Firefly vid recs

[hazelk]

I am so very behind with vid recs and that's before VCC even begins. So two very different Firefly vids to begin with, one to praise and one to bury (the series not the vids).

Out of (Classical) Gas byjarrow is the pure expression of love though motion

Secret Asian Man by shati is a pointedly witty criticism of what the show didn't show

I've been thinking about that. And thinking that maybe the problem was more deep-seated than a shortsighted failure to employ East Asian actors in speaking roles. Put that way it sounds as if re-casting the Tams or Inara would have solved the problem but I wonder if it might not have revealed an even more endemic one.

Perhaps the best illustration of what I mean would be the Operative because although played by the Black British Chiwetel Ejiofor the character is *written* and styled as a very stereotypical ninja antagonist. As well as the martial arts fighting skills and samurai sword he embodies all the Zen lack of effect, honorable fanaticism and inscrutable over civilized philosophizing, which is never ultimately a match for the rugged American libertarianism of a Mal or a Han or a Flash.

The thing is the Operative isn't just a one movie villain he's supposed to represent the whole Alliance and all its controlling anti-individualist conformist works. Granted it is a little unfair to use the movie, the show was more nuanced politically-speaking and according to interviews intended to become more so. Yet it remains a thing - if the Asians aren't there because they're the government that government has suspiciously Orientalist tendencies.

Rambling now but speaking of absences there's also the question of why set a Western in space anyway? For the shiny but also for the black. Westerns are famously about those big empty landscapes and space (without aliens) has the advantage of actually being empty instead of filled with other peoples as the real promised land turned out to be. A space Western is a way to have your John Ford cake and eat it, to go to the final frontier and not come back weighed down with colonialist's guilt. Perhaps that’s OK - every story can't be all things to all men, as long as the other stories are being told somewhere and if this one is shiny enough on its own terms?

Comments

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the best illustration of what I mean would be the Operative because although played by the Black British Chiwetel Ejiofor the character is *written* and styled as a very stereotypical ninja antagonist. As well as the martial arts fighting skills and samurai sword he embodies all the Zen lack of effect, honorable fanaticism and inscrutable over civilized philosophizing, which is never ultimately a match for the rugged American libertarianism of a Mal or a Han or a Flash.

The thing is the Operative isn't just a one movie villain he's supposed to represent the whole Alliance and all its controlling anti-individualist conformist works. Granted it is a little unfair to use the movie, the show was more nuanced politically-speaking and according to interviews intended to become more so. Yet it remains a thing - if the Asians aren't there because they're the government that government has suspiciously Orientalist tendencies. [...]

Westerns are famously about those big empty landscapes and space (without aliens) has the advantage of actually being empty instead of filled with other peoples as the real promised land turned out to be. A space Western is a way to have your John Ford cake and eat it, to go to the final frontier and not come back weighed down with colonialist's guilt.

These are really astute remarks. I've been thinking about Orientalist cultural appropriation and Firefly/Serenity for a while; I like how you tied that into the role that literal and cultural genocide plays in westerns, and into how there's a certain sanitization and (unsuccessful to the point of problematic) inversion of those tropes in the Firefly universe, especially in Serenity.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

You'll have seen lierdumoa's How Much is that Geisha in the Window? (http://lierdumoa.livejournal.com/310086.html) by now? Thing with Joss is he's a magpie and I think a lot of what he does is spatchcocking together different genres but the only trope he's ever consciously set out to subvert is the blonde girl in the horror movie one.

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the link! I had meant to find the video as soon as I heard about it, but I don't think lierdumoa had posted it to her lj at that time. And yes, I don't think JW is conscious of how he reinforces a lot of incredibly problematic tropes, though that doesn't make their use less painful; in the vein of your thoughts here, I like the observations by ratcreature, veejane, and others (at lierdumoa's journal and elsewhere) about the mapping of Western tropes onto the Reavers, &c. and their implications.

[jarrow.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rec! :-)