joss whedon and the blurry line between homage and appropriation

Now, if I had never watched and despised Firefly with its Chinese take-out mania, I might never have noticed Dollhouse’s opening motorcycle race through Chinatown, the decorative Buddha heads and bonsai plants in the Dollhouse’s head office, the “midcentury modern motif with a Japanese aesthetic” that informs entire freakin’ set. Or maybe I would’ve, but it wouldn’t have irritated me as much, I don’t think. You know, I could get over the glib and unbelievable characters, because Whedon has an amazing imagination and always interesting concepts. But now that the curtain’s been pulled back on Whedon’s cultural mining, I can’t put it out of my head, and I don’t really feel like watching episode two of Dollhouse.

I know Joss Whedon is a revered character to lots of folks. And listening again to his Equality Now speech and how articulately he is able to explain why gender equity matters to men, women and everyone, I feel kinda sad that he can’t lend some of that great analysis to the way he approaches race. If you think I’m wrong and shallow and missing out on great art, please convince me that I am. Because it would be nice to be able to admire Whedon again.

But before you mount your counter-argument, just do one thing. Take a good look at the picture of Eliza Dushku as Echo on the set of Dollhouse at the top of this post. See behind her? It looks like there might just be an East Asian person in the photo, maybe doing Tai Chi. Hey, maybe that guy in beige will become one of the main characters on the show.

Or maybe he’ll just stay firmly in the background.

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