So, Joss Whedon is a privileged dick. Must be Tuesday.

[idyllictorture]

Racebending.com's Mike Le asked Joss Whedon about the lack of Asians in Firefly. This was the response:

Click to view

Le also wrote a great essay explaining the situation: Frustrations of an Asian American Whedonite

Source

Comments

[othellia]

I have no idea what Whedon was even trying to say after the first couple dismissive sentences. It's like he just decided to ramble on for an extra minute and a half with some random buzzwords thrown in for good measure. :\

Excellent essay though.

[idyllictorture]

I know. His answer was so terrible, I was floored. It's why I didn't describe it in the post, b/c I don't know *what* that was (aside from B.S.) I think at one point he was hinting that the Chinese had been killed off? It was horrifying.

Thanks for reading the essay. :)

[lisaquestions]

Okay, I am glad it just wasn't me.

[imnotasquirrel]

Ugh....

Can someone steal this to post on ONTD? I'd do it myself - I'm willing to let my Whedon hate fly free - but I can't access Youtube at the moment.

Mike was a lot more polite than I would have been, lol. My tone would have been a lot more accusatory... then again, in the face of rabid Browncoats, maybe not. I value my life too much.

[idyllictorture]

I tried to post this to ONTD b/c it has a wider audience. And here I'm just preaching to the converted. It got rejected. I was sad about it. The first few times were b/c of formatting issues. And then finally, I don't know why.

Mike mentioned in the comments that he's been shouted down at cons for bringing up race issues. And he didn't want to risk it at a Whedon love fest. I don't blame him.

ETA: If someone does want to post this to ONTD, go for it! Maybe someone else can get it past the mods. They can even copy and paste my post. I don't care.

[imnotasquirrel]

Really? Okay, I'll try to submit it tonight. We'll see what happens. Maybe a different mod will get to it and accept it.

[idyllictorture]

Do it! I tried 4 times last night, so I kind of gave up. Good luck, I really hope it goes through. This essay and video have not been spread around enough.

[socchan]

Relevant Riot Nrrd: http://www.riotnrrdcomics.com/2010/08/will-you-subvert-the-dominant-paradigm-for-a-cookie/ - "Will you subvert the dominant paradigm for… A COOKIE?"

Since this one doesn't have a transcript - very unusual for Riot Nrrd, actually - I'll provide one below:

RJ addresses JossWhedon!Puppy: "Siiit..."

Whedon!Puppy sits.
RJ: "GOOD dog!"

RJ: "Subvert the dominant paradiiigm..."

Whedon!Puppy, tail wagging: "Can I throw in some Asian junk because it looks really cool?"
RJ: "BAD dog."

Edit: WTF, why did my link not work. I was ambivalent about LJ arbitrarily replacing my default icon with my alphabetical first icon, but that's entirely different from changing the actual content of my comment.

[idyllictorture]

The link is working.

[socchan]

It wasn't when I had the "a href=" business going, though, so I edited to remove that.

[crazymongomofo]

I think Le in his fanship of Whedon and of the show is truly not reading between the lines about what his idol's story intentions were for the show

[noybusiness]

The backstory of Firefly is that the Chinese and Americans did the expanding into space as a conglomerate; there were no pre-existing Chinese settlements that were later taken over by Americans. The full name of the Alliance is the Anglo-Sino Alliance and it has two capital worlds, one mostly Chinese and one mostly American. But the lack of visible Chinese people in the series makes it all too easy to read it this way. They're supposed to be everywhere the Americans are, but we don't SEE them, aside from the occasional extra. It's easy to imagine there was a genocide even though canon says there wasn't.

[crazymongomofo]

Read my post carefully. I was being sarcastic. I am already fully aware that what you described is the official backstory all along.

As you said it's easy to imagine what is or isn't there. You should have figured out that I am merely taking the mickey out of Whedon's vision. Exaggerating and being flabbergast about his backstory on my part just a means of ridiculing his show.

[noybusiness]

Actually, it's not possible to tell over the Internet, especially as I don't know you well enough and there are no phrases in your paragraph that read as hints at humor. A person could easily have meant what you said literally, as it's not really a ridiculous belief. In fact, people say things like that about shows and mean it literally all the time. So it didn't come across as exaggeration or being flabbergasted, just that you were stating the facts as you saw them.

[chickosaurusrex]

:( Ugh, I just cannot deal with Joss Whedon. The worst part is all my friends loooooove him, so when the Avengers came out I had to deal with weeks of everyone around me talking about how he was the most clever, progressive, fun, cerebral, bestest best writer in the world.