Godheval

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There are many possible reasons for the change, such as wider market appeal, as an ethnically ambiguous character alienates no one.  It is also a truism that the mainstream beauty standard – set mostly by Americans and Europeans – is not inclusive of distinctively “non-white” features, particularly Africanesque features.  For marketing’s sake – and this literally could’ve been a decision made by marketing against the wishes of the original designer – Jade could have been altered to resonate more with the mainstream.  Looking at the final version, is it enough to say that Jade was intended to be “black” by the designer, or even that she is so in his/her mind, in order to claim her as such?  I would say that it isn’t.

Jade’s ethnic ambiguity alone, however, is not enough to dismiss her from the ranks of black heroines.  After all, blackness is subjective, varying from place to place and culture to culture.  If we take it to be synonymous with “African”, then the ethnic diversity of that continent means that Jade could look like anything.  But here’s where we get to another important point.

Jade is most certainly not African.  Because she is not even from this planet.  Beyond Good & Evil takes place on the fictional world of Hillys, where people like Jade are classified as “homo sapiens”, distinguished from other humanoid races such as “Capra Sapiens” (goat people), “Sus Sapiens” (pig people), and “Felis Sapiens” (cat people).  The concept of race that divides human populations on Earth simply does not exist on Hillys.  For that matter, there are no social divisions between any of the “Sapiens” – they are subclassified solely for the sake of compiling a photographic catalogue of all of the planet’s species.  That is to say, these distinctions are biological, and do not manifest at all in the culture of Hillys.

This is an important point, because the meaning of “blackness” on planet Earth is defined mostly in a social context.  There are some vague overlaps into a biological context – some valid, particularly with regards to medicine, and some not – where genetics is cited incorrectly to support a social or political argument.  Without getting too much into the meaning of blackness, there is the experience of so-called “black people” to be considered, which historically, and with few exceptions, tends to be one of hardship, oppression, social inequality, prejudice, and even dehumanization.  This is particularly true of those peoples of Africa who were sold into slavery, and who even in the aftermath, have been forced to face social and economic handicaps.

Coming back to video games, what would be required for a character to be considered “black”?  Appearance could be one qualifier, but as we see in the case of Jade, this can become dubious due to the wide variety of physical characteristics that can be classified as “black”, a reflection of the extreme diversity to be found within such a vague and subjective category.

The “black experience” could be another qualifier, as in a situation where a character is forced to face certain indignities, in spite of her ethnic ambiguity.  There are undoubtedly women who resemble Jade and who have been forced to endure such conditions.  In the United States, by way of the one-drop rule, it is common for a woman of fair skin to be deemed a “black” woman by virtue of her other features, and therefore share in the black experience.  Jade as she appears in Beyond Good and Evil, however, fails to meet either of these qualifiers.

The only remaining qualifier brings us back to the designer’s intent.  Without speaking to Michel Ancel or his art team, we cannot know which ethnicities inspired Jade’s appearance from original concept to final incarnation.  Perhaps then, we could derive clues from the voice actors chosen to play Jade.  We have to take this with a grain of salt, however, because the ethnicity of voice actors do not necessarily match those of their characters.  Cree Summer, who is African-American, is one of the most prolific voice actors in the field, and because her voice does not invoke any particular ethnicity, she has been tapped to play a wide range of characters – most of which are not African-American or “black” in any sense.  She got her start playing Penny from Inspector Gadget.

Cree Summer

Penny

What this suggests about the willingness of game producers to cast black actors for their voices versus their willingness to craft black roles may be another subject worth exploring.  As for Jade, since the game was released in different languages, she was played by several different voice actors.  But with respect to how Jade’s voice corresponds to her ethnicity in the mind of the developer, we should take a look at the actor closest to the developers  – Ubisoft Montreal – which would be the one cast for Jade’s French voice.  Her name is Emma de Caunes, and thanks to the artist John Karp, we can see her picture below modified to resemble Jade.

Emma de Caunes as Jade

Even had Jade’s voice actress been of any French-African ethnicity, it would’ve been a stretch to therefore consider the character as being of any African ethnicity.  The example of Cree Summer demonstrates the distance between the identities of voice actors and their characters.  In any case, Emma de Caunes is not of any visible African descent, and therefore we cannot use her ethnicity as a case for Jade’s “blackness”.

This brings me to my final point about Jade, which is that in spite of the developer’s original intent, any ethnic inspiration for the character, how Jade is perceived by her audience may be even more important.  By looking at a few random samples of fan-created art for Jade, we can gain some insight into how others perceive her ethnicity.

Jade by Enchantma

Jade by Scott Rogers

Jade by Mista Jonz

Because an artist’s work will necessarily be based in part on their personal experiences, and probably in some way reflect the artist him or herself, it stands to reason that the artist’s own ethnicity may factor into how they depict a character. The artists of the pictures above are “Asian”, “White”, and “Black”, respectively. The quotes are to acknowledge that those ethnic/racial terms are weak classifications, and that I have no deeper insight into the artists’ backgrounds.

What we see here is that in spite of the varied ethnicities of the artists, not one of them depicted Jade with features any more distinctively Africanesque than what we see in the official Ubisoft rendition. Had these artists had even an inkling that the developer intended Jade to be “black”, then it may have been more likely that we would have seen that understanding reflected in their work.  The renditions by Enchantma and Scott Rogers seem to suggest that Jade may be Asian – based on her eye shape, while the version by Mista Jonz is ambiguous.

While we cannot discount the possibility that Jade’s features would’ve been “de-ethnicized” even had she been more clearly Africanesque – as is common amongst fan artists of Storm from Marvel Comics – we can at least say that nothing about Jade seems to encourage fans to depict her as “black”.  An extensive spread of Jade fan art can be seen at the deviantART Beyond Good & Evil Fan Club, where not one rendition depicts Jade with Africanesque features.

So in the end, based on overwhelming evidence, we are forced to conclude that Jade from Beyond Good & Evil is not “black” in any sense of the word.  For the reasons discussed above about how races are defined, and how they do not correspond to any human categorization on the planet Hillys, she cannot accurately be considered “white”, “Asian” or any other race/ethnicity from Earth.  She can only barely be classified as human, being a “homo sapien”, but those who have played the game also know that she is a little something more.  I’d like to count Jade amongst “black” female protagonists in video games, due to the fact that there are otherwise none, but doing so actually sets a weak precedent.

It is not enough to be inspired by Africanesque features, only to see that inspiration disappear for the sake of market appeal.  And it is regressive, if not plain insulting, to create a character of color – in terms of background and appearance – only to completely undo it in a future incarnation, as in the deplorable example of Vanessa Lewis from Virtua Fighter.  Note the lighter skin, thinner lips, altered facial structure, and reduced hips from the Virtua Fighter 4 version (background) to the Virtua Fighter 5 version (foreground).

Vanessa Lewis
(Background: VF4 Foreground: VF5)

As technology improves, and as the content of games expands in terms of breadth and depth, opportunities only increase for representing diversity.  In the future, it will not be enough for a character to have darker skin, thicker lips, or a different eye shape.  We will have to see different cultures and experiences represented as well.  This wouldn’t have to be a limitation with regards to restricting the game setting to Earth.

After all, there is always interstellar or cross-dimensional travel.  There is also alternative history.  And already, plenty of creators have told stories of other worlds, only to draw inspiration from the experiences of the peoples of Earth, because doing so adds a certain richness and believability.

As I discussed in Ethnic Depictions in Video Games, there has been a want for protagonists of color with which gamers of color can identify.  If gamers cannot identify on a superficial level – i.e. by appearance, if they cannot identify on the basis of a common social experience, and if they cannot identify by way of voice, then there is little remaining to connect them to the character.  For most gamers this probably will not taint their experience with a game, as the lack of inclusive ethnic representation has become the norm.

But there is certainly a call, albeit muted and scattered amongst the more thoughtful pockets of the gamer population, for game developers to be more inclusive in their thinking.

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For this very reason, Nadya Suleman is a moral deviant.  She has not only brought one child into the world under unsatisfactory conditions, but she has brought in eight of them – in fact a brood – merely to satisfy the desire to have more children.

Undoubtedly the birth of the Suleman octuplets was to the applause of many pro-life advocates, but her case also highlights exactly why every pregnancy should be preceded by extensive thought and planning, and why the option for a woman to not follow through to birth must always be available. After all, life is more than a heartbeat and air pumping through the lungs; there must be consideration for quality of life as well.

Even before the inadequate financial circumstances into which Suleman’s children were born, there was the high risk involved with bringing octuplets to term in the first place.  History shows that the risk is high, as before Suleman there were seven reported cases of octuplets, each with tragic results.

• September 13 and 16, 2000 – Four boys and four girls born to Mariella Mazzara of Italy. Four died within a month.
• December 8 and 20, 1998 – Six girls and two boys born to Nkem Chukwu of Houston. The smallest died within a week.
• December 5, 1996 – Four boys and two girls born alive to Rosario Clavijo in Spain. Two other fetuses were stillborn.
• September 30 to October 2, 1996 – Six boys and two girls born to Mandy Allwood of England. All died.
• December 20, 1985 – Five boys and three girls born to Sevil Capan of Turkey. All died.
• August 16, 1979 – Five girls and three boys born to Pasqualina Chianese of Italy. Six died within two weeks.
• March 10, 1967 – Four boys and four girls were born to Maria Teresa Lopez de Sepulveda, 21, of Mexico City. All died within 14 hours.

In light of these odds, Nadya Suleman’s actions were so selfish and careless that it can barely be understood, and can truly only be attributed to some sort of psychological malfunction.  I am sure it will come out at some point that Ms. Suleman suffers from some obscure disorder, at which point the nation’s shock and awe will necessarily change into at least disgruntled neutrality and perhaps even sympathy.

But she will get no sympathy from me, because outside of whatever psychosis she suffers from, she has showed the clear cognizance and presence of mind to arrange for the national welfare system to support her bizarre pathology, to conduct multiple interviews, and to have a website constructed to exploit people’s concern for her children in order to solicit donations.  She was supposedly even in talks to be paid up to $2 million for an interview and to star in her own reality television show.  Whatever illness Ms. Suleman may suffer from, it does not seem to have rendered her incompetent, leaving her completely responsible – morally and legally – for her perverse actions.

Although Nadya’s Suleman’s moral compass is clearly off center, the needle also necessarily points to the physician or medical team.  He, she, or they – aware of the situation, allowed her to take fertility drugs despite protests by Nadya’s own mother.  One can scarcely imagine the flight of judgment required for a highly educated medical professional to condone such a thing, which naturally leads to speculation that there may have been a more sinister motivation behind it.  Recent reports indicate that the care Nadya received reached costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Newly grounded from the euphoria of pulling off an octuplet delivery, her medical team is looking expectantly to California’s Medi-Cal system for compensation.

Could the sanctioning of a poor woman taking fertility drugs and subsequently giving birth to eight children really be based on something so trite as personal profit?  Or perhaps for the  acclaim a hospital would receive in being one of the only hospitals in history to safely deliver octuplets?  Either way, there was a major lapse in personal and professional integrity.

For Suleman’s part, she has cashed in – figuratively and literally – on her overnight celebrity, appearing in several interviews to defend her decision.  So this was no momentary failure of judgment, but a conscious and sustained commitment to moral bankruptcy.  At the same time as she makes the audacious claim that she is not taking advantage of taxpayers, she continues to pull in $500 per month in food stamps, which are of course paid for by taxpayers.  While the welfare system is necessarily in place to support the poor and disadvantaged, especially children, it was never intended to support those who would intentionally put themselves in a disadvantaged position.

Any vitriol towards Ms. Suleman has nothing to do with the fact that my taxes are helping to support her deviancy, because her situation has not increased my taxes, and I doubt that even one penny from my income goes directly to her.  And I completely support the welfare system, in spite of the fact that my family managed through poverty without it.  I would even see it expanded, if it ensured that the poor and disadvantaged were provided some relief.

Most people participating in the system – exceptions made for other exploitative deviants like Ms. Suleman – are in genuine need, and it is because of that need that I have no objections to contributing to that system.  Ms. Suleman, in creating her need voluntarily, is taking from those who find themselves at an unexpected disadvantage.  That she would deny that this is the case, and that she would be unrepentant, only compounds upon her disgrace.  That she gave birth to eight children she cannot support is a problem in itself, but that she has no concept or conscience of how she affects others is completely unacceptable.  It only becomes a greater trangression when we consider the state of the U.S. economy, and that the needs of the legitimately disadvantaged have only increased.

Things only get worse when we consider that more than half the world’s population lives in absolute poverty.  In very few places, and perhaps only in the United States, can – or would - a person willfully subject themselves and their children to poverty, and then look expectantly to the rest of the world with an open hand.  In most cases, with poverty comes humility, and reservations about receiving aid from others.  The people of the world’s poorest countries eke out a living as best they can with what little they have, and are invariably grateful – never expectant – for those who assist them.

Nadya Suleman is not only ungrateful – for the privilege of living in a country where her situation is even possible – she is indifferent to the fact that there are those who are suffering around her, and in the world at large.  This becomes clear in how she has embraced her sudden fame, making a public spectacle of herself and her children, even having the audacity to hire a publicist, as if to formally legitimize her celebrity status.

Reports are coming in that Ms. Suleman has gone into hiding, due to a number of people making threats towards her and her children.  She has allegedly checked into a hotel, leaving her publicist to interface with the public.  The welfare system does not cover the fees for a publicist, nor does it cover hotel costs.  Word also has it – and picture evidence affirms – that she had some sort of plastic surgery performed on her face.  Yet she has had to rely welfare system and the donations of strangers for support.  The people who have offered or made donations to the Suleman brood almost certainly did it for the sake of her children, and considering her need.  They probably did not – do not – intend to fund her public relations campaign.

It is not only a physical problem, as Nadya Suleman takes from the collective mouth of the poor, and the hand of the generous, but an ideological one, as she strengthens the case of those who criticize the welfare system as one of waste and excess.

It is for these reasons that Nadya Suleman – and the medical professionals who have explicitly endorsed her deviancy – are deserving of any vitriol that comes their way.  Instead of her actions being celebrated in the media, they should be examined by a mental health professional, and on proof of competence, examined in a criminal context.

Whatever the outcome of the situation, however, it is important to separate the Suleman children from the indiscretions of their mother, and proceed in matter that protects and provides for them as new members of society.  Even if it means their mother is deemed unfit – all evidence seems to point to this – and that they need to be placed in another’s care.

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Today, as I read extensively about the Palestine-Israel conflict and more on the background of the general tension between the so-called “Muslim world” and the west, I often run into the term Islamist.  And everytime it stands out like a beacon.  The term is taken by those knowledgeable in these matters to mean “Islamic radical”, or a person who generally perverts the foundational messages of the religion towards political ends, and often in violent ways.

There are two problems, however, with using the term.  The first is that the suffix “ist” is not an adequate substitute for “radical” or “militant”, although perhaps it could be argued – spuriously – that it is the last three letters of “terrorist”, which for all intents and purposes is what Islamist is meant to infer.  For those who know very little or nothing about Islam – which is probably the majority of non-Muslims – “ist” does absolutely nothing to separate the religion from the violent activities conducted in its name.  The uninformed person is not likely to recognize the difference between “Islamist” and “Islamicist”, the latter being a person who engages in the academic study of Islam.  Nor are they likely to know the difference between “Islamist” and “Muslim”.  And in a climate ripe with anti-Islamic sentiment, the uninformed and angry have very little incentive to make the distinction.

The second problem is that Islam is mentioned at all when discussing radical, militant, or terrorist activities.  Because as I mentioned above, a more thorough investigation into the relationship between the religion and violence is tenuous.  That an ideologue like Osama bin Laden recites – or misreads – a passage from the Qur’an does not bind the rest of his words or his actions to Islam.  In any case, he cites the Qu’ran very little in his communications, either because his knowledge of Islam is wanting, or because he does not wish to expose the dubious connection between the religion and his personal ideology.

Most Muslims – for whom Islam is an inexorable part of their cultures and lifestyles – do not associate the words or actions of a bin Laden with their faith.  And they are surprised and offended whenever that connection is made.  Imagine, if you are an average American citizen, with no involvement in politics or the military, being labeled an imperialist by others around the world simply because you live in a country which many regard as the modern day empire.

As you consider the inadequacy of that classification – unless, of course, you are an imperialist – multiply that inadequacy by about four.  America is home to about 300 million people, at least some of which certainly are imperialists.  But those few do not necessarily speak for the majority.  The same is true for Islam and radicals, except to a greater extent, since there are around 1.2 billion Muslims, and probably fewer of them who are radicals, terrorists, and militants, than there are Americans who support imperialism – if only implicitly.

So with that said, what need is there to use the term “Islamist” in discussing the actions of a Hamas or a Hezbollah or a Lashkar-e-Taiba?  For these three groups in particular, all of which with varying degrees of legitimacy are considered terrorist organizations, Islam has little to nothing to do with their stated motivations.  The actions of Hamas have everything to do with the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians.  The actions of Hezbollah purport to represent the people of Lebanon, particularly in their relationship with Israel.  And Lashkar-e-Taiba – those responsible for the Mumbai attacks – acted in response to the relationship between Pakistan and India.

Regardless of how we see these organizations, whether as terrorists or radicals or a militant resistance, it is important to separate their actions – almost always politically motivated – from their religion, unless the two are truly inexorable.  Otherwise we risk maintaining an unnecessary distance and animosity between people who apart from their particular beliefs and practices, have many of the same needs and values.

It is the responsibility of a lawful and moral press to bridge that distance, to squelch that animosity, by providing the information we need to better understand our surroundings and the people who occupy them.

An example of how to provide information constructed with the appropriate cultural and/or religious context is this article by the Washington Post discussing pending peace talks between Hamas and Israel.

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For example – Christians – at various times throughout history, and into the present, in spite of the principles of good will and universal love scattered throughout their holy text, have been perpetrators of some of the worst crimes ever committed – like burning women at the stake – and in the name of their religion. This is the case made against the religion by the more bull-headed atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Myopic as their views may be, it is easy to understand why someone would be cynical of any doctrine that preaches universal love on one hand and advocates murder on the other.

The truth of the matter is that where doctrine leaves room for interpretation – as it always does – and also intersects with any human deficiency – such as ignorance, fear, greed, malevolence – the interpretations that emerge are likely to be unfavorable. Papua New Guinea is currently stricken with the AIDS epidemic, a threat the likes of which their spiritual and medicinal practices (or ours for that matter) are not fully equipped to contend with. People dying in relatively large numbers for no conceivable reason would seem to have a mystical quality to it, if it were something you nor anyone else you knew had ever encountered.

Western rationality tells us to investigate where we do not understand something, to analyze and then come to a reasonable conclusion. But there are hardly any of us who can do that in every situation, because in addition to being rational animals, we humans are also very emotional. So there is hardly a doubt that the Papua New Guineans who have been burning people alive – this was not the first case, afterall – were acting on their fears. Much like the Europeans who engaged in this horrific behavior centuries earlier – and who gave the Papua New Guineans the idea in the first place.

While I do not believe that there is an onus on any people to change in a particular direction, to acquire any particular ideas or customs, there are certain abstract ideological threads that necessarily run through every culture, every religion, and of which most human beings have at least a minimal understanding. One of those is a reverence for life, which if not present would see every human society and institution fall apart.

If there is ever a reason to employ rationality, it is in making decisions that will damage or destroy the lives of others. There should be no place in this world for witch hunts. They were a travesty in Salem in 1692, post-WWII United States, Iraq in 2003, most recently in Papua New Guinea, and ongoing in the Gaza strip. The people responsible in every case should be brought to task for violating one of the essential principles that allow for humanity’s continued existence.

And when they are, we must resist any impulse to burn them alive.

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So going back to judging an agenda by the motivations behind it, we have one agenda that wishes to allow people freedoms that only affect the people themselves, making their lives easier and/or richer. The opposing agenda aims to cause actual harm to the same group of people for no conceivable benefit. To any justice-minded person, there can be no question of which side they must take. And no, I am not just saying that to infer that only those who support gay marriage are justice-minded, but for those who don’t and are, there must be some crisis of consciousness.

Anyway, with all that said, and my position on the matter clearly established, I would like to contribute a new thought to the debate. Perhaps the struggle for gay rights is misdirected in fighting for marriage. So-called “civil unions” may actually be a better alternative, if only the rights granted under such unions were equal to those granted by marriage. Since gay couples are fighting for more practical gains, perhaps they should concede to the zealots and the bigots their ideologically “sacred” institution.

That is not my new thought, however. I recognize that even were civil unions and marriages to be the same in practical terms, the ideological separation would still strongly represent the “us versus them” mentality at the center of the debate which must be eliminated. So my new thought is that civil unions should be an alternative to marriage for all people, regardless of their sexual orientation. Because marriage is one of those weird gray areas where the separation of church and state is not so clear, for those of us who are avowedly non-religious, a civil union may be a more desirable representation of our bond with a significant other.

One idea would be to expand the definition of civil unions to subsume all marriages. In this way, the so-called “sanctity” of marriage could be “preserved” and at the same time remove “sanctity” as cause for the denial of the rights of same-sex couples.

It is mostly a given that anti-gay marriage ideologues act out of some desire to punish same-sex couples for what is perceived to be an immoral choice, in spite of their framing it within the idea of protecting marriage as an institution. Were they to fight against this new definition of civil unions, they would expose their motivation as being one of blatant prejudice and antagonism. Such overt discrimination is not only intolerable but also prohibited by law, not to mention that it undermines the “good will” clauses written into every major religion.

Granting civil unions to everyone would restore the Constitutional mandate of church and state separation. It would also give opposite-sex couples a personal stake in the rights bestowed through those unions and allow people of every stripe to act with solidarity for the cause of justice.

As for those who want to maintain marriage as only between a man and a woman – they could keep it, along with what it says about their character. Meanwhile, those of us who care about human rights, justice, and forming strong relationships – more than preserving the stagnancy of some ancient institution – we would be able to choose something better.

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