On Television, Cinema and Race

Wow, Jennifer Hale looks awfully manly. What do you mean? There's no other voice actor for Shepard!

IMAGE(http://voicechasers.com/images/actors/1258.jpg)

Grubber788:

Everyone speaks with an accent of some sort. That includes you, every American, British, and Canadian on the planet, as well as every single person who speaks. As long as the accent isn't meant as a character facet, it's taken to be neutral.

For instance, every single person ever in British films has a British accent, just as Americans in Japanese anime have, well, Japanese accents. Those are unintentional artifacts are not meant to be characterization, hence the character is neutral.

4xis.black wrote:

Generally speaking, there are two levels of acceptable minority characters: The 'non-racial' character who is non-white but whose cultural background is not in play, and the 'racial' character who is non-white and whose non-white experience is explored in some way. (Unacceptable minority characters would be the lazy stereotyped ones.) Ideally every game should include the former, and it would be good if more games attempted the latter.

The Shepard who appears on marketing materials and as the default character model is a white male. You could make him non-white and nothing would change plotwise, but this is true of every 'create your own' protagonist I can remember. And while he might be a better example of a character than the personality-free Dovahkin from Skyrim, he is no better an example of a minority because in no significant way is he actually a minority.

So, yes, I suppose if default Shepard were Chinese or something he would be a good example of how not to make the gaming landscape 98% Caucasian, but being as he is a white guy by default he is hardly a good example of ethnic anything. He is instead the very model of the status quo.

This is what bugs me about the entire argument to start with. It's not ENOUGH for people that if you so desire you can be whatever race you want in just about every RPG out there. It's not good enough for a film to have a character of colour, that character must ACT like a minority. And that is what irritates the hell out of me. I would have absolutely no issue with a black Dr. Who - I WOULD have an issue with a black Dr. Who that starts acting like a stereotypical black person and not like Dr. Who, as if you need to somehow 'properly portray' a minority otherwise it's not legit. Of all shows, Dr. Who is one of the shows most like an RPG where you can swap out the skin / model / colour of the main character and still get the same story.

There is nothing wrong with status quo. It's a blank slate for a creator, and allows them to get a story out without all the extra effort involved with explaining exactly why this black character isn't a stereotypical 'black dude'. And frankly, I don't blame people who resist the idea of a 'black Doctor', simply because it's quite clear that in the movie industry of today, if you DID have a black Doctor, the chances of that character not getting assigned a.. 'more black' role is pretty damn small.

My problem with Shepard isn't the Canadian accent*, it's with the fact that he's an incredibly boring character. I say this because I am in love with Mass Effect and Batman. Shepard and Batman are both boring characters; their supporting casts are what make the story so interesting. For instance, I have no idea what Shepard likes to do on his free time. Does he have siblings? What does he like to eat? Now, the player could make that stuff up, but that's not the point. The writers for Mass Effect have made Shepard an empty vessel for the player to experience the world--it enables a seamless translation for the player to engage with the story.

Shepard being boring is precisely why I think he is not an ideal minority protagonist (if the player goes outside of the default option, that is). A minority character shouldn't have to be neutral to be ideal. I've read too many arguments against American cultural hegemony and the white-washing of society to accept that possibility without a bit of thought. I view the ideal minority protagonist--hell, the minority protagonist(period)--to maintain his or her own cultural, religious, moral values. I think a neutral accent is fine, but the fact that Shepard leaves no indication about his past or even his present activities outside the scope of the mission to be an incredible (but given the scope of the game, not unexpected) omission.

This is a problem inherent to characters you create yourself. These protagonists are vessels for advancing the plot of a story. It's the difference between a first person narrative and a third person one. Like him or hate him, CJ from GTA III SA was his own character, who was a minority and had a story to tell based somewhat on his own background. CJ wasn't a perfect character, BUT at least the developers weren't afraid to tell a story that involved race. Perhaps these expectations are different in nations with less racial/cultural diversity, but I know in the U.S. and parts of Europe, the clash of cultures is an interesting battlefield (so to speak), which game developers do not want to touch unless they say "Oh, you can make your character black, but it totally doesn't matter." If the story takes place in the U.S., well, it does matter and games should acknowledge that fact without telling the same story of racial tension between humans and elves. "Elves represent (insert hated race du jour here), guys!"

*although from an international communications point of view, it wouldn't be considered neutral given the fact that Canadians represent a relatively small proportion of the global English-speaking population. Standard American English is often used in global advertisements because of its connotation with neutrality. British English is like this as well, but to a lesser extent I believe, particularly in developing markets. It's also strange that most of the other characters in the game have strong American accents with a few notable exceptions like Zaeed. It's even more strange when you consider that the aliens are speaking through translators, so even in the future, the standard American dialect is still the most prevalent and widely-accepted accent. It doesn't change the fact that the Canadian accent is neutral--I agree with you there--, but it is noticeable.

Grubber788:

I think that ties in to Pawz' objection to the portrayal of race in games and media (and in life as well), and frankly, I agree with him. I don't like it when portraying a "black" devolves to recoloring the skin tone of an obviously "white" character, but I don't like obviously "black" characters either.

There's a time and a place for the portrayal of racism. The character of an everyman protagonist, or even a main protagonist of whatever kind - that's not the right place unless the entire piece is meant to be racist.

You've got a couple of things combined in a weird way there, Pawz.

I think for most people, it is entirely enough for a character to be something other than lily-white.
However, it's not enough for only the customizable characters to be that way. Nor is it enough for every character to appear in an "expected" role for their gender/ethnicity/whatever.

The question of having the story address the background of a given character is another thing entirely--and that's something that's also much more connected to things that are realistic portrayals of modern day life. If you're exploring in-depth the character of somebody in the modern world, having them *not* at least having thoughts about these issues is pretty unreasonable. But in any case, that's not what we're really talking about here.

The thing with a "customizable character" is that because they are a "blank slate", they don't really count. That's not because they don't "act like a minority", it's because you know up front that [em]you[/em] are choosing to make them that way. Mass Effect is not about Commander Shepard, a black spaceship captain badass (nor is it even about Commander Shepard, a red-headed spaceship captain badass). It's just about a spaceship captain badass, because that was the part that was written. Not because there are no hooks there for racial or gender identity, but because the character is simply neutral. That's why in a game like ME where you can customize the main character, it's the stronger parts of the supporting cast that's important. Captain Anderson counts. Ashley Williams counts. Joker counts. They were all characterized with backgrounds. But Shepard wasn't.

A black Doctor? A female Doctor? Those would be fine, and awesome, and require no explanation. And they would count--even if the way the Doctor behaves doesn't change one bit--because somebody said "Yes, let us have a black Doctor", and everybody watching knows that someone out there thinks that's a fine and good thing, and that it's not just them with their own personal version doing it.

I think life would be a whole lot better if we were all in real life, "just spaceship captain badass" without regard for incidental personal details that don't really matter. Emphasizing the importance of skin tone in a work propagates that value system in the culture at large. I'm against it.

The thing about people is that they have existed for a number of years, and in that time they have experienced things. Thus, a person who grows up in, say, the lower-class parts of Detroit experiences different things than a person who grows up in a gated community somewhere. I have heard that good writers often write plot as it flows from their characters, and find such details as cultural background important when trying to figure out how they will respond to whatever situation they're in. The writers of Breaking Bad, for example, do this, and we can see in that show a few examples of non-white characters with non-white backgrounds (Hank's partner Gomez is a good one). Other writers, like say Chris Nolan and his collaborators, tend to use characters as avatars for various ideals, and in these cases race probably doesn't matter because the characters didn't really have childhoods and exist sort of as pieces on his ideological chessboard. (Ken Levine is somewhat the same way; a man chooses, a slave obeys, et cetera.)

Unfortunately, video games have traditionally been the land of bad genre fiction where you take a classic story arc (like the adolescent power fantasy!), bolt your fantasy/sci-fi/whatever tropes on there, and then populate the thing with shallow characters who tend to be stereotypes ripped from other, better works in the genre. Of course there are many good reasons for doing it this way (game development is hard), and some studios like Naughty Dog do a remarkable job in spite of the limitations. Mostly though, we get stuff that is utilitarian at best and utterly boring/offensive at worst. And, yes, when you make one of your 3 character traits "Bad caricature of lesser Samuel L. Jackson parts" you end up with poor results.

A well-written character, by contrast, has more and more character traits the longer you think about and write and excavate it. Characters such as these cannot effectively be divorced from their background, and cannot therefore be 'racially neutral' because in reality (and often in good fiction) there is no such thing as a generic human being.

But, as I said before, video games as a rule have poor characters, so in the case of video games specifically (but not TV or movies) we can throw out that last part and are thus reduced to hoping for yet another boring, shallow game character whose skin happens to be non-white. And they won't even give us that much.

4xis.black wrote:

A well-written character, by contrast, has more and more character traits the longer you think about and write and excavate it. Characters such as these cannot effectively be divorced from their background, and cannot therefore be 'racially neutral' because in reality (and often in good fiction) there is no such thing as a generic human being.

But, as I said before, video games as a rule have poor characters, so in the case of video games specifically (but not TV or movies) we can throw out that last part and are thus reduced to hoping for a guy whose skin happens to be non-white. And they won't even give us that much.

I think that might really be what the issue boils down to. I think better writing and characters and the problem would work itself out naturally, at least to a degree.

LarryC wrote:

I think life would be a whole lot better if we were all in real life, "just spaceship captain badass" without regard for incidental personal details that don't really matter. Emphasizing the importance of skin tone in a work propagates that value system in the culture at large. I'm against it.

Yeah, it'd be nice wouldn't it?

Too bad good art is often a reflection of reality.

gregrampage wrote:

I think that might really be what the issue boils down to. I think better writing and characters and the problem would work itself out naturally, at least to a degree.

Eh, we'd be in the same place we are with film and television. The solution might involve convincing the public they would enjoy different cultural stuff, convincing the investors of this fact, and also convincing members of these cultures to become creators (which is difficult to do when the industry has no interest in working with them). In short, we would like for people to watch the original versions of things rather than the Hollywood remakes starring all white people.

Grubber788:

Good art also influences and progresses the society it is in. It looks back, but it should also look forward. I do not look forward to a future that is even more racist than the present, so I would prefer for cultural works to expunge racism from their lexicon, except to lampoon, lambast, and excoriate it.

4xis.black:

I think it's unfortunate that it is common to misinterpret "not believing race" or "not seeing race" to "not seeing people." Those are not the same things. Just because a character is not a racist portrayal doesn't mean that that character can only ever be a bland slate with no history. That is absolutely not true.

Let's take a naive guy who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood with wealthy neighbors. He's lived in a gated community until his coming-of-age, and when he was exposed to the ugly truths about his world, he's shocked beyond words. He doesn't understand the language of the ghettoes, and he doesn't get a lot of their values, even though he's trying to bridge the gap.

Is there anyhting in there that tells us what skin tone he ought to have? No.

His skin tone could be purple and it would still be the same character.

This guy grew up to become a super-tough, large, and muscular space marine, the envy of all his peers. He's a natural leader, though a bit rough and uncultured, but his heart is in a good place. The women swoon for him.

Now, aside from the use of the male pronoun, which I have used so far only because English doesn't have a gender neutral pronoun, what about all this dictates that this person is male, or heterosexual?

We agree that in reality and in the context of writing skin tone is a superficial trait and a poor indicator of underlying character. Yet the politics around skin tone are such that the entertainment industry defers to white skin in nearly every case, at great cost to actors such as Chiwetel Ejiofor. Categorically, the only solution to this problem is to make stuff containing characters with other skin tones, and conversely, choosing to give yet another character white skin will do no good.

Larry, we're not really arguing against each other I think. I don't think anyone is arguing for stereotypes to fill the role of the protagonist, but I would also say that if a stereotype does fill a role (cough cough CJ cough), then he had better be interesting otherwise he is just a caricature and worthless.

That's why I wish you hadn't picked Shepard as your ideal minority character. He's so boring, that saying he's ideal is like saying minorities should be white-washed and merge with the dominant culture. I don't think you are saying that, but Shepard really is a paragon of Western virtues, even if he is colored blue, brown or pink. Philosophically, Shepard is generally quite Western, which is important I think because if Shepard was born from other cultural traditions, I believe he would have handled certain situations differently. Then again, the differences between the alien races in ME are essentially an allegory for racism and nationalism on Earth today. Shepard isn't a model minority character, Tali is. Legion is. The non-human characters are great "minority" characters, in that their philosophies genuinely differ from those around them and they act differently based on those beliefs. The skin color isn't as important as their own senses of duty, morality and value.

Again, I'm surprised how Saints Row the Third is handling race and sex, and would encourage people to play it, if only to hear more thoughts on the issues addressed in the game.

I sympathize with people who are getting run over by the system because people in general are racist. In the short term, propagating racism appears to be beneficial, and will have immediate results.

In the intermediate and long term, the only thing that comes from propagating racism is to propagate racism, and to continue the hateful practices and viewpoints that are trampling all over people to begin with.

The definitive action to solve racism is to promote the viewpoint that skin tone truly is just superficial; neither reflective of genetics, ability, or even of culture. It's just skin. TV, movie, and games media are in a unqiue position to affect the minds of the new generation, and I think it's incumbent upon us as gamers not to accept the easy solution particularly when it won't even affect us directly. We must ask for, demand, and purchase material that is not racist, just as we strive to embody a non-racist viewpoint in our own little gaming communities.

The correct response to a black Spiderman should be:

"So were they planning on changing anything significant this time around?"

The guy goes around in a full body suit. If he were real, nobody would be able to tell what the damn tone of his skin would be!

In short, approving of things like stereotypes and "Affirmative Action" only propagates the very problem it's supposed to be dealing with. To cure a bacterial infection, you need antibiotics, not painkillers.

Grubber788:

I confess that I had not glommed on to the fact that Shepard was supposed to be a majority representation. In the ME universe, it's the humans that are the minorities, so he's representing a minority culture of a minority culture. That's why I said he was a good representative.

It did not occur to me that Shepard was supposed to be NOT a minority.

So you would like for creators to disregard all forms of racism (which, by the way, is not a word commonly used the way you use it; it entails the persecution of one group by another and includes the extensive histories of such acts. It is not so broad as to mean 'the awareness of race') and then start hiring non-white people without noticing what they're doing?

4xis.black:

I think it's a mistake to downplay the kinds of horrible things that came out of the propagation of the concept of "race." I also think it's a mistake to portray the concept of "race" as anything other than the hateful, destructive, and arbitrary, stupid thing that it is.

Even ME itself is racist, only it tries to soften the blow by positing actual different species and actual different genetics - as if a differing genetic and physical make up would actually matter, even if those things actually existed. A Turian is still a remarkably human-like sentient being, after all. If you ask me, they didn't go far enough to portray real differences - the science was not hard enough.

But yes, eventually I would like for people to hire people, and only recognize in hindsight what their skin tone happened to be (which is not to say that they would not recognize cultural differences, since culture is not skin tone).

The American civil rights movement propagated the concept of race, but I think it's hard to argue that it was unnecessary or that it did not achieve a greater good. I would suggest this is a similar situation: There is a taboo in place on hiring non-white-skinned actors and portraying non-white-skinned game characters, and willfully breaking this taboo is a logical and minimally harmful step towards the post-racial future.

4xis.black:

I'll replay in detail later. Have to give the community a chance to comment, too! I'll only point out that the concept of race was mentioned in the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which were written starting 1887. Suggest going to PM temporarily if you feel the urgency of discussion.

I was going to write something lengthy here, but it occurred to me...

Are we being a little too Western-Centric in our thinking here? I'm fairly sure there's a huge industry in India for example that pumps out movies with very few white people, and my gut feel is to doubt *their* populations are struggling with the 'oh no we're not catering to our white people minority in our movies and art!'. Chinese are probably the same.

The Chinese are more racist than you are. By quite a margin, too.

Pawz wrote:

I was going to write something lengthy here, but it occurred to me...

Are we being a little too Western-Centric in our thinking here? I'm fairly sure there's a huge industry in India for example that pumps out movies with very few white people, and my gut feel is to doubt *their* populations are struggling with the 'oh no we're not catering to our white people minority in our movies and art!'. Chinese are probably the same.

And those nations have their own issues with racial minorities and their representations (class being an issue in India, and let's just say China's "fraught" relationships with their own minority groups). Someone else not doing it doesn't mean that eons of lazy casting and stereotyping of some 80 million people (in the US) becomes okay. If we're going to go least-common-denominator, why try to improve or change anything?

It's important to note that the U.S. is the world's dominant driver for popular culture. Hollywood is arguably America's most important export to the world. I don't think India can really say the same about Bollywood.

LarryC wrote:

The Chinese are more racist than you are. By quite a margin, too.

True that. At least in the United States, racism is explicitly drawn along skin color. It's more complicated to be racist in Asia!

Everyone speaks with an accent of some sort

I used to think that too, but I was corrected by actual linguists. As it turns out, California standard English is considered 'unaccented', and the other various forms are defined as accented.

I don't know why that is; I was very surprised to find that 'my' English is the 'correct' kind. I thought it was all relative. But that's apparently not true.... Hollywood's English is the official flavor, as far as linguists are concerned.

There's no real need to be surprised. I'm assuming that those are American linguists. It's just surprising to me that they would choose Hollywood as their dog.

LarryC wrote:

There's no real need to be surprised. I'm assuming that those are American linguists. It's just surprising to me that they would choose Hollywood as their dog.

Why not? It's presumably the most widely-heard form of English in the world.

Malor wrote:
Everyone speaks with an accent of some sort

I used to think that too, but I was corrected by actual linguists. As it turns out, California standard English is considered 'unaccented', and the other various forms are defined as accented.

I did a minor in linguistics at Uni and that's the first I've heard of it. It may be the baseline for some studies, such as studies of American English, but the fact it's a rhotic form of English makes any suggestion that it's unaccented patently untrue. English dialects are either rhotic or non-rhotic - there's no "neither" option. There has to be an accent one way or the other.

Malor wrote:
Everyone speaks with an accent of some sort

I used to think that too, but I was corrected by actual linguists. As it turns out, California standard English is considered 'unaccented', and the other various forms are defined as accented.

I don't know why that is; I was very surprised to find that 'my' English is the 'correct' kind. I thought it was all relative. But that's apparently not true.... Hollywood's English is the official flavor, as far as linguists are concerned.

The closest thing to this is the 'Standard American English' accent (which, is still an accent). It does show up heavily in movies and TV frequently (which may be where the 'Hollywood' idea comes from) but is based off of a 'Midwestern Urban' accent. Either those linguists are trying to push an agenda, weren't very good at communicating what they meant, or didn't mind making things up.

Yeah, I dunno, I was surprised too, but they were very insistent.

4xis.black wrote:

The American civil rights movement propagated the concept of race, but I think it's hard to argue that it was unnecessary or that it did not achieve a greater good. I would suggest this is a similar situation: There is a taboo in place on hiring non-white-skinned actors and portraying non-white-skinned game characters, and willfully breaking this taboo is a logical and minimally harmful step towards the post-racial future.

Firstly, the concept of race probably didn't originate with America. I know it's in vogue to blame America for everything wrong with the world today, but when European settlers came to kill the Six Nations and take their land, they already thought of themselves as one tribe, and the prior land owners as another.

Secondly, I agree that breaking the universal ban on non-white skin tones is important, but I think it's important that the ban is broken the right way.

The other reason that I thought that Shepard was an outstanding example of a minority character is because his skin tone is literally superficial. The game plays exactly the same way regardless of how he looks like. He's the exact same person. His skin tone is purely and absolutely a cosmetic detail and nothing more. We pay more attention to his kit. His racial designation is "None," or "Not applicable."

Who he is and what he is is determined by his actions, his words, and his values. People react and judge him based on a lot of things, but skin color is not one of those factors. It's not that he doesn't belong to a cultural group, or doesn't have an accent, or is a blank character. He is, as mentioned, a prototypical Western action hero; even though he could look totally like someone who had ancestors from central China.

Game heroes and media heroes (and heroines! I hate that English genderizes so many words) would be a lot better if they followed that ideal and pursued that standard. Peter Parker having a darker tone of skin doesn't mean that he's a different character, but it's important that he remain Peter Parker and not morph into Pearson Parker because he somehow has to talk and act differently as a result of having a different superficial detail.

You might raise the totally legit question:

"If Peter Parker totally acts like Peter Parker, is he a minority character or Peter Parker with dark skin?"

And of course, you would be right. Peter Parker isn't a minority character. Race is not part of his character concept. Putting in race concept into the character changes the character into something else.

FWIW, I would like more cultural diversity in characters and stories. Culture, not race. Someone who identifies with the history and heritage of Tibet would be an interesting character provided that that detail doesn't make up his entirety or his majority. However, I would prefer a depiction where his facial features and skin tone isn't given the least amount of significance other than as cosmetic detail (his being used strictly as gender neutral in this paragraph).