Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

"But we don't want your people." seemed to me like it was addressing more than just their actions.

Firefly's Browncoats are 100% Confederate coded, but not in a way that really whitewashes the actual Confederacy.

Firefly's whole aesthetic is taking the "space western" idea shamelessly literally, and the ex-Confederate gunslinger is a western stock character. Actually, hell, our page on Noble Confederate Soldier already covers it pretty well:

So basically, it's problematic because it plays into Confederate sympathizing by using the exact same Lost Cause tropes but removing them from their historical context. In Firefly, the Independents actually were a just and noble cause defeated by the superior military might of their mortally bankrupt oppressors. This makes it easy to say "see, the Confederates were the good guys, just like the Brownshirts!" even when Firefly itself doesn't have anything (directly) to say about the historical Confederacy or the Lost Cause ideology.

Firefly runs into a virtually identical problem with their use of "Reavers", basically space zombies that are only capable of spreading death and destruction wherever they go (and also flying space ships to get around, but nevermind that), who also take prisoners and torture them into becoming reavers themselves, which most people consider a Fate Worse than Death. And oh yeah, they fill the exact role of The Savage Indian in Firefly's space western.

Ultimately, Firefly's problem is that it wants to use problematic tropes by rewriting the specifics in their story to remove the problematic aspects. In Firefly, the Browncoats were actually heroes and the Reavers are actually subhuman monsters. The problem is that doesn't make the use of the tropes unproblematic — it arguably makes them worse because it presents the trope as correct and proper while making the connection between Firefly's version of the trope (with Brownshirts and Reavers) and the real-world version of the trope (with the Confederacy and Native Americans) super blatantly obvious, so it's very easy to back-port the "Brownshirts are heroes and Reavers are monsters" to "Confederates are heroes and Natives are monsters".

That's really well expressed

I also would think that the issues with (lack of) Chinese representation have a similar issue, coupled with good-old-fashioned Hollywood whitewashing.

So like Firefly was obviously nodding to the trope of Chinese menial laborers in a Western setting, but tried to go in a progressive direction by having a big Chinese influence on the culture and having upper class main characters being Chinese. But of course the only Asian actors cast were the background extras.

Also, something I was thinking about in terms of framing, is that it really makes a thematic difference in having the Aliance as the bad guys, because it makes it harder to do plotlines about heroes fighting injustice in an Adventure Town, because regardless of whether those heroes are government agents or not.

Like I don't know if you could do Have Gun – Will Travel (about a humane former Union soldier cleaning up adventure towns) or a version of the historical figure Bass Reeves (former black slave turned lawman) in the Firefly verse.

Like isn't that character in Firefly just The Operative?

Edited by Hodor2 on Jan 16th 2021 at 2:34:38 PM

Three? Is Morena Baccarin non-white? I knw she's Brazilian but I thought she was white.

I think I read somewhere that Simon and River were originally intended to be Chinese but Summer Glau turned out being too perfect for the part.

I agree, that’s an excellent discussion of the issues.

Edited by Galadriel on Jan 16th 2021 at 4:42:29 AM

Given the role of the US Government in Native American genocide, certainly I have no interest in treating them as heroic or decent people. Any heroism I feel toward them went out the window after the Civil War was done. There's also no expasionism in the setting.

So Firefly is a Space Western with nothing remotely comparable to actual Western politics.

One might even say the Browncoats are closer to Revolutionary War individuals (except they were pro-slavery too).

I never noticed the Reavers = Native Americans connection until just now. Thanks for pointing it out.

"We were going to cast [POC], honest, but then we decided that [white actor] was really good and went with them instead."

Yeah, this is definitely the first time anyone has ever used that excuse. The fact that they were apparently auditioning white people for a role they totally meant to give to a POC doesn't raise any eyebrows, either!

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 16th 2021 at 4:46:15 AM

Also casting Glau wouldn't need to have precluded casting Simon as Asian.

On the Ability over Appearance page it says Kaylee was supposed to be Asian but it doesn't mention anything about River. Also, it says Ming-Na Wen's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. character was supposed to be white before she was hired, so maybe Joss felt guilty about the Firefly thing.

Edited by MFLuder on Jan 16th 2021 at 5:27:51 AM

In that case I'm more inclined to give credit to Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen (who is herself Asian) than Joss, since it's largely their baby.

Basically, the calculation for Firefly is: appropriation of Chinese culture and language while excluding Chinese and Asian actors + using ex-Confederate aesthetics for its heroes = aged like milk.

Still, I'll grant Firefly one thing: for depicting a version of colonized space that was settled by more than Americans. Most other space stories usually give the impression that the US was the only country to set up space colonies, and anyone from other countries or cultures have to assimilate by speaking English, usually also the only language spoken by humans in space, and not having any cultural practices alien to white audiences. Like a United Space of America, except less diverse than even the real country.

If I were to write a space story these days, I'd probably show how different regions, planets or systems were each colonized by the US, EU, China, Russia, and even places not generally associated with space technology like South America and Africa, and how their respective cultures have evolved in their own sectors after a century or so.

Either that or Joss didn't want to pass up a chance to hire Chun Li.

I'd be interested in a story where the Indians lead a spacefaring human civilisation. I mean, sure, the long lift rides on the spaceships would still suck, but at least you'd get to listen to the most bangin' Bollywood tracks on the way.

The casting of Ming Na-Wen as Agent May was so inspired that I remember a fanon going around that Agent May was literally Fa Mulan. How was she still alive after all these centuries? Weirder shit has happened in the Marvel Universe.

How many of them were "she's a Time Lord"?

And as a corollary, how many of them were instead "JTTW actually happens in the verse and she somehow got a hold of one of Sun Wukong's immortality inducers?"

The CW is working on a reboot of Walker, Texas Ranger, the action series from the 1990s which starred Chuck Norris. The Mary Sue provides some information on the show's politics as stated by Jared Padalecki who will be portraying Walker.:

Wonder who's gonna be playing the title character now?

Jared Padalecki. I stated it in my comment.

I think if you can't tell what a man's politics are by his actions you're hiding behind false narrative these days.

Okay I think this has been discussed before but...

What the heck is up with niche manga and slavery? I mean besides characters being happy with slavery being semi common trope, it almost always comes with characters meant to act as foil who try to free the slave against their wishes making MC buying them be in the "right" Like I see more manga acknowledge slavery as horrific, but it seems to be more common for this(anti slavery characters being portrayed in wrong I mean) to happen in isekai manga

Edited by SpookyMask on Jan 17th 2021 at 6:02:33 PM

It's a very common way for the male lead to have access to female characters, both by performing a baseline decent action that is "remarkable" (not because he's a good person but because the surroundings are worse), and by keeping them metaphorically or literally chained to him. Most isekai series are meant to be cheap self-insert power fantasies, so the male leads can't have too much personality and they can't do anything beyond generic "JRPG hero"-level good-guy stuff - because then they wouldn't be suitable as self-inserts. This means that usually, there's no actual chemistry between them and the haremettes that would make the female characters sticking around believable.

To be blunt, the type of customer who buys and consumes cheap isekai is probably misogynistic to some extent, because these series are marketed directly to the lowest common denominator of the Japanese male market (and proves plenty popular with the lowest common denominator elsewhere, too).

Edited by RedSavant on Jan 17th 2021 at 11:13:16 AM

Well, that's an alarming interview. It almost reads like they're apologizing in advance for making this show.

It's the producer's equivalent of that YouTube thing where people qualify their videos at the start by saying, "I just want to assure you that this is just my opinion. It's just a personal opinion and nothing more. I'm not the absolute arbiter of this topic, I'm not here to lay down the facts, I'm just telling you what I think. If you have a different opinion, that's fine! Your opinions are just as valid as mine are, and I'm not trying to say otherwise! PLEASE DON'T HATE ME IN THE COMMENTS!!!"

People on You Tube like to pre-empt their videos with that so that the things they're about to say won't be picked apart and criticized. And that's exactly what that interview sounds like. Padalecki's saying, "I just want to assure everyone that my show has no message and takes no positions and is saying literally nothing. Literally nothing. I don't really know enough to know which side to take so I'm just going to declare that my show is neutral. It has no positions whatsoever. PLEASE DON'T HAVE OPINIONS ABOUT IT."

Padalecki's going to be disappointed, however, because that's not how art works.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 17th 2021 at 8:15:34 AM

The industry still largely caters to otaku, so... yeah.