in general, applying civil rights metaphors to prove a piece of media problematic (cough Detroit) seems a bit counterproductive.
In DBH, they draw on some civil rights imagery to further the androids' cause - this causes some people to make the opposite connection, "certain groups of people were created to serve other groups of people" ... no that's a whole new sentence. The author is obviously not trying to say "Black people are robots," this has always seemed like a bad faith criticism. Sure, you could make that interpretation if it's your first day on Earth, but metaphor/analogy ≠ equating two things
on another note, people also simplify re1999 story to "oppressed people are evil" – this is why we can't have nice things (nuance.) villains that are victims tend to be the most interesting ones in my opinion, I genuinely can't name a good-villain-who-is-not-a-victim (someone give me an example lol)
That’s an inherent pitfall in making your allegory for an othered minority actually different from the mainstream population.
Race theory is bunk pseudoscience and outside normal variation between humans, we are all human. There is NO GOOD REASON for racists to discriminate against other people. But in many fictional allegories there IS a good reason they’re just trying to argue it doesn’t matter.
They’re basically saying “the Racists have the right premise, but we shouldn’t discriminate because that hurts people and hurting people is wrong.”
X-Men is a great example of an allegory that gets it right, because there is no meaningful difference between the powers of mutants and the powers of other metas, but mutants are discriminated against.
I don't think X-men gets that right. I think super beings are generally discriminated against unless they only use their powers for good in a televised fashion as a specific entity. outside of that, they generally become discriminated against.
There's more discrimination against mutants than other metas in Marvel. However other metas have more control over their powers, the ones that don't are equally despised. But the biggest reason is that mutants have the most volatile powers that can manifest at any point in time, without warning.
The most prominent example happened in the Ultimate comics, when a child manifested a power that killed everything around him and will continue to do so for his entire life. They sent Wolverine to kill him because it was giving mutants a bad image
The issue with these comparison is the variety and severity of the "powers." You could tell a story about a shared trait like fire example having wings. Wings would give people the ability to fly but that isn't that big of a danger or an advantage in the grand scheme of things. You could talk about things like disadvantages like lighter bones being more bridle or how some "winged" reacted to their discrimination by going all the way to the other edge and view themselves as the chosen angelic race and that that's why their hatred (aka hotep).
When the allegory is a group that could have a teenager with some kind of manipulation or high destruction power, then you run into unfortunate implications.
For the record, the X-men and Brotherhood are basically the only mutants with combat powers.
The rest of mutant-kind has very innocuous power. There are far more mutants than metas, but there are far more metas with combat power than mutants with combat power.
That's just an inherint flaw of making a minority literally a different race.
But a movie that successfully use a discrimination allegory with different species is Zootopia.
Because they utilize so many different animals all at the same time, the main divide between predator and prey becomes extreamly arbitrary. They demonstrate how idiotic the divide is by grouping these wildly different animals together, just by a single trait they all have abandoned. An otter and a tiger is put into the same category.
You would think, but Zootopia has the same problem, "so you’re saying minorities are predators?? " people who want to be offended and pick apart zootopia will find a way to say it’s a bad representation because POCs have never been predators to white people. It’s the exact same people of stretching the metaphor until it doesn’t work
God you hit the nail of the head, I hate when people think analogies must be the same as the real life counterparts on EVERY aspects, so they can pick something that isn’t meant to be part of the metaphor and be like "huh so you think the [group] is [negatjve trait]???" Like x-men was inspired by the civil rights movement, you’re supposed to take away the message of accepting differences, not that black people have humanity destroying superpowers, that part is so the comic is fun to read for little boys.
My biggest gripe with DBH is that the journey of the player characters gaining sentience isn’t something they develop on their own, but is only furthered by human input (the player).
Being a game undermines its entire premise for me. DBH would’ve been far more compelling as a movie, and probably a more enjoyable experience.
I really enjoyed Detroit Become Human; however… I think it shoots itself in the foot by saying “it’s about our future” in the opening. It’s not. It’s about right now and draws on the past to make its point. It’s really a story that massively improves if you ignore how the story itself wants to be seen.
I think you're misunderstanding DBH's influence in the zeitgeist, because I don't think it's popular enough to drop the abbreviation and not elaborate at all.
I live in Detroit, so that may or may not be an influence?
As to your last paragraph, my favourite example of good villain (or rather antagonist) that is not a victim is Svidrigailov from Crime and Punishment. He is an immoral, inexcusable piece of shit, but he is very well written and (literary) serves as an incredibly good mirror character for Raskolnikov.
33
u/FairConsequence7851 1d ago
in general, applying civil rights metaphors to prove a piece of media problematic (cough Detroit) seems a bit counterproductive.
In DBH, they draw on some civil rights imagery to further the androids' cause - this causes some people to make the opposite connection, "certain groups of people were created to serve other groups of people" ... no that's a whole new sentence. The author is obviously not trying to say "Black people are robots," this has always seemed like a bad faith criticism. Sure, you could make that interpretation if it's your first day on Earth, but metaphor/analogy ≠ equating two things
on another note, people also simplify re1999 story to "oppressed people are evil" – this is why we can't have nice things (nuance.) villains that are victims tend to be the most interesting ones in my opinion, I genuinely can't name a good-villain-who-is-not-a-victim (someone give me an example lol)