summercomfort | Cultural exploration/blending

Cultural exploration/blending

My post about assimilation and appropriation generated a lot of insightful comments from you guys! Thanks! What's interesting was that many of you jumped immediately to the gap in my argument, the "Then what" that I had purposely left unspoken because I wasn't very certain myself.

satyreyes asked whether he could legitimately learn and perform flamenco.

conejita thinks that blending is awesome. I really like how

bakeneko put it:

It seems to me that the things appropriation and assimilation have in common is they're ways to deal with cultural mixing and overlap that are unequal or unhealthy, in a lot of ways. These kind of processes deserve to be criticized. But this kind of critique gets accused by certain sectors as a requirement that things be "PC." I think that's unfairly dismissive, but I think part of that dismissiveness comes from the fact that it's often delivered as critique without solutions. People sometimes feel that they're being told lots of things they shouldn't do, without a lot of direction toward what they should. Maybe that's not justified, but it happens.

So, my question is, is there a positive inverse to this? Are there ways that people can explore or participate in cultures that aren't their own in some biological sense, or blend cultures, without being either assimilative or appropriative?

It's something I think about a lot. After all, I do have an interest in Japanese, European, American, and Islamic cultures (via history and art history), and I'd like to continue exploring these and other cultures in ways that aren't appropriation. Likewise, my experiences in China and America makes me want to blend these cultures and to better teach one side about the other. And in responding to all of your comments, I think I have a better understanding now. So below is an improved version of what I wrote in response to

bakeneko.

On exploring other cultures:
I think it comes down to properly contextualizing your every encounter with the culture. For example, the difference between the anime otaku who think that all of Japan loves anime and ends all of their sentences with "desu", and the anime otaku who realize the specific role anime plays in Japanese culture, that Naruto *isn't* the most popular anime in Japan, etc. To be able to distinguish between what the encounter truly taught you about a specific culture, instead of extrapolating an entire culture from this. Thus, the difference between a professor in Japanese studies, or a JET teacher saying "Japan is weird" and being able to back that up with evidence from many aspects of society, and some 15-yr-old saying "Japan is weird" just because he saw a 5 minute clip of a variety show. Or because he hated sushi.

By properly contextualizing your cultural encounter within the culture that you're encountering, you avoid appropriation. You're not *taking* an element out of the culture and making strange assumptions with it. You're *putting* yourself into the culture. Learn flamenco in the context of its Andalusian roots, and the merengue in the context of its Dominican Republic roots. (Start with the realization that flamenco is not considered a "Latin" dance). When buying a shirt with a foreign symbol on it, first make sure you know what it means, and what language it's from, and that placing it on a shirt is appropriate, and that it's the right language to use. (Why do you want "die" or "peace" on your shirt in Chinese? Versus, say, Arabic? Or Russian? Or Spanish? Or just plain English?) This is why I have little problem with SCA folks playing dress-up, and more problem with the Halloween "native american" outfits.

And in terms of blending cultures (vs. exploring/understanding), I think it's related to the difference between specific homage and generalized plagarism. When you're paying homage, you're expressing a respect and understanding to the source. When you're plagarising, you take others' work as your own, with active disregard for the ownership of the original. I've also added the modifiers of "specific" to homage and "generalized" to plagarism to connect it to my earlier point about contextualizing cultural elements. If you are paying homage to a cultural element and showing the depth of your understanding, it would necessarily be specific ("I drew influences from the Huangmei style folk opera prevalent in South-Central China"). If you are taking a cultural element with disregard for its origins and ownership, it would necessarily be general ("I put in some Chinese sounds"). For example, I felt a lot better about Avatar when I found out that they put specific effort into researching and choosing martial arts styles appropriate to each of the 4 (acknowledged non-Chinese) elements. Versus, say, the cosmetic inclusion of "Chinese" into Serenity.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Let's try that again. I missed my chance to comment on your original posting, but

http://www.hulu.com/watch/40968/saturday-night-live-digital-short-ras-trent

indeed.

I would be a hypocrite if I came out completely against cultural appropriation, being as I am an anime fan (whee, let's stick a bunch of crosses in here, and also everything is in french), an admirer of creative engrish, and so forth. I don't get upset when Japanese people put random english sentences on their shirts - but then, you wouldn't expect me to, because of the cultural power balance. Which to me is the crux of the issue.

I think even the most ignorant and egregious appropriations can produce some nifty artistic hybridization, but that has to be weighed against the cost to a culture; it would be hard to defend 19th century Wild West shows, for example, and equally hard to defend the fashion trend during the 1960s to see native americans as pure, noble savages who never made war or told lies until the white man came. Chinoiserie in 19th century France probably goes under the same category, but some very good art came out of it. In the modern age I am less sympathetic to the idea that chinese culture is being harmed by western appropriation. You seem to be writing more about things that annoy you personally.

While it irritates me to see ultra-white band Vampire Weekend dressed up in ponchos and keffiyeh, and it irritates others that they appropriate south african musical styles in a way that makes Paul Simon seem deep, it ultimately comes down to the music for me, and the music is good. The South African artist Esau Mwamwaya takes one of their songs and remixes it himself with the help of a French production team - a dialog is established, better art is made, and nobody is hurt except people who are outraged that white, privileged people would dare to step outside their cultural box.

Yeah, this is more or less how I feel. If Vampire Weekend appropriates South African musical styles, the problem occurs if they or their fans think it makes them experts on Africa and Africans; the problem is not the fusion of sounds from their culture with sounds from someone else's. How else is that music going to get created? Art, to me, is its own excuse, and I define art broadly. That doesn't mean no one can feel indignant that their culture's achievements are being taken out of context, but if we only explored culture in context then there would be no mixing.

I totally agree that white, privileged people have their own cultural box. (cf. disclaimers in original post). Sure, the success of western imperialism means non-western world as a collective know more about western culture than vice versa (and so the random French words are consistently French, and not a mixture of French, German, and Italian. Versus, say, the Chinese alphabet). But actually I'm surprised that you don't take offense at, say,

rumblerush's account about the Macedonian Carnival American Slave costume. Or that Chinese people think that Americans don't work in heavy industry or retail jobs and eat hamburgers all day.

But I disagree that "if we only explored culture in context then there would be no mixing." What's wrong with exploring in context and *then* mixing? Just cite your sources accurately. :)

And re:"In the modern age I am less sympathetic to the idea that chinese culture is being harmed by western appropriation. You seem to be writing more about things that annoy you personally."
Chinese culture in China is perhaps unharmed by Western appropriation. (And I guess I should see it as a form of cultural exportation, and should encourage ). So I suppose I'm just talking about the Chinese living in America.

Where is the cultural power balance in each of these cases? In the case of the hamburgers, it's international stereotyping between two putatively independent and powerful nations, so big whoop. It's basically like me saying that the french are rude, don't bathe and sleep around. And that's not really the same thing as cultural appropriation - just the millenia-old tradition of slandering foreigners.

Rumblerush's anecdote is more complicated. The slave costume is a great example of someone causing offense because they don't understand the cultural context (in this case, dressing up as an american slave might seem daring/naughty, like an american dressing up as a nazi, or even purely historical to someone who doesn't understand the cultural freight of blackface, minstrel shows, etc.) I feel embarrassed for the Macedonian who has committed this faux pas, but I don't feel offended (I'm not black) or horrified (I don't consider myself personally responsible for the legacy of racism and slavery in this country, so it's not like a j'accuse moment.) What I would be more interested in is how this looks to north africans living in Macedonia, whether there's an implicit cultural connection there, and whether it causes them to feel dehumanized. That's when I would pull out the ol' value judgment.

His anecdote about the Japanese and "amazing grace" doesn't bother me in the slightest, though. The parody that they're doing wouldn't work if we hadn't already made the song faintly ridiculous ourselves through ritualization and overuse. I worry more about the kind of ridiculous, faux-ironic racism that you get on 4chan from real genuine Americans these days - justified with the again faux-ironic pretense that there are no black people on the internet - which shows that there's still no american monoculture, that we all are in our boxes, that racial divisions are just as strong post-Obama, and that assuming that I'm offended by foreign attacks on black americans is committing a kind of essentialism...

Which is where the discussion on assimilation would open up again, if I felt up to attempting it. I just want to say a few things - I think it's in the main a positive thing to have gotten to the point where we can have a fat guy in a moustache singing fake opera on TV to sell spaghetti without anyone being offended - I think that the extra barrier of skin color makes this process more difficult for asian and african people than it was for my jewish/russian/hungarian/etc ancestors, but it's something we have to surmount, and the balkanization/ghettoization that's happening with minority communities all over europe right now speaks to this - and I would rather people thought that chinese characters are cool, even without knowing what they mean or where they come from, than that chinese people are likely to urinate in one's cola beverage at the slightest opportunity (I remember that one from elementary school).

In the meantime, the natural check on dumbass cultural appropriation (getting "slut" tattooed on the back of your neck in kanji, dressing like a black gangster when you are a) a small-town midwestern white kid or b) a korean trust-fund kid) is the same as it ever was: public ridicule.

I'm not totally sold on the idea that either:

1) Cultural appropriation is this sort of thing that anyone does to anyone else and it's value neutral as to the cultures in question. As a White American, you have white privilege basically anywhere in the world you go. Even if you're a minority in a particular country (like when I go to China) you still have white privilege. In fact, in post-colonial countries, it's probably stronger than it is in the US. When a white american gets 道 tattooed on them as says "it's a kanji than means 'God'" that's actually different than an Iraqi heavy metal band. One of them is a colonized person, adopting the habits of the colonizer. The other is a colonizer, adopting the habits of the colonized. These are fundamentally different transactions and they have different meanings. You can't just say one's okay because the other is.

2) That the racism of 4chan is "faux" racism. If the stuff said there is not racist, what does one have to say so that it qualifies as racist? Do you have to actually burn a cross? lynch someone? Or does that also not count as long as it's done "ironically?"

1. Not sure where I said one is OK because the other is. My earlier comment, in fact, was all about how power dynamics shape the morality of the transaction, with wild west shows and savage chic falling into the not-OK category. The last part of my second comment was just meant to point out that regardless of the source, ignorant cultural acquisition is usually pretty hilarious, which I will admit is a subjective judgment.

2. The phrase I used is "faux-ironic" racism, not faux racism - 4chan racism wishes to present itself as ironic, but (in my opinion) it isn't.

Thanks for reminding me about my white privilege, though! I forget sometimes.

Thank you, Ben and Isaac. I think I got distracted from the earlier point about cultural dominance, and so got really muddled for a while. But yes, I don't think Chinese people really care about cultural appropriation -- "oh, they think we're all good at kung fu like Jet Li? How funny." -- not because cultural appropriation doesn't hurt anyone, it just doesn't hurt them, because they're living as the dominant culture. But it does hurt the subordinate/marginalized cultural groups that are assimilating into the dominant culture -- on the one hand you've lost your arm in the assimilation process, while on the other hand the dominant culture has fused one of your fingers onto its toe. It's all rather confusing, identity-wise, and thus the pain and frustration. The difference is between an American seeing and using English every day and being able to laugh at incidences of Engrish, and a Chinese-American seeing and using English every day, and of the 2% of the Chinese language they encounter, half is misused by the English-speakers and half is restricted to dominant-culture-accepted areas.

And so you want to say, all right, screw it, I'll just stop caring about that 2% representation and be 100% American. Except that you can't because you're Asian.

I recommend doing what my ancestors did and embracing the Firefly-style co-option of your language. "For this I schlepped my tuchus from Zabar's?"

Honestly, yeah, rumblerush's stories don't bother me. I didn't know blackface was taboo until I learned about its history -- in college -- so it would be a little much to expect a random Macedonian to know that. As for the stereotyping, yeah, that's ugly and he probably shouldn't do that, but that's because racism is bad, not because appropriation is bad, and as Isaac says it's hard to take it seriously from one developed nation to another.

As for "Amazing Grace," I really don't get his horror. Apparently a lot of Japanese people are moved by that song without understanding the words? Good for them! I'm not offended if they like a song we associate with America. Actually, I'm kind of proud; though I have no right to be, because of course it was written by an Englishman and rose to prominence thanks largely to African-American singers, and even if it had been written by a white American, I wasn't that white guy, so I'd still have no logical right to be proud of it. Regardless, I think it's kind of cool that my language produced something powerful enough to move people who don't even speak it, and I'm happy that they feel the song enriches their lives. Of course, maybe that's easy for me to say because this kind of anecdote is fairly rare. If I had to be exposed to it every day, maybe I'd feel my culture was being cheapened and adulterated, like you feel about yours.

There's nothing wrong with exploring in context and then mixing. If there's any justice it should be possible to create something more profound that way. I'm just saying that I've probably never eaten authentic Chinese food, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the bastardized "pan-Asian" version they served back at Noodles Etc. or at my local P.F. Chang's. Somehow the cultural inauthenticity of this food, in many cases surely only tangentially related to anything I'd actually eat in Beijing or Shanghai, has no bearing on what my taste buds think of it. So I call it good food. How does that interfere with your culture? I'll eat the food I like, and I won't caricature Chinese food as Noodles Etc. or Chinese people as Noodles Etc. customers. Fair enough?

The part of rumblerush's example that spoke to me was not the blackface-ness, and not "oh look how they're representing African-Americans" racism, but rather, the "Is this how you think about Americans?" It's the feeling of living as an American in Macedonia, and meeting a well-intentioned, everyday Macedonian who says, "Hey, where are you from? Oh, America, is it? Yeah, we love Americans here. You guys had the slave thing, right? Look, we even dress up as American Slaves for our parties! You probably have your own Slave costume, though. But if you didn't bring it, you can buy it at the mega-store around the corner." (I'm exaggerating just a bit, but have definitely encountered similar situations, but with Asian cultural things.)

But yes, I think part of the frustration comes from being exposed to the appropriated thing every day, compounded with being exposed to the real thing so rarely. Like if McDonald's = American Food. And you either made your own at home, or ate at McDonald's. And everyone else thought that you ate quarter-pounders every day at home, too, because their only encounter with American food was McDonald's.

But yeah, I'm cool as long as you don't think I eat Noodles Etc at home every day, just as I'm sure you're happy with me enjoying McDonald's as long as I don't assume that your breakfast consists of the breakfast croissant.

I'm also interested in what you think re: racism. Several times in our discussion, you've said things like "that's racism, not appropriation". And then sort of dismiss racism as Something Else That You've Already Dealt With. So what is racism to you, and how have you dealt with it?

Racism, to me, is the things I've been promising in these posts that I won't do. Slandering another culture or shoving the people in that culture into stereotypes.

To draw on examples that I and others in these threads have already used, slandering another culture would be me portraying Noodles Etc. as authentic Chinese food, saying that 神 on my T-shirt means God without further elaboration, or saying Japan is weird based on the five minutes of Japanese variety shows I've seen. This is wrong because it trivializes the other culture by reducing it to the familiar, and makes it more difficult for members of the other culture to educate others about it because of the volume of misconceptions they first have to overcome. Making well-informed generalizations about a culture is not racist as long as it's accompanied by the acknowledgment that these are only generalizations; this is education and should be encouraged. The distinction between this and simply wearing Chinese characters on my T-shirt is that the latter doesn't assert that I know a thing about this culture; I just think the characters are pretty. It's an aesthetic statement, not a cultural one, and I don't really object to that. (Though I totally get that you're frustrated that you can't do the same thing without everyone attaching their stereotypes to you, and I'm so sorry America hasn't moved past that yet.)

Which leads into the second and for my money worse kind of racism, stereotyping individuals -- making assumptions about them -- based on what I know or think I know about "people like them." Examples we've mentioned include white people assuming you individually know how to cook "Chinese-style" food, rumblerush's Macedonian assuming his interlocutor thought making fun of black people was funny, and you assuming that the last white guy you saw wearing Chinese characters didn't know and appreciate their cultural context. All forms of racism. (Though really maybe I should say "culturism" since it's not always two different races that are at issue.) To me, it doesn't really matter if a generalization is true of 20% of members of a culture, or 51%, or 99%; it's not okay to assume that it's true of the particular individual you're interacting with. Now, we're all imperfect human beings, and you won't hear me saying I've never done this, but I try to avoid it because it dehumanizes the person I'm interacting with. I am full of contradictions, full of departures from the race, culture, and gender I identify with; I need to allow people I talk to the same right. That doesn't mean I can't learn belly-dancing, only that I can't assume all Egyptians know how to belly-dance.

Fair's fair -- how do you define racism? Is it anything like the above?

Yeah, I was confused by what you meant by racism, and I'm glad I asked, as it turns out you seem to mean more of a general "shouldn't judge people" instead of racism.

What I mean by racism is making judgements and assumptions specifically by the color of their skin, and assigning cultural, socio-economic attributes to false genetic identifiers. Everyone has many identifiers and belong to different groups. I can judge someone by their gender, their class, their ethnicity, their nationality, their age, their body type, their sexual orientation, and their race. Of these, race is the most unhelpful identifier, because it's too bundled together with everything else. For example, segregating by class may be helpful when you're trying to figure out who needs federal assistance. By knowing that I'm middle class, you can safely assume that I've never spent $1 million on my sweet 16 birthday party. Segregating by biological sex if you're trying to figure out if I have a higher chance of getting breast cancer than Jono. If I tell you I'm Chinese, you can make a pretty safe assumption that I celebrate Chinese New Year. However, I can also tell you that I'm American. I could be racially Asian but ethnically American. Or even West Coast American. But what does being racially Asian tell you? The only thing that it reliably tells you is that I've been treated as Asian by other people. And the other host of assumptions made when seeing an Asian person in America -- that I'm smart, good at math, studious, law-abiding, hard-working, fresh off the boat, petite, submissive, have a professional job and have no political or artistic aspirations -- are not based on anything except that everyone else has assumed the same thing and has thus created this "Asian" culture. So it's socially-reinforcing. The more you assume Asians behave in "Asian" ways, the more they're pushed to behaving in these "Asian" ways. The major way I see of untangling this is to acknowledge that previous racist assumptions has created a real "Asian"-ness, and then calling that simply a culture that is disassociated from race. Culture and ethnicity are mutable by the individual. Race is not.

So for me, racism is seeing someone's race and making assumptions about them based on what society has told you about that race.

Of course, over-assuming things based on any one of these identifiers is wrong -- assuming that women are emotional, or that Chinese are good at badminton, or that middle class people have all been on a plane -- are as wrong as racism. They just have different names, and I like to keep them distinct due to the different level of social-construction involved.

Mmm hmm, that's true, I've been using racism to mean something more like culturism, as I side-noted above. That's sloppy of me, and I apologize. As a white guy I ought to know the difference, given the diversity of "white" cultures in America and abroad.

The stereotypes you mention are interesting. Some of them (smart, good at math) routinely get applied to people in China as well as Chinese-Americans, while others (fresh off the boat, no artistic aspirations) generally only get applied to Chinese-Americans. Does that make the first set racist and the other culturist? Is the line blurred so much by stereotype-prone Americans that they're indistinguishable? Or...?

In any case, if I know nothing about you except your race I'm not going to assume you celebrate the Chinese New Year. You could be a rebel, or you could think it's goofy, or you could be a militant atheist who hates the mythological trappings, etc. If I met a Chinese stranger on an elevator next February 15 and ask her how Chinese New Year was, don't you think that would be presumptuous of me? How is that different from assuming that because you're Chinese you must be conversant with Chinese mythology or an expert in Chinese cooking? Just because the percentages are higher?

Sounds like we need to start from the beginning:

CHINESE IS NOT A RACE.
It is an ethnicity and a nationality, but it is not a race.

If you meet someone in the elevator next February and they say, "I'm from China" (nationality=Chinese), or "I'm Chinese" (ethnically Chinese), part of that identification is that they probably celebrate Chinese New Year. That someone could be white, black, brown, whatever. Maybe he's a white guy who was born and bred in China.

If you meet someone in the elevator next February who has yellow-ish skin and straight black hair (someone who looks "Asian", or "Mongoloid"), you probably shouldn't wish them Happy Chinese New Year. They might be Chinese. They might be Korean. They might be Danish or South African or American. They might have lived in America since 1855.

Now, the stereotypes mentioned:
Asian --> Good at math, hard-working
Chinese --> Good at math, hard working, communist
Asian-American --> Good at math, hard-working, FOB, not artist

If you see Asians and think that, you could be judging them based on their race, if you identify Asians as "yellow people with black hair". You could also be judging them based on their culture/ethnicity/origin, if you identify Asians and "people who grew up in South/East Asia"
If you see Chinese people and think that, you're judging them based on their nationality/ethnicity.
If you see Asian-Americans and think that, you're judging them based on their race as defined by Americans, which has become its own culture.

I guess for me, the difference between making judgments on Chinese people vs. the Asian race is that one of them is based in political/cultural reality, and the other is just based on amorphous perceptions of the judging person.

For example, if you come up to me and say, "You're from China, so you're probably Communist, right?" Then I can say, "That's a fair assumption to make, since China is known as a Communist country, and it's true that we have far fewer political rights than you do. However, only 10% of Chinese people are actually in the Communist party." And if China suddenly democratizes, you would modify your assumptions. Or I can say, "Actually, I'm not from China. I'm born here, so I'm quite a staunch Democrat." You can say that Chinese people are better at math because they have better math curriculum. And they work hard because the competition is fiercer. Regardless, there is generally a grain of truth behind the assumptions.

But if you come up to me and say, "You're Asian, so you probably don't understand rap music." What are you basing that assumption on? I might respond and say, "Yeah, I tried to get into it in high school, but everyone wanted c-pop suggestions from me, so I never really got into rap". Or I might say, "Actually, rap music is my favorite. I really like Lil' Wayne. What about you?" And you might respond "Really? I didn't know Asians are into rap music! Aren't you guys into classical music and j-pop?"

Of course, I'm racist about white people, too. When I meet a white person in the elevator, I assume that they are American. I assume that they speak perfect English, that they're honest and well-intentioned. I assume that they won't steal. I assume the proper way to start a conversation is to either introduce myself or to say something funny. I assume that they're only conversant in 1 language and have only been to Western Europe. When in fact they might be a recent Russian immigrant who spent 4 years getting a degree in Japan.

But yes, all of this ends up being about making educated guesses based on higher percentages, etc. It's natural for the brain to want to take short cuts, right? The problem occurs when these percentages reinforce themselves.

For example:
You assume that Asians make better doctors. So when you choose doctors, you prefer the ones with the Asian-sounding last names. Now the demand for Asian doctors is higher, so more Asian parents pressure their children into becoming doctors. As there's a higher percentage of Asians going through Med School, there is a higher percentage of Asians at the top of the class. And so there comes to be more good Asian doctors. And so you say, "Ah! Those Asians sure make good doctors."
(Reverse for Hollywood actors)

Edited 2009-03-30 07:06 (UTC)

As usual, I'm either misinformed or acting like I'm misinformed. I know that more than one race lives in China, but I guess I implied otherwise above. Conversations about race scare the crap out of me, especially when capital letters are involved; I don't see the connection of where we are now to where we started; and I don't want to demean myself in the eyes of my friend more than I already have, so I'm just going to STFU now. I'm sorry to be the one to cut off the dialogue, but I don't know how to pursue it without turning into a sobbing mess.

I'm sorry for ranting at you. I'm trying to figure these things out myself. Thank you for having this conversation with me and being open-minded and exploring and questioning, which is really the best way to talk about race, because race is big and confusing and tied up in so many different things. I hope I haven't scared you from engaging in future conversations with perhaps less scary people! :(

the cosmetic inclusion of "Chinese" into Serenity.

This bugged me too! Not because the setting dictated that aspects of Chinese culture had become mainstream-- I think it's cool that fiction can stretch outside the boundaries of real culture. More because they did that, and then neglected to show any asian characters at all. It's not that you saw white people in Asian-inspired clothes or speaking Chinese, but that you also didn't see Asian people.

But I'm curious what bugged you about it.

I think one thing that bugged me about it was lack of Asian characters. Another thing was the lack of truly Asian culture. I felt like most of what was "Chinese" was cosmetic -- a couple of swear words and some Mandarin outfits. I don't recall, say, integration of Eastern philosophies or other things into their ways of life. Why is Chinese the "swear word" language? Why isn't it also the "meaning of life" language? Something like "What's with Jayne?" "He's just a luohan (arhat)" Or "Mal, you and Inara just have no yuan (fate)" How would the Daoist philosophy of Wu-wei -- non-action -- interact with western ideas of progress? There's delicious Chinese terms for despotic warlord (bawang), and mountain bandits (haohan), and this idea of Jianghu -- the rivers and the lakes -- the "black market" people and trade. Where are *those* words? It confuses me that Inara was perhaps the most "Eastern" of the group, and she's this exotic consort person.

Or even in more concrete world-building terms. I mean, Chinese architecture is very different from European architecture. How would that transpose into, say space ships? Or transport bays? Or Chinese medicine -- Simon is a doctor. If the future is America+China, where's the herbal stuff? Where's the acupuncture? There's just so many opportunities for cultural blending that doesn't happen. Clothing, music, art -- Kaylee sometimes wears "Chinese" clothes, but why are the clothes just generic "Chinese" with the mandarin collar? We were just talking about how blending makes beautiful art. Where was the blending?

Those are some really good points. I think it would have bothered me to see east vs. west becomes the axis of conflict in Firefly, but there's definitely an opportunity lost in terms of using Chinese culture/language in ways that were positive or non-cosmetic. And there's a lot of irony, I think, in the fact that Westerns usually handily ignore the role of Chinese immigrants in American history, and Firefly gets so caught up in being a western that it forgets to include Chinese culture as more than clothes and curse words.

I love your ideas for other ways Chinese could have been incorporated. I don't think that underground acupuncturists, Taoist Companions, Shepherds quoting Mo, or Confucianist bureaucrats would have been at all out of place in the Firefly verse. It's hard to say whether such things would have appeared if the show continued, but it was definitely a missed opportunity.

Inara's problematic in a number of ways, because she has to carry all this cultural baggage that is sometimes conflicting. She has to challenge Mal's prejudices, be the worldy one, represent the one fluent in the dominant culture, and be the exotic one. She has a lot of , as you said, cosmetic asian attributes, yet she's not asian. She's the most "civilized" but also has this career that many people find dirty. So she has to be the 17th century european lady, the asian courtesan, the spiritualist and the whore with a heart of gold. . . it falls to that one character to represent so many groups and viewpoints, that none of them are represented well.

Yeah, many of the characters in Firefly get a little confusing when they leave the safety of their standard tropes, I feel.

I get equally confused by Mal's many sides -- the ex-Browncoat/loyal side, the wheeling and dealing practical side, etc. Of course, being the main character, he gets plenty more development than Inara-the-all-purpose-foil, but there are still lots of missing pieces. For example, everyone associates Mal with being a Browncoat, and say that as if it Means Something, but what? Being loyal to one's comrades? Unwilling to deal with the government? What's wrong with the government in the first place? Funny how Mal is such a Browncoat, and yet actual Browncoat politics never play into it. They're just the generic underdogs. What did the Browncoats even stand for that was worth waging a war over?

Many of the characters in Firefly purport to have an Asian connection, but when that is enacted, it just serves to confuse the character. For example, Simon and River have the last name of Tam, which would place them in Southern China as far as the paternal side of their lineage comes from. And when angsted, River does speak Chinese. And Simon sometimes murmurs to River in Chinese. But does it go further than that? When River has her nature hallucinations, is it just because she's crazy or because it's "Zen-like"? They could have had a very rich and multi-cultural background, but instead, it's just muddy and glossed over. Same with Kaylee, whose full name is apparently Kaywinnit Lee Frye -- once again, a chance for a multi-ethnic background, played like she is just a traditional small town girl with good knowledge of engines but no taste for clothing.

Finally, Inara. I think Inara would be very clearly defined if instead of being a Companion, she was simply known as a Geisha a la Memoirs of a Geisha -- highly cultured entertainer with sex as a sometimes form of entertainment. But then they complicate it by giving her Hindu/Tibetan cultural roots, which makes the "highly cultured" part of her far more contradictory -- You can be cultured in art and music and still be a courtesan, but it's harder to be cultured in pseudo-Buddhism and still be a courtesan. Which is why I just think of her as the convenient all-purpose-foil.

Of course, can't fault Joss Whedon too much-- maybe all this is because he only had 15 episodes and a movie to develop these characters.

All good points. I'd forgotten about Simon and River's Chinese. He also calls her mei-mei when she's upset, so it's the language he uses to express his love for her. So maybe Chinese becomes the language of raw emotion, whether good or bad? That's at least playing against intellectualist stereotypes for Asian cultures. I don't think the show really went on long enough to argue that it's a persistent theme or anything, but it would have been cool.

I kind of like to pretend the movie doesn't exist for this reason, because it takes a bunch of things that could have developed into something really cool and nuanced, and dumbs them down for a rushed ending :x

I hadn't heard of Jiang hu, before, but after some wiki-ing, what a cool concept! It has the heroic and shady connotations that Firefly, and so much modern fiction tries to play with. That's really neat!

Edited 2009-03-30 03:05 (UTC)

Yeah! Wouldn't Jianghu have been a *perfect* word to integrate into Firefly?

It really would have!I kept trying to come up with a similar English concept, because western lit definitely has those kind of genre-worlds that exist on the outskirts of civilization, away from the center, and so on the outside of political/geographical/historical specificity, where the operative morals and principles are different from in normal life. Like the generic forest/wild lands in fairy tales and Aurthurian stories. But there's not a codified name for them, that can then be invoked in other contexts to give them impression of a world apart, where the laws of the city have no real meaning. So the use of the word Jianghu would definitely add something that you can't otherwise get from just english vocab.

And all of this gives me some really cool ideas for LARPs, too. . .

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Cultural exploration/blending

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