Genshin Impact: Is Sumeru orientalist? / video essay

so what exactly is orientalism it's commonly brought up on the topic of negative stereotypes or designs but people in the Middle East such as movies like Aladdin and critique of badly done representation orientalism is essentially a colonist perspective on Hollywood view Asia in the Middle East a way of seeing exaggerated view of Arab people and cultures someone compared to European cultures it pushes really bad stereotypes that Arab culture is exalted backward uncivilized or even dangerous one of the most common response to orientalism is especially when put into popular entertainment media Video Games Etc is why does it matter it's just a game or just a movie I'm going to answer this question first because I know if I don't the majority of my comments section will just be that this is a common argument I see in the ganshin impact Community when someone talks about why I'd be cooler to have more characters with darker skin tones or how to better represent a culture but here's the thing media does in fact have an impact on real life saying fiction doesn't affect reality doesn't make sense because by that logic that means conventions cosplay fan art figurines and conversation about your favorite shows with your friends wouldn't exist however the those things do exist in the real world because fiction does affect reality I mean if it didn't then I would have been giving these horrendous socks for Christmas so when someone loves a game show or movie series they wanted to improve and get better telling someone who has genuine concerns about their favorite game to not ask for improvements and stop complaining is weird because you're allowed to enjoy things while simultaneously being able to acknowledge what's wrong with it I would actually argue it's the other way around if someone never played the game before I wouldn't trust them as much on how to improve it it's really clear that the true answer is just stop addressing misrepresentation or racism and just ignore it since when other people complain about what they want the game to do complaints like oh Rosario's boobs are too small the men should have more muscle the resin cap is too small the game should give more rewards Etc people agree and no one tells them just quit the game yeah when someone does the exact same thing except towards representation like oh they should add more characters with darker skin suddenly people get really mad for some reason telling them that it should stop voicing their suggestions which is so strange that people upset over talking about having better rap when those same people are silent about other complaints like Albedo tree and fluffier hair because it's essentially the same thing people see a problem they edit it show their better version and explain why it's better except one is clearly more important than the other yet gets more hate but in conclusion it's perfectly okay to analyze something you like and how you think it could be better I've seen many YouTubers do that so if people hate on me for this video but not others it's going to be really suspicious as to why you're upset now that we got that out of the way let's get back to the main topic within the seven regions located in The game everyone knows which region each country is based off of monstat being Germany Leo being China in Azuma being Japan Etc and the community has been very easy in defining which nation is which country since there are cultural references from life yet when it comes to samaru people guess it would be based on South Asian culture and Middle Eastern culture or it was just Persian culture or that it was Turkish culture but something comes really clear samaro is not based off a singular country but rather many places at once and this is actually related to orientalism worksmouth Orlando tends to merge countries into one rather than highlighting them individually an example would be Dory who's supposed to be Turkish but before I talk about the bad or stereotypical things about her first I obviously need to provide proof that she's based on a certain ethnic group before I say she's orientalist my evidence that she's Turkish is first her clothing and second her theme song of course I know her clothing is not a hundred percent accurate as I have seen many Turkish people argue that her outfit doesn't look similar to the traditional Turkish clothing rather just individual parts of it or that there's inaccuracy in places like how her hat is a male version while the female traditional clothing looks like this but others say it's fine and that she is good representation so what I'll be doing instead is showing you guys all dory's cultural elements which cultures they're from and then our conclusion on it first starting with the music not many people know this but dory's theme thank you for your generous purchase and inspired by Turkish music and I'll explain why listen to this clip of her soundtrack foreign this sort of fast-paced B is similar to halai which is a traditional Turkish dance I'll play part of the song so you can hear the speed [Music] at the very start of the song it's much more slower Pace but later on it speeds up in intensity oh [Music] a lot of Turkish music is basically rooted in the idea that there's a rhythm and certain beats get faster as time goes on and people also dance or clap faster along with it which is a quote Turkish user gave me when to describe how Turkish music is like I just want to promote them because they made this adorable and Well Done Dory redesign and I did have to ask some Turkish people while making this video to make sure my info was 100 accurate so it only makes sense to give credit as the reason I found this out was because many Turkish users were explaining how dory's theme reminded them of Turkish music and weddings which is why I started researching about it and listening to Turkish music for a few hours and I discovered this interesting fact but at the beginning of dory's theme they added this horn sound foreign [Music] which is an instrument that is used in traditional Turkish music [Music] even though there are a lot of problems with genshin I can't lie they always do do a very good job in the music aspect I found it really interesting that Turkish people were able to recognize his style which shows how representation can impact people as it feels very appreciative when done well so please do not be disrespectful towards black or other PLC when talking about wanting representation because it is actually something that makes people feel connected now this brings up an important topic so why were some Turkish and Middle Eastern people not 100 bored with Dory well even though she is Turkish it's weird how he did not give her a Turkish name her full name Dory sangama Bay is Persian of course Bay is Turkish but let's be real no one calls Dory by Bay which is why I'm going to be saying her name is Persian names and genshin are pretty important because since we can't tell the ethnic features of the characters obviously since it's an anime art style we can also tell it based off the name alone for example all the leoa characters all have Chinese names her signature dish is show me the Mora butter chicken butter chicken is an Indian food not a Turkish dish and Indian culture and Turkish culture are completely different and should not be mistaken for each other not to mention the stereotypical land that's put in her signature dish her design and attack patterns which again is strange since Dory is Turkish even her fans that are super hellbent to say that there's nothing wrong with her agree with me that she's Turkish so it's odd to have a magical lamp as well as a Genie in her design since she is not Arab and lastly the most important part the main reason people are critiquing dory's character is her personality she's really greedy and loves money to the point where she actually scammed people for their Mora which is a pretty notorious stereotype of Arab people and even other minorities like Indian people to be scammers which is pretty sad if you actually think about it and the thing that sucks is that it's completely unnecessary if you learn about her backstory she wanted to make more money to help her family it would have been more admirable if she earned all her money respectfully instead of taking it from others since a character who works really hard without scooping low to harm other people's incomes to take care of their family would have been way better since it would match her backstory about how she wanted to make money for others not herself here's a summary chart of what we talked about and as you can see it's very obvious what to change in the inaccuracy part in order to make Dory the best character she can be if Dory was more like this she would be even better representation without putting others in bad light the point is Dory SEMA Bay has a lot of potential such as her theme song yet It's upsetting that they mistaken a lot of things in the middle east and south Asia to be Turkish when they're not as well as stereotypes that are common about Middle Eastern people that they shouldn't have added now that you see it on a list you can probably understand why people are saying she's orientalists despite the fact that she does have cultural aspects such as her music that sadly not many people even know is Turkish it makes sense that people dislike her stereotypical personality and remember I'm simply addressing the bad things and good things about her character once again it's perfectly fine for me to criticize a character and acknowledge the bad things about them people do it with all the Genji characters so put the knife down over mixing of cultures in media gives a big inaccuracy and weak understanding of these cultures making people think that they're mostly the same or similar which is probably how mihoyo made these mistakes in the first place in comparison to a different character like nilu in my opinion she's a better done character from samaru from her signature dish to the horns on her head dress accessories as well as name are all Persian even her birth attack is a Persian dance which is amazing because it's definitely not or lentilous as they manage to focus on one culture while making a character proving that they could very well do the same with Dory the only problem that I could see with her would maybe be the fact that her clothing is obviously inspired by the whole belly dancer thing of the Middle East which isn't very good as that is an orientalist idea but honestly I'm not gonna pick on it too much since the majority of Persian people I've seen think she's great representation and putting someone like nilu next to Dory would diminish my point so I'm just gonna move on to my next Point we've been talking a lot about cultural mixing and orientalism and how people dislike it since these cultures are separate and not the same but is mixing and representing different cultures into one place inherently or Relentless and the answer is actually no a mix of different cultures into one place is not bad itself and can actually be executed well how so will I be using this example in the 10 most recent Splatoon game in Splatoon 3 in the introduction you meet two characters named shiver and Fry and the city splatsville contains lots of contrasting cultures matched together and skin Rarity despite it being such a short song Nintendo managed to throw in many cultural Melodies too and represent so many people for hell's sakes they even called themselves the city of chaos so what makes kanchan impacts big class representation get hate yet Nintendo's big balling part of representation get praised I think most people have already seen Nintendo's Splatoon but if you haven't here's a clip from it first of all something that's clear right off the bat is that despite the fact that these characters are humanoid squid creatures it's very clear which cultures that these characters represent even if you never did research most people would only guess about these two choices and that's interesting because it shows how their design speaks for the themselves unlike some of the Genji samaro characters unless we have knowledge beforehand about these cultures or do multiple hours of research like I've done for this video it's much harder to tell the ethnicity of the characters an example is how I would never guess the technology is based off African culture specifically Amazonia culture until after I Googled it whereas I do not need to do a deep dive to know that shiver is Japanese in conclusion the individual characters are focused on one culture and are identical as those cultures which makes those people feel representative hence why I've seen more people happy about niloy than I have about Dory number two another reason why there's a backlash in genshin for combining lots of different cultures in one is because of their history I'll give an analogy why do you think it was bad when Europeans represent the Middle East in an oral Angeles view in the first place because in the past and still in the present people treat for example Arab people really badly which is how we're able to connect movies and media that America made to how our societies view these people in real life when you have a history of harming minority groups and people from other nations just because they're different from you it would be alarming to then see you portraying for example like indigenous people there were many incidents of representing them as Savages or uncivilized ganshinari has Parts in their past where they made a tan skin character lighter or has done some suspicious stuff like when Carol from honkai Impact bleached her skin so that she can be lighter because she's I quote darker than dark or when they design Candace based on kadake who is an African queen but they decided to make her much lighter and before anyone argues with me that taking inspiration does not mean everything has to be exact you have to think to yourself why did they decide to lighten her skin from the original because it's obviously that they distinctively made the decision to change her skin tone since those were the reference photos it is weird to create a nation that represents a real country but not make it accurate to what the people look like and that goes for my third Point Splatoon did not have a problem with making the world with darker skin tones many of the main characters have darker skin tones and it's only polite that if you use another group's culture you shouldn't just take everything except conveniently exclude their color in closing genshin has this sort of colors mindset which does not leave the best impression on people and I think the Phantom should be more open for criticism because in my personal opinion they're very defensive over their favorite game I believe that there's a lot of potential and always room for improvement for everything so this video summed up some of my suggestions and criticism in which I think gentian can improve on thank you so much for watching this is the first YouTube video I made so if you have any questions criticism or death threats please comment them down below and I'll make sure to hopefully reply back to them I appreciate the support and I hope you guys have a wonderful day

Channel: zuzuscatheavenarts

Views: 70,130

Keywords: Genshinimpact, Genshin, Sumeru, Artcommentary, Nilou, Genshinanalysis, Genshinfandom

Id: Z7UhILLbdFs

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 08 2022