I just read this post, a pretty well written one, talking about the trash lady from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. He contends that the character in question is not racism. His is only correct on a technicality, but his reasoning has me boiling.
See, he argues that racism requires intentionality. [These sentences have been removed until they can be corrected properly.] Then he goes too far.
Several times he gives examples that show words have no meaning without intention, but he removes all context so that there could be no intention. He says he calls a woman he loved “Chief” being that she is not an American Indian she it is just a cute little nickname. He is perfectly right in this respect. The word has no meaning outside of that connotation, BECAUSE she is not a Native American. Likewise, earlier in the piece he says that the character’s use of “Capt’n” is only affix the racist term to it because it is spoken by a black woman, but has no connotation when on a cereal box with an old white man. Again, since context is removed and therefore meaning is removed, that somehow means that the word has no meaning. I hate to burst your bubble, but should you put it back into context the uninsulting word becomes insulting.
I will use a less charged example to show my point. In Mass Effect 2 the main character’s name is Shepard. He partakes in missions titled A House Divided (Mark 3:25, Matthew 12:25), The Prodigal (Luke 11), Eye for an Eye (Matthew 5:38), Sins of the Father (Deuteronomy 24:16 or Leviticus 26:39). In case you haven’t noticed there is a very strong biblical theme running throughout the whole game with the player cast in the role of a Sci-Fi military Jesus. Through him all your squad mates shall be healed. The thing is the parentheticals are my additions. The mission names are just phrases or noun phrases that mean nothing by themselves. They are words plastered on the screen. They are imbued with meaning because I know something about Christianity and the Bible. You don’t even have to know that much because these are well known phrases, known to be biblical though the first one is probably more famous coming from Abraham Lincoln now. Is it everywhere in the game? No, but in most places. (Suddenly it makes more sense that Shepard mother is mentioned throughout the game but not his father.) Does the game have any of that? No, but it is there because it was placed there with the understanding Bioware’s audience could connect some mental dots.
Nothing exists without context in our world. Some comedians make their living off of simply repeating verbatim famous quotes or well-known scenes in new contexts. In fact, all comedy is reliant on having some foreknowledge or understanding for something to be funny. Which brings me to the most misleading arguments of the entire piece.
He bookends the piece with a story of him as a baby that would howl should he ever be held by a black person’s hands. It ends with a story of him helping in a Madagascar clinic where the babies would have the same reaction when he held them. This is not proof that babies are racist or that the baby’s actions are racist or even that the actions have no meaning because they have no intention. Yes, the baby has no intention of being offensive if it even knows what offensive is or hurt is beyond physical discomfort. In fact, that uneasiness of the parents in both sets of circumstances is an example of us ascribing more to the moment with our own world knowledge than is inherent in the moment itself. But this is not because the action is without meaning, it’s because it is without meaning because it is without context. A baby has limited to no context of the world. I am no pediatrician of infant psychologist, but I feel pretty confident in saying it’s not the skin color itself that is scaring the infant or any cultural connotations therein, but the fact that the skin is just different. ‘Mommy and Daddy’s skin looks like this and this is not that color, this is a stranger, I want Mommy’ is along the lines you as an infant and the baby you held in the clinic was thinking. They have no context of the world. They don’t know what apartheid, the North Atlantic triangle, Rwanda, Imperialism, Jim Crow or who Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela or Malcolm X are. That comes with time.
The baby has limited context of the world and no context beyond anything relating to itself. The synthesis you create in the piece by introducing and concluding with these circumstances is to compare video games or any artistic work with a baby. Newly dropped into the world with no context for anything and just a thing that exists. And were the game designed by a baby that would be true, but it was not. It was designed by a large group of adults spending a lot of time going over every detail not just to see if it looks good but to make sure it works as intended and doesn’t break. These are intelligent people who are aware of the world. Deus Ex and Mass Effect and all other video games are a byproduct of the massive amount of blood, sweat and tears of the designers specifically to produce something.
Now does that mean a racist image or character or line in a work is bad. Not inherently. It’s all about context. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was recently censored in a certain reprint to remove the N word from the character of the escaped slave Jim’s name. Why? Because it’s racist. Yes, it’s racist, but it isn’t racism. Mark Twain used it as part of the culture of the time and used it to humanize the character by highlighting the degradation and humiliation black of the south went through by attaching it to his name. Finn himself at the end of the book recognizes the inherent wrongness of it and Jim’s treatment. The book is very anti-racism and does it by using a racist slur. Context matters.
Before anything, we must admit that to simply depict something is not to endorse it.
BULLSHIT. Yes, it does or they wouldn’t have made it or changed their names in the credits to Alan Smithy thereby disavowing the work. A creator, by making something and releasing it to the world is standing by their work. All parts of it. Mark Twain stood by Huckleberry Finn, Bioware stands by Mass Effect and Edios Montreal stands by Deus Ex: human Revolution.
Are the developers guilty of racism? No. Are they guilty of having put something racist in their game? Yes. Still not a problem, but the problem comes from as you say:
One talks with Letitia not to discover social insights into sub-species differentiation but to figure out where to go next and what to do there. The game is built like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces require a scavenger hunt. Objectives are unambiguous: break in to building X, go find person Y, bring object Z somewhere else. The puzzle is in discovering the prompts.
It’s because she has no other purpose than to be a means to an objective that it is a problem. There is no context other than the cultural knowledge that we bring to the game. There is no context as to why this character is unique to anyone else in the game other than her speech and mannerism. Not her class or her situation that others share. You said this was “before anything else, an aesthetic choice.” What did that aesthetic choice convey? Without any further context in the game, nothing concerning the game at all.
I am quite willing to chalk this up to Edios Montreal being idiots and leave it at that. Same with Capcom and Resident Evil 5. Massive, massive idiots. But you, you are the dangerous one here. I would not have stepped in were it not for you peddling of your anti-intellectualism garbage. Maybe it was unintentional. I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that YOU did not know what you were doing. Words have meaning, the meaning we give them. And you cannot change the meaning of a word by yourself. Only a society can do that, because words are creations of a society. They are thoughts made audible or in the case of writing physical. They are the purist distillation of the mind that a human can create. To say or promote otherwise is an insult to any person still willing to use their mind. Some things change meaning when they changed contexts. Look up the word “set” if you don’t believe me. But some words are so powerful, so strong they create the context for everything else. The same goes for images and cultural conceits. If I may use a video clip to show what I mean in the visual realm:
Meanings can change, be co-opted, disappear and so forth. But do not tell me there is no meaning. Art would not, could not exist without prior understanding and meaning. I focus on this example from your article because each of your examples are not equivalent. They all have different context and say different things to different effects. But they all do say something all by themselves. You cannot say otherwise without perpetuating a lie.
Great post Eric.
Though I’m not sure your fully addressed the issue of depiction vs. endorsement.
” ‘Before anything, we must admit that to simply depict something is not to endorse it.’
BULLSHIT. Yes it does or they wouldn’t have made it or changed their names in the credits to Alan Smithy thereby disavowing the work. A creator, by making something and releasing it to the world is standing by their work. All parts of it. Mark Twain stood by Huckleberry Finn, Bioware stands by Mass Effect and Edios Montreal stands by Deus Ex: human Revolution.”
Endorsing the entire text or aesthetic work is not quite the same thing as endorsing a particular view or depiction within the work. Obviously, Mark Twain endorses Huck Finn as a finished work, but not necessarily every viewpoint espoused by every character within it, though certainly he could endorse a specific interpretation of a character’s racist view/words as part of a larger dramatic framework or for larger social commentary purposes.
If anything, Deus Ex rails in this respect not from intended, or even unintended racism, but from disjointed and in-cohesive characterization; the irreconcilability of her character with its purpose as an NPC and the larger narrative/world its operating in.
To your larger point on context, well, it’s a tricky thing to nail down. Certainly, anyone in modern America encountering this part will be aware of its connotation, even if someone from another culture or another time period would not. In that respect, the game does not supply its own context for interpreting this part, either positively or negatively. And in that way, again, the game is incongruous but not unintentionally racist, for the very fact that it does not provide a background internal to itself from which players can construct a stable framework for interpreting it one way or the other.
One can read Huck Finn and not need to be from that time period in America to understand the stakes, viewpoints, and violence at play. That’s not the case with Deus Ex. No one playing that game outside of the modern American context would understand enough from the game alone to see it as advancing either a racist or non-racist viewpoint. Which is Michael’s most insightful point: that the game provides to little (if at all) context on race to make racism a viable interpretive outcome. It’s a failure of vision, which may follow from ignorance or stupidity, but not unintentional racism.
That said, you still raise some interesting and formidable challenges which I certainly appreciate. This is an issue that interests me a lot (in general) and my own view is still developing. Thanks again for the great read!
Great response. i’m sure you’ve seen Evan Narcisse’ take on this issue (http://techland.time.com/2011/08/31/the-worst-thing-about-deus-ex-human-revolution/) as well, but your response adds a critical dimension – colorblind ideology on the part of the GAMER – as a reason to understand Letitia as a racist depiction as well.
keep up the good work…
@Ethan Gach This is another pet peeve of mine, but not nearly on the level of the ignorance of the original post. The concept of a work with its own viewpoint. It is true Mark Twain does not endorse every viewpoint the characters espouse, but he does endorse the viewpoint of his own work. This is why a work with racist imagery and statements can itself not be pro-racist. As much as the idiots in our current political spectrum would have you believe reading and understanding other view points, even vile ones does not mean you endorse it. If you frame it correctly you can show it as a vile thing. Hell you can frame cute puppy pictures as vile and depraved in one’s work. Evidence by itself doesn’t matter and says nothing and more importantly it matters how it is framed.
Some things are so vile that it does not need framing or further investigation. Hence why displays of police brutality and the protest of the 60s are usually shown as is. The police officer who pepper sprayed the college students didn’t need a lead in or further framing because the act spoke for itself on news stations. But in Deus Ex: Human Revolution the game actively removes any context that might have justified some stance for the character either in favor or against what the portrayal meant. The developers stand by their work and consequently the poorly devised info dump of a character and what she means, because the work give no detailed context for the imagery she represents. You say that without any context or synthesis she is not a measure of unintended racism, but no, its because there is no context that she is then presented as something that just is. This is a presentation that this is what a black woman is. The element has to stand upon its own merits and the merits aren’t good. Are the developers racist? No, just lazy.
Additionally, while we may not live in the world of Huck Finn we do understand it via its context. Were the characters and situations transplanted 120 years into the future and Jim didn’t heave Huck into the middle of the river at the first mention of his nickname it would be a racist work. The context of the work as a period pieces assuages that viewpoint by being a product and statement of its time. Deus Ex does not have that luxury. It takes place in the future and is a product of 2011. Its not that people outside of certain American context would recognize its racist history, but that the reason its racist in the first place is because its insulting. It is just made worse by the historical institutionalism of the ideas that portrayal represents.
And finally:
“Michael’s most insightful point: that the game provides to little (if at all) context on race to make racism a viable interpretive outcome. It’s a failure of vision, which may follow from ignorance or stupidity, but not unintentional racism. ”
That’s the definition of unintentional racism.
“This is a presentation that this is what a black woman is.”
That is the proposition that can only be supported with evidence internal to the piece. If Deus Ex is context-less on this point, as you and I seem to agree, than I’m not sure from where you draw the conclusion that the game is asserting that character to be a true/realistic representation of a black woman.
Racism in the sense it is being discussed, is a argument. One can not unintentionally advance an argument. One can unintentionally demonstrate the fact of it by action or performance, i.e. attest to the existence of racism. But how can we attribute a proposition like racism to an element of a text which lacks any internal context within which it can be located or interpreted as racist?
The position that individual elements of a text can stand for themselves, independent of their use or relation to other elements as well as the entirety of the creative work, is simply that, a position, and a tenuous one at that.
If each text, each aesthetic expression, has its own internal grammar, syntax, etc. it seems unfair to evaluate parts of that text on terms external to it. To do so can have interesting results, but none of which can be convincingly attributed to the original authors, or the work itself.