Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
All I said was The National Party could look a lot better if they spoke up about how stupid this is. As far as I'm aware they have been silent on this, which makes them look bad and hence a target.
I know full well that The Speaker is neutral and never suggested otherwise.
Did you have to go ballistic?
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Nice cheap shot there
Yup it was a cheap shot.
However it would be nice if the National Party actually spoke up about how outrageous this is. Their silence makes them an obvious target.
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What is so sad about this is that it is the very definition of penny pinching.
It's unfair, it's probably a breach of her rights, it's certainly neanderthal behaviour on the part of The Speaker and some in the media, it's easily solved and it probably would take some poor English graduate off the benefit (sorry cheap shot but you couldn't expect a science graduate to be able to spell well enough to do the job).
But most of all it's cheap.
This government is happy to see senior management in the state owned enterprises pull down $300k or more but $30k to allow an MP to actually do her job?
Sadly there were people who actually voted for The Speaker.
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Ok so thinking more randomly.
Since we are looking at fiction, then surely the question is not "did the writer/director/etc create a strong female character?" but rather "did they create enough for the viewer/reader/etc to believe that character to be strong?"
I always admire writing that allows me to see just enough to fill in the rest of the details myself.
That of course sets aside the problem of not having a female role at all or a role so small there is no possibility of the viewer seeing what the character is really like.
One advantage male characters have is there are so many of them written that by dumb luck some of them are good, we can forget (mostly) the weak terribly formed characters. Whereas so few female characters exist that we need them all to be good/deep/strong.
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Emma Hart,
And if it’s being spoken as widely as English, it’d be in as wide a variety of accents.
And supposing English was still the dominant language would we understand it? Probably about as well as you’d understand 15th century English, heck I don’t understand 99% of song lyrics now :(.
It of course relies on providing enough of a cardboard facade to allow you to suspend disbelief. Which, to circle the wagons, leads to the question how do we know that River Tam isn’t an amazingly strong character for her culture.
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
The variety of euphemisms Americans have developed for well-known phrases
They are such prudes, we struggled in the south to find a polite way to ask where the toilet was - even bathroom raised eyebrows
So I took to saying "man I need a rest that coffee went straight through me"
"I'll be at the seminar in a second I need a rest first" etc -
Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Chris Waugh,
I guess I should find some of these TV series and find out what this random sprinkling of Chinese words actually sounds like.
There's some amusing pieces on the extras with the cast talking about how hard it was to be speaking these words without any idea of their meaning, They did get coached with pronunciation but the question was raised about what a native chinese speaker would make of their efforts. My guess is it's something like hearing a US actor attempt a kiwi accent.
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It's a fair call. The lack of asians is surprising and given the random chinese thrown into the dialog having one or more of the ensemble with natural pronunciation might have been smart.
In Whedon's defense I doubt he goes into a casting with a "look" in mind. Seems more likely he is looking for someone who can portray a character that he has in mind. Of course that simply takes the issue one step back and asks why the character has to be a small violent (insane?) female (thinking about River Tam here)?
It does raise questions about how hard is it for asian actors to get agents or auditions even when the story doesn't immediately exclude them.
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
…by mostly casting people who, as far as I can tell from Wikipedia, are 100% white? Because there are no bi-racial actors in modern Hollywood? (Like, say…..Gina Torres. I’m just saying.)
me confused. Gina is in firefly (cuban), Morena is brazilian
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
bi racial ...
As with many Whedon things, good in concept, poor in follow-through.
It's meant to be science fiction set in a time where the language and the people are so mixed that to describe anything a racial is deceptive. They fly in a spaceship and we accept that as part of the story even though all we actually see is graphics.
The characters are meant to be a blend of all races that we have now - unfortunately modern day actors don't come in that flavour - it's the point at which you are meant to be able to suspend disbelief.
I don't think it's entirely successful but they tried to extrapolate the idea that space travelers of our future will be more than just country AND western.