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Originally posted by ncbrowncoat:
If you live around a military base or any big city there are lots of mixed race people.

One of my good friends and an excellent Browncoat is is Chinese/American (mainly Irish) due thanks the US Marine Corps and she is married to another mainly Irish American. Her two children are lovely but still show softened Asian features despite being two generations away.

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Originally posted by ZAROVE:
WELL, specifically regarding th Tams, it may just be that they have some Asian Ancestry, but its three or four generations removed.

Suppose Mr. Yu Tam married a white woman, named Rachel Wellington. Their Children are of course Tams. Now if their son, Peter Tam, marries another mixed Asian/white woman, but whose Grandfather was a Veit, this means that the children are more white than Asian.

By the third or fourth generation of marrying mainly whites or other mixed races, we get our Tams, and they appear mostly white.

They still have Asian Ancestry though.

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
JSF,

but even if such a thing as a parallel/separate Asian society existed, that chooses to confine itself to Sihnon and not intermix with others... that still wouldn't explain the discrepancy of having lots and lots of non-speaking, clearly Asian background characters in the same low-level places where Mal and all the speaking non-Asian roles hang out.

Why wouldn't some of these poor Asians have been Independents, why couldn't they be part of Mal's crew or his business associates? And if the divide ran so deep, that even the poor kept themselves strictly seggregated along heritage lines, why wouldn't it have been mentioned on the show?

Honestly, I think there is no way to rationalize the weirdness of the lack of Asian speaking roles on the show.

The only reason people often ignore it is that the image of a space western, where Asians aren't necessarily expected to feature prominently, trumps the cultural implications of the show's premise, which would be... some Asians featuring prominently!

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Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
JSF,

but even if such a thing as a parallel/separate Asian society existed, that chooses to confine itself to Sihnon and not intermix with others... that still wouldn't explain the discrepancy of having lots and lots of non-speaking, clearly Asian background characters in the same low-level places where Mal and all the speaking non-Asian roles hang out.

Why wouldn't some of these poor Asians have been Independents, why couldn't they be part of Mal's crew or his business associates? And if the divide ran so deep, that even the poor kept themselves strictly seggregated along heritage lines, why wouldn't it have been mentioned on the show?

Honestly, I think there is no way to rationalize the weirdness of the lack of Asian speaking roles on the show.

The only reason people often ignore it is that the image of a space western, where Asians aren't necessarily expected to feature prominently, trumps the cultural implications of the show's premise, which would be... some Asians featuring prominently!

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You mean like the Zen Western with asian David Carradine (Kung Fu)?

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Originally posted by ZAROVE:
Actually, I intended Peter Tam to marry a woman whose Grandfather was a veit, and prodiced her mother. Her mother has half Asian and half white, and her Father white. This resulted in Jessica Thai Ly being only a Quarter veit. (But taking her mothers name, for legal reasons.) When she married Peter Tam, who was half Chinese, the resulting offspring where more white than Asian.

This is bcause Peter is half white and Jessica is 75 percent white. The offspring would be 3/8ths Asian.

Also, Im being general with whites, precicely because they are alreayd pretty mixed. Im not tryign to sound like some sort of Eugenisist, Im just not going into too many details. its bad enough I invented a family line, complete with names, for the Tams.

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Originally posted by bigwolf18:
perhaps there was no thought put into this at all, maybe it really was just the best actors for the parts. could you imagien it not having the actors it does and being just as good?

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
JSF,



Honestly, I think there is no way to rationalize the weirdness of the lack of Asian speaking roles on the show.

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Originally posted by Kaosium:

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
JSF,



Honestly, I think there is no way to rationalize the weirdness of the lack of Asian speaking roles on the show.

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Sure there is, it's called demographics. Asians make up all of 4% of the American population. Probably less in Canada. This is the pool of actors most American shows have to pull from. As education is generally highly prized in Asian-American culture, the best and the brightest are busy becoming engineers and doctors, not actors.

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Even if there are fewer Asian-American actors out there than any other group, I STILL find it unlikely that not enough would have been available and good enough to gain at least some of the guest roles, like I described in my earlier post. The premise of the show warrants giving Asian actors some preference for a certain percentage of the speaking roles. Yet there is exactly one speaking Asian role in the whole of the show.

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Originally posted by pizmobeach:
Hard to believe there wasn't one qualified Asian actor for the cast... if Joss was really looking for one he would have found one.

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Originally posted by Kaosium:

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Even if there are fewer Asian-American actors out there than any other group, I STILL find it unlikely that not enough would have been available and good enough to gain at least some of the guest roles, like I described in my earlier post. The premise of the show warrants giving Asian actors some preference for a certain percentage of the speaking roles. Yet there is exactly one speaking Asian role in the whole of the show.

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Joss obviously intended to feature Asians more prominently, but he can't wave his magic wand and create actors available and willing to do TV with the amount of talent necessary to be in a Whedenesque show. He only got fourteen episodes in which to do anything, so it's not a huge sample. Maybe as things developed he would have been able to attract the right actors, but apparently he was unable in the short span he produced the show. I think it's weird to condemn him for trying.

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:

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Originally posted by Kaosium:

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Even if there are fewer Asian-American actors out there than any other group, I STILL find it unlikely that not enough would have been available and good enough to gain at least some of the guest roles, like I described in my earlier post. The premise of the show warrants giving Asian actors some preference for a certain percentage of the speaking roles. Yet there is exactly one speaking Asian role in the whole of the show.

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Joss obviously intended to feature Asians more prominently, but he can't wave his magic wand and create actors available and willing to do TV with the amount of talent necessary to be in a Whedenesque show. He only got fourteen episodes in which to do anything, so it's not a huge sample. Maybe as things developed he would have been able to attract the right actors, but apparently he was unable in the short span he produced the show. I think it's weird to condemn him for trying.

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You have exactly one example of Joss trying, which is Kaylee. She's a member of the crew, a vastly important role, so there the talent thing might fly. But, say, Atherton Wing? The guy was horrible. He could have been replaced by anyone else. A broomstick, seriously. You can't tell me there wasn't one available Asian actor with the talent of a broomstick.

Even though you keep saying it, I am not at all convinced that actually trying to find Asian actors and actresses would have resulted in a show with exactly one Asian speaking role, as it did.

I think it's more likely that there is a casting bias at work. Not necessarily by Joss. But it's the far more likely explanation compared to "every Asian actor auditioning for speaking roles on the show was less talented than the non-Asians, to an extent that even a preference for Asian actors couldn't overcome".

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