This was the original version of my Day 50 post that I chose to re-write at the last minute because I felt bad calling out comments. I decided after talking with a few people that the public nature of comments makes it a valid thing too all out.
Enjoy a look at even less filtered Phill.
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As I was thinking about my 50th post here (I made it a month-and-a-half), I was thinking about the game I’m currently playing and the writing collaboration that I am just starting. I was also thinking about some of the political statements I’ve shared here on my blog in the last 50 days or so, roughly the same amount of time we’ve had our new President. I had a term stuck in my head, because it’s a term that had always irked me. And then I realized why it bothered me so much.
So first, the game. I’m playing Horizon: Zero Dawn. It’s frustrating me to no end because the game is beautiful, and it plays really well. But it has a cultural problem. I’m working to collaborate with a fellow scholar to say smart things about this game, but in the interim, I want to react to a source my friend sent my way. Take a look at this. I’m going to be concerned particularly with the comments section in this post.
Now, before I go deeper, back to the phrase. I am sure many of you have heard of a zero sum game. Generally speaking, that’s what most people consider to be a truly competitive game, where the losses of one side are equal to the gains of the other side and vice-versa. There cannot be mutual benefit. That’s not how a zero sum game works.
I never much liked that definition as it seemed too trite and limiting, but I realized, reading the comment section under Lacina’s post, that the problems with race and cultural appropriation in America are all about a zero sum game. Not maybe in the literal sense that game theory (not “game” theory but “game theory”) would see it, but in the sense of impact, this is the precise problem that plagues the comment section under this article and 90% of the Facebook discussions and other public collaborative efforts to discuss race. The idea that Indigenous culture has been slighted is rejected by the ancestors of colonizers because there is a sense, to White America in particular, that giving an inch means that whiteness must suffer. To celebrate and be inclusive means giving something up in their minds, because the world is binary and they cannot allow themselves to give ground in a zero sum game of race relations.
Let me offer examples, and please realize I am not claiming he people I am referencing below are wrong. I’m not making a value judgment. I am simply trying to point out the sense that there has to be a winner and loser in this discourse:
- In one comment, a responder says:
But if there’s an issues around non-x’s talking about issues with how x’s culture is represented in video games, why in the same breath tell non-x people to talk about these problems? You’ve already established they don’t have the right to do so?
On the surface, this seems like a fair question, in fact it’s a topic that I often find myself in discussion about. I have often decried the need my field in particular has to make anyone who isn’t white and male a standard bearer for what that person is (in my case, the token Indian), and I have likewise expressed exasperation at the fact that if we have to wait on Cherokee issues until Cherokee discuss them, it’s going to be a long time to get to everything, and we’re one of the larger remaining tribes.What is troubling to me about this comment isn’t the responder’s sentiment or heart. It’s that the lens of this being a competition blinded the responder to what Lacina said. She said she didn’t expect non-native people to champion our cause. That might seem like a subtle difference, but the Indigenous way is a way of subtle commentary. The author not presuming to expect the majority to discuss the issues she is raising isn’t the same as saying they cannot or should not. It’s a realistic, surviance stance to take. I don’t, myself, expect many people to champion Cherokee ideas. That might be because so few people do, but it’s also my way of saying “I’m not telling you this because I think you already know it– I’m telling you this because I don’t think you’ve considered it.” In that sense, this doesn’t need to be a judgmental moment. People are allowed to not know things and not be wrong or evil or hard-hearted. But if they refuse to be educated, it’s different.
- Then there are the attacks. Someone responded with:
Thats the most ridiculous text I’ve read about videogames. Seems like you have nothing better to do with your time and look for stupid shit to write and criticize an amazing work.
This is just a sort of trollish response, to be sure, but I included in this reflection because, again, the idea of zero sum appears. Horizon Zero Dawn can be an amazing game and still have cultural problems. To defend the game from having cultural issues because of its merit as a video game falls into the #Gamergate trap. It’s flawed logic.Another said:
Please direct me to those that claim official ownership of your cultural heritage, I wasn’t aware any one individual or group could determine how an entire culture feels about it’s interpretation, or that as artists we should be constantly limited by your assumed ownership of aesthetics you as an individual had nothing to do with. Do we consult Italians on how to best interrupt the Mona Lisa? Isn’t the entire point of artistic interpretation to view the piece from a perspective not of it’s own. I’m sorry but cultural appropriation is nothing but poisonous authoritarian nonsense.
This response, again, shows the ignorance brought on by the idea that we live in world made of zero sum games. This person seems to think that cultural traditions and values being lampooned and repurposed is the same as looking at a European white male artist’s painting. The responder also forgets that the owners of that image get to decide who can utilize the Mona Lisa. But again, the poster responding here shows the tense fear of what it would mean to accept that something less-than-genuine is happening with representation in Horizon Zero Dawn.And a third person responded with:
Zero Hero Dawn is about a post apocalyptic world where humanity can no longer access most of modern tech because its all turned against them. To try and compare that to any sort of native appropriation is utterly stupid. Its not comparable by any sense as the world it takes place in has very little do do with the real world.Here we see a misunderstanding of how the zero sum game would even work in this fight. The idea of “it’s post-apocalyptic” so it can’t be “any sort of native appropriation” tries to set up two sides of a fight that are in no ways exclusive. Post-Apocolypic things can be about culture. Almost every zombie apocalypse story, from The Walking Dead to World War Z is. But the refusal here is so palpable. There is no desire at all to consider what might be happening.
- And of course, we get our old pal the ad hominem attack in full force. Another poster stated (and again, I’m avoiding using real people’s obviously real names, but you can ctrl-F and find these quotes in the comment section easily):
Crikey Ms. Lacina, you’re really having to dig to the bottom of the barrel to find something to be offended about. It’s a video game as you state. Could one not be happy that their culture is represented?…Mass Effect Andromeda is out at the end of March, and it has lots of aliens in. I hope we will hear about Alien cultural appropriation in that product from you.
The argument here amuses me to the point that I crack a sarcastic Joker-faced smile as I read it. “Could one (he means you, Lacina) not be happy their culture is represented?” Because that’s the goal, right? It’s okay to have an Indian mascot or to dress up in tribal gear because at least that’s including us. That argument holds no logical water; it’s a concept with pinholes riddled through it. But again, the idea here is that the criticism is an attempt to harm Horizon Zero Dawn, that it’s zero sum in that to accept the problem means that we belittle the game.
Why is THIS the thing I chose to talk about today? I want to share a paragraph from an article I have in the publication pipeline that will sum up my views as well as I think I can:
It’s not that using Indigenous traditions in popular culture is so bad; it’s that for some reason contemporary society has a difficult time owning up to what happened when the Europeans came to this continent but still chooses to vividly remember the cultures it all but erased. Many Americans speak of “Indians” as if they died in the past, as if “we” are gone. And unlike a digital dragon I can strafe past or dispatch with haste, the legacy of colonization sits like a stone in American history, something we uncomfortably navigate and leave blocking so many paths to the past and the future. There are historical wrongs that cannot be undone, and to assert that we should wrestle with how we remember and memorialize them is to invite discomfort. I understand that. I’m not saying this would be an easy undertaking. What I’m saying is that we need to move past the discomfort and find a place of mutual understanding. Otherwise it’s never going to be us, and I’m always going to be one of “those people.”
I’ll be saying much more about Horizon Zero Dawn in the coming months. But for today I just had to vent some frustration. We still have a long way to go, and unfortunately the cost for making the step to say “hey, can we talk about this” leads to the sort of responses we see to Lacina’s post on Medium. She was just trying to open the space for the conversation. Why do people have to act like listening to her means they lose?