Far Cry 3's Citra Is Straight From the Freakshow

[Exterminas]

How could would a better use of these tropes look like?

Frankly, the forest of obscure and insulting racist tropes is extremely thick. To make matters worse, it is densely interwoven with the usual tropes of many adventure stories from the same period of time.

Taking that into account, it always seems kind of unfair to me to criticise this kind of media for racist tropes.
I mean really, what choice is there? If you display natives as in any way positive, you are playing into the noble savage trope. If you are displaying them as in any way bad, you are promoting the idea of the superior white man. If they are just kind of there, you are doing that Joseph-Conrad-Thing, where the natives are just the colorful backdrop for whities joyfull adventures.

I don't see any way you can tell a story that involves a native population without stepping in anyone of the dozens trope-traps.

 

[Gigano]

So a bad ending takes its material from something which was bad, punishing you for revelling in it?

Ban this sick filth! Seems quite appropriate. Though this being harmless fiction, there'd be no problem if the good ending was obtained by revelling in it either. In games which are already about shooting people in as many new and interesting ways as possible, defying a few other conventional ethical standards for which fantasies are acceptable to act out have no relevance.

Those who'd have a problem with it could simply look elsewhere, as it's none of their business what games other people choose to enjoy in their spare time and the privacy of their own home. As is, somebody was offended by a fictional game nobody forced them to play, then set out to post that offence on the internet.

Strip away the references to the sins of long dead fathers, anthropology, and cultural relativism which motivated said offence, and that's what remain. I always found this staggering lack of respect for the plurality of available media quite staggering. God forbid there be fictional media targeting audiences with taste quite different from their own, if it offends the delicate sensibilities, or political ambitions for which direction society should move in. And of course players other than themselves won't understand any subtle critique, but fall prey to the surface level archaic racist caricature. God forbid there be games which actually required effort on the part of the player to decipher, and had multiple layers to them, some of which weren't afraid to challenge and play around with established norms!

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

Okay, here's my problem with this article: The real group he mentions at the end, if used in fiction, sounds MORE RACIST THAN THE FICTION IT'S REPLACING.

 

[WanderingFool]

Okay, here's my problem with this article: The real group he mentions at the end, if used in fiction, sounds MORE RACIST THAN THE FICTION IT'S REPLACING.

Funny how reality works, isnt it?

I also feel bad about chuckling while reading the part about the John Frum religion.

 

[Slash2x]

Bah! The only way a game can let someone shoot at other living things and not get called racist is if the people involved are all the same color, or they are quasi-human like Gears or Killzone. They make a skin tone mod for the PC to shade down the pale man and make it ok. Heaven forbid a story about drugged out people acting crazy have more than one skin tone...

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

Okay, here's my problem with this article: The real group he mentions at the end, if used in fiction, sounds MORE RACIST THAN THE FICTION IT'S REPLACING.

Funny how reality works, isnt it?

I also feel bad about chuckling while reading the part about the John Frum religion.

my point was that it undercuts the idea behind the article. He offers it up as an alternative to the unacceptable story, but it's so bizarre that it sounds like something you'd find in a cartoon. from the 1900s

 

[Lonewolfm16]

Okay, here's my problem with this article: The real group he mentions at the end, if used in fiction, sounds MORE RACIST THAN THE FICTION IT'S REPLACING.

Agreed. If the natives had began worshiping Jason as a messenger from their ancestors and marveling at the splendors of modern technology he brought with him, they would have been accused of being really really racist. But this stuff actually happened!

 

[Ldude893]

I never saw the setting of Far Cry 3 as authentic, or anything other than a backdrop for extremely fun stealth/shooting gameplay. You could argue that a game favoring fun over political commentary would call for an unrealistic, overexaggerated setting like Rook Island, but I do understand that some people aren't educated enough to grasp beyond the exoticized view of foreign countries, and I think this game really missed a chance at presenting something unique by subverting the standard tropical-island-tribal tropes.

If the game was going for satire, I think a better satire would be a game where the main character is a native islander stranded in some city representing EVERY worst aspect of the Western world, or a game where the main character comes in thinking that it's going to be another tropical island adventure only to have his perceptions bite him in the ass (i.e. Spec Ops the Line.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Hearing what the real islanders are like really makes me wish Far Cry 3 was more about them instead of all the fake stuff they had.

Thing is, even the authentic stuff they used was a fucked up mix of various Polynesian cultures, some Melanesian cultures and even some scraps taken from a couple of indigenous Indonesian tribal cultures.

Have not played the game, but if that is so, well that's a bit sad too.

"Hipster Racism"
xD HA!

"We're lynching you ironically."

"Well, that well be just GREAT."

The extent to which some of the folks responding to this article don't just miss the point but purposely avoid it is... well, I WANT to say "astounding," but I'm afraid it's far too predictable if I'm being honest. :|

It is also interesting how people seem to thing Rath also thinks there is nothing good about the game just because it has some racist stuff in it.
Even though he calls it "fearless and fun" at the start of the article.

So a bad ending takes its material from something which was bad, punishing you for revelling in it?

Ban this sick filth! Seems quite appropriate. Though this being harmless fiction, there'd be no problem if the good ending was obtained by revelling in it either. In games which are already about shooting people in as many new and interesting ways as possible, defying a few other conventional ethical standards for which fantasies are acceptable to act out have no relevance.

Those who'd have a problem with it could simply look elsewhere, as it's none of their business what games other people choose to enjoy in their spare time and the privacy of their own home. As is, somebody was offended by a fictional game nobody forced them to play, then set out to post that offence on the internet.

Strip away the references to the sins of long dead fathers, anthropology, and cultural relativism which motivated said offence, and that's what remain. I always found this staggering lack of respect for the plurality of available media quite staggering. God forbid there be fictional media targeting audiences with taste quite different from their own, if it offends the delicate sensibilities, or political ambitions for which direction society should move in. And of course players other than themselves won't understand any subtle critique, but fall prey to the surface level archaic racist caricature. God forbid there be games which actually required effort on the part of the player to decipher, and had multiple layers to them, some of which weren't afraid to challenge and play around with established norms!

So, nobody will be offended as long as we get rid of all the context of what the story means in realtion to real life?
How do you want us to do that, and still be able to "decipher" games?
Just because something is fictional dosen't mean it can't be offencive. The movie The Birth of a Nation is completely fack, as are the stories Citra's character is based on. That dosen't make them meaningless. And the meanings(messages of the stories) behind both are offencive.

If you want different games we need more people to look at games on deeper levels, ask what they mean, and ask for more attention to be put into the meaning of a game. Also, as I(and more importantly Rath) said before, just because a game has some questionable content (in this case a character made into an old time stereotype), that does not mean the whole game is bad, and it doesn't mean the game shouldn't be aloud to exist if it has such a flaw. Why get so mad at Rath if you want games "which actually required effort on the part of the player to decipher"? That is what he is doing. What we find when we decipher a game won't always be good things.

Also, how is making a character into a sterotype "multi-layered"? Isn't using sterotypes the opposite of being multi-layered?

 

[LysanderNemoinis]

While not exactly pertaining to the same region, here's a little something that Mr. Rath will no doubt see as racist, because you know...everything is.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.402210-Indonesian-mother-kills-son-over-small-penis

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Okay, here's my problem with this article: The real group he mentions at the end, if used in fiction, sounds MORE RACIST THAN THE FICTION IT'S REPLACING.

Agreed. If the natives had began worshiping Jason as a messenger from their ancestors and marveling at the splendors of modern technology he brought with him, they would have been accused of being really really racist. But this stuff actually happened!

Yeah but then they could have given it a Captain Cook ending.

"Hey, you're not a god after all!" *sharktooth club to the head*

The moral being to tell Hawaiians you're not a god no matter how much they insist that you are... also that history hates Yorkshiremen.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Far Cry 3's Citra Is Straight From the Freakshow

Far Cry 3's "Join Citra" ending has its roots in stereotypes from the 19th century.

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Your articles are always well-written and well thought through, so I applaud you for that, even if in this case I beg to differ.

Is it not true that the more modern trope of the 'noble savages' is in its own way just as stereotypical as the earlier 'tattooed man' freak-shows. The 'noble savage' having its own (I find at least) particularly insidious brand of patronizing racism, where people try to hard to apply anthropomorphic qualities onto already human cultures as if they were a different species. That's what Jason sees in the Rakyat, and throws away everything he has to obey them without question. Getting his just desserts in the end for it in that end I don't think should be interpreted as 'Those kooky savages with their human sacrifices eh?' but rather 'all peoples of this earth have the potential to be cruel and manipulative, and you shouldn't be so naive as to believe you're fighting for a higher cause just because a pretty woman can spout some bullshit about warriors and spirituality'.

Also, when it comes to him obeying Citra without question, Far Cry 3 not only satirizes the 'rescue the princess' trope, but also it's peers in the current generation FPS genre, where you obey the voice of authority in your ear as he barks at you to commit war crimes, because you're, like, the good guys right? The fact that he acts like this makes him not the 'mighty whitey' at all (subverting that trope as well) because he willingly relinquishes power over his own situation. He gets raped, and his response to it pretty much is "So... are there any chores you need me to do while I'm here?"

 

[wearedevo]

Solid critique, right up until mentioning the cargo cults at the end. While I agree that they are fascinating, they're such a fringe minority that including them in this discussion is pretty odd.

Some of the comments above are breathtakingly stupid, but thanks at least for helping me shade the "typical liberal BS!" "it's satire!" "it's just a game!" and "stop overanalyzing everything!" squares in my Dumbass Internet Comment bingo today.

 

[anteater123]

So, I'm going to guess, based on the comments I've read here, that there is not a single person attacking Mr. Rath here who has ever even been to, much less lived in or even bothered to learn anything about, the South Pacific. As someone who actually spent a considerable chunk of his life in the South Pacific and has befriended and spoken with quite a few Polynesians from quite a few cultures (in other words, someone who actually knows what he's talking about), I'm just going to say that Mr. Rath is absolutely, 100% correct in what he says here.

One of the problems with Polynesian stereotypes is that the world at large knows so little about the South Pacific and its cultures that people don't even know the stereotypes when they see them. To claim that Polynesians sacrifice virgins to volcanoes, dress in grass skirts and coconut bikinis while living in grass huts and forcibly tattooing white men is about as ignorant and racist as claiming that black people are related to chimpanzees, are all drug dealers and love to rape white women, but because most people have probably never even met or spoken with a Polynesian they don't know how problematic these stereotypes are. That Far Cry 3 missed the opportunity to truthfully portray the South Pacific is an unfortunate missed opportunity because it is so extremely rare to ever see the South Pacific done justice in any kind of popular media (the only case I can think of that even came close was The Descendants, and even that was a pretty white-washed portrayal of Hawaii).

I know it sucks to have to admit that something you didn't know was a stereotype is in fact a stereotype, but the truth is, whether you want to accept it or not, that the Citra narrative in Far Cry 3 does uphold an extremely backwards portrayal of the South Pacific, and if you think I'm wrong, why don't you try, I don't know, doing something crazy like actually bothering to learn something about the South Pacific or speak to some people out there to learn why these kinds of narratives bother them so much (and if you're going to tell me they shouldn't be bothered by it, then why don't you also go tell all the black people and Latinos in this country that they shouldn't be bothered by the fact that they always get portrayed as gangsters and drug dealers, and go tell Muslims that they shouldn't be bothered by the fact that they're always being portrayed as terrorists, because whether or not you think they should be bothered by it counts for pretty much fuck-all to them).

Now, let all the complaints about how I'm a whiny, liberal douchebag who can't appreciate how bad white people got it in this country begin...

 

[LysanderNemoinis]

So, I'm going to guess, based on the comments I've read here, that there is not a single person attacking Mr. Rath here who has ever even been to, much less lived in or even bothered to learn anything about, the South Pacific. As someone who actually spent a considerable chunk of his life in the South Pacific and has befriended and spoken with quite a few Polynesians from quite a few cultures (in other words, someone who actually knows what he's talking about), I'm just going to say that Mr. Rath is absolutely, 100% correct in what he says here.

One of the problems with Polynesian stereotypes is that the world at large knows so little about the South Pacific and its cultures that people don't even know the stereotypes when they see them. To claim that Polynesians sacrifice virgins to volcanoes, dress in grass skirts and coconut bikinis while living in grass huts and forcibly tattooing white men is about as ignorant and racist as claiming that black people are related to chimpanzees, are all drug dealers and love to rape white women, but because most people have probably never even met or spoken with a Polynesian they don't know how problematic these stereotypes are. That Far Cry 3 missed the opportunity to truthfully portray the South Pacific is an unfortunate missed opportunity because it is so extremely rare to ever see the South Pacific done justice in any kind of popular media (the only case I can think of that even came close was The Descendants, and even that was a pretty white-washed portrayal of Hawaii).

I know it sucks to have to admit that something you didn't know was a stereotype is in fact a stereotype, but the truth is, whether you want to accept it or not, that the Citra narrative in Far Cry 3 does uphold an extremely backwards portrayal of the South Pacific, and if you think I'm wrong, why don't you try, I don't know, doing something crazy like actually bothering to learn something about the South Pacific or speak to some people out there to learn why these kinds of narratives bother them so much (and if you're going to tell me they shouldn't be bothered by it, then why don't you also go tell all the black people and Latinos in this country that they shouldn't be bothered by the fact that they always get portrayed as gangsters and drug dealers, and go tell Muslims that they shouldn't be bothered by the fact that they're always being portrayed as terrorists, because whether or not you think they should be bothered by it counts for pretty much fuck-all to them).

Now, let all the complaints about how I'm a whiny, liberal douchebag who can't appreciate how bad white people got it in this country begin...

Oh, I highly doubt that will happen. I would hazard a guess that there's far more people here that agree with you than those, like me, that do not. Rath mentions how previous civilizations have engaged in the tribal, sacrificing maidens thing in the past...and? I'm an American of Italian heritage, and I for one am not offended by movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas for portraying people like me as ruthless sociopaths and criminals. Hell, The Godfather's one of my favorite games!
Every racial and ethnic group has baggage, every group has done crappy stuff in the past, and every group still gets negative portrayals. No one who has Puritan ancestors complains when we all agree that the Salem Witch Trials were horrible and we show that in media. And I'm sure Germans aren't too happy with all the Nazi killing we do in video games. The only way we can ever move past things is if we just get over it and stop getting so defensive whenever someone or something hurts our fragile sensibilities. While not the best example, to paraphrase Yahtzee, a truly tolerant society is one where anyone can say anything and no one gets offended because everyone can take a joke or accept that for the sake of a story, certain more unsavory aspects of a group are used for a narrative.

 

[ClockworkUniverse]

I was very concerned before playing the game that its themes might be somewhat racist, but when I played it, I felt like while the Rakyat did fall into an unfortunate stereotype, the game itself seemed, to me, to frame their behavior in terms of the locale being so dangerous that it tends to drive people crazy. Now obviously you could argue that this has its issues in and of itself, and you wouldn't be wrong, but I think it makes a difference in that it ties the Rakyat inexorably to Jason's personal development. In addition to Jason, consider Dennis, Dr. Earnhardt, and Willis.

So...I won't say it doesn't tie into some unfortunate history, but I don't have an issue with the game itself.

 

[anteater123]

So, I'm going to guess, based on the comments I've read here, that there is not a single person attacking Mr. Rath here who has ever even been to, much less lived in or even bothered to learn anything about, the South Pacific. As someone who actually spent a considerable chunk of his life in the South Pacific and has befriended and spoken with quite a few Polynesians from quite a few cultures (in other words, someone who actually knows what he's talking about), I'm just going to say that Mr. Rath is absolutely, 100% correct in what he says here.

One of the problems with Polynesian stereotypes is that the world at large knows so little about the South Pacific and its cultures that people don't even know the stereotypes when they see them. To claim that Polynesians sacrifice virgins to volcanoes, dress in grass skirts and coconut bikinis while living in grass huts and forcibly tattooing white men is about as ignorant and racist as claiming that black people are related to chimpanzees, are all drug dealers and love to rape white women, but because most people have probably never even met or spoken with a Polynesian they don't know how problematic these stereotypes are. That Far Cry 3 missed the opportunity to truthfully portray the South Pacific is an unfortunate missed opportunity because it is so extremely rare to ever see the South Pacific done justice in any kind of popular media (the only case I can think of that even came close was The Descendants, and even that was a pretty white-washed portrayal of Hawaii).

I know it sucks to have to admit that something you didn't know was a stereotype is in fact a stereotype, but the truth is, whether you want to accept it or not, that the Citra narrative in Far Cry 3 does uphold an extremely backwards portrayal of the South Pacific, and if you think I'm wrong, why don't you try, I don't know, doing something crazy like actually bothering to learn something about the South Pacific or speak to some people out there to learn why these kinds of narratives bother them so much (and if you're going to tell me they shouldn't be bothered by it, then why don't you also go tell all the black people and Latinos in this country that they shouldn't be bothered by the fact that they always get portrayed as gangsters and drug dealers, and go tell Muslims that they shouldn't be bothered by the fact that they're always being portrayed as terrorists, because whether or not you think they should be bothered by it counts for pretty much fuck-all to them).

Now, let all the complaints about how I'm a whiny, liberal douchebag who can't appreciate how bad white people got it in this country begin...

Oh, I highly doubt that will happen. I would hazard a guess that there's far more people here that agree with you than those, like me, that do not. Rath mentions how previous civilizations have engaged in the tribal, sacrificing maidens thing in the past...and? I'm an American of Italian heritage, and I for one am not offended by movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas for portraying people like me as ruthless sociopaths and criminals. Hell, The Godfather's one of my favorite games!
Every racial and ethnic group has baggage, every group has done crappy stuff in the past, and every group still gets negative portrayals. No one who has Puritan ancestors complains when we all agree that the Salem Witch Trials were horrible and we show that in media. And I'm sure Germans aren't too happy with all the Nazi killing we do in video games. The only way we can ever move past things is if we just get over it and stop getting so defensive whenever someone or something hurts our fragile sensibilities. While not the best example, to paraphrase Yahtzee, a truly tolerant society is one where anyone can say anything and no one gets offended because everyone can take a joke or accept that for the sake of a story, certain more unsavory aspects of a group are used for a narrative.

Apparently you missed the whole point of the fact that the narrative he's talking about (Polynesian women kidnapping white men and forcibly tattooing them) is a complete fabrication. No one of Puritan descent (which includes me) gets angry about the Salem Witch Trials because they were historic fact, so it's not even a valid comparison. I would think a white person was an idiot if they tried to deny the Salem Witch Trials happened and were a bad thing and I would think a Polynesian were an idiot if he tried to deny that human sacrifice used to happen and was a bad thing. That is completely different from factually incorrect narratives that lead people to believe you are an ignorant savage (something that you, as a white European - and yes, Italians are white - will never have to worry about). The narrative Rath is talking about is more akin to the extensive "research" in the 19th century that "proved" that black people were on the same evolutionary and intellectual level as chimpanzees, and if your idea of a utopian society is one where a hiring manager at a job interview can tell a black man that he doesn't want to hire him for the position because he's on the same intellectual plane as a chimpanzee and then tell him that he shouldn't get angry because we live in a society where people can say whatever they want, then your idea of a utopian society is really fucking stupid (and, by your own logic, you have no right to get offended at what I just said).