Noesis, on 12 May 2013 - 12:26 PM, said:
I don't see any distinction based on your argument.
Exposure to a fictional reality as a form of entertainment where people can explore ideas as a thought exercise still exposes people to the social ideas as represented within them. This since your argument was that irrespective of the context people are incapable of discerning the appropriate truth related to the content and would apply unintentional social consequences due to this impressionability.
yes exactly except you seem to still be grappling with the idea that Some Things Matter More Than Others. as an example: feudal societies no longer exist ! we don't live in a world where there is a society which has as one of its core societal structures a reciprocal relationship between a warrior class, a landed nobility and a disenfranchised labor class. this isn't a problem in society, and doesn't affect anybody, so a joke about how a landed noble could order around peasants like they were playthings is pretty much equivalent to a joke about dragons or unicorns or The God Emperor Of The Galaxy Crushing The Opposition With His Legions Of Space Marines.
Willie Sauerland, on 12 May 2013 - 12:28 PM, said:
Cryptozoology, if I may request a point of clarification,
you are stating context is important.
In other words, the fact racism exists within a fictional universe
and it is adhered to within the context of "role-play" then it is ok
and as such Asians, for one, should not get upset for this fictionalized racism
as it does not translate into the non-fictional universe per se.
However, as Jeff Dunham is clearly real talking about real things in a
non-fictional universe then it stands to reason it only perpetrates racism
within the real world.
Am I understanding your point correctly?
it looks like you aren't understanding my point correctly, friend William. the argument that problematic elements in a work of fiction are de facto totally okay because the work is fictional is bunk - if i might diverge a little bit to make a point by analogy, let's suppose that I wrote a book where there's a space colony on a planet where a bunch of white astronauts settle down and start a colony and they import a bunch of death-row inmates from earth to do all the agricultural work. then this new space society starts to resemble the antebellum southern united states and through a bunch of weird pseudoscience i make up this state of affairs is justified and i depict this new colony as an ideal place to live and the primarily black population of inmates are at peace with their lot in life, and where everything owns and is operating As Nature Intended.
do you see how my book, while fictionalized, is advocating a society built on the enslavement of black people and depicting it as a great place to live and is therefore Really Terrible ?
to get back to BattleTech, I don't really play a whole pile of tabletop battletech or consume expanded universe fiction ( i do neither of these things at all ) but if we were to take the case of the Capellan Confederation and examine it, we would find an autocratic feudal society where the lower classes are disenfranchised and underprivileged, and we would also find that this society is depicted as A Bad Thing in the fiction. That's okay I guess ?
we would also find however that their leaders are a ruling party of people of asian descent and they're depicted as scheming manipulative sneaky and evil. these are common stereotypes found throughout many types of fiction about asian leaders. these instances while taken in isolation, are not so bad! after all, you could certainly have a future society where the leaders are all dicks and they just so happen to all be asian, and that's not a problem if this fictional setting existed in a vacuum. but the fictional setting Does Not Exist In A Vacuum ! it is part of the fantasy / sci fi tabletop game genre and if we look at OTHER material of this type, we see many OTHER instances of rulers who are evil dicks and are asian people. And we see this in books as well. And comic books. and video games. and movies. and music videos. and we see this depiction in the news when discussing asian countries, and we hear about it on the radio, and people we know talk about real life asian leaders like this. when we take into account The Whole Of Real Society That We Live In and and understand that fictional works do not exist in isolation from the rest of society we can see how one small instance of something kinda racist contributes to a Racist Culture where we are bombarded through multimedia constantly all the time every day every where by the same racist stereotypes and this fosters and reinforces racist attitudes in us and in the rest of society.
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