Sunday 5 October, 2008

I couldn't help but notice that there were basically two kinds of people in C.J.’s neighborhood: gang members and scantily clad women. In the interest of fairness I took the bike that I “liberated” from someone around the city for a while to see what the other neighborhoods were like. My impression was mixed, to say the least. The character models that roamed Grove Street were decidedly absent from affluent communities - which I mean in a very literal sense. Models (the physical shape of a person) are often retextured cleverly to give the impression of multiple unique characters without having to pay an artist for the time spent working on a new body shape. The models for the poor neighborhoods were exclusive to the models used in rich neighborhoods – that is to say, the models used in Idlewood had a certain physiognomy that wasn’t reused for the people living in Mulholland. The people in Idlewood were a bit overweight and appeared to have a different demeanor than the people in, say Rodeo.
What do we make of this? On the one hand, these stereotypes are fairly offensive and anyone who believes that the density of thugs and prostitutes on Grove Street’s streets is a literal translation of low income communities would rightly be accused of racism and sexism. But how are we to account for creative freedom? Topics such as gang warfare, drug trafficking, corruption and solicitation should not be taboo simply because the actions themselves are illegal or unethical; thousands of classic novels and films chronicle these and other subjects that are hardly morally upstanding.
So, yes, GTA:SA is sexist; women are portrayed as nothing more than the subordinate sexual conquests of male protagonists. And yes, the characterization of the neighborhood is, at least, offensive. Grove Street is portrayed as a place where everyone in the community is violent, a drug user, or a prostitute. And more to the point, this was deliberate.
I think that more attention could have been paid to the balance of character types. Idlewood is supposed to be a dangerous place, but that shouldn’t mean that every character should be a stereotype.

Your point about the overuse of stereotypes in GTA is excellent. The use of stereotypes can have a double edged affect. The plus side of using stereotypes is that it allows an game/designer or film maker to instantly convey a message to the viewer without going into deep character development. Hence all the "thuggish" characters on Grove Street, which conveys the message that Groove Street is not the ideal neighborhood. However the problem is that the game designers of GTA seemed to have to over used these stereotypes to the point of appearing racist or sexist.