The war against a common enemy clearly shows how world governments would gather the “affected” people under the same roof of comfort. How can we unite the people? Give them a common enemy.
The notion runs deep in the human psychology and works in the way we perceive different attributes in people, whether it is the attraction between genders or the face which we perceive as one to be feared.
Looking at how majority of the entertainment business go about their way in illustrating different stereotypes will be a matter that will take far way more than what can be put in a couple of pages. The issue will be narrowed down to two different categories which are similar to each other; the film industry and the game industry. And my intentions are merely to touch these subjects.
As many of the techniques the artist use are by experience of what things works and what things that doesn’t. Like defining the silhouette of an ally or an enemy simply by using shapes, or what kind of colors that would be more fitting for a villain than a hero. And these are not quantitative studies it’s merely how we psychologically perceive things, and partially the evolution of art.
I will present pictures or plots from different games or movies to show where these stereotypical roles are presented, and bring out the characters and their traits, and analyze it from two different perspectives, one as a “middle-eastern” individual and one as an individual growing up in Sweden.
Starting with the first one that is the movie “Clash of the titans” where we find a character that is out of context, even though he doesn’t appear to be an enemy we find that his attributes are kind of stereotypical. The leader of the djinn “Shiekh Sulieman”, If you read the info through this link: http://clash-of-the-titans.wikia.com/wiki/Sheikh_Sulieman, You will find that he is from Arabic descent and he actually offers himself for the sake of the group, by blowing himself up… Yes I laughed and that is the sad part about it.
The movie “The dictator” did something else, playing with the stereotypical way people see at others was fun but also a reality for others, when I watched this movie at the Swedish cinema the ones who laughed the hardest were the immigrants.
As we look at these representations in movies and video games nowadays we tend to miss crucial information such as stereotypes and sexism, and if someone talks about them or brings them up they would immediately be jumped. And yes sometimes the critique does seem to only be for self-gain and publicity but most of the times we should actually listen to those that make sense.
But many things also lack consistency and therefore make the results unnecessarily bad. “The dictator” and Aladdin (Disney 1992) surely had one of the main characters look like middle eastern people but they were consistent in their way of telling the story (There is the “damsel in distress here though”, and a harem girl/princess?), we can also look at Disney’s “The Princess and the frog” and see that they are pretty consistent there too, and I for once liked that the princess wasn’t “white”.
The main thing with this “article” began when I watched “How to train your dragon 2”, I liked the first movie so much that I decided to watch the second one, but I was disappointed in how they would portray the antagonist. In the world of dragons and stereotypical Vikings, they chose a Middle Eastern looking antagonist (Drago). The movie was not consistent now as it was before, and the way they portrayed him to be; ruthless, no humanity, all must bow to him or be killed, and even if the protagonist (a little boy) try to talk sense into him he coldly denies him.
And the power of implanting this into children’s minds is to me a scary thing, should they not be able to see the world as it is and not being fed with stereotypes? Don’t get me wrong, people need to be different we all don’t look alike and that is a beautiful thing. But we don’t have to portray people in these ways.
We have to have respect for one another, I think that it’s sad how this industry works, that this is what sells the most, this and the sexist way to look at women.
The best example for the way we choose to portray women in games are ridiculous too, I can give you a clear but extreme example of this and that is “Tera Online” where all the males have full body armors but the women have… well I actually consider them naked. Even though it’s not an AAA-game they clearly know that sex is something that sells and in turn gets supported by people.
Now summing this whole thing up is that even I have this stereotypes in my head, and how come when I draw someone evil they most of the time look like Jafar from Aladdin?
I will try my hardest to be consistent, and evolve on the way and not be ignorant!
I end this with a quote from the book Character development and storytelling for games: “To recognize when you are writing stereotypes, ask yourself questions: Does the character look, talk, and act exactly as you’d expect her to? If there are no surprises, you’ve got a stereotype. Do the concept sketches the artists are making from your description look a lot like the concept sketches from other games? Stereotype.”
A Student Game Design Blog - By Ahmad Ali 
