I was watching episodes of the cartoon "Avatar -- The Last Airbender" when I wondered why I felt it was authentic instead of silly. After all, we've all seen Western takes on "asian" culture before. Usually they were just silly (like those token caucasian villains in chinese period kungfu films, who exist to 1- speak weirdly accented chinese, 2- commit acts of brutality with firearms 3- display some ineffective western kickboxing style 4- get their asses kicked by the chinese hero with 'real' martial arts :P), sometimes they were a bit offensive.
I liked Guildwars: Factions too. Kaineng City felt like a real asian metropolis. It had that kind of Hongkong-y realism to it. Or, in a more local sense, a Telok Ayer-y style. Chinese, with streaks of minority cultures. But -- hang on, NCsoft is a korean company. The credits at the end of the game was filled mostly korean, japanese and chinese names. Well, no wonder when they make a game set in a pseudo-asian continent it feels realistic.
(I still recommend Factions. You should get it and help me get my second character through the storyline:P)
Avatar really is produced by a bunch of Americans though. How do they do it? Get that authentic feel, that is.
Apparently they take their job of creating an asian world really seriously and hire cultural/martial arts consultants. So let's give these ang mohs some credit. If you and I can understand and appreciate King Arthur, or learn greek/latin, then they can appreciate chinese culture too, and write some chinese characters. All it takes is effort and trying to be serious about it.
I recall being quite irritated by City of Heroes' Korea-launch trailer. I felt the trailer was dorky and fake. I like the comic genre too, and I know who batman or superman is. City of Heroes is a western genre and -- hey, it's a pretty cool premise -- but the way they somehow smooshed it Statesman and some weird Hongkongy-action-movie -- cum -- weirdo taoist notion -- cum modern chinese superhero blend -- cum... blahblah ... is just... stupid.
Plus, there was something incredibly dorky watching spandex clad Statesman in what appears to be Korea.
The end result felt incredibly colonialist to me, for some reason. I don't know why, but all I can say is, I "eat rice grew up", and there's this deeply ingrained sense of what is real/authentic/sincere versus what is dorky.
By the way, Avatar can be bittorrented, but I'm going to buy the DVDs when I have spare money. (Posting my stuff back to S'pore is sucking up all of that now.)
Still suffering from gaming/computer withdrawal...
2 comments:
I think Avatar is playing here. Remember seeing it on a TV guide, just never found the time to watch it. Still not going to have time, because NFL season has started. *cackles* That's all the TV watching I have time for.
I will get Factions someday...It looks kinda pretty.
Just not this day. :P I'm actually about -there- on computer games. My brute is level 25 and plodding along, eventually I'll make another dom cos they're fun, but CoX is normal MMO fare - playing mostly on weekends.
I was having fun playing Ground Control II, an old game that I bought a while back and hadn't completed. But now I'm a little stuck at the big end mission of story arc battle, getting pwned by the computer and unwilling to lower the difficulty to easy, so am giving that a break.
Urbandead is still a good fun thing, probably because of the limited turns. KoL I'm on a resting phase, achieved pretty much what I wanted to achieve.
I even revisited RoD to see the new news - they just put in a new preauth area. Heh, hopefully it's better than the old new one. Was too lazy to make a new char to see. I liked the old old one.
But anyhow, I'm about there on computer games. I'm on an old school phase of gaming now - making plans to solo roleplay with this system called Mythic, doing some solowargaming, and painting. Conveniently also cleaning up the house at the same time...
More on this on a separate post.
Oh, re: the City of Heroes Korea thing. Yea. It looked kinda sad. I think it's something to do with the comic genre - more cariacature than realism.
I hate mixing stuff that's too incongruous, and a mix of Asian and Western superhero spandex is about as incongruous as can be.
I despise seeing spandex clad heroes anyhow, and martial arts artists with spiky hair are not my first choice of favorite Asian inspired art either. Too Street Fighter and faux Manga. :P
I can tolerate body-armored heroes and ninjas together on the same page though. Yay for subjectivity. :)
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