The Other Culturally insensitive aspect of Far Cry 4's Box Art

[Rachith Sridhar]

Far Cry 4's box art came under a lot of fire lately for racism.

However I do not wish to discuss 'White Man subjugating Darker Man' as Ubisoft has cleared that up.

My bigger concern is the way the villain has been depicted. A man sitting with a head in one hand, weapons in two other hands(that are actually from a throne but appear to be coming from the villains back) and his last hand empty.

The box art invokes various Hindu Gods and Goddess who are also depicted in a similar fashion.

While I like the game series and the Himalayan setting I personally find this worrisome as Ubisoft has been known to handle cultures foreign to its own in a rather distasteful manner(See also-depiction of Pacific Islanders in FC3).

I bring this up only because no one else did and none of the Indian Journalists seem bothered or haven't noticed it.

Any thoughts?????

 

[Shadowstar38]

That sounds like a stretch to be honest. But if that were the intention, I'd think it'd have something to do with the character having some god complex?

The game is still far off and without a cutscene or trailer to give us some context there's not much to go on.

 

[lacktheknack]

BREAKING NEWS: SLENDERMAN IS NOW IMMENSELY OFFENSIVE TO INDIANS BECAUSE REASONS

Come on, it's like you're not trying.

Also, Hinduism isn't particularly common in the Himalayas anyways, if I remember correctly. It's mostly Buddhism up there.

EDIT: Turns out there are some "Holy Places" for Hinduism in the ranges, but I was right. If you're going to the Himalayas, expect Buddhism.

 

[Joey Banana]

Why is it culturally insensitive?

That's like a bad guy killing a priest or burning a cross. Yes, that's a dick move but he's supposed to do that. He's the villain. Now, focus your righteous energy and blast him away!

It's time somebody makes a white middle-class politically correct villain who is obsessed with treating all races and genders equally bad. With gay, transgender, lesbian, pedophile, asexual, white, black, asian, christian, muslim, atheist, agnostic, conservative, liberal, small, big, fat, thin, dumb, smart, and disabled henchmen. Hero is a spiritually conflicted, freedom loving yet gun restriction supporting, bisexual, ugly, unattractive, ethnically diverse woman. She's one quarter white, one native american, one asian, and one black. She has a mexican boyfriend who gets kidnapped by the villain.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Oh my god. Who gives a shit? It's a box art for a shooter. There's nothing deep, profound, racist, sexist or anything else interesting about it. It's just a villain in an ugly suit sitting and looking all evil and shit. It's a fuckin' FPS box art for fuck sake.

 

[JoJo]

As others have said, it seems like a stretch and even if it is a reference to Hindu culture, so what? People genuinely need to get a thicker skin if they think giving a vague reference to the deity of a culture found in a video game is somehow offensive. Are you actually a Hindu or are you getting offended on behalf of someone-else?

 

[MysticSlayer]

I thought it was just meant to be a desecration of a Buddhist image, which is the predominant religion in the region being depicted if I remember correctly. Depending on how the game presents itself, that may or may not be a good thing, and I can certainly think of numerous ways it can turn out to be either. We'll have to wait and see.

Oh my god. Who gives a shit? It's a box art for a shooter. There's nothing deep, profound, racist, sexist or anything else interesting about it. It's just a villain in an ugly suit sitting and looking all evil and shit. It's a fuckin' FPS box art for fuck sake.

It's still an image, and as a box art, it's still being used to at least hint at some of the content in the game. At this point, though, we don't have much context, so we can't really tell if the game will be insensitive or not, but you can't fault people for analyzing the picture and taking guesses of what it's trying to convey. That's what you're generally supposed to do with pictures/paintings/images.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

Could you give some examples, cause I put in "hindu gods" into google images and didn't get anything. And yes that is as far as I am willing to search on my own. Because as it stands, I did not find actual basis for your argument.

Hell I can make up a better argument: He is clearly sitting on a statue depicting someone meditating, so clearly the box art is insulting Hinduism/Buddhism... outrage?

 

[Vault101]

EDIT: comment retracted because it was kind of knee jerk and dare I say hypocritical

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

I think that's. but if a stretch

The "gay" thing I find more problematic

Why would that be more problematic than alleged religious insensitivity? We know absolutely nothing about the character or his sexual preferences, so why make an issue out of it until we get some pertinent, contextual information on the subject?

Why are we making any issue out of it for the time being?

All of the manufactured outrage this piece of artwork has brought about is fucking ridiculous. People need to get off of their SJW-branded booster seats, take a deep breath, and look inward to decide how much good their personal outlooks are really doing the rest of society.*

*Not a personal dig at you, just a blanket observation.

 

[Vault101]

Why would that be more problematic than alleged religious insensitivity? We know absolutely nothing about the character or his sexual preferences, so why make an issue out of it until we get some pertinent, contextual information on the subject?
.

well..I hesitate to say ones things worse than another...I'm not familiar with hindu religeons, as is visually referencing the thing offensive? I supose if its the bad guy their saying hindu gods=bad/savage...

I guess the gay thing bothers me because its more obvious...now mabye I was "issue hijacking" which...yeah is somewhat hypocritical of me, I just felt the OP was "reaching" a bit with the outrage

but to explain why I have an issue with the gay thing, to copy what I said in the jim thing

now of coarse we don't KNOW this guy is gay, and we don't know how he will act, we can only speculate based on the previous Far Cry game and his general apearance that he will be larger than life and/or flamboyant, but I digress thats jsut pure speculation

weather or not he's "actually" or implied gay is beside the point (unless its outright stated he isn't...to be subversive, but I don't put that much stock in Ubisoft), I may mess up terms here but he is "coded" gay

nobody makes choices like his hair/cloths in a vacum, we all know "visual shorthand" is used to comunicate to the audience "this person is good" and "this person is evil" specifically gay or not they take traits we associate with flamboyant gayness and use them to bring about this sense of "other" to tell us he's bad ewww look at him, isn't he different? isnt he weird? and then big ol normal hetero manly man comes in to vanquish the evil gaylord, as I understand the protag isn't white but god....could you only imagine?

I' not condeming the game just yet, I will wait and see because I liked far cry 3...even if it was a bit...yeah

 

[lacktheknack]

Could you give some examples, cause I put in "hindu gods" into google images and didn't get anything. And yes that is as far as I am willing to search on my own. Because as it stands, I did not find actual basis for your argument.

Hell I can make up a better argument: He is clearly sitting on a statue depicting someone meditating, so clearly the box art is insulting Hinduism/Buddhism... outrage?

Here's Shiva, a common Hindu religious figure.

<img width=400>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Bangalore_Shiva.jpg

What people don't remember is that there was a hell of a lot more to Shiva than having more than two arms. I'd argue that saying "It's Hindu and offensive!" merely because the bad guy kind-of-sort-of-not-really appears to have four arms and nothing else religiously significant is significantly more offensive than the image itself, because it shows that all you know and care about the figure is that they had four arms in some depictions.

It would be like criticizing a game for having a bad guy walk on water, because that somehow is insulting to Jesus. If they're going to draw a connection to Jesus, they're going to have to use a hell of a lot more than a water-walking scene.

 

[Nimzabaat]

now of coarse we don't KNOW this guy is gay, and we don't know how he will act, we can only speculate based on the previous Far Cry game and his general apearance that he will be larger than life and/or flamboyant, but I digress thats jsut pure speculation

weather or not he's "actually" or implied gay is beside the point (unless its outright stated he isn't...to be subversive, but I don't put that much stock in Ubisoft), I may mess up terms here but he is "coded" gay

nobody makes choices like his hair/cloths in a vacum, we all know "visual shorthand" is used to comunicate to the audience "this person is good" and "this person is evil" specifically gay or not they take traits we associate with flamboyant gayness and use them to bring about this sense of "other" to tell us he's bad ewww look at him, isn't he different? isnt he weird? and then big ol normal hetero manly man comes in to vanquish the evil gaylord, as I understand the protag isn't white but god....could you only imagine?

I' not condeming the game just yet, I will wait and see because I liked far cry 3...even if it was a bit...yeah

You know since you're the first person to bring that up... you might want to get your lens checked. Nobody else seems to think that the bad guy is gay. You are literally the first and possibly only one. He looks like someone who has watched too much Jersey Shore, which would be all the reason I need to increase the amount of iron in his blood, but... gay? Nope. Not seeing it.

 

[EternallyBored]

Could you give some examples, cause I put in "hindu gods" into google images and didn't get anything. And yes that is as far as I am willing to search on my own. Because as it stands, I did not find actual basis for your argument.

Hell I can make up a better argument: He is clearly sitting on a statue depicting someone meditating, so clearly the box art is insulting Hinduism/Buddhism... outrage?

Here's Shiva, a common Hindu religious figure.

<img width=400>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Bangalore_Shiva.jpg

What people don't remember is that there was a hell of a lot more to Shiva than having more than two arms. I'd argue that saying "It's Hindu and offensive!" merely because the bad guy kind-of-sort-of-not-really appears to have four arms and nothing else religiously significant is significantly more offensive than the image itself, because it shows that all you know and care about the figure is that they had four arms in some depictions.

It would be like criticizing a game for having a bad guy walk on water, because that somehow is insulting to Jesus. If they're going to draw a connection to Jesus, they're going to have to use a hell of a lot more than a water-walking scene.

Yeah, I usually side with the more liberal side of these types of arguments, but the Hindu connection and criticism seems a little flimsy, especially considering that he's sitting on a statue of Buddha, so I'm willing to give the artist the benefit of the doubt in this case.

Is it possible that the artists at Ubisoft are just ignorant of the differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and they used a Buddhist statue to make allusions to Hinduism? It's possible, but the situation is vague enough that there are plenty of other possibilities, like him just using the arms as armrests since it definitely seems to depict the villain desecrating the religious statue he's using as a seat.

Eh, it's really too soon at this point to be calling Ubisoft out on any potential racism, I can understand some people are a little leery after Farcry 3 basically being White man fantasy adventure land where random college douche apparently comes in and outfights all the natives and the professional mercenaries while the natives sling praises about how awesome he is and their leader basically fits every exotic mysterious native trope to a t, lazy attempt at a subversive ending notwithstanding.

It just seems a little early to really call out the plot of this one yet, the picture is a little racially charged, what with depicting a Chinese man fucking over Himalayan natives, which is a real thing that happens in reality right now, but I'm willing to wait to see the finished product before determining whether the Farcry people are flirting with cliche racial plot devices again, and whether those cliches are used well or fall flat on their face.

 

[Lupine]

BREAKING NEWS: SLENDERMAN IS NOW IMMENSELY OFFENSIVE TO INDIANS BECAUSE REASONS

Come on, it's like you're not trying.

Also, Hinduism isn't particularly common in the Himalayas anyways, if I remember correctly. It's mostly Buddhism up there.

EDIT: Turns out there are some "Holy Places" for Hinduism in the ranges, but I was right. If you're going to the Himalayas, expect Buddhism.

If anyone should be offended I feel like it should be Buddhists. You know with his throne being a decapitated Buddha and all. Also I'm going to be that guy and point out that him being the villain and all that him showing disrespect for the religious beliefs of others is sort of par the course especially with the subjugation vibe coming off him forcing a man to hold a live grenade while he dangles the pin inches from his face.

The person that said it seems like he has a god complex, personally I agree and I figure that they were going for just that. Probably supposed to be Kim Jong il flavored all in all, a dictator gone a little crazy with his power and everyone else suffering for it.