Comments on: Naked = Evil

By: Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:13:07 +0000

By the way, with this skin tone, I can’t figure out which other “human type” they could be. They definitely don’t look either Asian, nor Indian, nor from any black type, nor Latino, nor native American, nor Inuit, …

By: Magnetic Crow

Magnetic Crow — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 03:07:04 +0000

I agree with you there.
While actual sexual content should be tempered to the requirements of the plot and audience (I can see not wanting oral sex instructions on sesame street), there is no reason at all that there should be something wrong with the naked human body.
And every time that a big deal is made about such things, we’re just reinforcing that paranoia. I could rant here for a long time. Perhaps not.

As for the blonde vs. dark debate…
It seems to be a trend I’ve noticed in Japanese media as well. Blonde/blue-eyed tends to be pure and innocent, dark hair and narrow dark eyes is evil. This could simply be because light=good and dark=evil is a convenient system of visual cues. Or it could be a hold-over from Anti-Asian propaganda and the basic brain-washing of post-WWII. China might have been part of the oppressed, rather than the oppressors, during WWII, but Europe and America weren’t exactly great at distinguishing between Asian peoples in their racist war propaganda. I can’t imagine it’s easy growing up in that atmosphere.
Also, judging from a lot of Chinese, Indonesian and Korean art I’ve seen lately, there’s been a lot of interchange of stylistic ideals within the Asian continent/Islands.

By: American

American — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:35:26 +0000

There’s something to be said about the blonde->dark hair comment… certainly you see this sort of thing all the time.

But more interesting: The guy who created that artwork isn’t Caucasian, he’s Chinese. So what’s that do to the “light = good, dark = evil” theory?

By: Ainudil

Ainudil — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:12:45 +0000

There is though another thing declaring that those characters have gone bad/dark.

Grimm isn’t the only game that uses this mechanic. Just look at Fable for instance.

But… here we see blond hair as en expression of good. And when the characters are darkened they get a darker hair colour – they are not only naked – but they’re also no longer “caucasian looking”.

Interesting.

By: Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:38:24 +0000

I don’t like sex in video game because, say, I personally don’t like sex in video games, and neither do I like it in movies.
So I’m not too sad people think this way, event though it sometimes turn ridiculous (the “Hot Coffee” mod for GTA is a good example. But, really, the picture you posted did not look sex-related AT ALL !
So, who cares that they are naked ?

By: elcuaron

elcuaron — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:58:58 +0000

True, true.
I’ve been nodding my head throughout the whole article.
The whole violence-in-games-is-worse-than-sex debate really confuses me as a German. (It’s basically the other way round here.)

The general idea of making the fairytales darker in order to tell them the way they were meant to be told, sounds like an awesome idea.
Let’s hope this will open some people’s eyes that making certain things ‘child-friendly’ can actually render them meaningless.
(A release on consoles could be really helpful here.)

Just make sure it can not be misunterstood as a McGee-just-makes-everything-dark-again-for-no-deeper-reason game.
(The trailer kind of seems to be going in that direction.)

In other words: The dialogue has to be really well thought-out to make sure all those great ideas really come across.
…
But why am I even telling you this?
I know you’re good at that sort of thing.
Do your best! ^^