@lysergica33 said:
Am I the only one who doesn't see racism on this Far Cry cover? Just because the guy who's head the villain's hand is on is somewhat brown, it's suddenly racist? Perhaps this villain just fucking hates everyone and doesn't care about race. He could well be championing equality by hating everyone equally.
You know what IS fucking racist though? Calling something racist on these kinds of grounds. Equality is not just equal rights for all socially, but the idea that we are all one and the same beneath our skin. Doesn't matter if he's a fuckin' brown guy being oppressed by the villain, it matters that it's a HUMAN BEING being oppressed by the villain. That's where the drama comes from, not the colour of his skin.
This comes dangerously close to the extremely common argument of "You're the REAL racist for pointing out that racism exists."
You're right, race SHOULDN'T matter. But it does. A quick look at history and sociology shows that not only does race matter quite a bit, but also that racism is deeply ingrained in our society and our media. Most people who perpetuate bigotry honestly don't realise they're doing it since they can't see past their biases (due to them being human, and bias being an unconscious system.) Most people think that they're treating everybody equally, even when they're not. It's why the common "let's pretend race doesn't exist and just treat each other as equals" approach is ineffective at shifting the status quo towards something that actually resembles racial equality.
While you talk about the villain's potential motivations in the picture, the reality is that he can't have any motivations, because he's not real. The only people with motivations here are the people who put it together. More pertinent questions would be: What was the artist's motivation? Since this is the very first thing that Ubisoft showed regarding the content of the game, what where they trying to convey with the imagery, and why? What immediate emotional reaction are they trying to draw from the audience, and how is that achieved? Does the artist actually succeed, and are there any implications or subtext that might to be unintentional?
I'm not even arguing the picture is racist. I'm just arguing that if other people see racism where you don't, at least be a little more self aware than to dismiss it outright, and never, ever, assume that you might be too smart and too much of a good person to be biased, racially or otherwise. I spent pretty much all of my teenage years thinking I was too intelligent to be a bigot, and it's frustrating to see other people potentially fall into the same traps.
In conclusion, I think Far Cry 4 will be a really fun sandbox shooter and I hope I get to hunt a Yeti with a flamethrower.
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