Loadout: Am I the only one seeing this? [NSFW]

[osmosisch]

The insidious thing about these aspects of culture is that they get produced and reproduced often just through cultural osmosis.

Sorry D:

[prettyunsmart]

Prettyunsmart's question of "Am I the only one seeing this?" comes from a place of loneliness.  I watch [a show I won't name because it's not pertinent] and think "I like this show and these comedians, but it also seems homophobic."  I can't just sit there and not talk about it!  Otherwise a feeling of extreme loneliness overwhelms me.  So I force my wife to discuss it with me (thankfully she puts up with me and my lack of friends).

 

I think that pretty much summed it up. What got me about this more than anything else was looking at coverage of the game, especially from outlets (for example Rock Paper Shotgun, Polygon, and Giant Bomb) that have been generally supportive of a variety of social justice issues (can we please not say that like that's a bad thing?) in the past not make any mention of something that looked relatively obvious to me. It just seemed like either I was crazy for seeing something that disturbed me or that race is a big blind spot for coverage of games, even as things like gender and sexuality issues are slowly getting better.

 

Sorry D:

 

Oh, you.

[SGP]

Happy to see no stock "it's a video game, relax" comments here! I think the discussion is not one of censorship or correctness but of what effects such media may have on those that consume it. What does the imagery evoke or reinforce explicitly and implicitly?

 

I remember Resident Evil 5 receiving a similar reaction from some: a buff white guy with his fair-black companion mows down black-black Africans infected with a virus that makes them murderous and crazy. The silliness continues when you enter tribal lands and are fighting off grass-skirted Africans with spears etc. It's not surprising that a company from Japan (with such racial homogeneity) might miss the potentially problematic nature of the game's representations. To ease this issue, they added white infecteds with short blonde hair that resembled Eminem.

[Bjorn]

I think that pretty much summed it up. What got me about this more than anything else was looking at coverage of the game, especially from outlets (for example Rock Paper Shotgun, Polygon, and Giant Bomb) that have been generally supportive of a variety of social justice issues (can we please not say that like that's a bad thing?) in the past not make any mention of something that looked relatively obvious to me. It just seemed like either I was crazy for seeing something that disturbed me or that race is a big blind spot for coverage of games, even as things like gender and sexuality issues are slowly getting better.

 

Pattern recognition.  Humans are, in many ways, incredibly evolved pattern recognition machines.  But geared in such a way to identify patterns that stand out from our environmental norm.  If you walked into a room and saw a tile floor that was laid out in Tetris blocks, it would immediately grab your attention.  But if it was just laid out in a standard grid, you wouldn't notice, even though it's still a pattern.  It would be normal. 

 

Sadly the environmental norm of our media is one composed of a lot of sexist and racist elements.  We're getting better, but it's still the most extreme examples that stand out to us.  Even people (like the writers at those outlets) who try to be thoughtful about these issues will simply overlook a lot of them because they blend right into the norm. 

 

Sometimes I do just really want to be entertained, and purposefully choose not to think about the game I'm playing in any kind of analytical way.  I come out of a journalism and media studies background, and critically analyzing media is one of my favorite things in the world.  It's fucking depressing if I do it to everything though.  The same is likely true of most other people.