| | Asian cultural influences in Serenity:
(very minor, abstruse spoilers)
There has been quite a bit of discussion on the net of Chinese phrases and other influences on Firefly, and I am sure this movie will kick off more. But there is also a lot of Hindu symbolism that has gone unremarked.
In the new visual companion book, it says that Inara's wardrobe for the film has a very Indian feel to it, but there is a more dramatic Hindu element relating to River. The procedures performed on her to give her psychic powers include the needle in the skull right in the center of her forehead. In South Asian symbolism, the third eye is in this position and represents the ability to see into the soul, rather than just surface appearances. Later, in one of the dream sequences, we see her with blood dripping from the position of this needle, imitating the pattern of a big red Hindu 'tilak' or 'bindi'. (http://www.hinduism.co.za/tilak.htm, http://www.ebiztrust.com/jbiz/fbindi.jsp) Also, the female cartoon characters in the 'Japanese' ad for Fruity Oaty Bars display their own bindiya.
There is a great deal of Chinese language evident in Serenity, both oral and written. We will have to wait for someone with skills in that area to provide us with some insight into it. But not all the Asian writing is Chinese. On the third viewing, I caught the fact that the red and white diamond-shaped sign in the cockpit (visible briefly when Mal confronts River there alone when she is bringing up the planetary chart) has wording in the Devanagari script used for writing Hindi, Sanskrit, and other languages of northern and central South Asia. Later in the movie, I think there is a big sign on the side of the cargo bay that also has Devanagari on it.
The diamond-shaped sign looks something like a high-voltage warning in its overall form, and the big word in the center begins with the Devanagari long 'a' character, आ, (representing more-or-less the same vowel as in the first syllable of the English word 'father') followed, I think, by a 'ma' character, म. Further along in the word I think there is a 'da' (unaspirated, dental) character, ढ. Later, when the crew are in the cockpit considering their next move, you can clearly see the initial 'aa' character next to Jayne, with his shoulder blocking the rest of the word. I tried looking up words starting with 'aam' आम in a Hindi-English dictionary, but there were no obvious matches.
On my fourth viewing I didn't spot the cargo bay sign again at all.
When the movie comes out on DVD, I'll freeze frame on those two scenes and provide more details.
-Bill
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