It took me a long time to come up with an intro to this piece, because there's just so much going on here that highlights the problems with Leftism in entertainment: wokeness, hypocrisy, cultural appropriation, racism, and the Left's need to feel 'represented' in media by people who look exactly like them.
Trying to understand the Left's logic and thought process is a monumental challenge, so trying to articulate it in writing borders on the impossible. But try I will, because this story illustrates how the Left will destroy any intellectual property (IP) they can get their hands on in the name of their agenda.
So we'll start with some background. French game developer Ubisoft is best know for the 'Assassin's Creed' series of games. Their latest offering, slated to drop in March, is 'Assassin's Creed: Shadows' and it takes place in feudal Japan.
There's a lot of potential in that story alone. Feudal Japan was an interesting period of time. The game is supposedly set in 1579, during the Azuchi-Momoyama period, which was marked by civil war. But not satisfied to dig through that rich history, Ubisoft decided to make Yasuke, an African who lived in Japan and may or may not have been a samurai, a main character.
Japanese gamers in particular feel the game disrespects Japanese history and culture, and have circulated a petition to cancel the release of the game. In that petition they write:
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The game is about samurai in Japan and ignores the fact that samurai are the upper class of the samurai class and should be “gokejin” or nobles who serve them. In fact, William Adams, the first European to receive the title of samurai, was a man in the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu as the bannerman of the 250 koku.
In this history, Ubisoft continues to misunderstand the nature and role of the samurai. This is a serious insult to Japan’s culture and history, and can also lead to Asian racism. We call on Ubisoft to immediately cease the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and to show sincere research and respect for Japan’s history and culture.
As we all know, being labeled 'racist' is the unforgivable sin of Leftism. Yet Ubisoft doesn't seem to keen to hear criticisms of the game:
Censorship is the last bastion of the wrong.
But this is what the woke Left does in entertainment, and not just video games. They've taken several beloved IPs -- 'Lord of the Rings', 'Star Wars', the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- and turned each of them into barely recognizable 'reimagined' garbage meant to appeal to 'modern audiences' with healthy doses of THE MESSAGE.
They insert characters meant to represent 'marginalized' groups, even if the inclusion of those characters undermines the story or makes no sense in context.
They belittle and degrade male characters in favor of YAAAAS QUEEN Mary Sue female characters who don't need no man, have no character arcs, and manage to girl-boss their way through the story without making mistakes or growing as people.
It's why those properties, and the studios who sink millions (sometimes billions, in the case of Amazon's 'Rings of Power') into them, fail to gain popularity among people. The actual fans of those IPs won't watch the garbage that's wearing their beloved stories as a skin suit, and the 'modern audiences' -- who were never fans of those IPs to begin with -- don't start watching just because the characters look like they do.
On top of that, the Left also demands -- rather hypocritically -- that creatives only create stories that feature people like them. For example I (a heterosexual white woman) would be canceled if I wrote a story about a black teen in 1850s Georgia, or an Asian man in 1940s Hiroshima. I must only write about white heterosexual female characters, because the Left believes I am incapable of understanding how any other person who doesn't look like me might think or feel.
They ignore that movies, television, and video games are not about how characters look, per se, but about their experiences and emotions. Those latter things are largely universal to the human experience. Or were, until the modern Left came along.
To keep their stranglehold on media, any criticisms of those movies, television shows, and video games is dismissed as 'racist' and 'sexist', of course.
The same applies to criticism of Ubisoft and 'Assassin's Creed: Shadows', but gamers who understand a) Japanese history and b) basic horticultural fact pointed out something very interesting in the game:
If any other content creator did something like this, the Left would be demanding he or she be fired and ostracized from all polite society. At a minimum, they wouldn't work in video games or Hollywood ever again.
So why does Ubisoft get a pass? Why do the racist, cultural appropriators get a pass now? Why do they get to insult Japanese culture, play fast and loose with the history of the same, and apparently insert blatantly racist tropes into their work?
Because they are Leftists. That's why.
And when they lose millions, like Sony did with its 'diverse' and 'inclusive' game 'Concord', maybe they'll finally learn a lesson.
