Oriental Adventures, was it really that racist?

[MGibster]

I’m leaning the other direction. The disclaimer doesn’t say anything, really. It certainly doesn’t point to any particular moral failure in the books, and it’s applied to all the old material if I understand correctly. It leads no one to any conclusions, makes no determinations. It’s so general as to be nearly useless.

Quite frankly, if the title of Oriental Adventures doesn't clue a potential customer into into the fact that this book might contain material we don't consider proper today, well, I have little hope for that person. As adults, we bear some responsibility for what we choose to consume and WotC isn't obligated to hold our hands and wipe our noses for us. The disclaimer is enough for a potential customer to know that they might find something offensive in the product.

 

[Irlo]

Quite frankly, if the title of Oriental Adventures doesn't clue a potential customer into into the fact that this book might contain material we don't consider proper today, well, I have little hope for that person. As adults, we bear some responsibility for what we choose to consume and WotC isn't obligated to hold our hands and wipe our noses for us. The disclaimer is enough for a potential customer to know that they might find something offensive in the product.

I’m a little confused by your response. I was replying to a post that implied that the disclaimer conveyed WotC’s determination of the book’s faults. It does not.

I’m inclined to react negatively to the “wipe our noses” comment but I’m not sure I’m reading your intentions correctly. Is that directed at me? I don’t need WotC’s guidance.

I think the more honest disclaimer would be, “We are a company that tries to produce inclusive modern games, and these legacy products don’t meet our standards, but we’re selling them anyway.”

 

[Mordhau]

I’m a little confused by your response. I was replying to a post that implied that the disclaimer conveyed WotC’s determination of the book’s faults. It does not.

I’m inclined to react negatively to the “wipe our noses” comment but I’m not sure I’m reading your intentions correctly. Is that directed at me? I don’t need WotC’s guidance.

I think the more honest disclaimer would be, “We are a company that tries to produce inclusive modern games, and these legacy products don’t meet our standards, but we’re selling them anyway.”

Problem is some of them might meet current standards. Some of them may well have been written by people who were very careful and thoughtful about what they're doing.

I think part of the point of the disclaimer is to avoid being forced to go into the weeds on indvidual products - which could lead to endless arguments (If they do start removing products or putting specific dislaimers then they open themselves up to an endless round of "What about X?")

I know there are a lot of people who claim the disclaimer is unfair to creators from the past. I don't think that's justified at all, but using the stronger wording you suggest it might be.

 

[MGibster]

I’m a little confused by your response. I was replying to a post that implied that the disclaimer conveyed WotC’s determination of the book’s faults. It does not.

I think it does convey WotC's determination of the book's faults. It doesn't list them all in a comprehensive manner, but anyone who wants to purchase OA will read the disclaimer and understand there's some content in that does not align with modern sensibilities.

I’m inclined to react negatively to the “wipe our noses” comment but I’m not sure I’m reading your intentions correctly. Is that directed at me? I don’t need WotC’s guidance.

It's not directed at you personally it's directed at anyone who purchases books or pays to see a movie.

I think the more honest disclaimer would be, “We are a company that tries to produce inclusive modern games, and these legacy products don’t meet our standards, but we’re selling them anyway.”

Okay. How is that any more helpful than their current disclaimer?

 

[Voadam]

Let's see.... sliding WAYYY back in the thread to like one post above mine...


You were saying @MGibster?

My skullduggery knows no bounds.

So you take my disagreeing with you on the point you raised of whether their factual mistake on comeliness affected their conclusion about the impact of comeliness in OA as "pretending that the comeliness thing is the sole criticism of the youtube series, ignoring the fact that they bring up several hours more of reactions, and then pretend that being wrong about this one thing somehow completely invalidates all of their thoughts?"

As I said earlier I watched their two hour first episode having heard it was a good analysis of problematic issues in OA. Half of the first episode is Comeliness with the point that comeliness was added to OA to otherize Asians. I find that analysis flawed and have said so. When it gets brought up again by people saying their point still stands after you take away the factual mistake I disagree and so I have engaged again on that topic.

I didn't watch any more of the series and so I only really comment on the parts I saw. It has been a while now so the parts that stand out were the parts that rubbed me the wrong way. I own OA though and engage on direct issues raised about OA.

I would not expect that to be characterized as pretending that comeliness otherizing and sexualizing Asians specifically is the sole criticism of the series. I explicitly said up front that I only watched the first episode so not discussing opinions of theirs I have not heard I think would be considered the default.

I assume somewhere in the 20+ hours they have discussed the overlay of Japanese culture and names onto fantasy China in the context of WWII Japanese occupation. Probably in-depth when they got to their review of the Kara Tur setting boxed set as OA has only about one page on the Fantasy China empires portions of Kara Tur, half of its total discussion of Kara Tur as an actual continent setting. OA is spectacularly short on the actual setting, compared with the discussions about fantasy feudal Japanese culture, honor system, agriculture, and economic system and such earlier in the book. I can't remember how in depth they got on the Japanese overlay issue in the first episode, but I believe it was raised.

I remember there was also a discussion in the first episode about Orientalism in general, the title Oriental Adventures, the introductions, the Japanese focus of the book versus all Asia, and some drinking. The second half of the first episode was about ability stats including a discussion of their issues with samurai having a wisdom requirement. Then Comeliness.

 

[Aldarc]

And that’s not an unreasonable take.

To be fair though, at a guess, I’d say far far more people read Burroughs in a library than going out and buying it.

Heck you can read all of Burroughs online legally for free, so it’s not like it’s not available. Likewise Breakfast at Tiffanies will enter public domain very soon. Again it’s not lost.

Not being available to purchase doesn’t mean it’s no longer available at all.

I can confirm this. The only reason why I had read any of these books was because of my father, who was showing me his old library of books around the time that he was introducing me to fantasy reading. This was also how I got my taste of out-of-vogue pulp S&S fantasy, by '90s standards: e.g., Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock, etc.

While one can certainly still find these books in your brick and mortar book stores, they don't really line shelves as much as a lot more modern fantasy or even advertise them as much, even back then in the '90s. Tarzan has more of a pop status now - mired in its racial issues - than a literary one.

 

[aramis erak]

Why are people pretending that the comeliness thing is the sole criticism of the youtube series, ignoring the fact that they bring up several hours more of reactions, and then pretend that being wrong about this one thing somehow completely invalidates all of their thoughts?

snip

WTF?

Go read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"...

Note also, it's the first thing I'd heard about the group, and it's basically a slander. It's also 15 seconds and access to google that is provably false. Comeliness

 

[Bedrockgames]

I’m leaning the other direction. The disclaimer doesn’t say anything, really. It certainly doesn’t point to any particular moral failure in the books, and it’s applied to all the old material if I understand correctly. It leads no one to any conclusions, makes no determinations. It’s so general as to be nearly useless.

I genuinely find it fascinating that others see it differently.

It does point to particular issues: racial, gender and ethnic prejudice (it just doesn't point to particular books or places in those books). I do agree it is so broad it isn't really easy to identify what that is specifically in reference to. But such a broad brush, when you are talking about prejudice is going to shade peoples' readings I believe. Again, I don't think it substantially so. And I don't think it is all that unusual for companies to do these days. I just find the practice misguided, and it feels very condescending and paternalistic to me, as I think people should be able to encounter old and historic content, and understand those things themselves, and reason out what that means for themselves.

When I was young and I first read Lovecraft for example, there was some racial things that were glaringly obvious to me (particularly as a New Englander). I didn't need a content warning to prepare myself for that. And I don't need a disclaimer in order to reach the conclusion that WOTC doesn't hold views expressed in IP they own that is over 30 years old. And the reality of those books is far more complicated than a simple disclaimer can explain. When you go back to older books: there will be ideas there that you might find objectionable. I would expect books made in the mid-80s to reflect what was acceptable in the mid-80s.

But as things go, a disclaimer is the most mild of things they can do. I also don't see how a warning label would really satisfy either party here. As you point out, for you it doesn't really do much of anything. And as I am pointing out, it just makes me feel like WOTC doesn't trust me as a reader to form my own options about content that was written in the 80s (I understand why in this day and age, companies feel the need to be more clear about where their values are: but personally I am enormously skeptical anytime a corporation pontificates about its values---especially when all that really seems to require is saying nice words: but they still get to be driven by greed and behave in exploitative ways-----not accusing WOTC of the latter, just I see a lot of companies say pretty things about being good stewards of the earth or standing against racism, while they work hand-in-hand with repressive governments or exploit their workers).

Again this may be a generational thing. I was a kid in the 80s and came of age in the 90s. As children we had the moral majority and the PMRC, as teenagers and in our 20s we were steeped in an anti-corporate, anti-marketing, counter culture. I grew up with things like senate hearings about the filfthy fifteen (which included songs like She Bop) from the PMRC. That movement largely failed to censor as much as it had hoped but they did get one thing: warning labels. I understand warning labels don't do much, but I suspect some of my negative reaction to them is because I associate them with misguided moral crusaders who don't the least charitable and most simplistic analysis of the art they are attacking (not saying people here are doing that, but that is my instinctual reaction to warnings on art or entertainment). But a warning isn't like taking out content or making something not available.

And I think another thing a lot of people my age came away with from that whole thing was this exaggerated sense of the impact people thought media had. One of the bands on the list was Merciful Fate. I love Merciful Fate and King Diamond. King Diamond has some pretty dark lyrics and is himself a satanist. I was somehow able to listen to that music and have the lyrics influence my behavior in real life (if anything they served as a useful outlet most likely). I understood it was art and performance and that I didn't have to share any of King Diamond's personal beliefs to appreciate the music and stories he was telling. From what I gather most studies have shown metal heads turned out just fine. If they had succeeded in getting someone like King Diamond banned, or censoring his content, that would have only resulted in less art in the world (and I think King Diamond put out a lot of very interesting music). But they didn't just go after the scary metal bands, they also went after Prince, Cyndi Lauper and even Sheena Easton. I say this, not to argue there is no place for discussion of the morality of content, but just to explain my sense that many of the people taking my position are doing so because of that background and that period we lived through (and there was a lot more than just the PMRC going on at that time). I see a lot of posters taking my positions who indicate similar experiences.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

When I was young and I first read Lovecraft for example, there was some racial things that were glaringly obvious to me (particularly as a New Englander). I didn't need a content warning to prepare myself for that. And I don't need a disclaimer in order to reach the conclusion that WOTC doesn't hold views expressed in IP they own that is over 30 years old. And the reality of those books is far more complicated than a simple disclaimer can explain. When you go back to older books: there will be ideas there that you might find objectionable. I would expect books made in the mid-80s to reflect what was acceptable in the mid-80s.

I think the issue can be that it's not always a simple as that, especially if you're within the groups targeted.

With Lovecraft, reading it in the UK in the early '90s, I was not warned about it being racist, like at all, and indeed the racism initially was so bizarre and extreme, I didn't even read it quite as racism, but as like, talking about beings that weren't human. It was only as I read more that I realized "Oh, he means like actual normal Black people, holy hell this is super-goddamn racist!". As I've mentioned before there's some stuff where even manages to be racist against Irish and Scottish people, which is pretty eye-popping.

As for "it was acceptable in the '80s" I think the issue is that some of this stuff wasn't even then. OA was though. Indeed, I would argue OA (specifically) is actually less racist than a lot of stuff and less problematic than a lot of '90s stuff - but the difference I think is that the '90s stuff was raising a ton more eyebrows at the time. Like, World of Darkness: Gypsies pretty much immediately started getting called out for it's crude attempt to "flip racism" which ended up just being SUPER-racist.

I think it would be nice to have slightly better disclaimers on some "serious offender" books. I don't think every book which drops in a bit of casual misogyny or the like (because loads do - we've barely talked about that, but the tables in 1E are the tip of the iceberg!) is going to be able to be covered, but stuff that really "floors it" on the racism/misogyny etc. front may warrant a better description. I mean, last I checked, GAZ10 basically doesn't even get called out as "BRACE FOR RACISM!!!" in its description by Shannon Applecline, it's just more "Haha this book is pretty quaint!". Someone out there probably got quite a "What the..." moment if they were just buying a bunch of Mystara stuff and got to that, unsuspecting!

Again this may be a generational thing.

I think it absolutely is, and honestly I see where your generation is coming from in a lot of ways (I mean I'm presuming you're slightly older than me, I'm 43), because the politicians of the Gen X era were very, very keen on trying to ban everything media-wise, with heavy metal, D&D, video games, sexy music (the Satanic Panic is sort of a few degrees to the side of this as it never really penetrated government above a fairly low level) and so on. It's certainly enough to make one pretty concerned about that kind of thing.

I think it's one of those pendulum things though and maybe Gen X is perhaps, overprotective of some perceived attempts to shut down "free speech" from younger generations and that the definition of free speech is sometimes stretched a tad widely - hence the whole "cancel culture" vs "consequences culture" discourse (is it "against free speech" to decide not to buy a thing from someone you think is a jerk and to say so?). The big difference being that in the '80s and '90s, the shutdowns were all from governments and related authorities, whereas in the '10s, it's more individuals saying "No thanks" en masse (not even "protesting" in most cases).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The big difference being that in the '80s and '90s, the shutdowns were all from governments and related authorities, whereas in the '10s, it's more individuals saying "No thanks" en masse (not even "protesting" in most cases).

I just need to interject here. This is something that some of us keep referring to (usually obliquely, in order to keep the thread on topic).

It is certainly not the case that the suppression was mostly from state action (aka, government) in the 80s and 90s. Just like today, sporadic attempts to get state action involved would almost always get shot down by the courts.* Instead, it was continual fighting regarding pressuring private actors to suppress speech.

Of course, back then the primary pressures were aimed at keeping "harmful" speech away from people and punishing private entities that facilitated that speech- you know, "harmful" speech that might tell them that being gay wasn't bad (in the 80s, trans issues were barely on the radar). Or (in the case of D&D) that playing D&D wasn't immoral or satanic. Or that explicit music or "rap" wasn't the downfall of civilization.

One of the primary ways in which this was fought was to invoke the principles of freedom of speech, so that retailers like Waldenbooks would continue carrying this so-called harmful speech despite continued pressure.

Again, I think people make credible arguments as to why, "This time it's different." But that doesn't mean that there are credible arguments the other way as well. A person can agree that speech is harmful, or distasteful, or offensive, and still disagree as to the proper course of action.


*I am referring to the United States in my examples.