![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Firefly vid recs
Aug. 14th, 2008 04:44 pmI 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 by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jarrow is the pure expression of love though motion
Secret Asian Man byshati 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?
Out of (Classical) Gas by
jarrow is the pure expression of love though motionSecret Asian Man by
shati is a pointedly witty criticism of what the show didn't showI'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?
Names and Stuff
Aug. 8th, 2005 10:49 amRe-watching the Firefly episode Jaynestown and thinking about the thematic similarities between it and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance it suddenly strikes me that J-ayne is a contraction of J-(ohn W)-ayne. As well as being almost as girly a name as Marion.
Other names. Inara/Inanna, the goddess of love who descends to the underworld. Pretty literal. Book, now a man of the book but with hints of a previous non-biblical allegiance. Mal means bad as River points out but what kind of a hippy name is River from parents who called their first-born Simon? Parental name choices may often seem crazy but there’s method in their madness. This is like Dermot and Moon Unit.
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay…
The only chapter of Finnegan’s Wake I’ve ever felt I understood was the eighth with Anna Livia Plurabelle, the Riverness of Allwoman, being gossiped over by two washerwomen on the banks of the Liffey. Kitty Pryde – Willow – Fred. It seems Whedon’s Allwoman is a crazy teenage girl with superpowers and a genius IQ. For and in herself perhaps, River is well named.
Other names. Inara/Inanna, the goddess of love who descends to the underworld. Pretty literal. Book, now a man of the book but with hints of a previous non-biblical allegiance. Mal means bad as River points out but what kind of a hippy name is River from parents who called their first-born Simon? Parental name choices may often seem crazy but there’s method in their madness. This is like Dermot and Moon Unit.
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay…
The only chapter of Finnegan’s Wake I’ve ever felt I understood was the eighth with Anna Livia Plurabelle, the Riverness of Allwoman, being gossiped over by two washerwomen on the banks of the Liffey. Kitty Pryde – Willow – Fred. It seems Whedon’s Allwoman is a crazy teenage girl with superpowers and a genius IQ. For and in herself perhaps, River is well named.
If, as you live your life, you find yourself mentally composing LJ entries about it, post this exact same sentence in your Live Journal. Ooops, rumbled.
( Not the comedy stylings of Miss Cordelia Chase. )
( Not the comedy stylings of Miss Cordelia Chase. )
Genre theory 101
Jun. 11th, 2005 08:14 pmElder son’s mission to research the running times of every movie title listed on amazon.co.uk inspired the following conversation:
HIM Is Pale Rider like Easy Rider?
ME Well yes but with cowboys.
But isn’t Dean Moriarty the cowboyest boy that ever cowed? Easy Rider is just one big damm hippy Western.
( Fireflyly ramblings )
HIM Is Pale Rider like Easy Rider?
ME Well yes but with cowboys.
But isn’t Dean Moriarty the cowboyest boy that ever cowed? Easy Rider is just one big damm hippy Western.
( Fireflyly ramblings )
Daleks and Reavers and Bears
May. 1st, 2005 07:06 pmFeeling virtuous. Abstracts written, essays marked, meetings organized. Read a nice little piece in the Saturday Guardian about Jonathan Coe’s obsession with The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes with a (possibly) happy ending.
( Spoilers for ‘Dalek’ )
Nature has an article on the rise of ‘intelligent-design’ on US college campuses:
The arguments are familiar: some biological systems are too complex, periodic explosions in the fossil record too large and differences between species too great to be explained by natural selection alone.
After reading it I’m still not at all clear how this is a subject that can be taught separately. If we’re not teaching students to think critically about scientific results and their current explanations as a matter of course, we really are failing them. And the implication that intelligent-design means accepting that some phenomena cannot be explained and that therefore we should stop asking questions about them is anti-science at a far more fundamental level than any creationist claims that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.
I get the feeling I’m missing something. Evolution does seem to be important to scientists beyond those active in field – in an Guardian article a few weeks back the usual suspects were interviewed about what scientific ideas they thought it was most important to get across in schools. Natural selection was the single most popular choice. Darwinism is philosophically disorientating. I still remember the moment of understanding it for the first time and simultaneously losing my religion. Almost on aesthetic grounds. I’m going to hell for the pretty.
( More on ‘Dalek’ and ‘Serenity’ speculation )
( Spoilers for ‘Dalek’ )
Nature has an article on the rise of ‘intelligent-design’ on US college campuses:
The arguments are familiar: some biological systems are too complex, periodic explosions in the fossil record too large and differences between species too great to be explained by natural selection alone.
After reading it I’m still not at all clear how this is a subject that can be taught separately. If we’re not teaching students to think critically about scientific results and their current explanations as a matter of course, we really are failing them. And the implication that intelligent-design means accepting that some phenomena cannot be explained and that therefore we should stop asking questions about them is anti-science at a far more fundamental level than any creationist claims that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.
I get the feeling I’m missing something. Evolution does seem to be important to scientists beyond those active in field – in an Guardian article a few weeks back the usual suspects were interviewed about what scientific ideas they thought it was most important to get across in schools. Natural selection was the single most popular choice. Darwinism is philosophically disorientating. I still remember the moment of understanding it for the first time and simultaneously losing my religion. Almost on aesthetic grounds. I’m going to hell for the pretty.
( More on ‘Dalek’ and ‘Serenity’ speculation )
Madness and Theory of Mind
Mar. 12th, 2005 01:06 pmReading some articles about brain disorders, as you do, I had some thoughts on River and the basis for her madness in Firefly.
( Spoilers for Earshot (BtVS) and Ariel (Firefly) )
ETA since writing this I came across the following quote from Niko Tinbergen
“Some people try to extrapolate from our studies to human behaviour but if you wish to learn about the behaviour of man don’t ask the ethologist; turn rather to the great writers. Read Dostoevsky, read Tolstoy.”
Which is also what I was trying to say but with less words.
( Spoilers for Earshot (BtVS) and Ariel (Firefly) )
ETA since writing this I came across the following quote from Niko Tinbergen
“Some people try to extrapolate from our studies to human behaviour but if you wish to learn about the behaviour of man don’t ask the ethologist; turn rather to the great writers. Read Dostoevsky, read Tolstoy.”
Which is also what I was trying to say but with less words.
