Enough With The Orientalism Already
It’s high time that game developers and filmmakers stopped resorting to easy stereotypes about the East for plot devices
I like games. I like movies. Okay? I try not to tear them apart searching for subtext and historical accuracy (in public). And I can usually suspend my disbelief for long enough to actually have a good time. They’re just meant to be for fun, so that’s no reason to get too irritated about it.
But sometimes I do get irritated. And then I have to write about it. Games and films are important cultural products and shape the attitudes of their consumers. And much as I’m glad that Western developers are finally turning to the rich history and mythology of the East for source material, it’s also irritating to see them peddling inaccuracies and black/white binaries to make things more easily palatable for their primary audiences in W.E.I.R.D. (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) societies. Lemme tell you, the narrative of the East as “exotic” is as alive as it was in the 19th century. And it’s not doing any of us any good.
Yesterday I watched the announcement trailer of a new installment in my favourite game series, Uncharted. Uncharted is about a bunch of happy-go-lucky, snarky treasure hunters who go about despoiling mythical places in search of treasure. So far, our plucky heroes have accidentally destroyed the awe-inspiring fictional architectures of El Dorado, Shangri-La, Iram of the Pillars, and Libertalia in stunning HD graphics with fun combat, laugh-out-loud jokes, and surprisingly touching personal stories.
And the latest iteration of these lovely games, it turns out, is going to be set in India, where a couple of plucky women protagonists(genuinely happy about that by the way)— one a treasure hunter, the other a mercenary, are searching for (according to the trailer) “The Tusk of Ganesh”, the tusk of the elephant-headed deity worshiped as the Remover of Obstacles in Hindu mythology.
So far so good. I’m not offended by anyone’s take on religion.
But, according to the game, the tusk broke off in a great battle in rural Halebidu. Which, in the trailer, apparently has two colossal statues of gods carved into cliffs, with waterfalls coursing off of them. Cool, right? Only, according to actual mythology and not W.E.I.R.D. rehashing, Ganesh isn’t a fighter — he’s a scholar who breaks off his tusk to take dictation as a sage recites to him the Mahabharata, one of the Hindu religion’s great epics.
What’s more, Halebidu was the historical capital of the Hoysala Kingdom in South India back in the 13th century — and it has lovely temples, but no colossal statues and waterfalls. I know. I’ve been there.
A part of me is flattered that the West is finally taking notice of relatively unknown Indian traditions, but why does it have to be so reductionist? Either we’re cow-worshiping, sexist barbarians who don’t have enough toilets, or we’re exotic, spiritual, temple-building people who study in IITs.
And lest I be accused of not standing up for other cultures, I have issues with any number of Hollywood portrayals. 300, for example, is a fictionalized depiction of the Battle of Thermopylae where a bunch of mostly naked muscular white “Greek” dudes with British accents slaughter a bunch of weak brown Persian monstrosities with who knows what accents. Whereas historically, the massive, cosmopolitan Persian Empire considered the Greeks at the time to be uncouth barbarians.
The stereotype of the wise Chinese/Japanese master who teaches the American kid martial arts has been around since The Karate Kid — the latest iteration of this timeless trope being Kung Fu Panda. (News flash — Iran hated 300 enough to ban it).
And don’t even get me started on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom!
Modern stereotypes, whether positive or negative, do no justice to the culture that’s being depicted. Instead, by perpetuating simplistic ways of thinking about other cultures, the imaginary East/West divide is reinforced, as are existing East/East divides. That undermines the entire point of multiculturalism.
It also does no good to promote the West as having always been a civilizing, moderate, open-minded influence and refuse to acknowledge its own troubled past. How can it ever respect other cultures, or understand why they deserve to be seen differently, if every cultural product the West ever consumes merely reinforces the idea of its own exceptionalism? The average British schoolchild is still shockingly ignorant of the atrocities committed by the British Empire. And don’t even get me started on Americans who think they did the world a favour by invading Iraq. Thanks, American Sniper and Clint Eastwood.
And do you assume that Indians who watch 300 or Kung Fu Panda come away with an enlightened understanding of other cultures? Why did hardline Hindutva organizations support the election of Donald Trump if not partially because of Western-peddled stereoptypes of the Evil Muslim Terrorist? Why do the Chinese assume that India is a land of slums and drains (Slumdog Millionaire)?
Yes, we’re flawed. We do some good things, some bad things. We aren’t black to your white (so please don’t invade us to civilize us), or white to your black (so please don’t come here to visit a random baba, smoke some weed, and get enlightened). You can convey that point without sacrificing your precious plot devices.
Well-informed people aren’t going to be affected by stereotypes anyway (I hope). And the average audience member tends to surprise in this day and age. Wonder Woman has already busted box-office expectations due to a surprising wave of popular support for its assertive feminist narrative.
For the vast majority of people, from East or West, who don’t know much about other cultures — maybe they deserve a better introduction to them than what they’re getting now. Maybe audiences deserve to see a coloured person who’s just that — a person, no better or no worse than anyone else. Maybe mainstream cinema and gaming should do a better job of communicating the sheer diversity of the human experience, and stop underestimating the intelligence of the 21st century audience.
