(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

[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.