Okay, back to here. Race in FF.

[auronlu]

I meant to start posting meaningful game discussion here after the new year and have failed miserably.

This is one of those times that I may be dead wrong, and regardless, Tumblr discussion is liable to explode in STUPID WAYS even if by some miracle I'm making sense. So. Let me put this on my own blog where people I trust can set me straight or ignore me because it's not your job to educate me.

MAIN THING: When I first saw the all-male cast of Final Fantasy XV, I didn't just roll my eyes at the dudes. I saw white, white, white. And then I questioned myself, remembering that important discussion about how westerners see anime characters as white, when Japanese see them as Japanese. So I rephrased my initial reaction as, "all-same-ethnic-group" (Japanese?) Am I imposing western liberal values on a different culture? Am I failing to pick up visual cues for a more diverse cast? I am not sure, but I'm wary.

Ever since Final Fantasy made the jump to more realistic models, it seems to me like it's had feints and attempts to address racial issues, PoCs. Lemme share my vague impressions.

FF has done the Single Black Father (Who Is A Mix of Pure Awesome And Troubling Caricature/Stereotypes) a few times: Barrett and Sazh. I love them both, but I'm... uneasy about them.

It's done the Oppressed Minority thing several times: the Cetra, the Al Bhed, the Pulsians. In each case they've looked to me to be the same racial type as the dominant group (apart from perhaps some fantasy marker like bicolored or swirly eyes), so that their Otherness is indicated in-game largely through exposition. If I'm reading it right, these are Oppressed more for religious, political, or cultural reasons— they are the losers in a war, they are the Not-We— more than on racial grounds (except that there I'm constructing race according to western definitions of visible characteristics, so urgh).

In FFX, I felt like I was seeing random people of different colors, to an extent I haven't noticed as much in any other FF game: Wakka and Chappu, Jassu and Gatta, Lucil and Nooj, Buddy and Lady Ginnem, Eigaar and Abus are all fairly dark (and there's at least two distinct types -- the red-hair-islanders, as I read them, and  the black-hair-brown-skin). People of different skin tones are just there. (Although noticeably absent from the Yevonite priesthood, apart from Lady Ginnem who may or may not have been religious).  That's also true to a lesser extent in FFVIII, with Raijin. 

And then we get to other-species races. The Ronso are treated with scorn by the Masters behind Kelk's back, there's noticeable oppression and prejudice against Seeq and Bangaa in FFXII (Balthier is notably racist in this respect), the Hypello are portrayed problematically as well as treated problematically, and the Guado are an interesting case in which we're encouraged to stereotype and mistrust them, yet FFX-2 challenges us about it.

FFXII's main party was fairly monochrome– enough to make me wince— apart from the Other, Fran. And Sazh felt a bit tokenish, although he's a great character.

So FF's record with PoCs has always been a bit patchy, as far as I can tell. But FFXV's main party seems to my eye to be presenting same-race as much as same-gender as "default, relatable." 

Should I be uneasy about this, or do I need an eye check / assumption check? 

Comments

[melchar]

I'd worry about it too. It kinda sounds like a 'well didn't we deal with race the last couple games? Don't we get to ignore it now?'

[zen_monk]

It's also something to consider that for FFXV, they are actively marketing towards Western audiences as a big draw and not just within Japan. Sakaguchi had stated for FFX, they were going for expanding the definition of fantasy to include Asian settings and not just European ones, which to me indicates how the fantasy genre is viewed outside of the West and it's one that aligns with how American and European people think of what should be included in the fantasy genre a la Tolkien.

[rionaleonhart]

This comment has vaguely haunted me ever since I posted it. It seems disingenuous to edit it and pretend it was always very smart and articulate (and didn't get ethnicity confused with race, well done me), so I'm just going to delete it and leave this reply here as an acknowledgement that I screwed up.

I realise that this post is a year old and it's unlikely that anyone new would come across the comment anyway, but I need to settle my soul!

(I suspect my own post is a bit of a mess as well)

[auronlu]

I can't remember what you posted here, but yeah, don't worry.

I know that haunted feeling and respect the fact that on a site like here, unlike Tumblr, you're not stuck with people reblogging something you've reconsidered and no longer want dragging along behind you.

[samuraiter]

Commenting to note that I read this, and there is food for thought here (as always; I enjoy your posts!), but ... I don't think I have anything to add to the discussion, aside from a jabby joke at how the race of the FFXV guys is Nomuran, rather than human.

[heavenscalyx]

I suppose that one could argue that the Latinate names of the characters in Final Fantasy: SausageFest implies a European-style origin for those characters. However, we do have some work that also smacks white Western audiences for assuming whiteness in characters, as you point out, so I think it's probably safer to look at characters who are clearly intended to be Other Than The Mainstream for representation.

One of the main issues to watch for in the POCs is whether or not they represent a common cultural stereotype. Tanya of INeedDiverseGames deconstructed the presence of POCs in the Dragon Age games and pointed out that though we have our first playable recognizably-black character in Dragon Age Inquisition, she's a cookiecutter stereotype, and therefore kind of depressing.

The main reason we turned off FF13 when we tried it was the Comedic Black Guy With Something Living In His Funky Hair. We just couldn't get past him; I understand that he has an interesting story and isn't always played for laughs, but the intro of the game is really important, and Squeenix doesn't seem to care much about the racial (or gender) stereotypes (mostly Western) they wedge into their games. I think that Square, for all its flaws, did better on avoiding stereotypes, before they were eaten by Enix.

(OMG, I just read that the director of FF15 said that all-male parties were easier for players to relate to, and I just about exploded with rage.)

[auronlu]

Yes, that's pretty much the main cause of explosion around Tumblr right now. I was already unimpressed by the previews of the sausagefest, and... well, his comments more than confirmed my suspicions. I don't have a console capable of playing it anyway, but unlike FFXIII, I feel no motivation to go out and get one (which I did), thanks to those comments.

[zen_monk]

Some food for thought now that I thought about it: it's been known that there is a substantial amount of Koreans, Chinese and Philippines folks living i Japan, but they are considered not Japanese despite generations born and living there. Also, they are treated as second class citizens with noted discrimination, especially towards the Korean population there.

And I dunno, to me it just seems like now that there's more ultra-nationalists and right-wing political members in the government and are holding influence among the population, that this ties into what counts as the default Japanese- and therefore, default human- where racial stratifications are more divided compared to how we in the West perceive it. Like, here we know that under the Asian umbrella there's both East Asian and Southeast Asian people, but I think there's more investment over there in being more particular.

[auronlu]

Yes, clueless as I am, I have seen the news about Abe and some of that stuff cropping up. And that may be pertinent to the Al Bhed, come to think of it.

[rynling]

There has been a great deal that's been written about race and ethnicity in Japan; and, as other commenters have noted, Wikipedia has some excellent summaries. Japan is *by no means* a homogenous society, of course, as the country has the same sort of social/economic/regional/gendered/age-related (etc) differences and perceived markers of difference as any other country. Also, with the tenth-highest population in the world (at more than 127 million people), there are bound to be numerous cultures and subcultures there as well.

*but*

I think that, relatively speaking, issues of race and ethnicity are not as visible and as widely engaged by journalism and popular media in Japan as they are in certain other countries. This is changing, but slowly. (If you're interested in pursuing this, a good case study would be the movement for Okinawan independence, which has close parallels with the movement for Hawaiian independence.) Therefore, a lot of what enters the Japanese popular imagination (if such a thing can be said to exist, if only as it's shaped and limited by corporate media production) regarding race comes from the cinema and television of the United States, which is... you know.

This means two things. First, the sort of tokenism and unfortunate implications that we see in an uncomfortably large amount of American-style entertainment media (which might include non-U.S. properties like Sherlock), is reflected in Japanese media, which is largely echoing a conversation about race instead of challenging it. Second, representations of difference in Japanese media tend to be symbolic. Instead of a dichotomy between lighter skin and darker skin, there will be a dichotomy between between Hume and Bangaa, to give an example.

I'm a member of my country's politically dominant racial group (I'm a white American), so it's not my place to say whether this is conducive or detrimental to the goal of ending discrimination, and it's certainly problematic from the perspective of representation, but I get the sense that the fantasy genre as broadly defined is a cool discursive space to explore difference and possibilities for mutual understanding through discrete symbols, which are more open to interpretation and not necessarily limited by cultural or historical specificities.

In any case, to make a long story short, I've always gotten the impression that the "human" characters (many of whom are not really "human" at all) in the Final Fantasy games are of a default race that can be read differently by gamers of different nationalities and coming from different perspectives on what "default" is. This view obviously has limits, especially considering how light the skin of many characters can be, but it also makes sense to avoid discussions of whether characters have "Asian" or "Pacific Islander" (or what have you) facial features.

For what it's worth, the Zelda fandom has recently started playing around with these issues. I excerpted and linked to two relevant posts here: http://pocketseizure.dreamwidth.org/18467.html

This is a long first comment from a DW lurker, but I'm a big fan of yours on Tumblr. Sorry for coming out of the woodwork like this, and stay awesome.

[flonnebonne]

A big "hell yeah" on the "Japan is *by no means* a homogenous society" thing. I think Okinawa and Hokkaido would like to have a few words with that particular national myth.

It feels to me as if Squeenix is, for marketing reasons, trying to be deliberately ambiguous here about race--trying to appeal to Asian and Western ideals of beauty at the same time. Well, the most limited ideals of beauty you see in Asian and Western media, anyway.

Something else that bothers me about the FFXV designs is that the palest characters are the younger ones. A fair number of people in Japan are quite dark-skinned, some to a surprising degree, and these are people you'd call ethnically Japanese, whatever that means--but you almost never see darker faces in the media. So it feels to me that FFXV is saying to kids "people your age are supposed to be pale." At least Tidus had a tan.

[auronlu]

Which reminds me of the tendency in Minoan and Egyptian art to represent women as paler than men. (Implication: men were more outdoors). Huh.

I know at least a little about Okinawa's stresses with both mainland Japan and American military bases, plus bits and pieces about Ainu and Koreans and others being discriminated against, but I am sooooo clueless -- and again, keenly aware I'm a westerner with limited knowledge, so I'm afraid to judge much.

I need to digest pockseizure's comment further.

[auronlu]

Thank you very much for the comment, and sorry I disappeared for a week before seeing it.

Symbolism as representation -- that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, pink hair = blonde, right?

[pete_thomas]

I love my flist because each and every one of you have different, albeit equally important issues, that are being addressed by this FFXV release.

You make an incredibly valid point about race, and one I didn't actually notice until now. Maybe it's because my mind always flits to Ivalice when I think of races, since they are incredibly covered in that arc of the series. I don't need to see skin colors in Humes being different because there are Moogles, Bangaas, Vieras, Nu Mous, etc.

The other races that ARE represented in the FF series are, as you've noted, oppressed or stereotypically labeled in some way to try and be "relateable" I guess. While I'd love for them to address this issue as much as the rest, my main concern is why the hell they went backwards with the cast. Not only did we remove women from the group, but we've now made them all (as we know it) cis "white" males.

It's all very bizarre, and I'm nervous to see how this will blow over with some of the more outspoken activists for equal rights in gaming.

[thene]

I may be being overly generous about these particular characters because I love them, but: Sazh and Barrett are both part of a broader constellation of FF characters - the gunners, gamblers, pilots, and fathers in the series have this distinct overlap. Sazh is all of these things. Setzer is also a pilot, gambler and a father; Laguna, like Barrett, is a gunner and a father; Balthier is a pilot and a gunner, but has a passive and invisible future as an ancestor rather than a father. I do think it's interesting both that the series has placed default-race characters in very similar roles to Barrett and Sazh, and also to look at how their being black affected those roles both in canon, and in how the fandom treats those characters (or fails to treat them, sigh).

FFXIII was very much about how the Other is just like us; that Vanille could successfully pass as a default person, when really she was a scary Other, when really the Other is not that scary, was a story I enjoyed. As a white immigrant in America I am well placed to relate to that. What I can't assess is whether this is a story that is relevant to immigrant minorities in Japan.

[auronlu]

Oh, that is a very fascinating take on Vanille that had somewhat slipped my mind -- or rather, I didn't quite have it in focus, although I was glomming onto the "Other who looks like us" aspect of the Pulsians.

That's a thing to watch for. As you say, I'm not sure whether that's relevant in Japan or whether Squeenix is savvy to it, but that's... an angle to keep in mind.

[thene]

/very belated

Yeah I really think Vanille's story is intentionally about passing. She lets both the other characters and the player assume that she's whatever they expect her to be - Cocoonian, straight, a white mage chick, an MPDG foil for Hope's manpain. But hello she's an immigrant lesbian saboteur, and as well as shying away from being straightforward with other people about who she is, she also runs away from herself a lot. She's passing, she's trying to assimilate and get away from the stigma of who she is but she can't.

I love hating Vanille svfm.

[auronlu]

Vanille is an amazing trope-busting character. She appears to be another Rikku - Yuffie, and is nearly insufferable, but fairly early on, I said aloud, "Nobody can possibly be that perky in this situation — she's either mad or hiding something."

Ondore was a politician, and made a great unreliable narrator.

Vanille is a surprise unreliable narrator. It's one of the reasons FFXIII is still a good game, despite numerous flaws: it takes several classic FF archetypes, sets up the pattern we expect for them, then breaks the pattern, like a clever fencer.

[mintywolf]

I didn’t want to touch this on Tumblr either, haha.

It’s interesting that the game with the most apparent ethnic diversity (X) is the one that was specifically designed to be Asian-inspired, breaking out of the precedent for Western-style medieval fantasy worlds that was established in a lot of the early games. (Fang and Vanille do have Okinawan rather than Australian accents in the Japanese version of the game, but it was more to establish them as being from somewhere else rather than Gran Pulse being an analogue for Okinawa the way Besaid is.)

A lot of the average American’s perception of Japan comes to us through pop culture, and I’m sure that the reverse is also true. And if you look at Western pop culture it is overwhelmingly the Straight White Male Show, with everyone else relegated to supporting roles and broad stereotypes. It’s very likely that Barrett and Sazh come across as racial caricatures because that’s the image of black people that America is sending out to the rest of the world. :/

However, I think it’s a fair criticism that FFXV’s cast (and XII’s, with the token exception of Fran) all look monochromatic, because they do. Maybe not racially white, but they’re definitely all in the “pretty, pale people” category that is meant to be the ideal, and therefore the default and supposedly relatable to everyone. That’s a problem.

* On a side note, though, while we’re puzzling over our own racial assumptions, I’ve wondered if Tidus – possibly also Jecht – is actually meant to be a caricature of an American. He has the bleach-blond hair and the surfer tan and the mannerisms of a stereotypical American tourist. (Especially in contrast to Yuna, whose manner is much more serene and polite and in line with Japanese values.) He’s noisy, badly dressed, disrespectful of the native cultural practices, and when trying to communicate to people who clearly don’t speak his language, he just makes himself louder. But I don’t know if all of that was intentional, or I’m just seeing it that way because I’m looking at it through a Western lens.

[auronlu]

Oh, I've thought that for Tidus and Jecht for so long that I'd forgotten I thought it. It's interesting, because in Japanese, Jecht has a very distinctive voice acting type that I recall from anime, but I don't know the types well enough to recognize what it is -- it makes me think "drunk warrior," but I'm not sure. Still, I always took their brash, clueless, overbearing, good-hearted-but-lacking-in-manners style to be a bit of a spoof of Americans, not to mention Tidus' surfer look.

[flynn_the_cat]

All I can say is they looked like a boy band.

[auronlu]

that's what we've been calling them, yep.