Firefly is WELL worth watching (over and over!) as is the movie Serenity that
was eventually made to finish up the story lines in the canceled series.
From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com>
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2015 10:10 AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Strong Women Characters
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
From: "TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife]"
<FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com>
Lest anyone think that I'm being overly sexist and base by appreciating "the
women of Firefly" as I do above, give a listen to this award acceptance speech
from the guy who created these characters, and his perfect answer to the
question, "Why do you write such strong female characters?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYaczoJMRhs
I've posted this before, but I'm reposting it in hopes anyone might be
interested in the larger questions it brings up -- why *are* strong,
independent, and powerful women characters so rare on TV and in movies? And who
are some of your favourites?
Never saw Firefly but loved Buffy (how could you not?) and it's clear what his
intentions were and clear that he succeeded. His stuff is clearly in stark
contrast to women in Star Trek and especially in Dr Who where the female lead
always made the tea and screamed a lot. They did try having a female scientist
as a companion for the doctor once but it was hopeless as there was no one to
ask those stupid questions that allow an explanation for the benefit of the
audience about what was going on.
I'm not being hard on them though, they didn't fight it even thought there must
have been other ways round the damsel in distress dilemma, I think was just the
way society was in those days. Even in later shows like Blakes 7 the women were
intended to be stronger but ended up in the usual, catering and comfort zones.
The memes changed though, was it with Ripley in Alien that decent female leads
went mainstream? I'm not enough of a sci-fi historian. I know the novels I read
had a lot of good female leads, Heinlein's Friday in particular. Larry Niven,
most of the ones I can think of actually. I must have grown up with it without
realising it.
I remember reading that Nichelle Nichols wanted to quit her role as Lt Uhura in
Star Trek because she thought it was too demeaning just to be saying "hailing
frequences open Captain" but it was Sammy Davis Jr who persuaded her that just
having a black women on TV was worth the sacrifice, and then she had the first
inter-racial kiss on TV with Kirk! What a strange time that must have been for
that to seem like a big deal.
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