Well, I was going to say, I have a feeling there's something to be said about our willingness to demonize and one-dimensionalize "the enemy" as a collective rather than as individuals in an armed conflict, because considering them as individuals would make the conflict a lot harder to rationalize. Those kinds of assumptions that we allow ourselves to make about faceless groups of people aren't so easy to make about living, breathing individuals. Thus apparently it's okay to say the Huns as a group conducted war like monsters, but it's not okay to say the Huns themselves were monstrous. I would assert that they could both be offensive.
You could make the same argument comparing the darkspawn to the "Russian horde", and justify it by saying you're not talking about Russians themselves, but the people in that military using that military strategy... it still doesn't sound very kosher to me. You could compare the darkspawn to whoever you feel like, and say it's just their tactics you're talking about, but that's still a pretty negative thing you're saying about those people. It seems, in effect, to be a distinction of, "I'm not saying it's a duck, just that it walks like one and quacks like one."
I was originally going to assert that it makes a difference how far back in history you go. Thus, for civilization such as the Huns, Mongols, Vikings, etc, who are long gone, perhaps it's easier to portray them as 'barbaric' than it is for a modern civilization. But then I thought, why did the Iranian people get so upset with 300's depiction of the ancient Persians (as monsters)? Of course, that comparison is a lot more direct than any fan-speculation about the darkspawn being based on a past civilization... so it's not a perfect analogy, by far. But I think it casts enough doubt on the matter that I can still say – it may not matter how far back you go. You might still risk offending the descendants of that civilization.
I thought Dragon Age was supposed to be all about grey morality – why do darkspawn even exist? They are the epitome of black-and-white morality. They are pure evilness. That's why it's so easy to offend people by comparing any group of people to the darkspawn. I do not mean to say that there have not been civilizations which have done pretty monstrous things – while I'm not sure of it's true or not, the account of the Mongols catapulting plagued corpses into besieged cities seems fairly monstrous. What the ****s did seems pretty monstrous. But to compare
any group of people to a fictional belligerent group which is composed, quite literally, of monsters – evil to the core – then you have committed to a sort of one-dimensionalization that, yes, even the ****s do not deserve.
There, my foolishness has been laid bare. I apologize for subjecting you all to this.
But thanks for asking.
ps – those were all generic "you"s, not referring to anyone specifically.
ps2 -- interesting censorship, I didn't realize that word was off-limits...
Modifié par filaminstrel, 18 juillet 2010 - 12:41 .
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