kohlrak: I have only seen parts of the movies, to be fair, but what you're showing isn't facism. One of the most important parts of facism is what we see from the anti-facist movement: censorship. One of the main pillars, and the most important pillar, of facism isn't simply propaganda, but outright banning of counter-propaganda and/or free-speech. Would you say that the west as a whole was facist during WWII with all it's propaganda?
Mafwek: Starship Troopers specifically targeted fascism. Censorship isn't anything particular to fascism, liberal (European meaning of the word) governments in 19th century censored anything which challenged them; US has long history with censoring something which is considered to be morally unacceptable (comic books, rock and roll, Dungeons & Dragons, videogames...).
Fascism is very complicated concept, but for the West as a whole, I would say it was always perilously close to becoming fascist itself. And Nazism is whole different can of worms.
Right, except facism needs to censor. What we find is that communism and facism really aren't all that different. The west, as a whole, has seen alot of this terrible totalitarianism via ideology throughout the past century, and we never let it go. Even kings, who are totalitarian by nature, have less power, overall. The western governments saw the power of these ideologies, and naturally they want that power back again. Kings never had the power to simply tell someone who to like and hate, or even have regular people do the most inhumane things to each other at a whim.
LootHunter: Really? Even #5? I don't remember that UKIP or conservatives were against disagreement. In fact UKIP is pro-free speech.
So, how much integration are we seeing? Clearly, people are segregating, fear mongering or not, and we don't really need to point to one side or the other. It's happening.
LootHunter: Problem is that some people decided that some ideas ARE bad and shouldn't be in games. Like, you know, sexy women, strong white men, etc. And the reason, why they decided that is that they FEEL bad about thos ideas. Not some logical reasoning, or research, but just their own feelings.
JoeSapphire: I think the major reason people don't want there to be more computer games with sexualised female characters and muscular white male characters isn't because strong white men and sexy women make them feel bad. It's not because they want to make strong white men/sexy women an enemy.
This type of imagery is commonplace, and if we were to have solely this type of character in our narratives it would be a problem: Here's why -
Societies use stories as ethical and moral hypotheses and guidelines. Fairytales, folk stories, religious stories as examples. People look to stories to give them guidance, as well as informing their own sense of identity. Whether we're aware of it or not, stories are important.
The problem with having only one 'type' is that people who can't identify with that type feel excluded. If people are already marginalised in a society then lack of representation in stories begins to widen divides.
So a logical reason to be disappointed when a computer game features a muscular white male lead figure, posing in front of a sexualised female character is because if we want to avoid a divided society we should be making more of an effort to represent those who aren't represented. Not because strong white men and sexy woman are bad, but because it already exists so much that it's become normalised - because when people picture a computer game they picture a strong white man.
I'm running out of energy to make this point, and I don't think I've made it very well.
If this were the truth, why are we discouraging white males and sexy women, instead of simply promoting the diversity we pretend to seek? If you have no problem with A, but want to promote B, you don't discourage A when you might make the material for A disappear altogether instead of stepping aside to make room for B. Promote B. But, hey, no one's asking why everyone likes A so damn much. Might have something to do with the stereotype of white people: we're always in someone's business, always confident (but not over-confident), always trying to be badass, etc. Gee, wonder why we would want white people to be our lead badass who's trying to be a lone hero. Sure, wouldn't have anything to do with white western culture prioritizing the narrative of the power of individuality. I wonder why RPGs with a party system like Japanese so much. Oh, hey, what do you know, the story writers also generally happen to be of the race they're writing their epic about.
dtgreene: Final Fantasy 4 says hi. Perhaps Final Fantasy 2 says high as well.
(Keep in mind that JRPGs are RPGs too!)
Mafwek: Shin Megami Tensei says hi.
TES says hi as well, but no one ever gives it any credit, since you don't need to be a deep thinker to understand the main plotline of TES.
JoeSapphire: So a logical reason to be disappointed when a computer game features a muscular white male lead figure, posing in front of a sexualised female character is because
if we want to avoid a divided society we should be making more of an effort to represent those who aren't represented. Not because strong white men and sexy woman are bad, but because it already exists so much that it's become normalised - because when people picture a computer game they picture a strong white man.
richlind33: I'm just going to say that I think it's pathetic to take issue with this or that particular trope because tropes are all that our "culture" consists of. Why not get rid of ALL of them?
For the same reason tropes exist to begin with, which is the same reason stereotypes exist: they're useful. Don't get me wrong, if it wasn't for the over-representation of certain racial groups in certain activities (like sports) in a country dominated by another racial group, we wouldn't have stereotypes involving those racial groups in sports. If every Jew were poor, you couldn't call them penny pinching bankers. If every asian failed out of college, you wouldn't have stereotypes about asian intelligence. When the grand majority of bombers are brown and yell something about a fancy 72 virgin snackbar, we wouldn't have a stereotype of muslim suicide vests. If Russians didn't have brutal police and military, the Russian reversal wouldn't be funny. If white people didn't try putting their flags everywhere, try to convince everyone that multi-culturalism is good, trying to convince everyone of "women's rights" and "gay rights" being ideal for society, white people wouldn't have this stereotype of intefering with everyone else's shit. At the end of the day, that's what all this comes down to.
