Rockstar between suffragette, KKK and controversy. That is: Red Dead Redemption 2 and politically correct
Anyone who even occasionally inquires about the national news (I know you only read Holygamerz, but follow me) will have realized that the Racism e Woman rights is on the agenda. We must start from here, before addressing the question between Red Dead Redemption 2 and the politically correct.
How is this debate conducted? In the worst way, a sterile competition to see who is more right.
Don't take it, but cheering on one side over another doesn't do anyone justice and pollutes the debate with one side mass of stupidity hard to dispose of. In this chaos of disinformation and leveling towards the mediocre, art suffers political opinions (not politics) and is relegated to the indecent role of Entertainer. Everyone wants to be able to have their say and they want to say so many things that they don't have the time to know the topic they have to talk about, even if not specifically questioned.
When freedom of speech is combined with the freedom of idiocy, witches, smearers, violent video games are born, it was better when it was worse and France or Spain is enough if magna.
Anyone who inquires about video games (thanks to Holygamerz, of course) will have sensed the turmoil that Red Dead Redemption 2 generated. Then when the race to point the finger has a new video game IP as its battlefield, here is the monster. The competition becomes bloody and the accusations of racism, sexism, violence are wasted. What do themes that are so hard to deal with and the video game that is depopulating these days have in common? The traffic of tweets? The indignation of those who graduated from the university of life?
No sir.
The historical setting.
Rockstar got trapped on disk a precise world
A period marked by discoveries and historical struggles that have brought profound cultural changes and unthinkable awareness. Red Dead Redemption 2 is set in the late 800s. In 1863, by virtue of the emancipation program of President Lincoln, the Northern troops freed the slaves as they conquered the lands of the South. Millions of people they weren't anymore a property. Rockstar's masterpiece is set more or less 30 years later. 20 years earlier, however, of Universal suffrage which finally guaranteed the freedom to vote for women. A short period of time and a historical setting that claims its identity with all its ugliness. Was unavoidable that Red Dead Redemption 2 and politically correct went hand in hand.
Now we come to the point, to the explanation of how a video game, a work of art can face a topic head on to make it feel in the veins of those who participate, and how such impetuousness can generate turmoil in public opinion unaccustomed to art and accomplice of mediocre expressive forms that straightens the hair at the slightest variation on the theme.
Those accustomed to artistic expressions will have already understood what we mean: art is revolution, challenge and tumult.
The video game is preparing to establish itself as an eighth art, perhaps the most typical of the twenty-first century. This happens at a time of hyper-information and cognitive scarcity.
Obviously a Rockstar game can only lend itself to the shitstorm of the careless.
First of all Vice, who here expresses their concerns regarding the message of the game in a clear alarmist tone, as if a production should be considered for its unique message (which is impossible!) and not for its technical value that allows it to meet the participating and active subject. The reaction of the Vice newspaper puts our Red Dead Redemption 2 at the stake along with the Youtube video of the channel Shirrako, that video where the feminist intent on raising awareness in Saint Denis is beaten.
Obviously, the journalists have deepened the video game and have not explored the offending Youtube channel, because they would have realized (with shame) that in reality our protagonist Arthur Morgan can fight members of the Klu Klux Klan and help feminists by showing interest in their protest. So Rockstar's intent is clear.
In Saint Denis we meet this woman, a suffragette who draws our attention with her cries. Having already helped the protest in favor of the female vote (but this is not remembered by the detractors) we can interact with this rowdy exponent of the female vote.The relationship between Red Dead Redemption 2 and the politically correct is franc:
We can interact as we want, according to the spirit of the game and that portion of the map.
it is the freedom of choice, which also passes through these extremes
It would take another article of criticism to Rockstar, but it is tangible how Saint Denis is a 5: 1 scale GTA1. The magic of the West is lost and in fact we are in line with Dutch and Arthur's feelings of bewilderment. Could Saint Denis be the forerunner of future GTA cities? We do not go off the road but here it is perceptible how the model of our freedom of action is characteristic of another series, for many dedicated to experimentation and goliardia, unlike Red Dead Redemption 2 which was immediately taken very seriously. We don't keep the women waiting and we go back to our suffragette. Can we talk to her? Can we beat her? Feed it to a crocodile? Yes! It is not the result of a shady plan by the software company to damage our minds. IS an opportunity to experiment, discovering oneself in clothes that are not ours. It is an opportunity for freedom. We can blame an action, not the freedom to do, to want.
To learn more:
Violence and video games: GTA V, Watchdogs and the exorcism of choice
What did Shirrako bring on video?
It simply expressed the potential freedom of the title. Roleplay.
Are you a late nineteenth-century brute? You act like one. Do you really think suffragettes had an easy time? Here a series of cartoons demonizing their movement and here the violence they really suffered, in the reality that has become history. The cheap respectable they forget the sufferings of those who have produced an evolution in society.
Attention, we're not saying the Rockstar adaptation is a substitute for the history books, but which can certainly lend a hand to living dynamics otherwise passed unnoticed, as well as giving food for thought and even making known the protests for universal Suffrage (even to the most donkeys). Red Dead Redemption 2 spares no shots to that America that still has to deal with the past a lot, but also to the rest of the world, which is not innocent and free from the same faults.
And how can we talk about late nineteenth-century racism without talking about the plague of slavery?
It was inevitable, as we said, that there was this symbiotic relationship between Red Dead Redemtpion 2 and politically correct.
Miss Tilly he is part of Dutch's band of outlaws, like our protagonist Arthur Morgan. Miss Tilly is African American. In the first hours of the game we accompany the girls of the gang to the city, because they want to make themselves useful for the economic survival of the gang and so they try to steal information on easy shots. Except then get in trouble but this is a must of the members of our gang of rogues. Miss Tilly is bothered by an attacker who we will find later as the kidnapper of the girl, whom we will save both times. The first quest is set in the central part of the map, in our first refuge from the Blackwater escape. The second quest will start after putting up the tents further south of the map.
I, totally unaware of the geographical importance of travel I never expected to have unlocked a dialogue so powerful. Miss Tilly draws my attention to complain about moving too south. Arthur comforts her by saying that outlaws don't care where to go, as long as it's a safe place and he'll take care of protecting her.
You now drop the bomb.
We are in the South!
My mother was a slave until the age of fifteen. Arthur pauses for a very short time and sets out to protect her. As it has already done. Now: like many of the readers, I too would not have noticed the cardinal component and neither would Arthur! Small note on the beauty and depth of the dialogues: the actors / characters on the field do not already know what others think. They find out. Arthur who is a simple man, not always of heart, a brigand and white falls from the clouds. He and his family, both his biological and criminal families have not experienced slavery to their own skin. Maybe they didn't even have slaves. As criminals they lived outside the law, even when the law allows unforgivable obscenities. In fact, the gang includes other people madly unwelcome by good people. Precisely blacks and mestizos who find a home and family in the arms of good old Dutch. Miss Tilly is terrified. He knows what awaits him. Her mother will have told her.
This is the point of discussion that I want to grasp.
I don't want to be a distracted and compulsive gambler, but conscious and aware. I studied Lincoln years ago. At university I studied how imperialist and colonial politics forever defiled the hands of states with slavery. I have read justifications of all kinds, including religious ones, to justify this atrocious trafficking. We live in Europe where slavery in classical and medieval times had some differences.
Nothing to be proud of then, but I don't want to digress: for any further information I refer you here.
Rockstar's stance towards racism emerged a few days ago with the news and the rumor on social media of the possibility of killing members of the Klu Klux Klan without losing Honor, a quality that we cultivate based on our Gameplay interests. Of course we will be chased by the Law and have a Bounty, but our Honor will remain integro.
It's clear what Rockstar thinks about certain scum.
However, this is part of a process of understanding and growth after the facts.
With Miss Tilly's secondary / tertiary dialogue we have a testimony of those who are afraid because they know that despite the abolition of slavery there are still many people who don't swallow progress. She is not afraid of outlaws or sheriffs. She is afraid of good people who would not hesitate to chain her. The dialogue is not comparable to the heartbeats received by films like these, but we remember being a secondary, if not casual, dialogue.
The depth of the game is such as to allow such a profound debate with a few seconds of exchange.
The importance of the desire to learn, regardless of the medium
The operation put in place by Rockstar is courageous. In a panorama dominated by the politically correct at all costs, they are not afraid to be frank in their message and courageous in their contents. The protest of PETA against them it only confirms their position against any modest respectability. The protest was mounted when it became known that the process of flaying the hunted animals was among the most realistic in circulation in the videogame field. the animal-based association has imposed censorship on Rockstar, under penalty of legal repercussions. the production house went straight on its way. among other things, after seeing the offending scene, I lost all desire to go hunting. I will not say here that video games are educational, as are the songs, dances, films and books taken individually. Each of these expressions has its own importance and they all deserve a chance.
What is truly educational is the desire to learn.
It can also be learned and understood with a video game that allows you to walk into a past historical era.
We then relaunch that the beauty of Red Dead Redemtpion 2 does not lie in the punches given to the feminist of Saint Denis but in the freedom that reigns in the still not fully civilized prairies and in the feeling of grip that the great nascent city gives. The intent of the developers succeeded (not without problems to be dealt with elsewhere) but we certainly cannot detect a message problem. We cannot support merely critical positions on the part of those who overlook a topic and set themselves up as a teacher. We will die of politically correct, we will die flattening down. the fear of displeasing violent or aggressive minorities already makes you feel the stagnation.
Precisely for this reason we should be Grati to Rockstar, and how he dealt with the relationship between Red Dead Redemption 2 and the politically correct.
