In astonishing news the web has successfully eliminated all racial, gender and age stereotypes. What this means is that there is no reason to fear discrimination when using a virtual identity. How did the web achieve this utopian goal? It did so by simply making all virtual identities white males of about the same age.
Hopefully the statement above is so obviously false that it was humorous. The digital age doesn't appear to be eliminating stereotypes. However, the term stereotype doesn't quite fit the world of virtual identities as argued in the article Cybertyping: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. In order to more appropriately approach this topic Lisa Nakamura coined the term cybertype (3). My understanding nCybertyping is the act of stereotyping online identities through the lens of virtual reality rather then the standards commonly known in non-virtual reality. Since virtual identities aren't directly connected to a physical entity, they aren't directly related to our bodies. This doesn't eliminate cultural bias, it just allows people to choose which team they are playing for. Identity tourism is the process of "switching teams" in order to see what it's like to use a different identity.
Street fighter 2 is essentially based on cyber types. Each avatar is muscular and well defined as all "fighters" should be. In addition to the fighter cybertype, each individual avatar overlays additional cybertypes. To focus on one specifically, let's look at Chun Li. She is the only women of all the street fighters and she follows many of the typical female stereo types. She wears makup, a dress and fixes her hair in buns with ribbons. If she loses a match, she is even shown crying as this picture shows. While she has skills that are useful against many of her opponents she seems to be portrayed as week.
Some amount of identity tourism takes place through the avatars of each character but I think the most powerful form of it is through the game as a whole. It is even organized in a tourist fashion. The player moves from one country to the other fighting different characters. At each arena, the back drop shows cyber types for each nationality. While many nationalities are represented, the United States has two players in the game. This allows the player to pretend to be a street fighter and move from one nation to the other and virtually experience each culture as a street fighter. In between stages the character is given a bonus round that allows him to do as much damage as possible to a luxury car.
This game gives evidence of the danger behind identity tourism in two ways. First, allowing people to try out violent acts gives rise to the possibility of transferring those acts to real life. Not everyone who plays a game like this will do that, but some probably do. The second danger is the misrepresentation of each culture. The nationalities are certainly more dynamic then what is shown in the arena, but the player may feel like they are experiencing the culture when they are only experiencing how the programmer cybertyped that culture. To the right is a picture of the character Guile's arena. It portrays americans in a very militaristic light. Hardly the opinion I'd like others to have of me.
Bibliographies
Nakamura, Lisa. Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. New York Routledge, 2002. Print
Okamoto, Yoshiki. Street Fighter 2. Capcom, 1992. Computer software
Your perspective that the game has a basis of tourism is a great point of view. In retrospect, many games have the same touristic appearance. I never thought about this before now, but the reason some games appeal to me is the ability to travel virtually not only through time but also through space. In the future, I will look at gaming from a different perspective. I am not sure, if we as gamers can stop cybertyping, but if anyone of us have an opportunity to be game beta testers it is a good idea to bring cybertyping to the attention of the game developers.
ReplyDelete