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I finally completed the mission with OG Loc after several attempts yesterday. I decided to drive around and eat before moving on to the next mission. While walking and driving around in the game, I immediately paid attention to the gross stereotypes of all the players involved. The best way to describe this is the ways in which the racialized and gendered selves of inner-city black and Latino men and women are caricatured throughout. Since I was not focusing on completing a mission, I was able to listen to the random conversations that the extra's were programmed to say. A man passed gas on the street and a woman with a thick chicana accent said "that bitch was such a sucia." I can see why the stereotypes may offend people, but I feel that it can also be seen as a social commentary regarding prejudices that minority groups can have towards each other. For example CJ's distrust to another character named Caesar who is Mexican. I find this curious considering the genre of this game: some of the praise that the grand theft auto franchise has received on the PS2 and PS3 console has been for both its realism and absurdity, and from my exposure to such commentary, my impression has been that this praise is mostly focused on a tension between the realistic graphics and game play (the character has to eat, can gain fat, can dance, can work out at the gym--things that are not typically seen in a video game) and the stereotypical exaggerations among the different minority groups in the game.
Rating (out of 5): |
