Why So Serious?

 
Battlefield 1 cover

Battlefield 1, the big WWI game that launches this October, features this Harlem Hellfighter in all its marketing and has an expansion pack devoted to the famed unit. But do any of them identify as transgendered or intersex?

Throughout my life, I have been extraordinarily traditional while most of my friends have been remarkably progressive. Perhaps it’s the curse of an orthodox artist. Perhaps God thinks it’s funny. In any case, experience has taught me to be diplomatic and to choose my battles with care. But while my hippie friends and I have generally gotten along because we share an interest in life’s frivolities (even though we differ on nearly all serious matters), I find it’s increasingly difficult to maintain such friendships. With each passing year, philosophical differences intrude further and further into our casual pastimes.

These days, every other film, novel, or game is linked to some public controversy. Does the story lack gay characters? Unacceptable! Does it involve hunting? Outrageous! Why can’t player-characters in the game be cross-dressers? How can the book be respectful of the nefarious oil industry? How racist of them to choose a white man as the hero! How irresponsible to show a character smoking! Why doesn’t this sport have more diversity?  You know what I mean. Even Superman, who used to explicitly fight for “the American way,” is now a globalist, an environmentalist, and probably a secret bisexual like all superheroes must be.

Electronic Arts advertised a black man and an Arab woman as two protagonists in its upcoming WWI game, Battlefield 1, but even that hasn’t stopped many gamers from complaining that they can’t play as female soldiers in the history-based shooter’s multiplayer mode (history must be racist and sexist). The hero on the cover is at least rooted in reality.

The Passion of the Christ was accused of anti-Semitism for daring to dramatize millenia-old scenes straight from the book of this country’s most popular religion.

And today I find myself having to defend the proposal of whaling as an acceptable feature in a light-hearted pirate adventure game called Sea of Thieves. Never mind that every player in the cartoonish game is cast as a thief and a cutthroat (that is, a pirate) or that we’re talking about a game with krakens and mermaids.

When did progressives abandon the liberty to have fun?

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  1. KC Mulville Inactive
    KC Mulville
    @KCMulville

    Man With the Axe:If only they had had the sense to cast Audrey Hepburn as Lawrence’s love interest, and added a couple of songs for her to lip-synch. That would have been a movie.

    Except TE Lawrence was gay. Wow – now that would have been a much different movie.

    • #31
  2. Casey Inactive
    Casey
    @Casey

    Kephalithos:

    Casey: Yes, our nation is far too serious. That’s our problem.

    No. Our nation may be far too touchy. Touchiness, though, is different from seriousness.

    American culture is the very inverse of serious, if “serious” means “solemn or thoughtful in character or manner.”

    This is a common misconception.

    One can only be touchy if one is serious. One can only organize one’s trash if one is serious. One only worries about the temperature next century if one is serious.

    A serious approach to life is nonsensical. An unserious approach is the only way to function.

    • #32
  3. Kephalithos Member
    Kephalithos
    @Kephalithos

    Casey: This is a common misconception.

    All the more reason to avoid praising “unseriousness,” then.

    If I stand before a crowd of twenty-year-olds, megaphone in hand, and yell, “Go! Be unserious!” I doubt those twenty-year-olds will, in turn, abandon their anxiety about climate change and polar bear extinction. Instead, they’ll turn on Wiz Khalifa, and drink themselves into a stupor while hollering “YOLO!”

    Casey: One can only be touchy if one is serious. One can only organize one’s trash if one is serious. One only worries about the temperature next century if one is serious.

    Seriousness — rightly understood — also underlies reading, learning, decorum, worship, and raising children well. Seriousness doesn’t exclude humor, but directs it toward a worthy end. The serious person holds principles, and acts in conformity with them; the unserious person does not.

    Clearly, we’d define the word “serious” quite differently.

    • #33
  4. Michael Brehm Lincoln
    Michael Brehm
    @MichaelBrehm

    KC Mulville:When everything became political.

    And, in turn, when politics became more about image than substance.

    IMO, politics today is just competing PR campaigns, run by PR people with PR attitudes. Politics is conducted through the media by staging one political stunt after another. It isn’t about your theory about economic strategy; it’s about how emotionally appealing you can be when staging a PR event to display your “empathy.”

    I think this is just about the best summation of the times I’ve ever read. I wish Ricochet had a scrapbook function where you could clip and save individual comments, because I would totally do that in this instance.

    • #34
  5. Jerome Danner Inactive
    Jerome Danner
    @JeromeDanner

    I enjoyed this post.  It just seems to me that if a character or a game or whatever entertainment it is, if it does not represent liberal ideals in some way, shape, or form, then at some point, some people will claim it to be an example of bigotry of some kind.

    Plus, I think people are for more thin-skinned today!

    • #35
  6. KC Mulville Inactive
    KC Mulville
    @KCMulville

    Michael Brehm:I think this is just about the best summation of the times I’ve ever read. I wish Ricochet had a scrapbook function where you could clip and save individual comments, because I would totally do that in this instance.

    Why, thank you … I just wish it was about something more positive …

    • #36
  7. Casey Inactive
    Casey
    @Casey

    Kephalithos: Seriousness — rightly understood — also underlies reading, learning, decorum, worship, and raising children well.

    One can only do those things well unseriously. To do those things seriously would make one rigid and dogmatic. As we all are these days.

    We define similarly. We diagnose differently.

    • #37
  8. Kephalithos Member
    Kephalithos
    @Kephalithos

    Casey: One can only do those things well unseriously. To do those things seriously would make one rigid and dogmatic. As we all are these days.

    How would you define “serious” and “unserious”?

    In this context, “unseriousness” seems to mean “humility” or “holding reasonable expectations.”

    • #38
  9. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    Kate Braestrup: In all the movies you check out, all the games you play, all the shows on netflix you binge-watch, actually count the number of women and the number of men.

    Kate, I see your challenge to count genders, and raise you every Kardashian show, every “Real Housewives of X” show, and most of the TMZ line up.

    Problem is, to a person these women are awful.  They are also supposedly high class.  I assign the quickening of the pace of the coarsening of our culture to these shows.

    Also, the woman is not just the chance for reproductive reward.  She is both the motivator (reproductive reward) and redeemer of the fallible hero.

    I’d commend Michael Walsh’s The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, one of the theses of which is that in the ur-narrative of the Hero story, the woman is always in a position of greater power.  The Left must destroy this portrayal of the woman in order to sow discord between the sexes, and remake society in their own image.  Ergo, the counter-narrative of women held down and subjugated by the patriarchy. [Note, I’m only about halfway through the audio book–but it’s fascinating.]

    • #39
  10. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    I shut up when the first guy said it, but now that a second guy is doing it, I have to speak up–let me mansplain something to the menfolk here–folks, go back & read Mrs. Braestrup’s comments: She was no way complaining about the ratio of male to female roles. She even said so. I’ll add, it’s not the first time she talks about it–she’s never made any feminist/progressive complaint about this.

    Mr. Mongo–give us a book report whenever you can!

    • #40
  11. Mark Wilson Inactive
    Mark Wilson
    @MarkWilson

    Kate Braestrup:Nowhere near 51% (let alone 75%) of characters in movies and TV shows are female. Which isn’t a sign of horrible misogyny, it’s just interesting.

    Another interesting comparison is the overwhelming number of throwaway characters who are male — I’d bet it’s nearly 100%.  I’m talking about the countless men who are dehumanized and used merely as the objects of violence.  This includes unfortunate good guys (cops, team members, and soldiers who aren’t main characters) and bad guys (the countless, poorly shooting, feebly fighting foot soldiers who provide some nominal effort to support and protect the villains, but are easily dispatched by the good guys).  These men are put in the story only to be subjected to violence and be killed.  They don’t have backstories, personalities, dreams, or families.  The body count has to be in the millions by now.

    I only pretend to be upset about this as a lampoon of some of the complaints in the other direction.

    • #41
  12. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    Am I the second guy?  A challenge was issued and accepted.  I don’t think I intimated that I thought she was complaining.  I was just talking raw numbers, here.  Then I segued into commentary on narratives.

    • #42
  13. Nancy Inactive
    Nancy
    @Nancy

    I was teaching my niece’s son to play Sid Meir’s Pirates.  After destroying countless ships, a girl in the game asked him for a ring or a necklace.  There are two choices for what he can say, “I just happen to have one” or “I wouldn’t know where to look.”  He obviously doesn’t what to give it to her, so I said tell her you don’t know where to look.  He is shocked that I would suggest such a thing.  “That would be lying!”, he tells me.  It’s OK to drown hundreds of people but not to lie.  He’s just a kid, so it’s OK.

    • #43
  14. Man With the Axe Inactive
    Man With the Axe
    @ManWiththeAxe

    Titus Techera:I shut up when the first guy said it, but now that a second guy is doing it, I have to speak up–let me mansplain something to the menfolk here–folks, go back & read Mrs. Braestrup’s comments: She was no way complaining about the ratio of male to female roles. She even said so. I’ll add, it’s not the first time she talks about it–she’s never made any feminist/progressive complaint about this.

    She made that clear. But once you start counting men and women, and noticing it, it’s valid to consider why the numbers are the way they are, even if one is not complaining.

    My comments about the absence of women in the sports that people watch and in “Lawrence of Arabia” were tongue-in-cheek ways of pointing out, as Thomas Sowell would no doubt agree, that the expectation of equal representation from demographic groups in any endeavor is going to be disappointed.

    • #44
  15. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Nancy:I was teaching my niece’s son to play Sid Meir’s Pirates. After destroying countless ships, a girl in the game asked him for a ring or a necklace. There are two choices for what he can say, “I just happen to have one” or “I wouldn’t know where to look.” He obviously doesn’t what to give it to her, so I said tell her you don’t know where to look. He is shocked that I would suggest such a thing. “That would be lying!”, he tells me. It’s OK to drown hundreds of people but not to lie. He’s just a kid, so it’s OK.

    Context matters.  Was the governor’s daughter hot?

    Sorry, I’ll try that again.  Context matters.  Commerce raiding is a legitimate part of war.  There is nothing wrong with sinking and killing to advance the war aims of the country to which you are loyal (I tend to associate with whoever is at war with the Spanish, or pick a country and be entirely loyal to them, myself).  While you can be a pirate in the game, I have moral qualms against illegal commerce raiding.

    Lying to a woman, however, does not have a “there’s a war on” excuse.  (Far better just not to lead them in the first place.)

    • #45
  16. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Man With the Axe:

    Titus Techera:I shut up when the first guy said it, but now that a second guy is doing it, I have to speak up–let me mansplain something to the menfolk here–folks, go back & read Mrs. Braestrup’s comments: She was no way complaining about the ratio of male to female roles. She even said so. I’ll add, it’s not the first time she talks about it–she’s never made any feminist/progressive complaint about this.

    She made that clear. But once you start counting men and women, and noticing it, it’s valid to consider why the numbers are the way they are, even if one is not complaining.

    My comments about the absence of women in the sports that people watch and in “Lawrence of Arabia” were tongue-in-cheek ways of pointing out, as Thomas Sowell would no doubt agree, that the expectation of equal representation from demographic groups in any endeavor is going to be disappointed.

    Sure. I’m all for people explaining that–I think the lady has a point with her own favored explanation.

    As for the new expectations–well, I’m fairly sure no group of Americans is going to let other groups get away with anything! There’s gonna be fightin’!

    • #46
  17. Man With the Axe Inactive
    Man With the Axe
    @ManWiththeAxe

    Titus Techera:

    Sure. I’m all for people explaining that–I think the lady has a point with her own favored explanation.

    As for the new expectations–well, I’m fairly sure no group of Americans is going to let other groups get away with anything! There’s gonna be fightin’!

    I would reply but I don’t have time right now. The WNBA game is about to begin.

    • #47
  18. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    Kate Braestrup:

    Aaron Miller:Kate, the answers are simple, though not politically correct:

    — because most professional storytellers are men

    — because human history is dominated by the actions of men

    — because the easiest told and most exciting stories are action adventures, to which men are better suited

    — because most historical leaders and audiences alike are heterosexual

    Femme fatales, colored heroes, and gay characters abound. But there are never enough to satisy, it seems.

    <snip>

    And, of course, were we to be menaced by a real dragon, we’d be fine with anyone protecting us, provided they were effective. But in story-land, it’s the princess provides the extra kick— she’s the Reproductive Opportunity the hero is offered upon winning the battle.

    If the knight in shining armor is female, and defeats the dragon, does she get to marry the prince?

    <snip>

    I think there’s room for confusion here. Are we talking stories, myths, and legends rooted in history? Or a more fantastic, revisionist, modern storytelling based on affirmative action and political correctness? Most of the knights I’m familiar with in the Middle Ages were men, Joan of Arc notwithstanding. So, if there seems to be a preponderance of men depicted as knights in fiction rather than women, that would seem more plausible, wouldn’t it?

    I believe what Aaron is getting at is that there seems to be a concerted effort to somehow redress (there’s an interesting word) the apparent chauvinism of hundreds of years of story telling by introducing newly recognized and protected members of modern society who, in an earlier age, would have been arrested and often executed for their behavior, as well as, fundamentally transforming the Princesses of Reproductive Opportunity into strong, independent women who could easily cleave in twain any man (or dragon) they find annoying or troublesome.

    Disney has been hard at work emboldening its Princesses of Feminist Heroism in the last couple of decades from helpless and clueless characters like Snow White to characters like Mulan, Princess Jasmine, Merida who easily climbs sheer cliff faces and can best any of her twit suitors in archery (in Brave) et. al., even to the point of transforming a 13 or 14-year old Pocahontas into a statuesque, sexually alluring athletically-gifted 24 or 25-year old Amazon in its revisionist pap.

    I think the danger is one of context. The more that modern storytellers base their stories on a false retelling of history, the more that their young readers (or moviegoers, or gamers) who get older and mature as adults (hopefully), incorporate that warped and false understanding of history. And if some of the on-camera/on-campus interviews questioning college students on American, world history or current events is any indication, then many of these folks are easy marks for loading any sort of nonsense and garbage into their heads.

    • #48
  19. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Brian Watt:

    Right.  Aaron and Kate are having two different, related, conversations.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that -it’s the way of dinner conversation.  The two points of view are not, however, in direct conflict.  Aaron is pointing out that there are -as you say -people seeking to redress the previous stories.  Kate is noting that there is a reason -albeit one idiosyncratic to her -for the imbalance.  It is not unreasonable to conclude that the attempted regress will backfire and produce lousy stories because it goes against the necessary conditions of the story.

    I do not necessarily concur -see above reasons.

    Furthermore, I think that there do exist good stories about woman knights, and if you can get over the willing suspension of disbelief “men with breasts” can be a fun story, if ultimately derivative (in the same way most culture is derivative).

    There are two other objections, though.  First, that if the point is to recreate the historical experience of WWI, then sticking women in the trenches is counterproductive, because that isn’t the experience being aimed at.  Second, that games are made to be profitable, and thus is matters whether the SJW games are games that, like, actual people want to play.  To pick a rather famous example, Depression Quest could be an interesting game (I did not think so, but I’m willing to allow others to disagree).  But no one in their right mind would actually pay money for the gameplay.

    • #49
  20. Nancy Inactive
    Nancy
    @Nancy

    Sabrdance:

    Nancy:I was teaching my niece’s son to play Sid Meir’s Pirates. After destroying countless ships, a girl in the game asked him for a ring or a necklace. There are two choices for what he can say, “I just happen to have one” or “I wouldn’t know where to look.” He obviously doesn’t what to give it to her, so I said tell her you don’t know where to look. He is shocked that I would suggest such a thing. “That would be lying!”, he tells me. It’s OK to drown hundreds of people but not to lie. He’s just a kid, so it’s OK.

    Context matters. Was the governor’s daughter hot?

    That was part of the problem.  The game rated her as rather plain.

    • #50
  21. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    Sabrdance:

    Brian Watt:

    Right. Aaron and Kate are having two different, related, conversations. Not that there’s anything wrong with that -it’s the way of dinner conversation. The two points of view are not, however, in direct conflict. Aaron is pointing out that there are -as you say -people seeking to redress the previous stories. Kate is noting that there is a reason -albeit one idiosyncratic to her -for the imbalance. It is not unreasonable to conclude that the attempted regress will backfire and produce lousy stories because it goes against the necessary conditions of the story.

    I do not necessarily concur -see above reasons.

    Furthermore, I think that there do exist good stories about woman knights, and if you can get over the willing suspension of disbelief “men with breasts” can be a fun story, if ultimately derivative (in the same way most culture is derivative).

    There are two other objections, though. First, that if the point is to recreate the historical experience of WWI, then sticking women in the trenches is counterproductive, because that isn’t the experience being aimed at. Second, that games are made to be profitable, and thus is matters whether the SJW games are games that, like, actual people want to play. To pick a rather famous example, Depression Quest could be an interesting game (I did not think so, but I’m willing to allow others to disagree). But no one in their right mind would actually pay money for the gameplay.

    I think you are right about the two conversations.

    I’m sure there are wonderful stories about women as knights. My only concern is that today’s audiences begin to see these fictions as more historical than they really are. It’s bad enough that there are badly done historical dramas and fiction that fudge historical facts or get them blatantly wrong; or are based on shoddy evidence or a warped view of actual events. It’s worse when modern character constructs and politically correct narratives warp history or historically-based myths and legends even further but are skillfully presented as the way it must have been. Given the deplorable state of education, I’m afraid that only a few people will be able to discern what is garbage and what is historically accurate. Maybe this is a third conversation sprouting from the other two.

    • #51
  22. TheRoyalFamily Member
    TheRoyalFamily
    @TheRoyalFamily

    Aaron Miller: even that hasn’t stopped many gamers from complaining that they can’t play as female soldiers

    Just to quibble, it’s not really the gamers that are complaining, it’s the sjw’s and the media (but I repeat myself) that are complaining. SJW’s don’t actually play games, which is why pandering them is a losing game (and why ignoring them doesn’t hurt anyone).

    • #52
  23. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    By the way, I know this lord, who knows this duke, who has a page, who knows this blacksmith, who met this wandering minstrel in an alehouse who has Princess Reproductive Opportunity’s cell phone number if anyone wants it.

    • #53
  24. Aaron Miller Inactive
    Aaron Miller
    @AaronMiller

    Sabrdance:Context matters. Commerce raiding is a legitimate part of war. There is nothing wrong with sinking and killing to advance the war aims of the country to which you are loyal (I tend to associate with whoever is at war with the Spanish, or pick a country and be entirely loyal to them, myself). While you can be a pirate in the game, I have moral qualms against illegal commerce raiding.

    Lying to a woman, however, does not have a “there’s a war on” excuse. (Far better just not to lead them in the first place.)

    This is how wars are started.

    • #54
  25. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Western Chauvinist: The Left believes the extraordinary things about America and the West are its sins (slavery, racism, sexism…); the reality is, the extraordinary things about Western Civilization are its virtues (human rights, its treatment of women, capitalism overcoming subsistence-level poverty, etc.).

    That’s nice. I’m going to swipe it (with attribution) for my Sunday sermon!

    • #55
  26. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Mark Wilson: Another interesting comparison is the overwhelming number of throwaway characters who are male — I’d bet it’s nearly 100%. I’m talking about the countless men who are dehumanized and used merely as the objects of violence. This includes unfortunate good guys (cops, team members, and soldiers who aren’t main characters) and bad guys (the countless, poorly shooting, feebly fighting foot soldiers who provide some nominal effort to support and protect the villains, but are easily dispatched by the good guys). These men are put in the story only to be subjected to violence and be killed. They don’t have backstories, personalities, dreams, or families. The body count has to be in the millions by now.

    Oh, definitely—and this is true all the way through the supposedly misogynistic Bible, the “Texts of Terror” (Phyllis Trible’s title for a book on feminist hermeneutics), and for that matter in the news.  The body count among males is staggering, and reported nonchalantly. When “women and children” die, that’s a sign, a story, a scandal…it’s something. When men die…meh.

    This is not, incidentally, how I feel about it, being pretty partial to the men in my life and a little too conversant with what happens when a man dies  (hint: a world dies with him).

    • #56
  27. Man With the Axe Inactive
    Man With the Axe
    @ManWiththeAxe

    Western Chauvinist:Prager said something else yesterday I found worth remembering: The Left believes the extraordinary things about America and the West are its sins (slavery, racism, sexism…); the reality is, the extraordinary things about Western Civilization are its virtues (human rights, its treatment of women, capitalism overcoming subsistence-level poverty, etc.).

    This is actually very profound, and I’m glad you mentioned it. Those sins are not in the slightest unique to the west or to the U.S., in fact the opposite is true. Western society has had these sins, but to a much smaller degree compared to third world and eastern societies, where racism, sexism, even slavery is still pervasive. But no other society outside the west has come close to matching its virtues.

    • #57
  28. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Sabrdance: It is not unreasonable to conclude that the attempted regress will backfire and produce lousy stories because it goes against the necessary conditions of the story.

    Wow, you guys have been busy!
    First—I don’t know anything about gamers and gaming and games, and so could be completely wrong about how frequently females, minorities, LGBT et al pop up in the “stories” (should that be in quotes?) that are told in games.

    Second, the “knight” can be any number of heroic characters and Princess R.O. can be the cheerleader, the prom queen, the starlet, the Smurfett, whatever—and yes, there are stories with no women in them at all. But if a woman appears, the chances are very good that she will occupy one of two roles: “Mom” (esp. in children’s stories) and “R.O.”

    As I say, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing

    . I think it’s noteworthy that a young woman wrote a completely imaginary story about a kid with magical powers, in part because she was thinking about entertaining her daughter…but Harry Potter was nonetheless a boy. I’ve talked to a few children’s writers, and they admit that this happens unconsciously—it is likely that Rowling didn’t weigh the merits of whether it should be Harry or Harriet and make a decision. Male is the default. Why would that be? And why does it happen cross-culturally, and why are we so unaware of it? As I say, when the ratio of males to females dips below 3:1, our impression is that the story is practically all female! And we might not even notice that a story contains no female characters at all. I read and re-read  all the Winnie The Pooh stories when I was a kid without it ever seeming odd to me that only one character in the Seven Hundred Acre Wood was female.

    When feminists, for example, try to tell Female Knight stories, they always end up telling crummy stories, usually because they also object to violence and think you can solve all problems with Understanding, which means the Princess can’t kill the dragon, she has to…manipulate him verbally. Hmmmnn.

    However, if you’ve ever written a short story that was okay, but lacked a certain zip… try switching all the sexes. Every male character becomes female, every female becomes male—and don’t change anything else. This is not a political thing, it’s a writing tip; a boring story becomes really interesting.

    • #58
  29. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Brian Watt:By the way, I know this lord, who knows this duke, who has a page, who knows this blacksmith, who met this wandering minstrel in an alehouse who has Princess Reproductive Opportunity’s cell phone number if anyone wants it.

    Hah! Funny man.

    • #59
  30. TheRoyalFamily Member
    TheRoyalFamily
    @TheRoyalFamily

    Kate Braestrup: he Princess can’t kill the dragon, she has to…manipulate him verbally

    I know of several stories where princesses (or princes…) manipulate dragons…in ways that aren’t really proper for discussion in the Main Feed, perhaps. Just to throw that out there.

    • #60
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