Joss Wheden answers question about the lack of Asians in Firefly

[james_davis_nicoll]

Recently someone asked Whedon about the whole "no Asians in a setting supposedly heavily influenced by China" thing:

The questioner's account of the encounter

The questioner knew they'd have to be careful about the phrasing of any follow up question lest irate Firefly fans tear him limb from limb, like an Orpheus confronted by stars-and-bars waving Maenads, which sadly precluded a follow-up question from being asked at all.

In Whedon's defense, when you're making a thinly veiled tribute to the degenerates of the failed slaver rebellion in the form of a hack Bat Durston TV show and movie, it's hard to remember to polish the patina of one's supposed liberalism with a more inclusive casting policy.

Comments

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

"Firefly" didn't seem too bad scientifically until Whedon outright said it was a slower-than-light universe, in which case the setting depicted could only be explained through ancient solar-system level engineering by some extinct superculture.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I vaguely recall that Whedon avoided the FTL handwave by falling back on the terraforming handwave. And the whole idea of the Reivers is just hilarious.

My general impression of Whedon's settings is that he's good at broad B-movie-style metaphors that viewers can invest with their own interpretation, and he's bad at settings that actually require consistent detail. And subtlety, he's bad at subtlety.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Given magical terraforming the setting could be a young system, perhaps around a star much more massive and bright than the Sun.

A question would be 'how could Earth-that-was be beyond use, given the technology we see?' Another one would be "and why did they not use that technology on the other worlds of the Solar System?" The simple answer is given the neo-Confederate leaning of the setting we therefore can be assured the people writing the history books are addicted to endless self-serving lies about their past. Probably they were kicked off Earth to clear their land for more productive use [1] or they fled Earth as the Confederados fled the US following reverses there; once in whatever system they are in the original settlers adopted a standard sour grapes model to explain why they left Earth.

1: The cultural influences by the Chinese and the near-total absence of the Chinese may indicate who did the kicking.

[avram]

The first time we're told about the supposed fate of Earth, it's in the form of a shadow-puppet story being displayed by one of the very few Asian characters we see on-screen. (Actually, he's far enough away that he might not actually be Asian. But let's assume he was.) So maybe the story about Earth-That-Was isn't so much a self-serving lie the denizens of the new star system tell themselves, as an Ark-B-style myth fed them by the culture that stayed behind.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

One of the script books for the show actually has the story as told to the characters from that episode.

And it might be interesting to have another look.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

As much as I loved the show (I am Joss' mare [and, squee, get to meet him next week])... it only worked if they had dirt-chep gravity manipulation.

If you take that, however, than most of the rest works out. (Dirt-cheap artificial gravity almost certainly gives you ways to make power cheaply. So you can terraform a moon or asteroid, and make it earthlike. And once you can do that, you've got an entire solar system to play with -- one that has multiple planets that can be made inhabitable, plus countless moons and asteroids.)

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

I'm a Firefly fan, but I like that explanation, especially the footnote.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

There was an episode where they had to fire a gun in space and they thought it couldn't be done without placing it in a space suit so there'd be oxygen for combustion. Now, while the characters could just be idiots who've never hear of an "oxidizer" before, I suspect it was more the writer thinking he was showing off his knowledge of science.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I remember there was discussion about that on r.a.sf.w when the episode first aired. The consensus, at least as I recall it, was that while the rounds would certainly fire, there might be problems with the lubricated moving parts of the gun being exposed to vacuum. So if you just hauled the gun out into the airlock, the first shot should be OK but the gun might jam suddenly after that.

Of course, the same thing would happen if you wrapped the gun in a space suit, as they did in the show.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

The Soviet Salyut 3 space station was equipped with a 23mm cannon for defense, and reportedly it was successfully fired at least 3 times. This was done by remote control while the station was unmanned, as it was feared the vibrations from the cannon might endanger the crew.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

It's also worth noting that many fuels and explosives contain their own oxidizer; there's no reason to think that in the Firefly universe space-rated rounds aren't available at any gun store.

Finding and using lubricating gun oil that is stable in vacuum might be more of a hassle.