Every Stereotype I Know I Learned from Street Fighter

Let's be perfectly clear; I love video games. I don't think kids who play video games are at any more risk of shooting up their classmates or coworkers any more than the rest of us. And I'm almost certain that there's less risk of them going Rambo if they're parked in front of Mortal Kombat than if they're getting bullied at school and neglected at home.

With that being said, I'm tired of hearing how racist and intolerant America is. Yeah, we had a dark period of slavery (it just struck me that the descriptive word of "dark" may be considered a double entendre). And as messed up as it is that the KKK is still around, people seem to forget that there's still slavery in certain parts of the world. America is an easy target because it's constantly in the spotlight. Countries are like celebrities. The biggest and most famous are always in the news; the smaller, lesser-known stars are only in the news when they die (and suddenly, just as in Hollywood, everybody remembers how great they are).

But if you've ever played a Japanese video games (and if you've ever played any video game, you probably have), you had to have noticed some sort of racism. It's not very subtle.

(left to right; Zangief, President Gorbachev. not pictured; subtlety)

That's Street Fighter for ya. I learned as much about world stereotypes from that game as I did about geography (I remember getting a D on my geography test in junior high, but if they would've put it in the form of a Street Fighter world map, I would've fared much better - though I may have listed Russia as the U.S.S.R.). Let's take a look at what they think of the British;

Incredible. I know that's what I think of when I think of Great Britain (that is when I'm not thinking of Helena Bonham Carter. she's eccentric, yes, but sometimes that gets in the way of her hotness). It's as though they didn't know which stereotype to use; the old-school boxer or the high-class gentleman. Now let's play a game. Let's guess where each of these fighters come from.

Okay, so the first guy is Guile, the blatantly American military-type. Next is Honda, the Japanese sumo wrestler. And the last guy... I dunno, is he some sort of evil Irish leprechaun? Nope, that's Blanka, the acrobratic Brazilian monster. Okay, I get that people think of Brazil as some sort of untamed wilderness, but this is ridiculous. Even the people are savage. By the way, I've been to Brazil. Besides being much greener than us (their land, not their skin!), they're not much different from us. They just watch more telenovelas than we do. The only stereotype that doesn't make much sense to me is Dhalsim, the Indian guy. They seem to associate India with yoga and body distortion.

(you think yoga's hard? try doing it while breathing fire!)

They associate India with a skinny, bald guy who...

...Oh. Now I guess it makes sense.

Well, to bring my post to a close, I want to share the story of M. Bison. Not the M. Bison as Americans know him, but the original "Iron" Mike Bison! That's right, in Japan they used Mike Tyson's likeness to create the first boxer in the series (before that Dudley douche). However, due to legal troubles, they had to play a sort of musical chairs with names. Vega, the Thai dictator, became (ambiguous M.) Bison. Balrog, the effeminate Spaniard, became Vega. And Mike Bison became Balrog.

(makes sense, right?)