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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8032862">But we don't own our culture. We live in our culture, we participate it in it. But we can't insist other people don't borrow from our culture.  Should someone who is Italian be able to tell you how to portray pasta in your game. If you wanted to make a game about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, should you worry about how italian cuisine has been appropriated into the concept? It is a bit of a ridiculous example, but I do think it helps illustrate the point I am trying to make. Because in both these cases the character being humiliated and the character being ridiculous can be incidental to their identity. Or it may be important to the kind of story being told for these things to happen to these characters. I am not saying things are never offensive, or you don't have a right to take offense. But I do think we all have a right to interpret these things differently and artists have a right to tackle material whether they are part of a culture or belong to an identity themselves (in fact I think it is important for them to do so). These things can be sensitive. But not everyone from all groups react the same to them. There are movies that trod crudely on aspects of my identity, but I don't take issue with it. I like to assess these things individually to determine what the intention was. If someone is deliberately being insulting to a particular group that is one thing. But I think it is also a mistake to insist that certain people only be portrayed a particular way (or that certain things can't happen to these characters---like humiliation). These are stories and bad things happen to characters sometimes. Sometimes ridiculous characters are more interesting than non-ridiculous ones. They are not necessary a commentary on the identity groups the characters fit into However, I think this is also quite separate form the idea of borrowing cultural tropes.</blockquote>

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