Bioshock Infinite and Racism - Part I
I wanna play this so bad
I don’t think I ever want to play this game. Especially with the first pic of what looks like a witch hunt and 2 black people about to be burned at the stake…
This left a bad taste in my mouth…I don’t want to play this shit.
Reblogging for BigBlackWolfe to see the racist fuckery in Bioshock Infinite.
Also, I’m seeing a whole lot of people calling individuals like myself who don’t want to buy this game for the blatant racism ‘stupid’
FUCK YOU.
I have EVERY FUCKING RIGHT not to want to buy a goddamn video game because of this shit. EVERY RIGHT.
These same mothafuckers be on that ‘freedom of speech’ bullshit, but when POC use it to say “Nope, not here for this shit. It’s racist,” they want to shout us down.
FUCK YOU.
I’ll spend my 70 dollars on something that is WORTH MY FUCKING TIME.
I GIVE NARY A FUCK ABOUT THE PRESHUZ STORYLINE
The racist imagery in this game was completely unnecessary and I bet they did it to be controversial on fucking purpose without any regard to how that would make people feel. Or with regard, but not for any concern more so than their own shits and giggles.
Like this game could have been just as good without the overblown racist imagery of Black people.
I mean I get they’re trying to show the whole “racism is bad look at this it’s bad” thing but come the fuck on, this is unnecessary
It wasn’t “unnecessary.” Racism isn’t something that needs to be explained subtly. The game is purposefully doing the opposite of what mass media today does: it’s not sugarcoating it. Columbia as a city is meant to represent the absolute worst of American history and American society, and that is exactly why it doesn’t hold back punches. A lot of our media likes to white wash history and dance around issues of racism in the very concepts of what it means to be American, but this game actually goes out of its way to show how unethical this ideology is.
The game actually does a great job of pointing out problems in our social foundations of racism, sexism, corporate capitalist abuse, religious zealotry. I often hear other P.O.C. on Tumblr complain that the media is skewed to avoid making American and white history in general look bad. If anything, people should play this game, because it doesn’t pretend like American society is perfect: it’s a game that takes the concepts that built this nation and pushes them to extreme to show how morally depraved they really are.
Columbia isn’t there for the player to like, and its citizens aren’t there for the player to want to emulate. It’s actually there as an example of exactly what is wrong with white colonialism, racism, xenophobia, white supremacist attitudes, etc.
This game is actually being attacked by white supremacists because they think it’s “anti-white,” since the game doesn’t pander. It’s brutal about its portrayal, but for a reason. A good reason.I was shocked reading the preceeding comments before the last because I thought it was very clear, in even just the screen captures, that the point was to show how lurid racism was at that time. That it was simply a cold, honest portrayal of a sick philosophy at a turning point when it was still bold— not showing something you should agree with and espouse. And… I’ve been under the impression that the Bioshock games tend to present awful communities like that as examples of terrible things people tend to do but shouldn’t? The hedonism and avarice of it, the absurd cruelty of it, etc. That people put happy faces on absolute barbarism. This is something that needs displayed in all its disgusting glory because, indeed as the person previous said, our media today tries to dance around it, sugar coat it, hide it and pretend this ugly chapter never ever happened.
Presenting ugly, disgusting behaviors and ideologies for what they are is a means of educating people against those behaviors. When we hide and sugar coat everything, people put such great distance between themselves and it that they end up doing it, but don’t consider themselves worse for it. If you really think that pointing out how horrible something is by example means you’re being told to go do that, you’re a fucking moron. I’m sorry— but seriously. You can’t hide from everything you don’t like and a prime motivator for preventing foul behavior is to show it, and to show how foul that is. You SHOULD feel uncomfortable to see those sorts of things. And why avoid that? Why avoid discomfort? You can’t learn and be a human like that. Pain teaches you to avoid shit. It’s upsetting? Fantastic, now you know better how/why to not treat another human being. Without these lessons people get stupid fucking ideas in their heads that they’re supposed to be granted control over others because they want it, or that their partners are their property, or so on. and so forth. I know full fucking grown adults who can’t understand that racism is a thing and it totally happens and how that all works because they’ve never been forced to confront it or fully understand it. Or if not racism, homophobia or transphobia or ethnocentrism and sexism and so on. Everything gets turned into blanket statements and literalism and semantics. if they don’t personally experience it or are otherwise given the understanding of what it’s like to experience it, they simply don’t believe it and don’t give a fuck. No one wants to think critically, especially when it might mean they’re actually doing something bad and instead of seeing an opportunity for self improvement, they only think they’re being personally attacked and that it’s necessary for them to prove they’re perfect. Which is totally asinine. Of course people make mistakes, and the matter is whether or not they learn from it. Which takes us back to the top— without knowing what mistakes to avoid or how, you can’t hope not to commit them.
The two final comments are perfection.
Happy Easter Sunday, how about that side of Tumblr stops being a sinkhole for the ignorant and deliberately pissy—-and listen a moment.
I will say that it is not wrong to get offended. I will however say that the game is purposefully meant to offend on some smaller level—-fully preparing the player to get angry at Columbia—-giving the player full reign on what sentence they would like to give Columbia—-and giving the absolute truthful, however vexing, theories and many explanations about what people actually thought made racism a virtue. It calls every villainous person and citizen into question for their hatred, the game specifically lays it all out for the player to view and get progressively more angry about. It promotes the opposite of racism—-it promotes a war against it. Even the main character comforts the POCs in the game, when it’s relevant. Equality—-who’d have thought?
I can see where a POC that is being insulted in the game can get offended, but in my book as a person of mixed race who has been thrown out of churches for being of a mixed race—-it is so incredibly satisfying to play the game and release all that anger on the combines of Columbia. Talk about Cathartic vengeance.
All in all—-if you’re so angry and pissed at it, play the fucking game, kill the racist people in many different creative/imaginative ways, and get over yourselves. Racism was prevalent, and sometimes still is in certain places. The only way we can learn how to prevent and stop it is by learning more about the history of it.
Factual themes in a fictional setting to act against ignorance of America’s racist past beyond the civil war = Idea-oriented perfection.
My palm hit my forehead so hard after reading the first couple of comments
The racism and capitalistic abuse is exactly what makes this game so interesting
Seriously if you’re actually getting offended by this you’re just a big baby^ You win the internet and i agree with you 100%
I’m not going to call anyone a ‘big baby’ for being offended or bothered by it, but speaking as a black person I completely understood their reasoning for the racism- I don’t personally think there’s anything to be offended about. You can say it’s a sci-fi game so theres no need for historical accuracy but by saying that you are missing the entire point of the game. You are ignoring the very things Bioshock has always been known for trying to do in the games. I think they way they handled and presented the controversial content was gritty but super interesting. I don’t think it’s possible for me to love this game more~ I don’t have any complaints.
Did you guys know this Columbia was modeled after the white city of the columbian world expedition in chigago. And what is demonstrated in this game is very accurate for the time that the expedition went on. The photo booths and zoo like settings that were set up, and the entertainment by “savages” and “undeveloped” contries is also a very accurate representation of what really occurred.
I’m really glad this game is addressing these issues, and while the history is indeed exaggerated, i think the point is still illustrated beautifully.