Stop Whitewashing Dorian Pavus
It’s not news that the landscape of gaming is populated primarily by white protagonists. The treatment of characters of color usually falls into three categories: sidelined, villainized, or cannon fodder — and a good deal of the time they’re not present in the first place. This is the reality of what happens when predominantly white media makers lock themselves into an echo chamber created by years of racism, misogyny, pandering, and lots of money with which to produce media. While some companies are taking steps to level the playing field, the majority of AAA releases still feature the same trio of traits in their main characters: white, male, and straight.
But this isn’t about the state of the game industry and its representation of non-white people. There have been a lot of think pieces out there that are better than anything I could produce on the subject, and anyway, I’m white. I’m not really the person to talk about the nuance of being erased or mistreated in media on the basis of race.
That said, because I’m a fan of one piece of media in particular, and spend time in the trenches of its fandom, what I am going to talk about is erasure in a specific circumstance: Dorian Pavus’ whitewashing by members of the Dragon Age: Inquisition fandom.
As a person who doesn’t work in the game industry, the change I can hope to effect is small in scale. I can vote with my money by buying games I believe in and eschewing what I don’t; I can promote good games to my friends; I can buy merch; I can create transformative media of my own, if I feel like it; and I can call out racism in the fannish circles I run in.
Just to be perfectly clear, the type of racism I’m talking about with regards to Dorian isn’t a fault with Bioware, who made a perfectly lovely action-fantasy RPG with bonus dating sim elements that I deeply enjoy, even though it does have its flaws. No, Bioware actually knocked it out of the park with Dorian Pavus, who is first and foremost well written — and who is also notably gay and a man of color. While Tevinter, Dorian’s homeland in Thedas, is a fantasy country in a fantasy world, according to Lead Narrative Designer John Epler, when describing Dorian’s race, “Indian would be the closest real world analogue.”
I don’t want to be reductive, but for me that’s an obvious conclusion to make. All it took was seeing Dorian’s character design and hearing him — his voice was provided by Ramon Tikaram, a British Indo-Fijian and Malaysian actor — to immediately make a determination of “not white.” While I appreciate knowing the specifics of his race, I didn’t need to be told he is Indian in a fantasy setting.
But apparently some people in the fandom did need to be told.
Where I had a moment of pleasant surprise when Dorian showed up in their game as a snarky, mustachioed badass with an unfortunate propensity for walking around the cold and dirty landscapes of Thedas with most of his pec out, and as someone who was clearly not white, some players noted the first set of characteristics but not his race. I’ve seen reams of meta and discussion on forums, Twitter, and Tumblr that argue a pretty obvious fact — Dorian’s non-whiteness — and that perform mental gymnastics around what race really means in a fantasy world, or how some people are just really tan. In my research for this story, I saw several people claim that Dorian looks Italian.
In terms of degrees of wrongness, that’s not the worst thing to assume. He’s got a dark complexion and looks vaguely Mediterranean to some people. So while it’s a little cringeworthy that they didn’t make the leap to Not White — or all the way to Indian, if they had checked the IMDB credits for Ramon Tikaram or Googled — it should follow that, even if they didn’t realize he’s not white, they at least drew him as tan or swarthy, right?
You would think.
I’ll be frank: I sincerely doubt that people who debate what race means in a fantasy context are doing it with a Machiavellian purpose. Rather, it comes from the sort of ingrained, subconscious racism — one reinforced in all levels of media and society — presuming that white is the default and that white is the aesthetic ideal. That racism is insidious and quotidian. It leads to artists creating whitewashed art. (In this context, “whitewashed” means turning Dorian Pavus from a man with dark skin and a character design meant to be Indian into a man with subtly different features and much paler skin.)
Zevran Arainai is a man of color. Isabela is a woman of color. Josephine Montilyet is a woman of color, from the equivalent of Spain. Vivienne is black. Dorian Pavus is a man of color: he is Indian. None of these characters are white, and they have all been drawn as white or described in fan fiction as white.
Presuming to draw these characters using a palette miles away from their actual skin tone is not acceptable. Brown people will look brown in most, if not all, lighting. And, as lighting has been a point of contention in discussions of whitewashed art, if artists are choosing to draw these characters in washed-out lighting, the first question is why?
Why choose to draw the only circumstance in which this brown character would not look brown? Further, manipulating stills and screencaps of brown and dark-haired, dark-eyed characters into having blond hair or blue eyes (usually referred to as “edits” and considered distinct from drawn fanart) is similarly wrong.
Erasing race — when there are already so few representations of non-white people in mainstream media and in video games — is a hurtful, dehumanizing thing, even if done in ignorance. The message conveyed, as described by John Elper, is that “Unless you’re white, we don’t think you’re worthwhile.” Or that nonwhiteness is a flaw that needs correcting.
I’m not here to debate intent. I think a good number of people who whitewashed Dorian have been remorseful when called out, and that’s a positive sign. These artists are frequently working from the deeply rooted and constantly reinforced idea that white is more attractive, and I doubt they registered the preconception lurking in their subconscious.
With any luck, the protest against whitewashing from members of the Dragon Age fandom and pieces like this one will lead to the end of the practice. My hope is that everyone in the fandom will walk away with a broader understanding of racism. With any luck, the discussion won’t devolve into questions as to whether Dorian is actually white because India doesn’t exist in Thedas. I hope that kind of discussion is over with, along with the whitewashing.
(Also, I hope we can talk about how Dorian is not only whitewashed by fandom, but straightwashed by fandom with mods to allow him to romance female Inquisitors, despite his gayness being a central part of his storyline and his identity, but that’s a whole new article.)
So, you have it from me, a person who dwells in the Dragon Age fandom and loves Dorian Pavus — and Josephine, and Fenris, and Vivienne, and basically everyone with the exception of Solas, who is the actual worst — that Dorian is not white and that whitewashing him should stop. If you require proof of his race, get it from John Elper and Allan Schumacher. If you require proof that whitewashing him or any other character is harmful, look to all of the people who saw themselves in media and then saw themselves summarily erased by their fellow fans.
(This article was originally published on remeshed.com on 4/12/16.)
