Gonna make sure there's a link to this on every page.
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'Stop Giving Evil Characters Brown Skin'
- Thread starter Shaanyboi
- Start date
Gonna make sure there's a link to this on every page.
MoogleMan
Member
Because dark is not the same as ethnic, which is how a lot of individuals are spinning it.
The only harm is the misconceived perception that "dark" = "ethnic".
Look at the fucking post above yours.
This is a gaming thread. The link posted relates to videogame characters. This is the circle of discussion we choose to discuss and are responsible for. If you'd like to start up a thread in OT, please feel free to do so.
Most of the times when a Japanese game does darking skin its more based on Japanese folklore, and less about realism (I mean, were talking about a fighting game where people shoot fireballs out of there hand, leave your brain at the door). Akuma is basically a demon. Oni is basically him being consumed completely. Evil Ryu was an always what if situation, and Violent Ken was always kind of a meme made by SNK. This kind of stuff is all over the place in 80's anime/manga. There are true dark skin tone villains that have nothing to do with those ideas of course.
I'll agree that it is an issue in Western media, but I don't think using Evil Ryu/Violent Ken is a good example.
I'll agree that it is an issue in Western media, but I don't think using Evil Ryu/Violent Ken is a good example.
won't make a difference
people who are willfully goddamn stupid are going to continue being willfully goddamn stupid, because it's not actually about the argument that giving evil characters darker skin is harmful.
it's about people feeling like you are attacking them for liking media that does this, so the defense shields go up and the fingers go into the ears and everybody acts like they can't reason any better than a five year old
SicSemperTyrannis
Member
The link posted was referencing characters from multimedia. They used characters from both games and animated movies. I was continuing the discussion in line with the OP.
This video would seem to show that the original doll experiment, which was done in the late 30's/early 40's may have a more improved outcome if done today.
Just because the roots of certain ideologies lay elsewhere, doesn't mean they're not worth considering within more specific environments... If this thread was instead about female representation in games, would you similarly dismiss it with "yea well, religion has been saying this for ages", as though that's reason enough to ignore the effects of this everywhere else?
Hell, I certainly wouldn't use religion to argue against pretty much anything to be honest.
I doesn't need to be about ethnicity though. Skin colour is a characteristic inherent to a person, and to have that continually represented to be something bad or evil, with very few examples of the opposite can have legitimately negative effects on a person. If you go up to someone and comment negatively on purely their skin colour, do you think that would be fine so long as you leave any other ethnic attributes our of your insults?
Again.. look at this...
This is how children's view of the world can be shaped by the reinforcement of a skin colour being a negative trait, this then will impact their view of themselves when pretty much the only time they see a character that "looks like me" is when it's yet again the bad guy.
Deputy Moonman
Member
Dark is usually associated with evil while light is usually associated with good. Has nothing to do with skin color.
SicSemperTyrannis
Member
I wasn't using religion to argue against anything, just that even without visual representations we would still have the concept of light vs dark and the notion that light is good and dark is evil.
Exactly my point as well.
Primethius
Banned
God fucking damn, this video breaks my heart.
Gonna put this video in the OP
Aizen.S.Kennedy
Banned
Do I have to read this thread or is it the usual? Mostly white ppl with a sprinkle of poc's saying no ( insert topic about race/representation) doesn't matter. They don't notice a problem therefore there obviously isn't one. It's just the way things are. Stop looking for racism. I bet someone linked a study or some sorta video/ scholarly article that those ppl will ignore. Etc etc. I'll be shocked if it's different lol.
Bonus points if others can't believe neogaf has members that are that dense who also lack empathy.
Bonus points if others can't believe neogaf has members that are that dense who also lack empathy.
Yes, but "it has nothing to do with skin colour" stops being true the moment you apply it to skin colour...
Bubbavelli
Banned
Nailed it. Its honestly quite shocking how you hit the nail on the head
God damn.
Kageshinzo
Member
My issue with your video is that it is largely American/Western-centric. What about those of us on the other side of the world who are largely homogeneous but still think that darkness = evil, light = good? You know, the concept that has been in trope even as far back as the dawn of Christianity (which, by the way, has its birthplace in the Middle East)?
If you want a more socially apt example, even in SEA, where I live, this concept has long been recognized even before Western colonizers came and discovered our lands. Light skin is more associated with nobility because nobles do not have to work under the fields, hence no tan. Whereas peasants, associated with rough labor under the sun, tend to get darker skin. So now you know why people look on lighter skin in a more favorable light, and something to aspire to. Which is why I find it amusing when Western people go out of their way to get a tan; you have no idea how many SEA people would love to have fair skin.
Yeah, you people over there have serious problems with minority and representation that needs to really be addressed but sometimes, I hope that before putting everything into a racial lens, y'all take a moment to see if there's any other reasoning behind it. In this case, it's a simple dark = evil, light = concept theme. In the case of Evil Ryu and Violent Ken, their change in skin tone is just to "cast" a darker more ominous counterpart to their lighter-skinned versions. It's like how, as an artist, if I want to create a more somber and depressed mood on a scene, I select a darker and more muted palette. It has nothing whatsoever to do with "black/brown/minority skin color = evil". If Ryu or Ken's default color is brown, I guarantee you their evil counterpart would just be a darker shade of it because, you know, dark = evil. And there's nothing really racial in that.
Basically the problem.
I fucking love Street Fighter and Zelda and Persona 5, but im not gonna pretend the games didn't had objectionable choices.
People need to understand it's completely possible to be critical of the things they like.
lastrealgameralive
Member
This was very obnoxious to see in Fire Emblem Heroes.
SicSemperTyrannis
Member
There is also this more recent study that shows that instead of black children have preference for white dolls, they now show near neutrality between the two colored dolls. White children are more biased toward the black dolls, but less so than the original study done seven decades ago. Maybe the white children are just raised by shitty parents instead of being brainwashed by the color of antagonists in the media they consume. Maybe I'm just a naive asshole.
Bubbavelli
Banned
Its literally a video about black Americans on msnbc
The human species evolved in Africa. While we instinctually avoid actual darkness because we're diurnal animals, the idea that dark skin plays on instinctual fears of the dark is laughable.
SicSemperTyrannis
Member
We are on the same page and I agree with your point of view.
Aizen.S.Kennedy
Banned
This ain't my first rodeo smh.
Glitter and Gold
Banned
It's not some zero sum game lmao
They don't cancel out because it happens to both dark skin and light skin characters.
and it's not even equivalent. White/lighter skin characters have way more protagonist/good examples than darker skin characters. Which is why the trope is a lot more noticeable.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Tecmo koei is astonishingly bad at it. You really have to wonder what goes through their heads and the mindset that leads them to come up with that nonsense.
Kageshinzo
Member
And the concept of light = good, dark = evil is nigh universal across many cultures. The video in the OP is basically just a reaction to this trope.
It is mine, but I'll know better next time and will adjust my expectations accordingly.
Glitter and Gold
Banned
Lmao
I've only browsed 3 pages and I've seen all of this here
LinkAndEpona
Banned
It depends.
Though my one of my favorite series is Far Cry and those almost always have fair skinned enemies, not that it mattered me though.
Antiwhippy
the holder of the trombone
And there are so many ways to show this other than to darken their skin.
Unless every character in the game is completely naked. And even then nah.
The Spoony Hou
Member
That's about it. It's a ying and yang thing. It's to contrast and also shown that the character gave in to power (darker skin is stronger than a delicate white skin).
xaosslug
Member
LinkAndEpona
Banned
Neither does Ganon, he doesn't even look like a Gerudo.
LordKasual
Banned
Light being good and Dark being bad isn't really rooted in subconscious colorism as much as it's just basic human instinct? We gravitate towards the light and shy away from the dark. But people (and yes children) can generally tell the difference between a dark(er) skinned character with red eyes, an evil expression and crazy hair, vs. just a regular human who happens to have brown/dark skin.
I mean when I personally think of just clearly "EVIL" characters....they're usually sunken, unusually pale with an unhealthy tint. Sometimes you get the dark(er) skinned variant with crazy unkept jet black hair, but i don't think that really makes people associate ethnic people with the same attributes because they are not at all the same thing.
This really only becomes an issue to me when it's ethnic characters that are only ever put into roles that are deemed bad. Which is definitely a problem, but not so much in any of the examples in that video.
In that video there's alot of conflating....but the main thing is that all fictional characters could completely reverse this "trope" and the issue would still persist because it really has nothing to do with it.
I mean when I personally think of just clearly "EVIL" characters....they're usually sunken, unusually pale with an unhealthy tint. Sometimes you get the dark(er) skinned variant with crazy unkept jet black hair, but i don't think that really makes people associate ethnic people with the same attributes because they are not at all the same thing.
This really only becomes an issue to me when it's ethnic characters that are only ever put into roles that are deemed bad. Which is definitely a problem, but not so much in any of the examples in that video.
In that video there's alot of conflating....but the main thing is that all fictional characters could completely reverse this "trope" and the issue would still persist because it really has nothing to do with it.
Kageshinzo
Member
But doing so is the most effective way to get the point across that the character has gone dark or evil. Color is a very strong representation and is universally and instinctively more recognized by every one across every culture, to the point that almost every color has something immediately associated with them: red = anger/fury, purple = disgust, yellow = happiness/warmth, and yes black = death/evil/darkness and white = light/goodness. Video games, being a visual medium, will naturally take advantage of this.
Twilight Gap
Member
<This brown artist agrees with this post.
This. Keep seeing posts acting as if we're completely unfamiliar with the theme of light vs. dark, good vs. evil, as if that justifies it. You can do it without darkening a character's skin.
deadeyekiwi
Member
But this is in OOT, in breath of the wild the Gerudo are totally depicted as good, normal people, so they did correct this. Also in OOT the Goron have dark skin and are different good guys, and have been in every game I can think of.
No shit. The article isn't saying this is a uniquely American phenomenon or even that this is explicitly about race.
Antiwhippy
the holder of the trombone
If only we humans do things something like wearing clothes or personal effects as a way to represent ourselves. I guess we really don't do stuff like that.
Bubbavelli
Banned
Ahhh yes, another "this isnt racist, this is just the way it is"
I get it, examples could be better but your reaction being "nope, no racism here, just tropes" does nothing in a conversation about race in media. In fact you sounding a lot like the juniors in this thread.
What the actual fucks lol😂
None of them have a dark skin tone and dark link is more a evil shadow.
Dark Samus is a mutated metroid...
Like I said in my post the majority of the examples in this thread are legitimate problems. I don't buy the trope of darkening a character's skin to show corruption is a problem when the trope is also executed by lightening skin. It's just an obvious visual cue to show that the character is now evil like glowing red eyes or purple auras. If you're doing a skin tone change it has to become either lighter or darker and I don't believe there's way more examples of one than the other. I feel like this is claiming that the evil twin signifier of a mustache is prejudiced against the facial hair prone.
Shit like Resident Evil 5 or treating people with dark skin as savage/evil/exotic/etc. is a problem. The dark skin corruption thing is more of a coincidence.
Icedburden
Member
Yes, but people like to see things that aren't there so they feel better about their thought processes, no matter how inane.
This is really weird.
Is there a modern version of this experiment? I seriously feel this is artefact'd at this point. And before you jump down my throat about "YOU SAYIN THERES NO MORE RACISM??" what I'm saying is that with how much more aware this coming generation is I'm pretty sure this problem is rarer than ever before.
EDIT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i20d11fGz-0
Newer version 2009. Trying to find a 2016+ version.
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