Gays and Minorities as villians in fictional media... Good? Bad?

[sammysoso]

As long as being gay/a minority isn't the reason for them being the villain then I don't really see the problem with it.

Of course the PC police will have their bitching session, but they'll move on.

 

[Darken12]

Thank you so much for finding this. Youtube wasn't letting me connect but I wanted to post it because it really does say a lot on the subject.

But yes, it's extra good because it points out that the homosexuality doesn't have to be a big event, or even really mentioned in the story, to still fall victim to this trend. It also points out that it can even happen in GOOD shows, which I think is important to remember.

No problem, I'm going on an archive binge on her channel and I find her to be pretty much the best media critic I've seen so far (though, in all honesty, I don't go out of my way to find new media critics to watch).

I completely agree with the rest. Also, I think that a lot of the posters here are sidestepping the issue by choosing the easy answer ("Of course minorities can be villains, I have no problem with that!") instead of analysing or commenting on how minorities are usually portrayed in the media, how minorities-as-villains have often been used to prey on societal isms, or weighing the good and bad of including minorities as antagonists first and protagonists later.

 

[norashepard]

No problem, I'm going on an archive binge on her channel and I find her to be pretty much the best media critic I've seen so far (though, in all honesty, I don't go out of my way to find new media critics to watch).

I did the same thing a couple weeks ago, and I agree. May not be the most complete work, but it's certainly good.

[quote/]I completely agree with the rest. Also, I think that a lot of the posters here are sidestepping the issue by choosing the easy answer ("Of course minorities can be villains, I have no problem with that!") instead of analysing or commenting on how minorities are usually portrayed in the media, how minorities-as-villains have often been used to prey on societal isms, or weighing the good and bad of including minorities as antagonists first and protagonists later.[/quote]

It's actually funny to consider this in fantasy games. Why are the orcs always bad? Well because orcs are bad, duh! It's the same exact idea just turned up to 11. Why are the enemies all middle eastern? Because terrorism. And that's mostly just a side effect of the white, straight, male standard in heroes. They need an easy way to display the villains as other, or wrong, so they make them darker, or more flamboyant.

I didn't even think about evil-turned-good characters, but that opens a whole other can of worms along the lines of the "white man's burden" where it implies that the hero brought the character away from their native (savage) land/lifestyle.

 

[Darken12]

I did the same thing a couple weeks ago, and I agree. May not be the most complete work, but it's certainly good.

Yeah, especially since I haven't come across too many feminist media critics (the Nostalgia Chick, in my opinion, focuses too much on the media and too little on the feminism). I really hope all the awfulness she's been put through can at least get more attention for her videos, so that her points can be considered by a wider audience.

It's actually funny to consider this in fantasy games. Why are the orcs always bad? Well because orcs are bad, duh! It's the same exact idea just turned up to 11. Why are the enemies all middle eastern? Because terrorism. And that's mostly just a side effect of the white, straight, male standard in heroes. They need an easy way to display the villains as other, or wrong, so they make them darker, or more flamboyant.

Hah! Don't get me started on fantasy games. If you've read the Skyrim threads about the slut-shaming hubbub, you'll see the hilarious ideas that "it's okay for misogyny to exist in fantasy because they're superficially based on medieval Europe", completely neglecting all the wonderful things that medieval Europe didn't have, like magic, elves, dragons and the like. Apparently, for some people, all those fantasy tropes are perfectly believable, but progressive gender attitudes are just too much!

And yes, a lot of people are conveniently neglecting the difficulty of telling the difference between "minority antagonist as progressive inclusion" and "minority antagonist because a man touching the (male) hero is supposed to make the audience uncomfortable, or because black, Muslim, Hispanic and lower-class people are supposed to be scary, or because trans* or campy people are supposed to be weird and unnatural."

I didn't even think about evil-turned-good characters, but that opens a whole other can of worms along the lines of the "white man's burden" where it implies that the hero brought the character away from their native (savage) land/lifestyle.

Oh! I didn't think about that either! I was referring to the implications of saying "yeah, we should be more inclusive of minorities! But not as protagonists. Better start our inclusiveness with them as antagonists." Instead of starting with minorities as protagonists in our stories.

But yeah, I completely agree. It's always very skeevy when a white cis straight male "turns" a minority antagonist to the side of "good". All sorts of unfortunate implications in that.

 

[rbstewart7263]

being the bad guy shouldnt be seen as negative and we should not fear that others will think this or that because your villain is "this" or "that". We should all be the villain and we should all be the hero as we can all empathize with both. What some people are talking about in this thread boils down to."People will think ill of blacks or gays if we make them the antagonist so make them all white and straight."

This is the most ignorant form of activism i think there is out there right now.

 

[SageRuffin]

Is the character a villain who happens to be homosexual, or is the character a villain because they're a homosexual?

That is the question, boys, girls, and everyone in between.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I can't speak for the homosexual community but I'd imagine it turning out bad.
They are JUST starting to, well, acquire the rights they should have always had and I think portraying them in a negative way could reset some of that.
I could be totally wrong about this, like I said, can't speak for the homosexual community.

 

[Ryotknife]

Well, in Japanese games/anime, homosexuality seem to be used to make a character stranger. I can think of homosexual protagonists whom i liked, but i cant really think of many LBGT antagonists in games other than Volk from Metal gear solid 3. I guess Kuja from final fantasy 9 should get a special mention.

But honestly, more and more of the protagonists i like are either women or homosexuals.

But there is nothing wrong with the idea of a LBGT villian. You can make the sexual orientation a minor part of the character (in which case the fact that the character is a LBGT is meaningless), or you can make it personal. A common villian type is one that lost a loved one and has gone a bit batty in either revenge or trying to get them back. Making the LBGT villian lose the loved one due to societal outlook on the villians sexual orientation could give it a nice personal touch (kinda like as others mentioned Magneto and being a Jew)

 

[Thaluikhain]

Well if we say that gay people and minorities should never be villains then we're going to run into a problem.

Eventually we're going to have a big event/story happen in real life where the villain is a minority. Say that they're a tyrant, or a serial killer, or a war criminal who's also gay or Hispanic or whatever.

Hell it's already happened with Osama Bin Laden, the Virginia Tech shooter and IIRC Jeffrey Dahmer might've been gay.

So if we stick with the "never make the minorities the villain" role then we run into the real issue of there being some real historic events that games can never talk about/use for the arbitrary reason of "the bad guy's a minority". That or we do everyone a disservice by whitewashing reality.

But even when talking pure fiction we shouldn't relegate straight white guys to be only group that gets to play the villain. It's arbitrary, and we shouldn't be pretending that minorities are incapable of evil, even if they're Lesbian Indians.

It's not a matter of never making minorities the villains, it's making minorities the villains in disproportionately large amounts, and heroes disproportionately small.

The decision to have a, say, gay villain isn't quite the same if everyone else is having gays as villains and little else, than it is if there are various gay characters, some of them being villains.

 

[NemotheElvenPanda]

Is he a bad guy because he's an asshole and just so happens to be (insert minority here)? I give zero fucks.

Is he a bad guy because he's (insert minority here)? That's a bit of a problem.

 

[Darken12]

What some people are talking about in this thread boils down to."People will think ill of blacks or gays if we make them the antagonist so make them all white and straight."

This is the most ignorant form of activism i think there is out there right now.

It's arbitrary, and we shouldn't be pretending that minorities are incapable of evil

I don't think anyone is arguing that.

What I and some others are arguing is that there is a problem when it's seen as "more acceptable" to cast minorities in the role of antagonist than it is in the role of protagonist, or why, if we want more minority inclusion in the media, we must start with giving them antagonistic roles instead of protagonist roles.

And, you know, the fact that often antagonists have been given certain minority traits in order to make them more disgusting/scary/loathsome/strange and so on.

 

[norashepard]

Hah! Don't get me started on fantasy games. If you've read the Skyrim threads about the slut-shaming hubbub, you'll see the hilarious ideas that "it's okay for misogyny to exist in fantasy because they're superficially based on medieval Europe", completely neglecting all the wonderful things that medieval Europe didn't have, like magic, elves, dragons and the like. Apparently, for some people, all those fantasy tropes are perfectly believable, but progressive gender attitudes are just too much!

And yes, a lot of people are conveniently neglecting the difficulty of telling the difference between "minority antagonist as progressive inclusion" and "minority antagonist because a man touching the (male) hero is supposed to make the audience uncomfortable, or because black, Muslim, Hispanic and lower-class people are supposed to be scary, or because trans* or campy people are supposed to be weird and unnatural."

Oh yes, I am well aware of Skyrim and it's silliness. At least it has Lydia putting as much sass as she can muster into opposing normal gender assumptions.

It's absurd how much can (apparently) be justified in the name of fantasy (and fiction in general honestly). If I have to listen to one more person tell me "it's just art" I might just throw up (that argument is especially hilarious because in most cases that implies that the artist is a racist/sexist and that's not exactly better.) I find it especially hilarious when it's present in Sci-fi and they justify it as just another part of the world, when often it's even worse than the medieval fantasy.

Also Silva in the recent James Bond is a perfect example of this entire idea. His homosexuality (or at least faked homosexuality) was deliberately used to make people uncomfortable. Of course, Bond just flirted back which was great.

[quote/]
Oh! I didn't think about that either! I was referring to the implications of saying "yeah, we should be more inclusive of minorities! But not as protagonists. Better start our inclusiveness with them as antagonists." Instead of starting with minorities as protagonists in our stories.

But yeah, I completely agree. It's always very skeevy when a white cis straight male "turns" a minority antagonist to the side of "good". All sorts of unfortunate implications in that.[/quote]

Ah, now I get what you were saying, and I agree. It's kind of like wealthy people donating to charity, but refusing to actually interact with those they donate to. All the good feelings of "helping" and none of the dealing with people who aren't exactly like you!

 

[RevRaptor]

It Can be a ver good thing if done right.
check out Samurai Pizza Cats, Seymour "The Big" Cheese was gayer than a very gay thing and that show rocked but in all fairness I can totally see how this could go wrong.
The big cheese worked because he was a villain than happened to also be gay, If it was the other way around that would be kinda offensive.

 

[norashepard]

I can't speak for the homosexual community but I'd imagine it turning out bad.
They are JUST starting to, well, acquire the rights they should have always had and I think portraying them in a negative way could reset some of that.
I could be totally wrong about this, like I said, can't speak for the homosexual community.

I can't speak for the entire homosexual community, but you're more or less right. While it won't really reset any of the legal struggle, it will certainly elongate the amount of time that people can justify being bigots. They'll just point to movie A with the evil gay man and, because most people don't know a lot of gay people initially, they'll just assume that all gay men are like that. And even in less dire cases, it's apparent. There's a reason everyone thinks all lesbians have short hair and drink beer all the time (fun fact: we don't). I like to hope most people are smarter than that, but evidence suggests otherwise.

It's especially bad for the trans* community though, because out of every depiction of them in (American popular) film, there have been about two that weren't villains or messed up in some way (the most popular being the secondary antagonist in silence of the lambs), and they aren't on the cusp of gaining their rights. Indeed, most trans* people are still trying to get people to even realize that it's a real thing.

 

[likalaruku]

As soon as I read the title, I knew Nostolgia Chick would come up.

Well, the flamboyant gay stereotype used in movies & TV so much is equivalent to Blackface in offensiveness. The closest thing to realistic I can recall to my gay guyfriends is the couple from The Sarah Silvrman Program, only nerdier. Literally the only difference between a normal gay man (as opposed to the eccentrics) & a straight man is what he sleeps with.

Plus there's also a ton of flamboyant men (especially outside of the USA) who are straight. Japan is an excellent example of this.

 

[Darken12]

Oh yes, I am well aware of Skyrim and it's silliness. At least it has Lydia putting as much sass as she can muster into opposing normal gender assumptions.

It's absurd how much can (apparently) be justified in the name of fantasy (and fiction in general honestly). If I have to listen to one more person tell me "it's just art" I might just throw up (that argument is especially hilarious because in most cases that implies that the artist is a racist/sexist and that's not exactly better.) I find it especially hilarious when it's present in Sci-fi and they justify it as just another part of the world, when often it's even worse than the medieval fantasy.

Also Silva in the recent James Bond is a perfect example of this entire idea. His homosexuality (or at least faked homosexuality) was deliberately used to make people uncomfortable. Of course, Bond just flirted back which was great.

Lydia was probably the best NPC in the whole game. She should have been the Dovahkiin.

The best thing about fantasy and sci-fi is that they tell you quite a bit about the authors themselves, not in what they change, but in what they don't.

The "it's just art" is just a diversion tactic. It seeks to shut down valid criticism in the name of "freedom" when nobody is advocating censorship or anything of the sort. A lot of people think that media portrayals are a zero-sum game, that by writing more stories with minorities as protagonists, then the straight white cis males are going to lose something. Which is ridiculous, but scarcity mentality is still live and well and crops up a lot, particularly during a recession.

I didn't see Skyfall (not a Bond fan at all), but I did saw a bit of that scene and found it somewhat leery, though I didn't know Bond flirted back. That actually makes it a lot better than I thought it had been.

Ah, now I get what you were saying, and I agree. It's kind of like wealthy people donating to charity, but refusing to actually interact with those they donate to. All the good feelings of "helping" and none of the dealing with people who aren't exactly like you!

That is an excellent example. Which is why I'm saying it's not a matter that's as easy as people seem to think it is. Giving themselves cookies for being inclusive because they made a villain a minority while at the same time preying on the "scary black/Hispanic man" trope or the "insinuations of LBGTness are supposed to make you uncomfortable" is pretty crass.

Where is it more acceptable to make the villains minorities.

War games aside I'm seriously struggling to come up with 3 games I've played where the main bad guy's a minority.

San Andreas and I'm guessing John Woo's stranglehold (I think that game has an Asian bad guy I'm not sure). Both cases the main villain is the same race as the main protagonist.

This very thread. Nobody's taking into consideration the antagonist-to-protagonist ratio in the media when it comes to minorities, while I have been repeatedly told in these very forums (in other threads, admittedly) that minorities as protagonists don't work because companies have to make money, and protagonists need to be majorities in order for the general public to identify with them. I don't think I need to tell you that the very definition of "demonisation" or "vilification" in the media is determined by how often something is portrayed in a negative light in relation to how often they are portrayed in a positive light.

As for the "how many", exact numbers don't matter. Just compare how many times they are portrayed as minorities versus how many times they are portrayed as protagonists. And don't discount war games, they are some of the most popular games out there and they most definitely deserve mention (especially when they pander to the right-wing xenophobic, racist, ethnocentric, patriotic paranoia). Furthermore, in the Nostalgia Chick video that was mentioned in the OP, there's a fairly interesting analysis on how Disney has been using "camp" stereotypes in their villains. Minorities as villains has been happening for a long time now, while minorities as protagonists is something that is still being struggled with.

The bottom line is that sidestepping the issue with a lukewarm, milquetoast, neutral "sure, equal opportunity villainy for everyone! writers should write their villains as anything!" response is pretty much ignoring the whole issue with the depiction of minorities in the media for a "safe" answer.

 

[norashepard]

Lydia was probably the best NPC in the whole game. She should have been the Dovahkiin.

I have to make that mod now.

[quote/]
The best thing about fantasy and sci-fi is that they tell you quite a bit about the authors themselves, not in what they change, but in what they don't. [/quote]
And suddenly I have to go back and watch/play every single fantasy/sci-fi thing just to look at it that way.

[quote/]
That is an excellent example. Which is why I'm saying it's not a matter that's as easy as people seem to think it is. Giving themselves cookies for being inclusive because they made a villain a minority while at the same time preying on the "scary black/Hispanic man" trope or the "insinuations of LBGTness are supposed to make you uncomfortable" is pretty crass.[/quote]

I think that in any situation where someone has to be coaxed into being a decent human with cookies, something is wrong.
And if they must get cookies, well, the people who live with being different should get an entire buffet.

Where is it more acceptable to make the villains minorities.

War games aside I'm seriously struggling to come up with 3 games I've played where the main bad guy's a minority.

San Andreas and I'm guessing John Woo's stranglehold (I think that game has an Asian bad guy I'm not sure). Both cases the main villain is the same race as the main protagonist.

Well that can be just as bad. Take Far Cry 3 for example. Vas was clearly a better antagonist than Hoyt, and yet he still couldn't be the big bad for some reason.

And you're right, it's very rare for the big bad guy to actually be a minority, unless the game is set in a location where that minority is in fact the majority. And that's just a ridiculous. Especially when the game is set in such a diverse place as America, and every single protagonist and antagonist and main love interest is white. It reeks just a little bit.

And nobody said it was acceptable to make a villain a minority just because they're a minority. But nobody stops to question why they're making the bad guy a minority because it's so normalized that they're the "other."