Week Eight: Stereotypes and the Ethics of Representation

This week we are discussing the use of stereotypes in gaming, animation, and comic culture. I think stereotypes are something that are fought for time and time again by diehard gaming, cartoon and other media enthusiasts, vehemently standing by the fact that they are necessary in order for the point to get across, necessary for people to better understand the more minor parts of a story so that the reader can now focus on the 'bigger picture' that whoever is trying to portray.

I think this is entirely false. I believe that stereotypes are created by people in positions of power and privilege to simplify, delegitimize and dehumanize them. I think that they're a lazy excuse not to do more research, be more inclusive, or make any attempt at opening up the gaming, animation or comic community to a wider audience. People who think that 'stereotypes exist for a reason' are often the same people who think that games, movies, comics, etc. don't have female protagonists because women don't play games or watch movies or read comics. They're often the same people who think that only white men created beautiful classical works of art, literature and otherwise because women and people of color 'just didn't do stuff like that'. They're often the same people that think that women and people of color still aren't making the best comics or cartoons or games because of no specific reason.

These are the kind of people who are satisfied with the answer 'that's just the way it is' without thinking of why something is that way. They don't look past the reason why stereotypes exist or why classical women/POC painters aren't recognized in history or why every blockbuster movie just has to have a white male main character.

Society actively erases the work of people who aren't the privileged ones in the equation. Many people who have the power to recognize an artist or give a game idea the greenlight or determine if there should be an option to play a woman character as well as a male character in a certain game aren't interested in diversity or being inclusive because they find it inconvenient and threatening to their position in privilege-- because, yes, many of the people who can make these decisions were put there because of their privilege. It's a cycle, and it's not a view that is visible to someone who is on the bottom of the mountain, so to speak.

Stereotypes are created in an arbitrary way and enforced by constant use over generations. It's possible to break down a stereotype by understanding that these traits are ones that people of many different races and genders possess, and instead of being a label for these traits they are simply traits that any kind of human is able to possess. Many great works have been created in the past century by actively going against stereotyping and breaking the boring bounds of what someone thinks would be a normal stereotype. I think there are better ways to immediately communicate an idea besides offensive stereotypes-- and to refer back to them time and time again is a lazy practice. So no, I don't think they are necessary to communicate an idea. There is never a need to be offensive or dehumanize an entire group of people to tell your space opera story.