As a German I would not be happy if someone wrote a for instance a dieselpunk universe and took German culture as a whole purely to include some kind of irredeemable one-track-minded nazi villain-faction in their setting.
In Anglo-Saxon culture, 'Germanist' (:P) fiction that presents Germans as inherently horrible villains has a long history, dating back to before the Nazis. It seems to have emerged within a few decades of German unification and to have been firmly in place by WW1. It worked to support WW1 Allied propaganda about non-existent German war atrocities. Indeed this seems to have been a factor in a widespread refusal to believe in the depth of actual Nazi atrocities, until the truth became irrefutable towards the end of WW2.
What that means is that when drawing on late 19th/early 20th century Anglo pulp fiction, the 'Prussian militarist' with a spike on his helmet is as much a stock villain trope as the voodoo witchdoctor or the Fu Manchu mastermind. It's much like the stock white Southern racist in countless more recent Hollywood movies. My own maternal ethny (Ulsterman) also provides a common source of villains in British English fiction.
I guess my feeling is that such tropes are not particularly harmful given that one is aware they are actually fictional tropes, and relation to reality is tangential at best. In their original context they usually reflect current prejudices, which are typically a mix of some reality with a lot of projection (the French regard the English as obsessed with sex, and vice versa). I don't think older tropes generally do anything to foster hostility today. But playing with and sometimes subverting them usually doesn't hurt, either. :)
If you are interested in a thorough discrediting of Said, there is this: Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism. In it he goes through how Said was very fast and loose with his theories, he made a range of what would later turn out to be false accusations which he used to attack many different people and mar the reputation of an entire scholarly discipline. This group have contributed much to our historical knowing of the history of the world, through Assyrianology, Indian, Arab and Mesopotamian studies. They were only interested in studying and learning more about the non-Western world and grasping histories not the West's own; but Said publicly and intellectually shamed them greatly by attacking even their intent to analyse other cultures, and calling that whole endeavour into question.Yes, it seems to be primarily a Shaming exercise. Said wanted Europeans to feel bad about their interest in other cultures. Then he was taken up by US Universities as a tool for 'educating' their students to feel ashamed of themselves (involving a bit of a sleight of hand, since 'Oriental' in American-English refers to the Far East, not Said's Middle East).
Operating within a Marxist-influenced postcolonialist framework, he doesn't seem to have been interested in encouraging genuine objective inquiry, or in encouraging Westerners to see their culture as just one among many world civilisations. The paradigm is one in which power hierarchies are hardwired in; in particular the West is inherently 'on top' and definitional. In Western Liberalism/Neoliberalism the West is uniquely Good, the universal culture to replace all others. In the New Left-Marxist frame the West is uniquely bad, the demonic civilisation that holds the world in thrall. Neither allow for what IMO would be the healthier attitude of seeing the West as just one among many cultures, with some unique features, and very influential globally over the past 500 years, but in many other ways not so...
Yes, well Michel Mauss had already allowed westerners to see their culture as just one among many world civilisations. So Said clearly found it very important to present a re-telling where this never happened and where the west was always intellectually pure evil.
I guess my feeling is that such tropes are not particularly harmful given that one is aware they are actually fictional tropes, and relation to reality is tangential at best. In their original context they usually reflect current prejudices, which are typically a mix of some reality with a lot of projection (the French regard the English as obsessed with sex, and vice versa). I don't think older tropes generally do anything to foster hostility today. But playing with and sometimes subverting them usually doesn't hurt, either. :)
You can't usually assume that though outside of an academic perspective. The man of the masses is still going to have that image of a suicide bomber be his one idea of a Muslim and then proceed to throw rocks in a Sikh temple because everyone in a turban is the same.
It's just... very unhealthy to describe an entire culture as good or evil, and even if you know better you must understand that your audience probably doesn't and that they will repeat those tropes you think are so harmless. The Muslim armies massacring non-believes doesn't change the fact that the Crusaders did the same, nor vice versa. The Japanese army committing horrifying atrocities against their captive prisoners (especially those of other Far Eastern cultures) does not change the fact that the atomic bomb was more a result of political maneuvering against Russia than a tactical strike on Japan and was not considered necessary to end the war by any major American military official.
These atrocities don't erase the successes of these cultures either. The Caliphate's flourishing of the arts and sciences didn't stop existing when we decided that killing for your religion is bad. Japan's unprecedented rapid industrialization that spat in the face of the Europeans and Americans who wished to pick the island nation's resources apart as they did China and then proceeding to compete equally with the westerners at their own imperialist game is still a marvelous accomplishment of industry. But you don't really hear these stories in western media very much.
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I guess my feeling is that such tropes are not particularly harmful given that one is aware they are actually fictional tropes, and relation to reality is tangential at best. In their original context they usually reflect current prejudices, which are typically a mix of some reality with a lot of projection (the French regard the English as obsessed with sex, and vice versa). I don't think older tropes generally do anything to foster hostility today. But playing with and sometimes subverting them usually doesn't hurt, either. :)You can't usually assume that though outside of an academic perspective. The man of the masses is still going to have that image of a suicide bomber be his one idea of a Muslim and then proceed to throw rocks in a Sikh temple because everyone in a turban is the same.
It's just... very unhealthy to describe an entire culture as good or evil, and even if you know better you must understand that your audience probably doesn't and that they will repeat those tropes you think are so harmless. The Muslim armies massacring non-believes doesn't change the fact that the Crusaders did the same, nor vice versa. The Japanese army committing horrifying atrocities against their captive prisoners (especially those of other Far Eastern cultures) does not change the fact that the atomic bomb was more a result of political maneuvering against Russia than a tactical strike on Japan and was not considered necessary to end the war by any major American military official.
These atrocities don't erase the successes of these cultures either. The Caliphate's flourishing of the arts and sciences didn't stop existing when we decided that killing for your religion is bad. Japan's unprecedented rapid industrialization that spat in the face of the Europeans and Americans who wished to pick the island nation's resources apart as they did China and then proceeding to compete equally with the westerners at their own imperialist game is still a marvelous accomplishment of industry. But...
*Raises hand*
Ano... actually the crusades were a defensive war. Launched in response to many years of attacks and to correct the immense number of territories seized by Islamic factions. Check your maps and the centuries leading up to the crusades.
You can't usually assume that though outside of an academic perspective. The man of the masses is still going to have that image of a suicide bomber be his one idea of a Muslim and then proceed to throw rocks in a Sikh temple because everyone in a turban is the same.
I don't think that 'True Lies' (Hollywood movie with Muslim villains) inspired any 'man of the masses' to attack a Sikh temple - or a mosque for that matter. 9/11 did, but reality is a lot more influential than fiction which is known to be fiction.
Lies presented as truth can be influential - eg I was reading about anti-Jewish and anti-Czarist black propaganda in 19th century Russia, which is still influential today in stirring up both anti-Semitic and anti-Russian feelings, as we see re Ukraine right now. But that's very different from fiction presented as fiction.
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Japan's unprecedented rapid industrialization that spat in the face of the Europeans and Americans who wished to pick the island nation's resources apart as they did China...
Just on a factual point, Japan is very resource poor and was never much sought after for its resources by Western powers, though they did want it as an export market for their own goods. From what I can see, Japan came into conflict with Western powers because it wanted to be a peer, with its own 'place in the sun', and while Russia after 1905 was forced to cede Japan a sphere of influence, the US in particular would not accept a challenge to US hegemony in the western Pacific.
Japan is a very interesting case. I don't think it's generally appreciated in the West how critical Japan's example was in ending Western global supremacy through its example - a resource poor non-Western nation that repeatedly proved itself at least the equal of the great Western empires, ending what had been an influential myth of white-Western invincibility. American victory over Japan obscured this from the American POV, but that was after Japan had previously defeated Russia in 1905 and the British, French and Dutch Pacific empires in 1941, as well as driving the American empire back to her own side of the Pacific. Events such as the Fall of Singapore contributed to a perception that Western global imperial domination was no longer tenable.
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But if we took out everything that anyone could ever be offended by, THEN we would have a great campaign setting!
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But if we took out everything that anyone could ever be offended by, THEN we would have a great campaign setting!
My sides. Marvellous pain.
PC and postcolonial Orientalist critique does hover in the background I find whenever I make a setting or consider running a game quite different to what I have played. You don't want to be crude and racist and slaver: the game could be really good. :)
What I find helpful is to only take some inspiration from real world cultures and otherwise make it very bizarre, throw in a lot of demihumans and if you must copy paste a culture, at least make it a fusion that seems plausible, but it is better that the real world equivalents are not so recognisable. It is essential it must be interesting and draw the players in.
Like one little country I made outside of the Mwangi expanse. A different alignment version of the dragon run island in Golarion. Here things were more chaotic, more orientated to happiness but there was also subordination. Run by good dragons who had tried to answer what do people want, it was an agrarian paradise. The tech wasn't that high, the economy was stable and the people protected. Drug use was very high and encouraged (a touch of North Korea), but the system was not up for change and the men were especially subordinate (radical feminist paradise?) in that they got a good life of nice food and plentiful drugs and some work required, but the military underneath the dragons was a fierce matriarchy. Almost all women were of the roaming Amazonian tribe that was the army of this realm. Culturally they were very different to those they protected and did not partake in drugs (a warrior tribe as the police) enjoying and taking meaning from fighting monsters and tribesmen on the borders. These heroines protected the men that spent a lot of time in drug-induced bliss, but they would viciously put down any revolts if they were to occur. There was a lot of freedoms, but also tyranny and the players found this variant Oriental despotism a fun little area to visit, but also very creepy.
Now something like that is enough of a mix of ideas that the fact the people are non-Western isn't really a factor.
then he was taken up by US Universities as a tool for 'educating' their students to feel ashamed of themselves (involving a bit of a sleight of hand, since 'Oriental' in American-English refers to the Far East, not Said's Middle East).
I've read Said in college (and was never asked to accept anything he said without criticism, by the way). In fact I had to read criticisms of his book along with the book itself.
Alleging sleight of hand in the use of the term "Orient" is not up to par.
Whether you agree with Said or not, a basic argument of his is that the Orientalism he discusses is rooted in 18th and 19th century thought. He spends much of his energy engaging with scholarship of that era.
"Orient" in scholarship of that era includes the Middle East (as it has for millenia up till the quite recent American English shift you refer to).
No reader of Said should be caught off guard by the use of terms drawn from that era's discourse, to discuss that era's discourse.
It is not sleight of hand, any more than it would be sleight of hand if a book titled "Decimation" with a big picture of a Roman legionary on the cover and full of classical scholarship, actually was referring to the practice of military discipline and not merely to non-specific severe damage as is the meaning of the word in contemporary American English.
Elementary grasp of context is not too much to ask for the reader of an academic work.
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Honestly I think that book in question deals fairly with the French concept of the exotic Levant rather well, especially as portrayed before 1918. Going on to apply it to modern times is silly...
...after all 9/11 and the PLO have done far more to create a new version of Arabs(and an unpopular one) than all the bad translations of the arabian nights ever did...
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Re-reading this thread from the beginning today, catching up with what was discussed to date. I come across the following exchange...
I will, however, say things like, for example, "for any cultural small detail I didn't fill in presume generic east European. For say, food, drink, types of music enjoyed whatever, if I didn't mention it, I give a generic "filler" culture as the padding.
And doesn't that give an advantage to players who are familiar with that culture, and a disadvantage to players from other cultures?
But is that a problem?
If no-one in the group is from that 'exotic' culture, who is being offended?
Whether or not someone is offended is immaterial to the issue. The reinforcement of the faulty stereotype is a problem for the holders of the stereotype as well as for its target. A homophobic culture is not any better, if there is no homosexual behaviour. If it were, the perfect answer to homophobia would be to get rid of all homosexuals.
To put it simply and bluntly: the problem resides with the perpetrators, not with the victims.
I believe you misinterpreted my point.
The matter in discussion wasn't homophobia, or misogyny, or racism.It was in relation to Arssanginus saying he would fill in trivial background details, by suggesting a real-world analogue the players could use, to better visualise the setting.
I repeat, why is that a problem?
If I were to set a game in the Chinese Warring States period, and a player ask me for advice on what his character would wear, assuming I made an attempt to narrow down my image search to the relevant dates, is it a hanging offence if the search results are inaccurate?
Does giving the player a picture of a costume that is 100 years later going to wreck our friendship?
If there was a Chinese player at the table, I would have already picked their brains. If I hadn't had time to do so, brought the picture to the game table, and they said 'Hah, that's wrong', I'd apologise, and ask for a correction.
If they screamed that I was being racist, or culturally insensitive, and demanded an apology, do you not think I would have the right to wonder what the hell was wrong with them, to have such an over-reaction to an honest mistake?
Somewhere in China, there may be an RPG group playing Cthulhu by Gaslight. Their GM may be telling the players they meet a Victorian policeman, and show them a picture of an Edwardian policeman.
Do I have the right to kick down their door, and scream 'racism'?
If not, why not?
Why the double standard?
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Because one of the root tenets of identity politics is that being a victim of more or less anything makes you right, at least compared to those who can't claim victimhood, who then by extension, are wrong. It is the primary reason identity politics are crap.
It is natural, though not moral, to have double standards. One standard for the in-groups and a separate one for the out-groups.
It is not something that people put any kind of logical thought into. They do it because they, by nature, have less tolerance for out-groups and they have learned how to deal with those various groups from their culture.
Just like with the N-word. If you say it, people always look to see what race you are to see whether it is acceptable or bad. Still racist to support that double standard.
I have yet to meet an educated (as in someone who has college level knowledge) person who takes great offense or has superiority issues. It seems that actually learning to expand one's worldview seems to increase one's tolerance for differences. Though that is just personal experience.
But if we took out everything that anyone could ever be offended by, THEN we would have a great campaign setting!
Except that this is impossible. The entire movement of artists going to abstract art, was to avoid offending anyone by removing all subject material, and there are still the occasional offended people.
The way I see it, how much people take offense to is far more telling of an individual's maturity and personality, rather than how much they offend others.
Because one of the root tenets of identity politics is that being a victim of more or less anything makes you right, at least compared to those who can't claim victimhood, who then by extension, are wrong. It is the primary reason identity politics are crap.
Amen. We should all stop drawing lines in the sand around each other. Dr. Suess said it best with Sneeches.
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But if we took out everything that anyone could ever be offended by, THEN we would have a great campaign setting!Except that this is impossible. The entire movement of artists going to abstract art, was to avoid offending anyone by removing all subject material, and there are still the occasional offended people.
The way I see it, how much people take offense to is far more telling of an individual's maturity and personality, rather than how much they offend others.
I think you failed your sense motive check, either that or Sissyl failed her bluff check.
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I think you failed your sense motive check, either that or Sissyl failed her bluff check.But if we took out everything that anyone could ever be offended by, THEN we would have a great campaign setting!Except that this is impossible. The entire movement of artists going to abstract art, was to avoid offending anyone by removing all subject material, and there are still the occasional offended people.
The way I see it, how much people take offense to is far more telling of an individual's maturity and personality, rather than how much they offend others.
I'm offended that you think Sissyl couldn't have been completely serious.
*Munches on politically correct naysayers*
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Amen. We should all stop drawing lines in the sand around each other. Dr. Suess said it best with Sneeches.
"You're a Star-Belly Sneech,
You suck like a leech,You want everyone to act like you.
Kiss ass while you b!#$~,
Till you can get rich,
But your boss gets richer off you."
Was that the one?
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Except that this is impossible. The entire movement of artists going to abstract art, was to avoid offending anyone by removing all subject material, and there are still the occasional offended people.
Can we be offended by the fact a talentless 'artist' placed a dot on a blank canvas, and got paid a fortune?
While talented artists are sneered at, as mere 'illustrators', for painting works that depict actual things, that the public might wish to look at?
Amen. We should all stop drawing lines in the sand around each other. Dr. Suess said it best with Sneeches."You're a Star-Belly Sneech,
You suck like a leech,
You want everyone to act like you.
Kiss ass while you b*#+#,
Till you can get rich,
But your boss gets richer off you."Was that the one?
I think we might have had different translations. :P
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I will assume an early medieval european culture except for the parts for which I am told otherwise by the GM. This is simply because I am somewhat familiar with and this was the base assumption by Gygax.
In my own games however, I will take those changes (such as including magic) and follow through with them logically. Magic would logically change the culture in a similar fashion as technology, except that there would likely still be a focus on individual crafters rather then assembly lines, since working magic requires a full understanding of magic.
Except that this is impossible. The entire movement of artists going to abstract art, was to avoid offending anyone by removing all subject material, and there are still the occasional offended people.Can we be offended by the fact a talentless 'artist' placed a dot on a blank canvas, and got paid a fortune?
While talented artists are sneered at, as mere 'illustrators', for painting works that depict actual things, that the public might wish to look at?
I'm not sure what to think of your reply. Either I don't understand your statement, or you don't understand mine. Unless you are trying to make an amusing statement of agreement with me, but it just sound like that to me.