this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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Firefly, for three reasons.
One, the "heroic" war veteran crew were basically US civil war Confederates.
Two, Whedon's sexpest behaviour during production.
Three, it cemented Whedonistic dialog into pop culture.
Four, they all speak Mandarin because of some historic cultural amalgamation, but there's not a single Asian person on the crew (or in the show that I can remember)
this one is so deeply strange to me, like they made it up it's not a real existing cultural appropriation so why would people so uncomfortable with chinese people choose for that to be the thing? they could've chosen other languages plausibly white or adjacent that'd still indicate the cosmopolitan space culture
My armchair analysis is that it's a common theme in futuristic space media to show that the Earth is much more united now that there are other worlds with which to fight, form tenuous alliances, etc. China is the biggest, most distant Other, so merging them into the American melting pot in your lore is the strongest way to make that point.
If two political bodies that were once very distinct in the past are now just provinces in a single nation, the cheapest way to extend that pattern into the future is to do what they did. It's a bit cliché but I wouldn't consider it the worst writing sin in the world if they had just made the characters and casting reflect that.
Side note: across Firefly and Dollhouse, there aren't that many black characters either, and a uncomfortably large proportion of them are villains.
i think it might have taken the place of 80s media being all "everything is going to be Japanese" after Japan's bubble burst and the PRC was (more visibly) on the rise