Ask And Ye Shall Receive
May 1st, 2008Faithful commenter laesperanzapaz has requested some discussion of this Gamasutra commentary on the issue of whether or not GTA IV unfairly plays up stereotypes of (Balkan) immigrants in their protagonist, Niko Bellic. I’m not sure how distinct my perspective is from that of the author, Simon Parkin. I do think, though, that there’s a less oblique way to dispense with the criticism.
As far as I can tell, the only criticism alleged by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) is that making the protagonist an Eastern European criminal is unfair because Eastern Europeans aren’t disproportionately responsible for crimes. The most obvious answer to this complaint, of course, is that the protagonist has to be someone, from somewhere. So without any further evidence of anti-Balkan sentiment besides the mere fact of a character’s generic accent, it’s a pretty absurd allegation. QED.
(By the way, if anyone you know gets their worldview on other ethnicities from Grand Theft Auto, they really shouldn’t be allowed out of their room.)
Posted in Geoff, Idiocy |
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
“the issue of whether or not GTA IV unfairly plays up stereotypes of (Balkan) immigrants”
ARE there stereotypes of Balkan Immigrants?
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
So you slept through the entire Clinton era, cisco? :/
on topic: to be fair, I mostly agree with Geff. The only thing is that i hate the goddamn stupid accents.
I seriously hate fake-ass played-up accents. Especially since the VA is not even fluent in Serbian.
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
“So you slept through the entire Clinton era, cisco? :/”
I’m pretty familiar with the actions in Bosnia and Kosovo and I’m not aware of any rampant stereotypes being born due to those incidents, at least not in the US. I can’t speak to the issue in other countries, I suppose if the refugees created problems, there are probably some issues there but I’m guessing the article referenced is speaking to stereotypes present in the US. What am I missing?