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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Id entity thinks Sony's marketing department should be hit with sticks.

  
  

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*
20:16 / 05.07.06
From this:


To this:


What is going on with the game industry? Are Sony and their allied game manufacturers under the impression that people of African descent like being depicted like this? Do they think it will sell more games to Black people? Or have they probably correctly divined that it will sell more games and systems to white people? Is Jeremy Parish right that we shouldn't blame Japanese game and console designers for innocently reproducing American racist stereotypes of the past (%which are now surely all dead, thank Gods%)? Or is it, well, sort of racist to assume that everyone involved in producing these images is a) Japanese, and b) unable to comprehend the complexities of offensive stereotyping?

I'm not inclined to let Sony off the hook here. How about you?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:59 / 05.07.06
Well, the top image has nothing to do with Japan - it's been produced by Sony Netherlands. The European advertising for Sony is handled by TBWA, a formerly British ad agency now owned, IIRC, by Omnicom.

I'm already following the discussion of this on Metafilter - it's fascinating to see how many people are confident in their ability to state with absolute confidence what is and is not racist.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
22:02 / 05.07.06
That piece on LocoRoco... well, I'm not convinced that the writer isn't simply trying too hard to pin down a currently popular, critically acclaimed title in order to sensationalise his argument. Which is a shame, and stupid, because there's an almost endless stream of games out there that would better have illustrated his point.

Black (here) = evil because night = fear. That, I think, is quite clear when you look at the design of the hero of the piece. LocoRoco = yellow = sun. Bad guy = black = night. You defeat the bad guys - or, rather, you travel to the end of the level because there aren't actually all that many bad guys to defeat - and a plant grows. Grow all the plants and the sun rises over the planet. It's a theme that carries ont throughout the entire game.

There's a lot of evidence of institutional racism in games. A lot. Trying to make this game out to be an example of that does a huge amount of damage to your argument.
 
 
*
22:30 / 05.07.06
Randy: It's not just about the color, it's about the lips and the "dreadlocks." These three things combined make it pretty clear to me that this is imagery taken from racist stereotypes, albeit probably indirectly. And "black = evil because night = fear" is a pretty ancient anthropological model which is eurocentric in itself, as I recall; it doesn't explain the many non-European cultures wherein white signifies evil. I don't share your interpretation of the color symbolism, and anyway the color is only a third of the signifiers which I see as evidence of racist imagery.

Haus: Thanks for the clarification. If anything interesting happens on metafilter, would you post a link?

So I'll rephrase the question— what's up with Sony Netherlands?
 
 
Jawsus-son Starship
22:51 / 05.07.06
it's about the lips and the "dreadlocks."

Am I being super naive, but arn't they spiders?

With regard to other games - the GTA series has a long and bad history of racial sterotyping which rarely seems to be brought up (iirc, haitians are the only group who have commented, at least in the mainstream media, about racist languge in GTA Vice City - "Kill the Haitians" or something similar").

The main problem with western gaming culture is that its mainstream is white, male, working/middle class - hardly a socio-economic group with a rich history of racial understanding.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
23:10 / 05.07.06
I don't want to be seen to be defending something that somebody else clearly sees as being the product of unwitting or subconscious racism, but I'm still not convinced. Mouths and lips are red. The 'dreads'... they can be legs (y'know, like a spider) or tentacles. The way they're animated, I never once thought of them as hair. The Golly thing hadn't occured to me at all while playing - not until this thread - and I don't see why it can't be an accident, a coincidence. I definitely see the comparison now that it's been pointed out, but it's a leap - and a leap without sufficient supporting evidence - to presume that the one was influenced by the other.

Also: the teeth. I'm reading vampirism in the teeth, which again suggests night.

And "black = evil because night = fear" is a pretty ancient anthropological model which is eurocentric in itself, as I recall;

That can't always be the case, surely. Doesn't a fear of darkness (as in lack of light) naturally come from the inability to see what's out there trying to eat you? I don't see race playing a massive part in that - I'm very much open to the argument, but at the moment it doesn't really gel with me.

Shoting myself in the foot slightly, but the other thing I just thought about wrt this particular game is that it also features a black hero. You're given the opportunity to swap between characters - the's a pink French-accented one, a red Jamaican-accented one and a black American-accented one. Which possibly weakens the day/night argument a little, but does suggest that any racism visible in the design of the enemy character is accidental and/or unintentional.

Math> The Grand Theft Auto people have traditionally taken the Bernard Manning defence - "I'm not racist, I hate everybody" - and it's just as unconvincing coming from them as it is him.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
23:16 / 05.07.06
All that said, I'm not sure that my admiration for the way LocoRoco's mechanics are designed and how it plays aren't blinding me to what's obvious to others. I'm also a bit wary of focusing on that one example too much because it appears to put me on the same side of the argument as the stupid, stupid people posting comments to 1UP.
 
 
Jawsus-son Starship
23:17 / 05.07.06
I'm reading vampirism in the teeth, which again suggests night.

Or spider's fangs. For delivering posion and such.
 
 
*
23:31 / 05.07.06
Randy, it's not about who's "bad." It's about uncritically reproducing the iconography of racist stereotypes. Even if these things are meant to be "spiders" or something, if you look at the history of racist imagery of Black people it's clear where their design elements came from, consciously or not. You assert that they are colored black because black is pretty naturally associated with evil, since it's the color of night and that is scary. Okay. But the color in combination with the emphasized lips (why do they have lips? why not just a mouth?) and the tendrils/locks (spiders don't look anything like that for crying out loud) evokes racist imagery. Why these things in combination? I assert it's because they've been seen in that combination in racist imagery for two centuries, and because it's easy for people who have absorbed that imagery to reproduce it without even intending to.
 
 
Jawsus-son Starship
23:45 / 05.07.06
spiders don't look anything like that for crying out loud

To be flippant, neither do black people...

I can see the golly-wog analogy in the kojya - same type of colouring, same outline of face. But it's all based on my preconceptions of what this could be, as opposed to the artist ideas of what he was trying to create. It is simply to difficult to guess what the artist was trying to do. But this example doesn't map for me. On the other hand, a spider has eight legs, and these things have nine and a shit load of tentacle leg/dreadlock things. Lips wise - again, you could read them as a black and white mistrels look. But this is based on western (UK) 50's-70's popular culture.

My problem with this specific example is that it's difficult to put these trace elements of my country's racsist past into the hands of a japanese games designer. I'm pulling for coincidence on this one.
 
 
*
00:17 / 06.07.06
I see you didn't read all the links:

Meanwhile, Japan spent America's formative years completely closed to the rest of the world, and even now its population is roughly 99% ethnically Japanese. Which means that most of Japan's collective experience with other races is limited to preconceptions and media imagery, much of which was imported in the early portion of this century. What kind of racial imagery would that be? Well, let's see what our earliest exports were....



Hmm, Al Jolson wore blackface in the first-ever talking movie. Not encouraging, but at least we know Disney was above that sort of---



Oh, right, Fantasia. Oops.

Unfortunately, these are the images that became ingrained in Japan's collective conscious. By the time America's Civil Rights movement convinced (most) everyone that skin color shouldn't affect a person's right to be treated with dignity and respect, the damage was done. If you've ever read any work by Osamu Tezuka (think Walt Disney, Charles Schulz and C.S. Lewis all rolled into one), you know that he was very much a supporter of equality and human rights.

In fact, by complete coincidence I came across this drawing of Astroboy defending Judaism from Nazis just this morning. Yet Tezuka frequently depicted big-lipped, spear-throwing, grass-skirt-wearing natives in "Kimba the White Lion". Because he was a bigot? No, because manga relies on visual shorthand and iconic imagery, and Tezuka was simply using a classic "jungle" image imported into Japan through decades of early American films and serials, like Tarzan. The '50s and '60s made that sort of imagery verboten over here, but Japan never experienced race riots, protests, MLK, Malcolm X. They missed the memo, so to speak.

Thus this imagery has carried into other Japanese media, including videogames -- even those by companies you'd think would know better. Like Square, whose version of Tom Sawyer featured Jim the slave...



Maybe this helps to see some context.
 
 
Jawsus-son Starship
06:40 / 06.07.06
Ummm... Al Jolson and Disney are American constructs. I'm English. I think the minstrels (AFAIK) were Welsh, and the Gollywog was made by Robinson's Jam which is also English. I was discussing how I can see something racially charged in this picture, but this is based on MY filter of things I've been exposed too in popular culture, which is why I expressed it in these terms. Sorry if this didn't come off to clearly.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:40 / 06.07.06
I think the point is that many of those cultural connectors are shared, Mathlete. See:

Unfortunately, these are the images that became ingrained in Japan's collective conscious. By the time America's Civil Rights movement convinced (most) everyone that skin color shouldn't affect a person's right to be treated with dignity and respect, the damage was done. If you've ever read any work by Osamu Tezuka (think Walt Disney, Charles Schulz and C.S. Lewis all rolled into one), you know that he was very much a supporter of equality and human rights.

In fact, by complete coincidence I came across this drawing of Astroboy defending Judaism from Nazis just this morning. Yet Tezuka frequently depicted big-lipped, spear-throwing, grass-skirt-wearing natives in "Kimba the White Lion". Because he was a bigot? No, because manga relies on visual shorthand and iconic imagery, and Tezuka was simply using a classic "jungle" image imported into Japan through decades of early American films and serials, like Tarzan. The '50s and '60s made that sort of imagery verboten over here, but Japan never experienced race riots, protests, MLK, Malcolm X. They missed the memo, so to speak.

(Oh, and minstrel shows originated in the US, by the way).

Much Japanese visual style is heavily influenced by the influx of post-war US comics, which at the time had some really dubious depictions of African and African-Americans.

In this case, it may well be the case that the baddies are based on the game designer's dreadlocked face, as has been claimed. The point of the post Jeremy Parish was commenting on, however, was not that this was deliberate racism, but that you'd think a localisation team might have noticed this unfortunate correspondence, as they did with Oilman and Jynx, and that failing to do so might impair the playing pleasure of black Americans.
 
 
Lugue
11:01 / 06.07.06
In this case, it may well be the case that the baddies are based on the game designer's dreadlocked face, as has been claimed. The point of the post Jeremy Parish was commenting on, however, was not that this was deliberate racism, but that you'd think a localisation team might have noticed this unfortunate correspondence, as they did with Oilman and Jynx, and that failing to do so might impair the playing pleasure of black Americans.

This certainly seems to be the main issue - to what extent those who distribute these games internationally should be held responsible for the potentially offensive content they contain. While it seems easy to jump to "fully", it's hard for me to figure out to what extent this sort of imagery is justifiable in and of itself: while I, and I think most, understand that it's innocuous, in that it is, rather than a purposeful belittlement of actual black people, a set of visual symbols uncritically absorbed in the past, I think that if it's the only kind of depiction of black people in Japanese culture, there might be a bit of an issue. Should we expect a greater understanding of race than symbols from racist times?

Meaning, I sort of think that whether this sort of imagery is entirely predominant is somewhat significant. Am I wrong?
 
 
Lugue
11:02 / 06.07.06
(But then, that relates more to Japanese understanding of races, which might be somewhat off-topic; I apologize.)
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
11:08 / 06.07.06
I suspect it won't make an awful lot of difference to public perceptions so long as the airwaves are brimful of upbeat, cheerful depictions of black Americans. Shooting each other and fucking their "ho"s, that is. Why bother letting other people charge you with violent misogyny when you can proclaim it for yourself? With friends like these...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:15 / 06.07.06
In many ways, our greatest weapon in the fight against misogyny is racism.

Or to put it another way: if you have nothing relevant to the actual thread topic to say, Kay, which seems on current form unlikely, please find somewhere else to peddle unsupported and irrelevant stereotypes, or to complain about the representation of black Americans in the media, which you appeared to be doing until your last two sentences, which turned the whole thing into mush. Somewhere other than Barbelith would be nice.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:22 / 06.07.06
I read that more as Kay referring to the GTA stereotype rather than actually peddling it.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:24 / 06.07.06
Is GTA on the airwaves, then?

It's pretty clear what Kay was saying, Stoatie. Black Americans have nobody to blame but themselves because of their evil rap music. There's a thread about this in the Music forum Kay could probably post in if ze likes.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:26 / 06.07.06
Stoatie - that makes sense as an interpretation (barring the bit about airwaves) up to:

Why bother letting other people charge you with violent misogyny when you can proclaim it for yourself? With friends like these...

At which point it appears that Kay is saying that it doesn't really matter how you depict black Americans, because they deserve it, and they deserve it because, as a race, they have been depicting themselves shooting guns and doing ladies over the airwaves. As such, they haven't got a leg to stand on in any arena in which it appears that black people are being negatively represented - that is, that there is a direct, straight-line connection between the output of all black people in the US (to wit, violently misogynistic hip-hop) and how much attention should be given to the appearance of a character in Loco Roco (none).

I think that might actually need a new thread - perhaps one in the Head Shop called "crabs in a barrel".
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
14:40 / 06.07.06
Oh, come on. I'm saying that perceptions of black people are less likely to be influenced by some naff posters for a couple of video games than by the very large numbers of very influential artists who make their living by embracing a violent and sexist ethos. I am not for one second attributing blame to those artists; obviously the whole picture is very complicated, but I am saying that these pictures are a drop compared to the %self inflicted% ocean.

Do you disagree, Haus? If you think that's not a relevant contribution please explain to us why Sony's pictures - and indeed the entire corpus of stereotype reinforcing video game adverts - outweigh the perception due to the export of violent/misogynist rap music* and gangsta culture. And that therefore venting spleen on Sony - who should of course not do it - is rather trivial.

*I am of course aware that this is hardly representative of the entire spectrum etc. etc., but it certainly summarises the East Coast / West Coast bollocks neatly enough.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:44 / 06.07.06
Certainly. It's not, after all, as if anyone who had being paying the slightest bit of attention to rap for the last five to ten years would, say, realise that describing the mainstream as "East Coast/West Coast" was an anachronism thanks to the ascendancy of the South.

Why don't you find or start a thread in the Music forum in which we can discuss your views on rap music in depth, Kay?
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
14:54 / 06.07.06
Good grief. I didn't realise that the shape of rap in the nineties, or the ongoing idolisation of some of the participants, had no bearing today.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:56 / 06.07.06
In fact, Kay, can you without looking at the Internet give me the lyrics from five rap songs of the last couple of years that support your contention?

No, you can't. Because you don't listen to rap. Why would you listen to rap when you already know that it is made up entirely of those beastly men shooting people and expressing misogynistic beliefs? Why would you put yourself through that?

And, of course, all black people make gangsta rap. If any black people do not make gangsta rap, then they are still to blame for not stopping other black people from making gangsta rap. It's their fault.

And, of course, it is vitally important that you share you feelings about how black people are their own worst enemy in a thread about video games that it is pretty clear that you haven't read - to start with, the posters are advertising _hardware_, not games.

Ignorant generalisation about race based on ill-informed prejudice without an interest in the current situation? There's a word for that. You might want to think about how close you are to fitting it.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
15:02 / 06.07.06
I didn't realise that the shape of rap in the nineties, or the ongoing idolisation of some of the participants, had no bearing today.

No bearing on what? On how we should respond to an advert in which a white woman dressed all in white agressively grabs a black man under the slogan "White is coming", presumably intended to trigger the response "Yay! Good old white!"? I mean, I agree, the shape of rap in the nineties probably doesn't have a lot of bearing on that. Not quite sure why you brought it up.

If you want to discuss the shape of rap then or now in more detail, y'know getting into the actual contours of that shape rather than just the fuzzy blurred thing one might see from far away whilst not wearing one's glasses/contact lenses, my earlier suggestion still stands.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
15:13 / 06.07.06
Oh, please leave off the ad hominem, Haus. Of course I've read the bloody thread. The second of those posters is for a game, so please acknowledge that you were wrong to say in a thread about video games that it is pretty clear that you haven't read - to start with, the posters are advertising _hardware_, not games.

(digression)

I do, incidentally, listen to rap; it's hard to avoid. I own very few rap albums, to be sure; I'm not a fan, but I'm not a fan because I don't particularly like the music. Perhaps I'm listening to the wrong radio stations, although I do try to listen around; I am something of an audiovore, and am perfectly willing to listen to anything once.
 
 
rising and revolving
15:14 / 06.07.06
That's five posts in a row off-topic. Take it somewhere else.
 
 
rising and revolving
15:21 / 06.07.06
On how we should respond to an advert in which a white woman dressed all in white agressively grabs a black man under the slogan

I think it's a black woman, actually.

Not that it makes a great deal of difference to the case, though.

I think Randy mentioned upthread one of the most interesting parts of this discussion - which is that racism is so deeply ingrained across gaming in general (and Japanese gaming in specific) that these cases don't necessarily stand alone.

Also, Japanese representations of black people are widely problematic. Not just in games, but in their manga. This does seem to be a cultural issue first and foremost - it's simply not a problem in their culture.

To what extent do we demand change in foreign films to meet local standards? Generally not at all - you simply subtitle and be done with it. Why are games different?

I think these are the interesting and key points that arise from here, personally. Along with the US developers racism, which is of a completely different and equally offensive type.

Not to mention representations of Japanese elements in western developed games. Which are usually ham-fisted to say the least.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:32 / 06.07.06
Of course I've read the bloody thread. The second of those posters is for a game, so please acknowledge that you were wrong to say in a thread about video games that it is pretty clear that you haven't read - to start with, the posters are advertising _hardware_, not games.

You said:

I'm saying that perceptions of black people are less likely to be influenced by some naff posters for a couple of video games

There are no posters for video games in this thread. Only one of the two pics above is for a game, so there are not "a couple of games". The only poster is for the white PSP. Looks like I was right - and neatly back ontopic.


Anyhow - there is a thread here which looks at how groups within and without hip-hop use perceptions of the genre as violent and misogynistic in different ways. To be honest, it descends into the mad mind of a man gone wrong, but there's still some interesting stuff there and I think you'll find a lot of thoughts you'll recognise. I'd start there and work your way through to the end, then share any thoughts you might have.

Any more rotting of this thread I don't think is going to get us very far. I'll move to delete anything further that very obviously has nothing to do with video games.

On the poster atop - it's worth noting that it is not the only poster in the series - there are a number of others in which "white" and "black" are fighting - I saw 4, but apparently 100 or so were created. Sony have now taken them down from the YourPSP site, and I imagine that they will not resurface, but no doubt can be googled. In all of them the white and the black "PSPeople" were fighting - in three white had the upper hand, and in one black.

Does that make a difference? Is it the fighting that is the problem, or the slogan, or the upper hand? Sony's got a difficult proposition here - they still want people to buy black PSPs as well, but they need to hype the white PSP, if only to draw attention away from the potentially catastrophic PS3. Apple released their two iPod colours at the same time, having probed the market with the U2 iPod. This, by contrast, looks like an ad agency given a product for which there may or may not be a need or a desire, not at all sure how to get a handle on it. Just as a tackle you don't enter full-blooded is more likely to break an ankle, an uncertain campaign is more likely to mess up.

Quick question - do we want to talk here about race in video games, or about Sony's questionable marketing campaigns, or stick to these specific cases, and others which serve to illuminate the same issues - Jynx in Pokemon, say?
 
 
Char Aina
15:35 / 06.07.06
has anyone emailed sony?
i was about to, but would appreciate the opportunity to read any response others have recieved before i do.

PM me if you dont want to publish the content here.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:39 / 06.07.06
I haven't personally, toksik, but the outcry led Sony to make an impromptu press release - highlights here. Interesting to note that they are particularly keen to state that it was never planned for release in the UK... or did this announcement say the same thing in every country abut that country?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
16:52 / 06.07.06
id> Yeah, sorry. It was late and my brain wasn't working very well, and I should have held off posting until I was more capable of thinking the posts through properly. I do get your point. As I say, I'm conscious of the fact that I'm likely being overly protective of the game - one of those things where I like it, so it can't possibly be doing anything as bad as perpetuating offensive, racist imagery.

On why the localisation team missed it, I can think of two possible explanations. The first is because they were so concerned with getting it out in a form as close to the Japanese original as possible. There's a tradition of Japanese games being butchered for their western releases and the internet's provided players with a forum in which to air their complaints about this en masse. Maybe the localisers allowed concerns about this to blind them to the problems in this case (also, a hugely important release for the hardware, so pushed through the process more speedily than is usually the case).

The other possibility is something that I've been wondering for a while. That is: ignorance. Or, rather, a kind of innocence to the undercurrents. I don't think that the Golly is that prevalent an image in western culture nowadays - not in the UK and maybe not elsewhere (honestly, I don't know) - so I can see it maybe being that the localisers simple weren't aware of the way that this character design evokes racist imagery from the past. And I don't know what the answer is in that case, beyond better education.

Does there ever come a point where this kind of racist imagery (and I guess you can include things like the whole Red Indian deal in here, too) loses all links with its origins - through age, lack of use, whatever - and becomes completely free of those connotations? A kid who's unaware of the history of the character is unlikely to link a Golly with black people - that sort of thing. Or not? Different thread?

(Just as an aside, it's actually quite difficult to see some of those features in the game itself, incidentally. The sprites are far smaller than they appear in the image above - the smallest is about two millimetres in diameter on the screen, so it's impossible to make out that it even has a face. The PSP's screen also has some problems displaying fast-moving shades of black, so the features on the larger of those sprites become obscured - the black bleeds into everything surrounding it when it moves as a result of a poor response time leaving after-images all over the place. Again, this doesn't excuse the imagery, but could explain why many - myself included - have been so sure that it's *not* doing anything particularly wrong.)
 
 
*
17:19 / 06.07.06
Games Industry quoted from Sony's press release:

A Sony spokesperson has responded by stating that the ad does not have a racist message and that is part of a wider marketing campaign, telling GamesIndustry.biz: "The marketing campaign for the launch of the White PSP in the Benelux focuses on the contrast between the Black PSP model and the new Ceramic white PSP model."

"A variety of different treatments have been created as a campaign to either highlight the whiteness of the new model or contrast the black and the white models. Central to this campaign has been the creation of some stunningly photographed imagery, that has been used on large billboards throughout Holland."

According to the spokesperson, "All of the 100 or so images created for the campaign have been designed to show this contrast in colours of the PSPs , and have no other message or purpose."

A recurring theme here, and one which also underlies much of this thread, is the idea that for something to be racist, it has to be intended to be racist. For something to convey a message, it has to be a message that the "speaker" intended. If the speaker did not intend a message which the hearer perceives, then the hearer is at fault. This, just like Kay's digression about Black people and how they all like to perpetuate racism against themselves by portraying themselves as violent misogynists, places the blame for racism squarely on the people who are oppressed by it. Thus, the responsibility for fixing racism rests on those who are disempowered by it, not on the people whose actions unintentionally and unconsciously perpetuate it.

I strongly disagree with this stance, and I think allowing it to pass unchallenged is one of the largest obstacles to actually ending racism.
 
 
Ticker
17:29 / 06.07.06
WTF is up with Sony? Did any UK folk catch this weirdness?

PSP ads escape UK ban:"Sony's European gaming arm has escaped censure in the UK despite a barrage of complaints from the public about a high-profile poster campaign. The series of advertisements for the PlayStation Portable, created by TBWA London on behalf of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, drew 45 complaints from the public.

The posters in question used four lines: "Strong language and scenes of a sexual nature here", "Your girlfriend's white bits here", "Take a running jump here", and "Saucy emails won't get you fired here". The adverts were run primarily on billboards and buses, as well as other outdoor sites.
 
 
rising and revolving
17:51 / 06.07.06
The other possibility is something that I've been wondering for a while. That is: ignorance. Or, rather, a kind of innocence to the undercurrents.

Localisation teams are primarily composed of young, white, american men who want to get into game development but haven't managed to yet. Often they're under 20 years old.

So yes, I can imagine their familiarty with historical images of racism is low.
 
  

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