Sex, Lies, and Video Games
[via Shanghaiist]
I had heard about the hentai game Slaves of the Red Mansion several weeks ago because I read a fair number of blogs about Japan, and they were all interested in the slight connection between this game and the classic Chinese novel Dreams of the Red Mansion. Yet I didn't really think too much about it. In hindsight, I should have done my best to predict the future as I try to do in other cases when foreign cultures touch upon China's. Not surprisingly, China is none too happy.
"Turning Dream of the Red Chamber into a lewd game besmirches a treasure of Chinese literature, and is a desecration of Chinese culture," thundered one irate surfer on web portal Sohu.com. "As a big fan, this is absolutely unforgivable for me.
....
Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as Dream of the Red Mansion, by Qing dynasty (1644-1911) author Cao Xueqin, chronicles a noble family's declining fortunes, and is often regarded as the zenith of classical Chinese fiction. The Japanese computer game, however, features images of scantily-clad young girls attached to chains and comes with an adults-only warning. While the game's setting has little to do with the epic novel, its Chinese critics believe the main character -- a pallid young girl called Lin Daiyu -- is a direct take-off of the novel's heroine. They say the story's character has been slandered; she's described in the game as an illegitimate child born after her mother had an affair with a foreigner."
The great irony of this is that if you go and read about this occurrence on Chinese web sites (such as http://games.tom.com/1184/1765/2006921-221996.html), you will see the article juxtaposed with numerous links to pictures of scantily clad Chinese women, including some Chinese cosplayers given that this site is for gaming news. This is the norm for Chinese news web sites. All of this gives off the impression that it's perfectly okay to objectify and sexualize real-life Chinese girls, but if you do that to fictional ones, you'd better expect to get the smack laid down.
Furthermore, this discussion also ignores the fact that a significant aspect of the original text was its sexual subtext. However, it's entirely possible that a large percentage of those involved in this flame war are not aware of that fact given that I sincerely doubt that all of them have read the original and unabridged version, which is quite lengthy.
2 comments:
"All of this gives off the impression that it's perfectly okay to objectify and sexualize real-life Chinese girls, but if you do that to fictional ones, you'd better expect to get the smack laid down."
It is unfortunate that these Chinese girls appear on the gaming website. But I feel that these are two separate issues.
First off, The Dream of Red Chambers aka The Story of a Stone DOES NOT have a significant amount of s-xual content. Rather, it a social and political satire, a story of unrequitted love, and a story filled with Chinese cultural and religious references. To focus on one aspect of the story would do it significant injustice.
Like the irate surfer you quote, turning a classic like this into video game p-rn is indeed unforgivable. I am rather appalled. However, as with all classics (I can only think of LoTR and HP right now), a s-xually charged version of the story tends to appear in the some subcultures. Over the years a number of Chinese soft-prn versions were made based on Dream.
No, it is not okay to objectify and s-xualize real life Chinese girls, nor is it okay to do the same to girls of any group. However, it is unfair to say that there is a double standard.
Re: sexual subtext, I will defer to your admittedly greater knowledge of the work.
Re: whether turning a classic into such a game is forgivable, I respectfully disagree. First, the connection between the game and the work seems to be tenuous at best, and certainly none of the Chinese commenters are likely to explore this further beyond hearsay. Second, I don't think its status as a classic bears any relevance to whether the game company has the right to produce such a game. If they made a similar game based on Hamlet, would it garner the same reaction? Probably not.
The salient issue here is rather the relationship between China and Japan, and the fact that frankly so-called Chinese "netizens" do take every opportunity to lash out at perceived injustices perpretated by the Japanese, some other examples of which you can also read about in the linked article. This is one of those trends that I choose to track.
Given all this, I do maintain my (implied) assertion that this represents a double standard.
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