"Wait!"
"You're not going alone."
Ubisoft's 2012 game,
Far Cry 3
casts players as Jason Brody,
a young white American man
vacationing in Bangkok,
with his brother and their white friends.
But their carefree fun comes to an end
when a skydiving trip goes wrong
and they all end up kidnapped by evil pirates,
who, you guessed it, are not white.
Jason escapes and encounters a group of
islands called the "Rakyat," who enlists his help
to rid their island of the pirates.
Ushering Jason into his exotic and exciting
new role as a tribal warrior and white savior is
Citra, a young woman who is viewed
among her people as a warrior goddess.
Under her guidance,
Jason's adventure rapidly becomes
an absurd hodgepodge of racist stereotypes
about tribal cultures and brown women.
At one point,
Citra gives Jason a hallucination-inducing drink
which leads him into battle with an imagined giant.
After he defeats the monster,
he is rewarded with the topless Citra
telling him that he is now part of the tribe.
"You are Rakyat."
Citra's strange mystical powers return
later in the game when she blows
a glowing dust into Jason's face,
triggering another hallucinatory sequence
that culminates in a game-ending choice:
to save Jason's friends and leave the island;
or to do Citra's bidding --
to savagely kill his friends and
stay on the island with her.
If players choose to murder Jason's friends
and stay with Citra,
a scene plays in which the two of them have sex.
Then she stabs him while stating that
their child will become the new leader
of the tribe.
I guess those mystical tribal powers of hers
just immediately let her know
that she is already pregnant.
"I'll be yours."
On the one hand,
Citra is yet another example of a
female character whose sexuality is presented
as a motivator and reward
for the presumed straight male player.
But there's something more insidious
happening with Citra.
Her body paint and magical powers suggest
that she practices some sort of tribal mysticism,
which also roots her in a longstanding tradition
of racist stereotypes.
These elements of sexism and racism intersect,
turning Citra into a stereotype
of an exotic, primtive, mystical, savage,
sexualized woman of color.
This linking of sexism and racism is an example
of what's called "exotification."
Exotification occurs when a group is treated
as inherently different, alluring, and strange.
"...like a lamb to the slaughter."
For instance, when certain white men
falsely view Asian women as inherently more
obedient or submissive than women
from other cultures,
and sexually fetishize them as a result
of these false notions,
those women are being exotified,
and their race is falsely depicted as
the defining aspect of their
character and personality.
"America...so far away."
"Not so far away that I'll forget you."
For the purposes of this episode,
we're focusing specifically on racist stereotypes of
tribal and indigenous cultures.
But it's important to note that
women of color from any background can be
and often are, stereotyped and exotified.
Sometimes, black female characters are exotified
entirely through clothing that simultaneously
sexualizes them while
also evoking racist stereotypes.
2009's Resident Evil 5 introduced a new
character to the series,
Sheva Alomar:
a Bio-Terrorism Security Assessment Alliance
agent who joins Chris Redfield as he confronts
an outbreak of infected in
a fictional region of Africa.
The first time you play through the game,
Sheva looks like this.
However, once the story has been completed,
if players also collect all 30 BSAA tokens
scattered throughout the levels,
they unlock a new outfit for Sheva, called
"the tribal costume."
Equipping this outfit takes Sheva,
who up until this point has been wearing
somewhat practical attire for the work she's doing
and shoves her into a leopard print bikini top
and a few tatters of fabric around her waist,
while also applying paint markings
to decorate her face and body.
In Hyrule Warriors, the villain, Cia,
is one half of the spirit of the original sorceress,
a noble being who watched over
the balance of the Triforce.
When the evil Ganondorf drives the light
from the sorceress's soul,
she splits into two:
with her virtuous half becoming Lana,
who like the similarly-righteous
Link in Zelda is fair-skinned.
Meanwhile, her evil half becomes
the darker-skinned Cia,
who casts dark magic,
wears an extremely sexualized outfit,
and whose body is adorned with markings
reminiscent of tribal body paint.
These differences between Lana and Cia,
two halves of the same being,
directly link the color of their skin
to their goodness and virtue --
falsely suggesting that a lighter skin tone
reflects a purer and more noble spirit.
In reality, lighter skinned women of color
are often depicted as more desirable and more
virtuous because they come closer
to meeting the culturally dominant
white beauty standards.
This insidious notion, that a darker skin tone
reflects a less moral or virtuous soul
is hardly new to the Zelda franchise,
in which the heroic and noble
characters like Link and Zelda are fair-skinned
while the recurring villain Ganondorf is associated
with the darker-skinned Gerudo people.
In Diablo III there are 6, soon to be 7,
classes to choose from,
but only one of them is represented
by black characters -- the witch doctor.
Employing just about every
visual stereotype about tribal warriors
in the book:
elaborate piercings, skull masks and body paint,
and carrying voodoo dolls and shrunken heads
as items of power.
The witch doctor is a caricature of tribal identity,
rooted in centuries-old racist imagery
that has no place being perpetuated
in the 21st century.
And this is nothing new.
Harmful, ignorant, racist stereotypes
have been used in the design
of supporting characters and enemies
in games for decades.
And often the result is female characters
who are both sexualized and exotified.
"Have you come to kill me?"
It's no secret that fighting games often feature
sexualized female characters and often feature
characters whose design is rooted
in ethnic stereotypes.
Sometimes, these two elements combine in
sexualized, exotified female characters.
In Street Fighter IV,
Elena wears...well, she wears almost nothing.
But the bands that she wears
on her arms, legs, and neck vaguely suggest
African tribal culture.
And she possesses that stereotypical
character trait of a mystical connection to the earth.
"I'll show you my dance! You ready?"
All these stereotypes
are anything but harmless.
Here in the United States,
racist images and stereotypes of black women
have been doing tremendous harm for centuries.
In fact, false ideas about black women
as inherently hypersexual beings were perpetuated
in southern slaveholding society.
This was a time when oppressive Victorian ideas
still held sway,
creating a false sense of womanhood
as inherently domestic, submissive, chaste,
innocent, and modest.
But the reality of black women's lives
as slaves was irreconcilable with these notions.
Not only were female slaves of course denied
any and all basic rights as people,
they were also often forced to be naked
when on display at auctions,
were regularly whipped in partial or total nudity
as punishment,
and were frequently sexually assaulted
and raped by their owners.
In her essential book, Sister Citizen,
Melissa Harris-Perry explores how myths
about black women's sexuality were deliberately
perpetuated by white people
as a way of rationalizing their cruel
and dehumanizing treatment of female slaves.
"The myth of black women as lascivious,
seductive, and insatiable was a way of
reconciling the forced public exposure
and commoditization of black women's bodies
with the Victorian ideals of women's modesty
and fragility.
"The idea that black women were
hypersexual beings created space for white moral
superiority by justifying the brutality of
Southern white men."
These false, harmful stereotypes and their tragic
impact have remained alive through the centuries
and into the present day.
Throughout most of American history,
up to and including much of the 20th century,
the sexual assault and rape of black women
by white men was almost never treated as a crime.
In her book, Dark Continent of Our Bodies,
historian Frances E. White says,
"Virtually no legal protection was provided
for women who were portrayed as
loose and licentious.
"Under such conditions, black women --
promiscuous by definition --
found it nearly impossible to convince the legal
establishment that men of any race
should be prosecuted for sexually
assaulting them.
The rape of black women was
simply no crime at all."
Obviously, the problem here is not
with the idea of representing women
who come from tribal cultures.
Our media absolutely should reflect
the cultural diversity of the world
we live in.
But that's not what characters like these do -- at all.
These are not respectful,
well-researched representations of actual cultures.
Rather, they represent a form of cultural
appropriation: when a dominant culture
exploits, and often profits from,
the history, culture, or traditions
of a marginalized group.
Like a white person putting on a sombrero
and a fake mustache, grabbing a bottle of tequila
and saying they're going as
"a Mexican" for Halloween.
These offensive and embarrassing depictions
reduce rich cultures down to a
few stereotypical signifiers.
Mystical powers, skimpy tattered clothing,
body paint, and racialized hypersexualization
are used as shorthand for "exotic."
As a result, these signifiers reinforce extremely
false and damaging stereotypes about the people
and cultures that they're appropriating.
These false, harmful myths and stereotypes
continue to contribute to the marginalizaition
and oppression of women of color
in America today.
For instance, in her book
The Politics of Disgust,
feminist theorist, Ange-Marie Hancock
discusses how racial stereotypes about
black women contribute to a political
system in which the marginalized continue to be
underserved, oppressed, and unheard.
We very rarely see portrayals of women of color
in games that incorporate the cultural history
of those characters in honest, respectful ways.
In many ways, Alex Vance from Half-Life 2
and its follow up episodes is a great character
and it's good to see a non-sexualized
woman of color in such a prominent role.
But the game isn't concerned with
cultural background.
Nilin, the biracial protagonist of Remember Me,
is a sexualized female protagonist -- but
the sexualization doesn't employ racist tropes.
Like Alex, her cultural background is
treated as irrelevant.
Unfortunately, there aren't many positive examples
of women of color in games whose cultural history
isn't erased, but also isn't presented
as the stuff of racist stereotypes.
And that's a shame.
Because characters whose cultural background
are incorporated honestly and respectfully
can work to challenge the deeply racist
status quo.
We're at least seeing some improvement
where black male protagonists are concerned.
Though they're far from perfect in terms
of representation,
2016's Watchdogs 2 and Mafia 3
center black male characters and acknowledge
black identity and structural racism as aspects
of their characters' lives.
Mafia 3 does feature a supporting character
named Cassandra,
a woman of Haitian heritage
whose background is very important
to her character.
Cassandra fights the entrenched Italian mafia
and their racist brutality against
the poor black citizens of the game's
fictional southern city.
The game 1979 Revolution doesn't center
a woman as its protagonist,
but in telling the story of the Iranian
revolution, it illustrates how games can
introduce players to new cultural perspectives
in ways that are respectful and compelling --
and that work to counteract stereotypes
rather than to reinforce them.
"We're a nation of equality
greater than Western capitalism!"
One game with a female protagonist that does
an excellent job of incorporating a character's
cultural history and traditions is Never Alone,
which stars a young girl named Nuna,
a member of the Iñupiat people of Alaska.
Folklore and traditions of the Iñupiat
are incorporated throughout the game
in a respectful way that enriches the player's
understanding of these people and
their experiences.
This kind of respectful treatment of cultural history
and traditions should be the norm.
But instead, games more often just plunder
marginalized cultures with no sense of respect
and no concern whatsoever about
accurately reflecting the people and traditions
they are appropriating from.
To put it simply, it's not ok for games
to reduce these cultures to stereotypical costumes
and personality traits
in an effort to add a bit of exotic flair
to their worlds.
It should not be too much to ask for
and expect representations of people of color
whose cultural backgrounds are acknowledged
and woven into their characters in ways that are
thoughtful, validating, and humanizing.