So are rednecks/religious people the new boogeymen now?
- Thread starter Saetha
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They've been an acceptable target since forever, and will probably be for a long time after.
Personally, I'm not a fan of it, it reeks of rampant classicism and kind of epitomizes the Us vs Them mentality that permeates the urban vs rural/exurban rivalry, it's quite frankly dehumanizing. It's not like there wasn't a lot of racist bigots amongst them though.
In any case, here's my contribution to the long list of redneck used as evil antagonists in fiction in this thread, the Peacock family from the X-Files:
That episode gives me the willies.
Personally, I'm not a fan of it, it reeks of rampant classicism and kind of epitomizes the Us vs Them mentality that permeates the urban vs rural/exurban rivalry, it's quite frankly dehumanizing. It's not like there wasn't a lot of racist bigots amongst them though.
In any case, here's my contribution to the long list of redneck used as evil antagonists in fiction in this thread, the Peacock family from the X-Files:
That episode gives me the willies.
CITATION NEEDED! (except if you interpret it in the shallowest way possible). Resident Evil 7 had altars to deformed dead bodies, not to christian imagery. Besides they are late to the party. I dare to say that Resident Evil 4 had more direct Christian references than RE7 (like the bell summoning all the villagers to the church); but it still was basically your secret cult horror trope. And Binding of Issac did the crazy christian baddie in 2011.Saetha said:
The irony is that lots of parts of the Internet, hating religion in general is presented as cool. So much that it almost made me believe that main gaming sites had atheists as the majority of their audience.
EDIT: And if in real life 918 members of the American cult "The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ" perform mass-suicide (children included) by drinking poisoned Kool-aid [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_Temple#Mass_murder.2Fsuicide_at_Jonestown_agricultural_commune], I dare to say that having a cult of crazy christian zealots as the bad guys in fiction isn't unrealistic.
There is something stiflingly boring and obvious about Far Cry 5's setting and villain. Ubisoft is a company obsessed with the idea that its the superficial details that make a game franchise work, rather than original content or clever ideas. That's why every game of theirs follows the same damn icon hunt, open world, tower climb, rinse and repeat gameplay. More specific to the Far Cry Franchise, they've decided that every game has to have a crazy, charismatic villain. And every game has to feature outposts. And every game has to be set in a wilderness etc. etc.
Far Cry 6 should be set in an English tower block, in the style of the book/movie High Rise.
Far Cry 6 should be set in an English tower block, in the style of the book/movie High Rise.
After what happened with Charlie Hebdo, the "In these times, you must understand that there might be some violent repurcussions if you intend to follow through with your pointless criticism" part didn't make me laugh at all.Parasondox said:
Outlast 2 and Resident Evil 7 aren't that surprising. Hillbillies are a major villain target in horror. It's offers convenience, both in the "what goes on out in the middle of nowhere" and/or in the "what happens if your car breaks down out there" senses. It also helps that arguably the most important slasher film of all time (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) focused on a hillbilly family as its villain.
As for Far Cry, at least since Far Cry 3, it's clearly had some grandiose visions of being a "subversive" game in the shooter genre. I think Ubisoft said as much during Far Cry 4's marketing. And in terms of "subversive shooters", targeting overblown American patriotism is the cool thing to do, as Spec Ops: The Line and BioShock Infinite showed us.
But as others have said, hillbillies have been a common target for a long time, and with eight years of anti-Obama rhetoric followed by Trump, Ubisoft is no doubt hoping to capitalize on the fear surrounding the more extreme variants of America's religious right, and it doesn't have to think too hard about what that may look like given the rhetoric from some of these groups.
As for Far Cry, at least since Far Cry 3, it's clearly had some grandiose visions of being a "subversive" game in the shooter genre. I think Ubisoft said as much during Far Cry 4's marketing. And in terms of "subversive shooters", targeting overblown American patriotism is the cool thing to do, as Spec Ops: The Line and BioShock Infinite showed us.
But as others have said, hillbillies have been a common target for a long time, and with eight years of anti-Obama rhetoric followed by Trump, Ubisoft is no doubt hoping to capitalize on the fear surrounding the more extreme variants of America's religious right, and it doesn't have to think too hard about what that may look like given the rhetoric from some of these groups.
I never said anything about Resident Evil 7 having Christian imagery. I said devout Christians or people from rural areas - I know it has nothing to do with religion. The root of all evil comment was in regards to Handmaiden's Tale, which as I said in the OP, I know very little about and may be completely wrong on.CaitSeith said:
That being said, I'm not saying it's unrealistic. Truth be told, I have no real opinion on it. I think it's a little distasteful, but that may just be because I know countless good people who are devout Christians/Southerners, and reducing them to an internet boogeyman feels narrow-minded. But I don't really feel like it's worth getting up-in-arms about either. People like what they like.
I would say that things have gotten more nuanced from the days of just being inbred rednecks though. The classism argument doesn't really make sense anymore as much like urban gangbanger stereotypes, rich sociopathic businessmen, and stereotypically inbred wealthy European old money, it seems like we've moved away from simple charicatures, or at least added more variety than just maniacal inbred hillbillies like Deliverance, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc.Sonmi said:
In RE7 the Bakers are extremely intelligent and sophisticated, and their ultimate corruption came from an outside force perpetrated by a large corporation, they were essentially fucked over by big city outsiders, rich fucks looking to make a biological weapon to sell to tinpot dictators. In Farcry 5, the protagonist isn't some big city outsider or hot shot federal agent besieged by scary rural folk, it's a county deputy aided by other locals protecting their way of life from a cult where Ubisoft has stated that one of their second in commands is an A list Tom cruise style Hollywood celebrity that sells the cult much like Scientology. The classism argument doesn't make as much sense in these cases as either the antagonists are actually well off or outsiders trying to corrupt otherwise good people, and in the latter case it's that the rural folk are also the protagonists protecting their way of life.
The redneck enemy at its worst was a simplistic and scary antagonist for city folk to encounter while out on innocent camping trips or if their car broke down while traveling between cities, the rural location making for an easy sense of isolation and the twisted sense of Americana contrasting with urban or suburban values. In more modern cases the antagonists barely qualify as "rednecks" beyond being rural, the Bakers are hardly rednecks, and in Farcry 5 the protagonists seem to fit the stereotype more closely than the antagonists. Outlast 2 is the only case of the three that seems to mostly play things straight, which isn't necessarily a bad thing just as the stereotypical evil businessman or urban gangbanger doesn't need to totally disappear just because we've now got more variety in portrayals.
That's the problem with representation. People always assume a representation of one facet of a large group, is a statement about the whole group. The wackos in FC5 are Christian, Fundamentalist, and Militant. There are people who do represent those facets in real life Christianity. Sometimes only 2 of them at a time. But it's not everyone. And it never said it was referring to ALL Christians that way. Frankly, people who get upset and do the "not all *insert group here*" line, have no concept of nuance, and are incapable of understanding that saying this group is like this, doesn't mean all groups are. Because sure, you say you know countless Christian/Southerners who aren't a cult of homicidal lunatics. That doesn't mean they don't exist. Because they do. And when you are making a bad guy for a game, you don't pick the "mild mannered, unassuming, perfectly harmless" guy as your villain. You pick the guy who rants about blood and fire raining from the sky to burn the sinners from our homeland! Because of those two examples, one is simply a bystander, or possible victim of the other. And the other is a dynamic villain that you can enjoy taking down due to his insane ways.Saetha said:
Honestly, some of the horror stories about isolated religious cults are fucking terrifying, and I'm talking about the real life ones. Usually their insanity is inwardly focused, with abuse being directed at the members of their own community, not outwardly focused. So it's not without some basis in reality, that a charismatic leader of a small group of people, who are all under his thrall of personality, would believe some batshit crazy stuff, and act on it. The only difference is in the game, they are facing that crazy outward, instead of doing things like mass suicide to catch a UFO behind a comet. Or Jim Jones and the koolaid poison massacre, though Jim Jones did indeed attack people when they came to his commune to try and see what was going on with the people. Several people were murdered by gunfire at his order.
This isn't pure fabrication on Ubisoft's part. They do have some basis in reality. They are simply hyping it up a bit more for marketing reasons.
It seems lately that Christian right-wing nut jobs have become more vocal about their prejudices, my guess being that since one of their own is now the President of the United States they think it's ok to come out of the closet since he'll have their back. This has reflected poorly on America as a whole. Just recently a German diplomat said that Europe needs to start relying less on the US. It's not surprising that Ubisoft, a European game developer, would find these sorts of people as acceptable targets. I'm just glad that they are making it clear that the bad guys are their group and don't represent America as a whole.
One thing is for sure, after having a real life run-in with one of these conservative jack-offs, I'm really looking forward to this new FarCry just so I can mow them down by the hundreds.
One thing is for sure, after having a real life run-in with one of these conservative jack-offs, I'm really looking forward to this new FarCry just so I can mow them down by the hundreds.
To be fair, these 3 particular games would have been planned years ago, they're not exactly small projects. Makes a change from the mentally ill, Russians or Brits being auto-villainated I guess.
No, it makes me laugh. It's a pathetic petition with stupid excuses. Hell, they should be reported to the authorities because of the threat and have them questioned.CaitSeith said:
No one is that stupid to make a petition like that serious. It's too ridiculous and stupid but I shouldn't underestimate humans.CaitSeith said:
Meh, they've been targets forever. It's a grooup that's recognizable enough for everyone to know about them, but non-descript enough to not target anyone specifically. And everyone's basically been saying it, but it's not very new. Do you think they were jsut throwing darts around when Kingsman landed on that church so that Colin Firth got to slaughter - guilt-free, of course - 50 or so people? No, of course that wasn't random.
