suspect we are starting to lose the thread here though, heh.

     Posted 23 Feb 2009 at 12:42 am ¶

108. Lxy wrote:

     @ Robespierre

     Whatever your background, you sound like yet another Angry White Male who throws a hissy fit whenever issues of White Supremacy or racism are brought up in a systemic and uncompromising political manner–in this case, with respect to the media.

     “Begging” only enters the picture when one believes that respect for someone else’s creative process is inherently demeaning. Your idea of “begging” is that of the mythical Salieri currying favor from Mozart, a composer to whom he feels superior and inferior simultaneously: His perception of the relationship is his problem, not the composer’s If you truly believe it is your right to demand that others write scripts according to your whims, then you’re not a social critic — you’re a fanboy, whatever your gender, expecting the external works you consume to be about you. If you really want that sort of control, then write your own series.

     What the hell are you talking about?

     You should go back and read what I actually wrote in my arguments, as you did not comprehend them in your angry little rant.

     If anything, it’s you that acts like a prissy Josh Whedon fanboy, or worse yet, an aesthete who refuses to acknowledge how White racism powerfully underlies American media representations of minorities and Asians in particular.

     But perhaps you believe in this nonsense about Art’s for Art’s Sake and that racial politics have no place in discussions about films or the media?

     If so, you miss the very purpose of this website.

     I particularly like the perverse way that you twist my criticism of the American media into the idea that I am somehow “demand[ing] that others write scripts according to your whims, then you’re not a social critic — you’re a fanboy, whatever your gender, expecting the external works you consume to be about you.”

     As I said above, people of color are wasting their time begging the American media or Hollywood to include more minorities in their work.

     Like every other institution in America, the media reflects a White mainstream worldview and ultimately serves to uphold White cultural hegemony and dominance.

     These institutions are morally bankrupt and deserve to be called out as such and treated as such.

     That’s what my posts were about.

     Do you actually believe that respect for an entire racial subset (physical or sociological) is inherently demeaning based on arbitrary characteristics believed to result in permanent and ineluctable social distinctions? You could easily be talking about Lilliputians rather than caucasians: “White people eat their eggs from the little end! They can’t be trusted to depict anyone else truthfully!”

     Generalizations so sweeping that they confuse one individual (Joss Whedon) for the whole of “White Hollywood” are symptomatic of stereotyping at its worst. To saddle strangers with such baggage is to criticize in others what you fail to recognize in yourself. The moment you say that “white people” universally write about Asians in terms of circumscribed exoticism, you fail your own test for sensitivity to particularity and nuance.

     Innocent Hollywood and White America are now the victims of stereotyping?!

     Talk about standing reality on its head.

     In Orwellian fashion, the victimizer is now the victim, right?

     What you’re really demanding in your comments about “sensitivity and nuance” above is that I softpedal and downplay the issue of American media racism in general and especially Orientalism.

     Sorry, that ain’t happening.

     In fact, have you even heard of Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism?

     If not, you should go read his work.

     Orientalism is the dominant socio-cultural lens by which the West and America not only perceive but also attempt to define the very identity of Asia.

     As I said before, most American media representations of Asians (or minorities in general for that matter) have very little to do with their putative subject.

     Instead, these media representations REVEAL MUCH MORE ABOUT THE INSTITUTIONS AND PEOPLE THAT PRODUCE THEM–and what they reveal is not so pretty.

     Racist (mis)representations of the “Colored Other” is a defining American tradition–of which Hollywood is one of the preeminent examples.

     To deny this is to deny a critical facet of White Supremacy as an institution and culture.

     That wouldn’t be your agenda, would it?

     Posted 23 Feb 2009 at 6:32 am ¶

109. David wrote:

     I am from Sweden. As such I belong to a linguistic minority, Less than 9 million people speak my language.

     When I watched Firefly, I was struck by the use of mandarin-ish as absolutely brilliant. In my opinion it mimics very well the use of “Swenglish” that I see in my country.

     There are words borrowed, such as CD or laptop, but more and more entire expressions are used intermingled in the swedish conversation.

     A typical group of expressions are those that come from movies and songlyrics and used as cool quotes or swearwords. I honestly believe I have heard people use “asshole” more often than “rövhål” over the last decade. (I do not know whether this is an improvement or not) And if a native english speaker (I include yanks in this as “speaking a kind of english”) were accosted by a young swede in hip hop gangsta attire shouting: “Vafan dissar du? Dissar’ru? Fack! Amgonna kapjo niggha!” I honestly do not think they would perceive this as anything but “gibberish”.

     I have to admit though, that I didn’t consider the lack of african or asian characters as I probably should have. Living in a massively pink society, africans and asians are always get treated like exceptions simply because we (pinkies) do not think about race issues unless someone points them out. I will make an endeavour to do so in the future.

     That said, I think Whedon missed a chance here. An even mix of races, or even leaving pinks out would have given the ‘verse a better style in my opinion. After all, if we mix as a species for thousands of years we will probably all be dark haired and perpetually tanned.

     Posted 23 Feb 2009 at 8:33 am ¶

110. Robespierre wrote:

     It doesn’t serve your cause, lxy, to hurl accusations of racial/political allegiances when you’re being called out on careless writing and thinking. You make so many assumptions about who others are and what they’ve read that I wonder why you bother to respond to actual people. Since you can’t possibly know any of what you assume, why not limit your targets to imaginary opponents?

     Calling strangers angry white males when they criticize your logic, accusing them of right-wing agendas when they disagree with your points — it’s all embarrassing and unproductive. No, lxy, I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the republican party. Nor have I failed to promote diversity, nor are most people who spent a semester in college (let alone, taught there) unfamiliar with standard tomes by Kristeva, Foucault, Said, Derrida, Adorno, Deleuze, Lacan, et al.

     Speaking of which — why brandish Said’s name like a zip-lock-bagged revolver in a courtroom drama? Yours is perhaps the most embarrassing defense of theory I’ve ever seen. Mentioning Said and his decades-old analysis of Orientalism is like marching up to a group of film students and saying, “Ever seen any films by Fellini? I have. They’re really something.” Fatal, to assume your audience is ignorant simply because they disagree with you or because you feel misunderstood.

     Any failure to make yourself clear falls on you and your paucity of expository coherence, not any imagined limitation of your audience. Nor is my deliberate avoidance of standard terminology an indication of unfamiliarity or disrespect — choosing not to revisit the gorgeous difficulty of Anti-Oedipus and Glas, choosing not to leave myself open to charges of university-cultivated insularity, is a personal decision that has to do with my life and milieu, not their contribution.

     When imprecision collides with over-identification, you create problems for yourself. One example:

     When you label every individual working in Hollywood “the oppressor” and yourself “the oppressed,” the term becomes meaningless except as a kind of safe word in a solipsistic fantasy. It is bad writing to characterize huge cross-sections of humanity as behaving and thinking uniformly.

     In contrast:

     When Darius James remarked to me that he appropriated ideas from blaxploitation films, Yoruba and Holloway House novels to counteract his need “to use the oppressor’s language,” his observation was literally true: He was in fact forced to write and think in English, with which slave owners had replaced the language of his ancestors. He is also correct metaphorically: He is trying to force our mongrel language to reflect the possible language(s) he’s lost — real or imagined. His specificity isn’t a matter of decorum, or knowing his place. It’s a matter of thinking clearly.

     It’s curious that you choose Hollywood in particular to denounce, since, in doing so, you’re echoing the sentiments of Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly. They, too often claim to be “oppressed” by Hollywood.

     In my view, Hollywood’s key problem is not that it is insufficiently moral or diverse. It’s problem is that it values the appearance of moral rectitude over originality or content. As Hollywood becomes more diverse, the content of its films remains banal, sentimental and derivative. Its stories are ever-paler xeroxes of earlier stories, which is why ultimate diversity is a given: power-brokers have to welcome the Other for the simple reason they have run out of ideas — even recycled ones — that carry sufficient power to create new audiences. Besides, demographically, the hoary icons of Hollywood are becoming meaningless.

     Said is worth reading not because he’s morally correct but because he, like Roland Barthes, is an expressive and specific writer whose observations and insights are so revelatory that must be dealt with even by reactionaries who oppose him bitterly(hence the many attempts to discredit Said’s authorship and dismiss his autobiographical accounts on the grounds they’re not always literally true (while the Victorians get a free pass, of course)). My late friend, Kathy Acker, loved him, too, but I doubt she’d think your grocery list of representation ought to be imposed on future writers in his name. The point isn’t political, it’s artistic: People think more truthfully when they’re not trying to be overtly moral. The superego is boring except when symptomatic of repression and fascinating neuroses (Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market).

     Criticism has its prescriptive side and, as such, ought to be helpful — it is, frequently, in the business of purging the canon. Critics are often called failed artists, but I believe they can be successful artists and teachers, and that’s where I find your comments lacking. You accuse Whedon of foulness, as if he should know better, yet seem unable to foresee your prescription for more meaningful characters might result in characters that are more bland. That you’re unaware of this is and insist on launching screeds against “oppressors” is what annoys me most. Ideological prescriptions seemed not to destroy the thrust of Khlebnikov or Lizzitsky, but they pithed Shostakovich of wit and cogency from his 5th Symphony on. The world deserved better then; it still does now.

     You continually attempt to make artists’ issues about racial power. They are rarely about that; more often, they are about unexamined limits — which might or might not *encompass* racial power — in personal experience, which results in flaws in the work. Yelling at artists for failing the diversity test can create undesirable effects — like the loss of a sense of humor — that’s all I’m saying. Fostering improvement is far more useful than trashing imperfection.

     Posted 23 Feb 2009 at 8:23 pm ¶

111. Starlet Harlot wrote:

     Lxy – I am with you 100%.

     I am embarrassed and disgusted to read how Robespierre attempts to discredit you and silence your voice, along a freaking textbook line of attack, fully in keeping with the actions of confronted white people. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t – but he really does sound like one.

     I’m sorry he has aimed this attempt at belittlement and dismissal at you.

     Posted 24 Feb 2009 at 2:47 am ¶

112. Lxy wrote:

     (Moderators: please delete my previous post–formatting issues.)

     @ Robespierre

     Are you for real? You not only sound like an Angry White Male, but now, an Angry White Male that bravely retreats into hyperintellectual posturing when he is challenged on issues of racism. You must be what passes for a “progressive” in academia or the artistic world these days. Name dropping references to Barthes, Kristeva, Foucault, or your late friend Kathy Acker is so damn impressive.

     Too bad it doesn’t address the actual points made by myself or the original article in any *politically* relevant sense.

     But hey, you do “promote diversity” and can cite Khlebnikov or Lizzitsky, or Shostakovich at the drop of the hat like a mofo.

     *Slow clap*

     ” It’s curious that you choose Hollywood in particular to denounce, since, in doing so, you’re echoing the sentiments of Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly. They, too often claim to be “oppressed” by Hollywood.”

     It’s curious that you conflate the protests of minorities against American and Hollywood media racism with the disingenuous “criticisms” of millionaire media mouthpieces that are part of this very same American media.

     In fact, these criticisms by the political Right are merely an internecine turf war against the more liberal wing of the White ruling class–of which they are a part.

     “Calling strangers angry white males when they criticize your logic, accusing them of right-wing agendas when they disagree with your points — it’s all embarrassing and unproductive. No, lxy, I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the republican party.

     Apparently, all your grandiose critical explication skills have failed you, as you sure as hell didn’t read my post carefully.

     I did not accuse you of being a Right Wing agenda supporter or a Republican. You seem to mistakenly believe that White Supremacy is merely a problem of the Right Wingers like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, or the KKK.

     This is a favorite deception that many self-styled White Leftists and progressives love to promote, as it, not coincidentally, serves to deflect attention from their own White privilege and institutions. And the more that you open your mouth, the more it suggests this is what you are about.

     White Supremacy is found across the political spectrum from Left to Right and involves the defense of European American power and hegemony in ALL its mutations–name dropping references to post-structuralist criticism notwithstanding.

     Put another way, White Leftists are just as much of a problem as Right Wingers when it comes to minimizing and thus defending America’s racist institutions and values–of which Hollywood continues to be another pathetic example.

     You continually attempt to make artists’ issues about racial power. They are rarely about that; more often, they are about unexamined limits — which might or might not *encompass* racial power — in personal experience, which results in flaws in the work. Yelling at artists for failing the diversity test can create undesirable effects — like the loss of a sense of humor — that’s all I’m saying. Fostering improvement is far more useful than trashing imperfection.

     And you continually deny the reality that White racism (among other forms of social oppression) has everything to do with artistic production in terms of institutional access and power; funding and resources; or what gets counted as “art” in the first place.

     And for someone who is obviously self-impressed with her/her own English language abilities, you have a serious problem with reading comprehension.

     To repeat myself for the third time, advocating for so-called “diversity tests” as you so smugly put it, is the one of the *last things* that I think minorities in the USA should be doing. As I said before, begging Hollywood or Josh Whedon for inclusion in their artistic masterpieces is a waste of time.

     Ultimately, these White-dominated American institutions have no moral legitimacy and deserve to be called out and treated as such.

     “Speaking of which — why brandish Said’s name like a zip-lock-bagged revolver in a courtroom drama? Yours is perhaps the most embarrassing defense of theory I’ve ever seen. Mentioning Said and his decades-old analysis of Orientalism is like marching up to a group of film students and saying, “Ever seen any films by Fellini? I have. They’re really something.” Fatal, to assume your audience is ignorant simply because they disagree with you or because you feel misunderstood.”

     You must be an academic, right? It’s revealing that you frame the issue of politics in terms of academic criticism or dismiss Said’s work relevance to this thread simply because it is “decades old.”

     My mentioning of Said, Professor, has nothing do with a “defense of theory” or even the “business of purging the canon.” Maybe, this is what passes for politics in the Ivory Tower, but those issues have little to do with real-world struggles–or in this case, how America and its media construct Asia according to their continuing “decades old” Orientalist delusions, paranoia, or disturbed fantasies of a future without people of color .

     For you, White oppression and racism are merely inconvenient (and uncomfortable) issues to be glibly dismissed with a postmodern wave of the hand. After all, they get in the way of the more esoteric pursuits of The Artist in his/her noble quest for aesthetic perfection.

     That’s what passes for “reality” in the rarefied and elitist world of the American aesthete like yourself.

     BTW, your intellectual condescension is so over the top, it’s funny as hell.

     Here’s a little video that you should check out. It’s about “keeping it real,” something that you have got no clue about.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6MlwT1lBk0

     Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 8:50 am ¶

113. Latoya Peterson wrote:

     Robespierre/Lxy –

     Both of y’all know better than to start personally attacking people because you don’t like their argument.

     I’m disappointed. Please stop.

     Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 11:26 am ¶

114. Thea Lim wrote:

     @Robespierre

     “I say, point out the lack of Asian characters in Whedon’s series, but don’t beat him up for being racist. If the goal is to make better art by adding diversity, then don’t destroy humor and spontaneity in the process.”

     So do you conflate an awareness of privilege or desire to make a TV series/movie with a social conscience with humourlessness/lack of spontaneity? That doesn’t really make sense to me – Buffy for eg has a very strong feminist consciousness but is also funny and considered one of the best TV shows of the 90’s. Goodness Gracious Me is a highlarious English TVseries that confronts anti-immigrant prejudice head on.

     Also, you say Demme was “traumatised” when he was accused of homophobia and from there on in he made bad movies. To me being “traumatised” in response to people criticising your politics is kinda pathetic.

     It smacks of “white guilt” ie the tendency to make an accusation about how you’ve hurt someone into an opportunity to talk about how hard you have it and how stressed out you are about the mistakes you’ve made and how you cry about it…in other words it derails the conversation, and refocuses it on one own’s mental state – ie it centers the experience of the person in power. Again.

     If Demme’s response to being called out for homophobia was “trauma” then I think he had other problems dealing with privilege to begin with. That’s prolly why he makes lousy movies, not b/c someone called him out.

     Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 12:34 pm ¶

115. Robespierre wrote:

     Thea Lim:

     Since yours is the response that relates to the topic (rather than the characters and identities of individual posters), I’ll answer you first.

     “So do you conflate an awareness of privilege or desire to make a TV series/movie with a social conscience with humourlessness/lack of spontaneity?”

     The Boolean choice you offer ignores the connection between the two problems you address: political/social unawareness and humorlessness. The solution as I see it is to maximize awareness and minimize self-consciousness (the state that leads to rote and dead-end work): to point out the problem without resorting to charges of sinister motives. Scolding emphasis on unwitting mistakes often leads to bad work and wasted creative years, particularly when accompanied by accusations of immorality (which tend to stick with the accused, as history often shows). The fact we’re discussing this in a specifically political context is incidental, since I’m opposed to it in any context. The aim ought to be to encourage rather than intimidate.

     In this particular discussion, I’m not addressing “oppressors” and “their” hierarchies of privilege because we’re referring to one individual and the possible blindness to Asians and Asian culture in his work. The fight against actual oppression, a cause deserving of our time, attention and resources, is not served by meaningless hyperbole. The word *oppressor* ought to be treated as Godwin’s “law” does *nazi*: Avoided in vague contexts so as not to derail meaningful discussion, not because the word is taboo.

     “So do you conflate an awareness of privilege or desire to make a TV series/movie with a social conscience with humourlessness/lack of spontaneity?”

     Fiction writers are both conscious and unconscious of the levels on which stories operate. I can’t presume that base motives are involved in bad characterization even where the result is annoying to me personally. When a student (yes, often a white male) writes about an “exotic” female character encountered by their protagonist, I wince or yawn internally, remembering the endless times my mother and sister were praised by the oblivious for their “exoticism” (beauty that was somehow not legitimately American). Yet I always approach the problem as a cliché, not a personal crime against my family. The aim is to promote awareness without triggering self-consciousness: I want the student to add observed details to a female character, to try to listen to her and see through her eyes, rather than simply reproduce whatever he daydreams about. I don’t want the student to replace undigested fantasy with a string of equally unimaginative attributes because he thinks they’re more acceptable politically. I want him to try to *become* that person. It doesn’t matter whether the writer knows better than to use the word “exotic”. If the student’s non-white female character amounts to what Forster termed a “flat character” — predictable and doomed to repetitive background movement — I expect more on artistic grounds.

     Often, myopia and self-consciousness are the primary obstacles. The goal of diversity and the practice of writing effectively converge, in my view, when such obstacles are removed in both cases. That is why Madame Bovary is less sexist than Buffy despite Whedon’s conscious attempt to embrace and embody feminist ideals: Flaubert is simply more successful at becoming his character (Emma), understanding the characters who surround her, and exploring the awful complexity of the social limitations that circumscribed her life.

     “So do you conflate an awareness of privilege or desire to make a TV series/movie with a social conscience with humourlessness/lack of spontaneity?”

     Awareness of privilege is incredibly useful: It’s one of the things that made Edith Wharton’s depiction of New York society so prophetic. What isn’t useful is beating the crap out of people who were somehow unaware of privilege until the moment we stepped into their lives.

     Beating up recognizable people and points of view *just because* they’re recognizable isn’t something Racialicious feature writers have tended to do. For as long as I’ve read it, this site has been one of the most reflective sources of pop criticism on the web, and user threads like this have been more thoughtful than on most other sites I’ve read. That’s why it hurts a bit to see the usual effects of site popularity begin to apply here: people grow less civil to one another, mild snarkiness escalates to invective, and an us-or-them mentality emerges that makes empathy and understanding less frequent. Hence my use of the phrase “fanboy regardless of gender”: unlike certain other epithets on this thread, mine wasn’t intended to challenge another person’s authenticity on the basis of identity limitations. “Fanboy,” unlike “Angry White Male,” doesn’t imply a gendered point of view. It suggests the bitter tone of a person who feels doomed to be a spectator to the work of other people.

     I tend to view professional writers exactly as I do students or amateurs: Individuals who might be capable of elevating the culture if only they could confront their limitations without being weighed down by distractions. In my experience, people who enjoy castigating others for mediocrity are often the least discerning when it comes to excellence. The odds grow even worse when shortcomings are construed as immoral.

     “Also, you say Demme was ‘traumatized’ when he was accused of homophobia and from there on in he made bad movies. To me being ‘traumatized’ in response to people criticizing your politics is kinda pathetic.”

     Yes, that’s exactly what I implied: Demme is a mediocre director with harmless intentions rather than an agenda-driven “oppressor.” It’s precisely because his pseudo-leftist output is so flawed that he should be kept on course tactfully: as long as people hire Demme to make films that assault us regularly, we’re stuck with his transmissions to the zeitgeist. With characteristic bad aesthetic judgment, Oprah Winfrey chose Demme to adapt the most experimental and least-filmable novel Toni Morrison ever wrote (why Winfrey didn’t choose Tar Baby is beyond me). If Demme weren’t so haplessly derailed, perhaps he’d have had the sense to question the choice, refuse or, at worst, make a better film.

     Demme’s success matters only insofar as his films and countenance have become an unavoidable receding part of culture. That he happens to be a “powerful” Hollywood director only obsesses people who haven’t worked in Hollywood. To paraphrase a late friend, “Don’t have heroes or villains. Only have peers.”

     I don’t like to see obstacles placed in front of improvement whether they be creative, individual, economic, hegemonic or overtly discriminatory, but in this case, I’m only speaking to false charges of immorality, which can send people off toward dead ends of guilt or self-justification. Cf. the tedious litmus test of identity in this exchange (first the impugning of my supposed cultural illiteracy, then the charge that I’m insufficiently streetwise and authentic): The point was never to disparage anyone’s political agenda. My interest has always been in creating mutual encouragement in the service of creating an supporting work that isn’t painfully bad. If it were about the vetting of people’s credibility, I wouldn’t have needed to speak at all (since others will always prove intent to claim that territory).

     Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 8:40 am ¶

116. Robespierre wrote:

     Latoya Peterson:

     I, too, find personal attacks disheartening. I’ve already explained my specific and non-gendered use of the term “fanboy”; if you consider that a personal attack, then I apologize.

     If you feel there are any other instances in which I attacked someone personally (as opposed to criticizing their writing), feel free to let me know either here or off-site. I mean that without irony.

     Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 9:03 am ¶

117. Lula wrote:

     to ditto something someone mentioned earlier: his writer Maurissa Tancharoen sings a whole song complaining about the Asian problem (of Joss’s and everyone else’s) on the Dr Horrible special features. It is, incidentally, an excellent song.

     Posted 24 Mar 2009 at 6:14 pm ¶

118. Derfel wrote:

     Late to the game here and missed out on most of the last flame war-ish posts. I had my own issues with the total lack of Chinese characters in a ‘verse dominated by Chinese culture. It’s good to see other people taking issue on something which I perceived either as Whedon being either lazy or uncaring about the background he himself created, which I find pretty crass. And that’s coming from a big Firefly fan.

     There are a couple of points I’d like to make. One is that the issue of appropriation is not something that is US-exclusive. I’m a great anime fan. It seems to me that Japanese seem to have a big soft spot for Germans and Germany (probably from their past connections or similar views on discipline, amongst other things), which is reflected fairly often in animes (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Bleach and Fate/Stay Night are just some examples). Here, they often use German words; however, they mangle and misuse these words in such a drastic way that for me with a German-British background I would either have to cringe and be offended by it, or find it amusing in an off-beat way and let it pass – I always opt for the latter. Of course, that may stem from me being white as well as male, with not much of a history of belittlement because of race or gender, or from the fact that I grew up in three different countries, spent my entire school life in international schools and have relaxed attitude towards different cultures and their different quirks… I don’t know.

     My second point is on the tendency in all these otherwise highly thoughtful and enlightening comments to be enraged about Whedon’s ignorance about not including “Asians” in the show, that “East Asians” are mis- or rather not represented etc. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the show specifically mentions China as the other dominant culture. Last time I looked “Asia” was a big ole’ place with highly diverse cultures and ethnicities, while even “East Asia” still includes Korea, Japan, China, Mongolia etc. I’m not trying to be a Whedon apologist – on the contrary, it seems to me that by generalising, and casually equaling “China” with “Asia” many posters are making similar mistakes as Whedon himself…

     Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 4:55 pm ¶

119. Nick wrote:

     Lxy,

     I’m not disagreeing with your postings, but your hurling the terms white supremacy, white hegemony, white paranoia, white oppression, white domination, Angry White Males, orientalist delusions, etc, etc makes me feel that I’m on the wrong website when it comes to learning about PoC and the world outside the white mindset.

     I’m white but I am not your enemy.

     Posted 09 Apr 2009 at 3:55 pm ¶

120. merricat wrote:

     Late to the game, but have a curiousity about something I don’t think I saw clearly addressed in the previous comments, with apologies if I missed it.

     Without meaning this as a catch-all excuse for failings of Firefly or other Whedon shows, there is probably some interesting territory to be mined in examining how the production realities facing him at any given time in Hollywood might have affected what we see in the end product. I think this is especially important when comparing someone like Whedon to someone like Gaiman. Whedon has built his primary career as a creator, writer, and showrunner of television shows. More specifically of “genre” television (as opposed to procedurals, sitcoms, or realist urban or historical dramas, among others). This means he creates on the landscape and with the available resources that he can talk his way into. Gaiman, on the other hand, is primarily a novelist (both of “graphic” and traditional versions of the form). As such, he can, in a way that Whedon cannot, create his primary texts with the near-total independence of isolation (or, in the case of his graphic novels, in very intimate collaboration with one or two co-creators), and then closely control the circumstances under which he will consider further adaptation or re-working of those texts to other media.

     The use of non-English Language might be the easiest example of what I am getting at: One reason (discussed on some of the Firefly commentaries) why it was primarily profanity that was non-English was that it was a category of language the role of which could be understood in context by English speakers, so did not require subtitles, as even non-profane single word/short phrase slang would have required. Of course, there is the option of going much further and committing to frequent use of subtitles for whole scenes, etc., but a show doing this has to consider not only its wishes for as much verisimilitude as it can pull off, but whether this choice would be successful for the careful cat-and-mouse game (between the expectations of the creators and the expectation of the network) of style and genre workability/perceived marketability.

     Budgetary issues play a part as well: Firefly was a genre show, which never seem to be the most generously budgeted on television, even when you’d think a space show requiring a bunch of visual effects would be higher budget. My recollection is that the Chinese translator was an aide to the writing staff, an early-career/aspiring television writer herself who didn’t make grand claims about her own abilities, but, instead, put a lot of effort into using family and other personal connections to try to come up with translations for what were not even traditional swear words, but odd insult phrases created by the writing staff. Of course, there is an obvious and valid argument to be made that Whedon and his producing partners could have made a choice to devote a larger fraction of the resource pie to language and other asian elements of a show that so clearly imagined major Chinese influence as a key element of the imagined future the show was set in. I do not work in the television and film, and so I do not know how difficult or easy it might have been to insist on greater resources for this without either crippling the budget of some other key element of the show or without crossing into territory that made the show seem non-viable to the producing studio or broadcast network, whose concerns for cost and for ease of audience “buy-in” to a new series have notoriously created difficulties for many television creators, even before we get to any possible critiques of the ideologies or prejudices of particular studios or networks.

     The casting issue is at least somewhat similar: First, Whedon was faced not only with his own conscious or unconscious biases or blindspots, but by the whole existing apparatus of Hollywood casting agencies and their attention to caring about, finding and nurturing a diverse pool of actors to connect to Firefly or other shows. Second, as in the previous point, it remains a fair argument, as already made here, that, in the face of this existing apparatus, Whedon himself could have been more insistent on/worked harder to find more potential actors of asian background for a show that placed China as such a major political and cultural contributer in its imagined future. Whedon has stated, as someone alludes to above, that he initially imagined several roles, including Kaylee and the Tam siblings, as either asian or more clearly of mixed ethnicity, but ultimately made casting choices based on particular actors or ensemble chemistries that grabbed him. I don’t think anyone would expect him to cast actors whose abilities and ensemble chemistry didn’t manage to grab him, but, even aside from fans’ love for the actors we now know from their roles in Firefly, it is a fair argument to imagine that, had he, by chance or effort, been exposed to more of the talent pool of asian actors that we know is out there, he would very likely have found actors whose skills, personas, and chemistry equally fired his imagination. (”Lost” is probably the most relevant recent example with more obvious success on this count).

     Any thoughts on how to judge Whedon and his output in relation to these sorts of forces? Though I am an admirer of Whedon, I’m not looking to defend him so much as wonder aloud about how the realities of his chosen medium affect the issues discussed here, which might be worth some attention. That said, I will say that he seems to have a track record as someone who takes seriously — not glibly dismissively — critiques made of his blind spots. And even if he didn’t hold himself to this standard before, he now has, as people have mentioned above, a collaborator (and sister-in-law) in Maurissa Tancheron who seems to pull no punches on issues of asian culture and identity in Hollywood and who will, we can hope, make it difficult for him should he start to get flabby in his habits on this issue.

     Posted 07 May 2009 at 8:26 pm ¶

121. Samia wrote:

     Nick: What exactly is wrong with the term “white hegemony?”

     Posted 09 Jun 2009 at 1:08 am ¶

122. LadyLavinia wrote:

     This article reminds me of a beef I have regarding the character of Charles Gunn. In an article I had posted on my blog, I pointed out that sometime in mid or late Season 2; Charles Gunn, along with Cordelia Chase and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, became the new founders of Angel Investigations. All three had agreed that Wes would act as leader of their investigations, due to his knowledge of the occult. Yet, after Charles’ encounter with his old gang in S3’s “That Old Gang of Mine”, Wes had the nerve to threaten him with dismissal . . . as if Charles was his mere employee and not a partner. And that pissed me off.

     Posted 17 Sep 2009 at 3:09 pm ¶