Genghis Khan Portrayal: Offensive or Not?

[Harlan]

Here are a couple of pics of what Mongol warriors looked like back in the day. This is from the Osprey book on the Mongols. The Osprey books are fanatical about getting every detail correct - serious grognard stuff. Note the insects buzzing around the guy in the summer picture (though not in the other one, which takes place with snow on the ground). Note one of the few teeth we see is knocked out in the summer pic. No doubt Ghengis looked much more like these guys than the propaganda portrait commissioned by Kublai Khan.

[Hohenzollern]

Captain is one of those pathetic types that use forums to stir up trouble.
you are incredibly ridiculous, anyone with any sense can see you have made this and others like you, a flame war and its all gone, all your 'proper etiquette' crap is pointless.
PS i love how you cut and pasted your way through my posts, real classic of the person you are. thanks.

[civman2000]

those pictures look better than the leaderhead though...

[ChaotikVisions]

-Gone Fishin'-

Going to the lake for the weekend, be back monday evenin'. I'll reply to anything posted then.

[Darkworld Ark]

Thanks Harlan!

As for the Chinese painting of Ghengis, how do we know that he doesn't have bad teath from that? I'm sure that if that paiting were to smile, his teeth would be just as bad as they are in Firaxis' portail of Ghengis.

[siredgar]

Harlan,

1. You still haven't shown an alternative picture of Genghis Khan to the ones I have posted.

2. I find nothing offensive about the picture of the Mongolians you have shown. If Genghis Khan was portrayed anything like either of those men, I would have no problem. He is not.

3. It seems that you are relying on guesses and "probably"s more than anything else. If you were to make the same assumptions about Elizabeth I, I am sure she would truly look like a toothless "hag".

4. I believe you stated that Genghis Khan should have been portrayed during his later years of rule and questioned the judgment of the people at Firaxis on this matter. I wonder why they did that, too. Let's think...

Ed

P.S. I have to go play tennis now, so I'll have to reply to other posts later.

[Spiffor]

I won't take position in the argument again, I'll discuss the rhetorics :

Captain & KhaoticVisions do show their point, explain how they think and so on. They have both good reasons to think their way, and they show these reasons.

Hohenzollern is indeed a bearer of anger. Thanks Siredgar for pinpointing me who the angry ones were, I really felt lazy to browse the whole thread again.

Siredgar is way too emotive, compared to Captain : he thinks Genghis is Chimp-like (while many others, including myself, consider him very humanly ugly), and seems not to understand people can have a different representation of the same thing. That's sad, and Siredgar is a kind of pendant to Hohenzollern : no rational discussion.


OK, now, to the point.
I don't think it's possible to portray a minority without it being racist. The true message is what people percieve : if you depict an ugly "minoritarian", the "majoritarian" who sees the picture might think : "Oh ! The ugly minoritarian ! No doubt he and his likes are inferior !" or such a thing.

Many won't. But some will. I suspect that diehard antiracists, who see racism everywhere, suffer from these racist misrepresentations (Siredgar, I'm not talking specifically about you, but you could enter the category... I can't say, because I don't know you enough). If you were subtly taught the Blacks are inferior to the Whites, then any representation of a Black person can seem offensive to you, if this person has obvious flaws (uglyness, mischievous or something).

If you have no subtle racism in your culture, you might just think : "oh, someone ugly".
But, I highly doubt any culture has no racism, or at least no discrimination about what's different from the norm. Personally, I have racist tensions, which I fight, but which are deeply rooted in my psyche. Racism is bad and I know it, but it's hard to fight against your subconscious.

[Darkworld Ark]

Originally posted by siredgar
3. It seems that you are relying on guesses and "probably"s more than anything else. If you were to make the same assumptions about Elizabeth I, I am sure she would truly look like a toothless "hag".

Since we know the paintings of Ghengis Khan are propoganda, you're relying on guesses and "probably"s just as much as anybody who says that that's how he looked. As for Liz, she proboly should have had bad teath, although she's already a 'hag'.

[FrantzX]

The masses have spoken. Civ leaders can be ugly.

[Carver]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Siredgar is way too emotive, compared to Captain : he thinks Genghis is Chimp-like (while many others, including myself, consider him very humanly ugly), and seems not to understand people can have a different representation of the same thing.

Well let's look at a Nazi death camp in the 1940s. Who was emotional there? The Nazi soldiers were probably very calm and cool as they went about their jobs of killing Jews. The Jews, who were seeing their family members taken, tortured, mutilated, experimented on and killed, would have been very emotional. Suffering and hate cause emotions. Being emotional about an issue does not negate one's argument, not in the least.

[Darkworld Ark]

Originally posted by Carver


Well let's look at a Nazi death camp in the 1940s. Who was emotional there? The Nazi soldiers were probably very calm and cool as they went about their jobs of killing Jews. The Jews, who were seeing their family members taken, tortured, mutilated, experimented on and killed, would have been very emotional. Suffering and hate cause emotions. Being emotional about an issue does not negate one's argument, not in the least.

There's a large difference between Ghengis Khan looking ugly & Nazis killing Jews...

[Carver]

Originally posted by Harlan
No doubt Ghengis looked much more like these guys than the propaganda portrait commissioned by Kublai Khan.

Harlan, the pictures you posted (of "genuine" Mongolians) look tasteful and respectful. These men look intelligent, determined and strong. The graphic racial slur Firaxis has handed us makes a mockery of the Mongolian people. And yes, when talking about a country as little understood as Mongolia in the US or Europe, the leaderhead very much represents his people.

Ghengis doesn't need to be "pretty". I don't much care about bad teeth or an imperfect complexion. But the expression on Ghengis' face (from the screenshot we have) is one of imature foolishness. Ghengis should not be the Jar Jar of civ3. You can give me a man who is poor, ugly and even dirty; but if he looks (most importantly, if the expression on his face looks) honorable, intelligent and delibrative it would not be a racist portrayal.

History is still with us and the media have an obligation to ensure that marginalized and/or unknown ethnicities are not portrayed as fools.

[Darkworld Ark]

Originally posted by Carver


Harlan, the pictures you posted (of "genuine" Mongolians) look tasteful and respectful. These men look intelligent, determined and strong. The graphic racial slur Firaxis has handed us makes a mockery of the Mongolian people. And yes, when talking about a country as little understood as Mongolia in the US or Europe, the leaderhead very much represents his people.

Ghengis doesn't need to be "pretty". I don't much care about bad teeth or an imperfect complexion. But the expression on Ghengis' face (from the screenshot we have) is one of imature foolishness. Ghengis should not be the Jar Jar of civ3. You can give me a man who is poor, ugly and even dirty; but if he looks (most importantly, if the expression on his face looks) honorable, intelligent and delibrative it would not be a racist portrayal.

History is still with us and the media have an obligation to ensure that marginalized and/or unknown ethnicities are not portrayed as fools.

The reason that he looks like a ****** in the pic is because he's smiling, all the leaders looked stoned when they smile. I'm sure you'll fear for your life & immortal soul when he's annoyed or furious.

[Ninot]

Ok, I wanna restate my biggest point

In many of the Civ3 portraits, character traits are well displayed and seem to be the intention (thus Joan in an Army shirt in the modern age, cuz she was a warrior for the french).


Genghis was a warrior... he looks like hes been threw a war, its appropriate.

If they made him look like that Chinese propaganda, it would be the realists crying out bloody murder... hehehe.

Personally, I don't take the leader as representative of the group. If i did, I would believe that all Chinese folk were communistic (i have atleast a dozen very close chinese friends... none are communists that I know of).

So, to sum this up(again), I think there isn't anything that wrong with an ugly Khan. I think its just a bit of a coincidence that the most famous Mongol was ugly.

And for something Siredgar replied to something said about "Genghis Khan should have been portrayed during his later years of rule"... well, All of the leaders are portraid by when they were in their prime. Caesar isnt exactly a 54 year old in his portrait, Lincoln isn't a young lawyer, and Mao isn't a young revolutionary. If Civ3 wants to think that Khan did something important when he was 20 something, then thats fine with me. I think if he is shown as 40 or 50, then he would only be an older ugly guy.

oh... and as for the actual depiction, say ya take away the battle scars, and what might be dirt, and ya give him a bath... he might be an attractive leader... but im guessing the given pics are from the ancient age... and Khan did not have the luxuries of baths. Im guessing as soon as a modern era pic of Khan is released, it will be plain that Khan can look decent.

And a note on the thread

I completely respect Captain's posts. I wouldn't mind a rebuttle from him.
However
If siredgar replies to my post... well, lets just say im in a bit of agreeance with NYE. If Siredgar replies to me... i want some hard info, not just accusations of "probablies" and such.

[Harlan]

1. You still haven't shown an alternative picture of Genghis Khan to the ones I have posted.

I thought I had made it clear, and that Mongolia Today article makes, clear, that there are no other portraits of Ghengis. Given that the one portrait and the few descriptions of him come from incredibly biased sources, we have no way of knowing what he looked like. He could have looked like a complete idiot with drool running down his face. He could have looked so noble and brilliant that you'd break down and cry tears of joy to see such a face. There's just no way of knowing for sure. We can only make best guesses based on the evidence available to us and what we know about the Mongols and the time generally. That's all I'm trying to do.

2. I find nothing offensive about the picture of the Mongolians you have shown. If Genghis Khan was portrayed anything like either of those men, I would have no problem. He is not.

As I said, I wouldn't have drawn him with that silly smile. My main point in posting those pictures was to contrast those with the Kublai Khan era propaganda portrait, to show how completely off that one is.

3. It seems that you are relying on guesses and "probably"s more than anything else. If you were to make the same assumptions about Elizabeth I, I am sure she would truly look like a toothless "hag".

I've done a lot of reading and studying about the Mongols. Feel free to read some quality books on the subject and then respond with your own probablies. If you still maintain that Ghengis looked anything like that portrait you posted, then I like my probablies a lot more than yours.

4. I believe you stated that Genghis Khan should have been portrayed during his later years of rule and questioned the judgment of the people at Firaxis on this matter. I wonder why they did that, too. Let's think...

If Firaxis had racist intentions in their portraits, why would they have wanted to make Cleopatra black skinned? There have been a number of black scholars for years trying to claim she was black - she's a very admired figure in history.

Yes, the Ghengis portrait is a charicature. But is there a clear pattern of racist malice towards non-white portraits? No. They're ALL charicatures, with overly exaggerated facial expressions. Some white ones look dumb, some non-white ones look dignified. As I said before, I have problems with all of their portraits because of inaccuracies and cartoonishness, and I don't see Ghengis so bad that he's in a class of his own. I certainly fail to see any chimp resemblance, and I haven't seen any other posters claiming to see that either (but I may have missed a few posts).