(no subject)

[adiva_calandia]

*reading Said's Orientalism*

Okay, stuff I feel obliged to try and bring up in class tomorrow (whether there's time to discuss it, or whether it'll be interesting to anyone but me and the instructor and maybe some of the PTMs, is debatable, but):

• PotC3: Singapore in general, Sao Feng in particular
• Firefly, though what in particular I'm still figuring out. Lack of Asian representation in main cast, definitely. (And thank you so much shati for the help finding references!)
  
• Neil Gaiman's "Ramadan."

And then when we get to black representation, I can bring up PotC2 and the problematic natives!

I like this class so much. We watched episodes of "The Chappelle Show" to talk about how whiteness can be represented, same as blackness or Asian-ness or anything else. Which reminds me, I really need to type up that Richard Dyer piece and see what y'all think of it. Half the people in class disliked it, but I thought it articulated some of my own feelings really well.

Comments

[tropes.livejournal.com]

Shanghai Noon. Seriously funny, seriously fucked up.

The Mummy franchise. Sometimes genius satire, sometimes far too SRS BSNS. I brought that one up in the Orientalism section of my junior seminar in undergrad.

:D

[adiva_calandia]

Oooh, The Mummy! I have seen juuust enough of that to be able to bring it up. Shanghai Noon I have no idea about, though. Maybe I'll throw it in and hope no one asks me to elaborate. >.>

*considers* Indiana Jones franchise, you think? Along the Mummy lines.

[tropes.livejournal.com]

Oh, God, yes, the Jonathan Rhys-Davies character alone could rate a thesis.

[adiva_calandia]

*snickers* My thoughts exactly. The only weirder casting I can think of is Sean Connery as an Egyptian-descended Spaniard in Highlander.

[shati.livejournal.com]

Also, Disney is always fertile ground -- for this, Aladdin. For the rest of the class, The Lion King.

[adiva_calandia]

Ooh, yes. With the Jewish Children!

Lion King can go all kinds of interesting ways, especially considering the Broadway production with an almost entirely black cast.

It's terribly tempting to go into the problems with Disney's Aida here, too, but I'll save that.

[genarti]

And with the way every single major character I can think of is either a blatant Arab stereotype (the caricatured hooknosed scheming vizier, the childlike naive king who needs other people to run his kingdom while he plays with his toys), barely acts or looks Arab at all (Aladdin), or both (Jasmine, the scantily clad harem princess who nonetheless acts like a spunky American). And it is all exotic and fantasyish! Getcher Orientalism here.

...I do need to rewatch Aladdin and do a tl;dr post rambling about it sometime.

Disney's Aida? This I did not know of!

[travelwright.livejournal.com]

*is Adiva*

Yep. Aida. Starring Heather Hedley (adult!Nala in the Broadway Lion King) as the Nubian Aida.

And Adam Pascal (the original Roger of Rent) as the Egyptian Radames. And Sherie Renee Scott as the Egyptian Amneris.

Oh, and music by Elton John.

It's a great musical! But, um. Egyptian =/= Aryan.

[genarti]

Hunh.

And yet, wtf.

*tosses Sean Connery in there, because apparently this is the done thing for Ancient Egypt*

[ghost-light.livejournal.com]

Well, remember that Firefly's ethnicity was based on the premise of "everyone just screwed until they were all the same color."

Did you see the Chapelle show with the racial draft?

[adiva_calandia]

Then . . . oughtn't Wash be less white? And Zoe and Book less black? And everyone a little more Asian? Not to mention the incidental characters.

River -- and Mal, to a lesser extent -- looks like she's mixed race, but it doesn't make sense, because Simon's definitely white, and so are Gabriel and Regan Tam in "Safe." I like the idea a lot -- it's very Belize's heaven speech in Angels in America -- but it's not coming across.

We watched "The Mad Real World" and "The Niggar Family" sketches. I kinda wish we'd watched the black white supremacist. *grin*

[ghost-light.livejournal.com]

I agree - but that was a quote from Joss about why people speak Chinese but there aren't any Asians to be seen....

If you haven't see the racial draft, I highly recommend seeing it - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3045384347322743771&q=Racial+Draft&total=44&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1



Also the Senior Black Correspondent bit from The Daily Show. (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5321108278355788809&q=Larry+Wilmore&total=7&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

[genarti]

My mental Millicanon for that is that River favors a grandparent. *grin* Because yeah.

It is a neat concept that sort of lost itself in the execution, basically, I think. I mean, I grant you, Joss in general favors the world-building-as-slapdash-vehicle-for-genre-fun approach, so I am not entirely surprised at the failure in followthrough, but still. It doesn't make tons of sense as executed, as you say.

Also there's the fact that no one speaks like actual bilingual people code-switching, but whatever.

[ashen_key]

I still don't get why they didn't go to Honk Kong instead of Singapore, I really don't. But, ah well. And I want to know where Ana Maria ran off to. She was cool, she was a black female pirate with history and then POOF! All gone! And I was actually looking forward to seeing her, too.

I can't think of any examples of stuff, though.