She can be cute and cheerful and like yummy food and fuzzy things, and she can be smart and capable and help to save everyone with her genius at her messy, technical job. And she has a teddy bear embroidered on her overalls. She's certainly not afraid to start nursing a big crush on Simon. She certainly enjoys food when she can get it. She's not chubby, but she's not rake-thin either. She's a genius mechanic, who finds that machines speak to her, and not a soul finds it at all strange that this mechanic is not just a girl, but a girly girl. She is the heart of the crew, loved by all of them, even if Jayne takes his teasing too far. Let's talk about how fabulous Kaylee is in this episode, shall we? I mean, just look at her. And that's not OK, no matter how great the rest of the show is.Īnd that sucks, because the rest of the show is pretty great, especially when it comes to female characters. What had the potential to be a cool, plausible vision of the future simply became cultural appropriation. ![]() It cannot say that Chinese culture is OK for the show (especially when watered down or used for mispronounced, censor-passing swearwords), but then say that Chinese people are not. It's a vital part of the story you're telling. If characters speak Chinese, wear Chinese-influenced clothes, and on and on, all because China became one of two equal powers that shaped this new civilization, then the show has an obligation to go above and beyond to ensure that a significant chunk of the cast is Chinese as well. Once a show makes a commitment to show a fusion culture, where America and China became equally powerful influences, then the requirements for the "congrats, you're not being racist" card get considerably more demanding. And as much as I love Sean Maher and Summer Glau (and I really, really do love them), it's almost insulting to have a half-Chinese culture, have characters whose surnames are Cantonese, and then cast dark-haired white actors to play them. But having characters with a Chinese surname who could pass for part-Chinese, maybe, is absolutely not the same as having Chinese-American actors in the cast. The Tams could potentially pass for half-Asian, especially given their name. There's even an interracial marriage here. I suppose that, given the state of many show casts, we should praise Whedon for creating a diverse crew, with four female to five male main characters, and several non-white crew members. ![]() Unless there was a random person in the background that I missed, the entire hour-and-a-half pilot passed without anything more than some Chinese writing, Kaylee holding a parasol, and characters bursting out into poorly-pronounced Chinese. At least as far as the pilot goes, there are Chinese influences, but there sure aren't any Chinese people. The whole thing is on Netflix if anyone wants to watch along! But I'm going to be posting episode reviews (with no spoilers for future episodes) every Wednesday until I've worked through all the episodes and the movie. Turns out the reality is a lot more complicated.īecause of the slow-burn nature of the pilot, this post is more a general musing on the world of Firefly and its characters than an episode-specific review. Combine that with the fact that Joss Whedon has been criticized more and more recently for the shallowness of his so-called feminist message, and I was really concerned that my favorite show would turn out to be heartbreaking, and not for character-death reasons.
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