Then the only reasonable objection to using Diego Reyes and Rana Desai is that Desai is Indian rather than East Asian.
Need some info for my article...
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Then the only reasonable objection to using Diego Reyes and Rana Desai is that Desai is Indian rather than East Asian.
There's no reason you can't. As stated, lots of readers cast Olmos as Reyes. You can cast whoever you want in the role. You can cast, oh, Tony Todd as Reyes if you like.
For that matter, Tommy Lee Jones was born in Texas and has Cherokee ancestry. If he'd been born 200 miles to the southwest, he'd be Hispanic.
And there are certainly cases of Hispanic or other "ethnic" actors playing white characters. For instance, Mexican-Iranian actress Sarah Shahi is currently starring in USA's Fairly Legal as a character named Kate Reed. Jessica Alba played Sue Storm in the Fantastic Four movies. Frankie Muniz played Malcolm Wilkerson in Malcolm in the Middle. And there are a number of Hispanic-American actors who generally play Anglo-Saxon characters -- Martin Sheen and his sons, Cameron Diaz, Edward Furlong, Lynda Carter, Miguel Ferrer, Zoe Saldana, Gina Torres, etc.
Okay, first you complain about going off-topic, then you drag the conversation even farther off-topic. The questions you asked were about Trek literature. What has that got to do with Hollywood or the casting of actors?
I'm telling you that you're presenting inconsistent arguments. If you think the difference between a Texan actor and a Latino character is insurmountable while the difference between a Korean actor and a Japanese character is trivial, that reflects your own racial biases. Actual Asian people would see it very differently. Many Japanese people would be deeply offended by the suggestion that they're interchangeable with Koreans; there's a pretty strong anti-Korean prejudice there.
So the issue here is not about what I'm saying. It's what you're saying that needs to be examined more closely.
Not true. No African-Americans played Klingons in TOS. In the TOS movies, Michael Dorn was the only black actor to play a Klingon. And in modern Trek, we've had Klingons played by Vaughn Armstrong, Robert O'Reilly, Kevin Conway, Gwynyth Walsh, Barbara March, Suzie Plakson, Roxann Dawson, Brian Thompson, J. G. Hertzler, etc. While black actors have often been cast as Klingons, I don't think they've ever constituted the majority.
Why not? Judging from the reactions of female college friends of mine when they first saw a picture of Dorn out of makeup, he's a very handsome guy.
So, I guess we can end the conversation now, right? Especially since my questions have already been answered.
Thank you.
You can't expect anyone to take your scholarly papers seriously if the way you react to constructive criticism is to dodge the issue completely and storm off in a huff. If you can't admit and correct your own errors of fact and logic, then any scholarly paper you produce is likely to be fatally flawed. But it's your funeral.
You're giving yourself too much credit, Christopher.
I've noticed that you've done this in other threads, with other posters. That is not going to work with me.
As I mentioned before, I am doing several things at once. For example, as I am now typing my response to you, I am working on a final essay...and will be working on another project.
As for constructive criticisms? That is why I have my fellow peers offline, as well as the aforementioned instructors, advisors, Asian American scholars as well as African American advisors who are familiar with representations of Asian Americans and African Americans, which this thread was initially about.
As for 'storming off in a huff'? Hey, feel free to start a new thread.
This particular thread was in regards to questions I had about my project. As continuously mentioned, those questions have been answered.
I agreed with you that we are getting off-topic, so what is the point of continuing? What is the point of putting so much energy in just going back and forth?
Again, start a new thread if there is something specific you want to converse over or involve other posters; or PM me. I don't want to get into a 'one-up'...going back and forth.
It's not proving anything.
^ If it helps any, I think you've been illogical and weird in here, too, and it directly relates to one of your questions. In Vanguard, there IS an Asian woman paired romantically with a Latino. I still don't have any idea why you think that a few people imagining Tommy Lee Jones playing a role that is officially a hispanic person disqualifies them from being hispanic when the source text says they are.
You said Worf doesn't count because the CHARACTER is alien, even though the actor is black, indicating your paper was about CHARACTERS.
Then, you said Reyes won't count because the ACTOR (or rather "actor") is white, even though the character is Chilean, indicating your paper was about ACTORS. (Which is silly, because Tommy Lee Jones isn't actually playing anyone, but whatever.)
Which is it - are you interested in the CHARACTER origins, or the ACTOR origins?
You said Worf doesn't count because the CHARACTER is alien, even though the actor is black, indicating your paper was about CHARACTERS.
Then, you said Reyes won't count because the ACTOR (or rather "actor") is white, even though the character is Chilean, indicating your paper was about ACTORS. (Which is silly, because Tommy Lee Jones isn't actually playing anyone, but whatever.)
Which is it - are you interested in the CHARACTER origins, or the ACTOR origins?
Still going on, I see...
I already answered this earlier:
Yes, he would be Latino. However, he would be a white Latino...
Critically thinking, I ask, 'Why would there automatically be the though of a white individual for the role, and not a darker-skinned individual?"
(Whether or not it's hypothetical?)
This goes with the idea (especially in Trek) of usually putting a white male opposite an Asian woman rather than an Asian, black, or brown-skinned Latino male.
Interestingly, you say I've been weird and illogical, in regards to one of my questions...which has already been sufficiently answered posters already.
The only indication I gave about my paper, in my initial post, was that it's about Asian American representation.
Again, I asked my questions, and those questions were answered.
Furthermore, I've already talked about the idea of Worf, Klingons, and African-Americans (particularly African-American males)...in this thread and others.
This is very obvious.
The criticism was based on the hypothetical 'casting.'
I already answered this earlier:
Yes, he would be Latino. However, he would be a white Latino...
Critically thinking, I ask, 'Why would there automatically be the though of a white individual for the role, and not a darker-skinned individual?"
(Whether or not it's hypothetical?)
This goes with the idea (especially in Trek) of usually putting a white male opposite an Asian woman rather than an Asian, black, or brown-skinned Latino male.
Interestingly, you say I've been weird and illogical, in regards to one of my questions...which has already been sufficiently answered posters already.
The only indication I gave about my paper, in my initial post, was that it's about Asian American representation.
Again, I asked my questions, and those questions were answered.
Furthermore, I've already talked about the idea of Worf, Klingons, and African-Americans (particularly African-American males)...in this thread and others.
This is very obvious.
The criticism was based on the hypothetical 'casting.'
^ I'm still trying to figure out of you disqualified Rana Desai for being Indian.
If not, then you might want to note that she briefly has a romantic relationship with a black human male, Haniff Jackson, in the series' fifth book.
If you are disqualifying her, then never mind.
And I don't give a fuck who readers "cast" as Reyes. His ancestry is Chilean, but the guy is from Luna. That's right: he's from the fucking Moon. So there.
If not, then you might want to note that she briefly has a romantic relationship with a black human male, Haniff Jackson, in the series' fifth book.
If you are disqualifying her, then never mind.
And I don't give a fuck who readers "cast" as Reyes. His ancestry is Chilean, but the guy is from Luna. That's right: he's from the fucking Moon. So there.
David,
She's Southeast Asian, so she indeed is 'Asian.'
Thanks for your input, sir...
And TOS gave us Kor, with greenish-brown skin tones, Koloth in caucasian tones (originally scripted as the returning Kor), and Kang in reddish tones (also originally scripted as the returning Kor, and recast by an actor known for previous then-called "Red Indian" roles). The first bony-crested Klingon commander (in TMP) was played by the white Mark Lenard.
this thread turned into a cluster-fuck in an incredibly short space of time.
Given who was taking part, although slightly interesting, it was obvious pretty early on.
What makes you think that anyone "automatically" thought of Tommy Lee Jones? You're framing it as though it's a notion that's arrived at reflexively (and thereby an indicator of unconscious racial bias) rather than with careful thought and consideration. Perhaps the people who have decided they would like to see Jones playing the role arrived at that conclusion in spite of the fact that he's white rather than because of it.
You don't know, but you seem to be making an assumption that your fellow posters are just "automatically" picking white actors rather than darker-skinned actors, and indicating that you assume this is because of an unconscious bias in favor of white actors (and in particular in favor of the idea of white actors being paired with Asian actresses). And I simply do not think this is a reasonable conclusion to jump to.
And I say that as someone who has pictured Edward James Olmos as Reyes from the first time he read Harbinger in 2005, in part because I thought it would be a better idea to picture a darker-skinned actor playing the character.
Like I said, interracial relationships can be damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't. A critic can construct an argument that any form of interracial relationship is a commentary on how much more desirable one of the races/ethnicities is than the other's race or ethnicity, and a critic can construct an argument that a monoracial relationship reflects a racial segregation bias. You can't win for trying there.
I actually do not imagine Jones or Olmos as Reyes, but no one in particular, and he is a darker-skinned man in my mind. This is a very strange position you are taking on the character; if Mack had said he imagined Betty White playing Ming Xiong, you would assume the character was an elderly white woman?
Also, Desai is NOT Southeast Asian. She is of Indian descent, like Choudhury.
Also, Desai is NOT Southeast Asian. She is of Indian descent, like Choudhury.
India is a country in south Asia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India
Too, there is an article by Nazli Kibria that discusses the issue of Asian Indians titled: 'Not Asian, Black, or White?: Reflections on South Asian American Racial Identity.'
^^ Ultimately, when it comes to the question of racial definitions, what we've been running up against from the very beginning of this thread is that there is no such thing as "race" from an objective standpoint, just various phenotypes that all blend together with no identifiable borders between them, and all "racial" identifications are just a form of biologically arbitrary folk taxonomy.
You said Southeast Asian. I was correcting you. Unless you are now equating Southeast Asia with South Asia (the Indian subcontinent). I have never seen a definition of Southeast Asia to include anything west of Myanmar (Burma).
^^
I did; and yes, I was incorrect.
As my above (#37) post stated, Desai is South Asian, not Southeast Asian....
Anywho, thank you for everyone's comments. The article has been completed and submitted...
For the future, in regards to this topic, I plan on working on a bigger project for Palgrave Macmillan.
I did; and yes, I was incorrect.
As my above (#37) post stated, Desai is South Asian, not Southeast Asian....
***
Anywho, thank you for everyone's comments. The article has been completed and submitted...
For the future, in regards to this topic, I plan on working on a bigger project for Palgrave Macmillan.
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