A Couple of Links about International CultureFirst, today, we have a product of a culture, comic books, that have in many ways been part of that force that the western world used to co-opt other cultures. I'm not saying that like its a bad thing, but it is a real thing. When you have bollywood musicals featuring spider-man, and superman is a figure known and respected by children throughout the world, its a simple fact that our culture has managed to spread itself throughout the globe via comics.
But now someone from the Muslim world is taking that medium so foreign to his own society and co-opting it right back, with THE 99, the world's first Islamically-inspired comic, the first to be produced in the middle-east, and, with world-wide translation and a new animated film in the works, amazingly THE 99 is on the verge of becoming the first licensed entertainment property to come out of the Islamic world. Here's a
letter from the creator of THE 99, to his sons, explaining why he wanted to make this comic.
I think perhaps he's a little too optimistic about it being able to bridge the gap; I haven't been in any north american comic stores in the last year, but I'm going to bet that you won't see THE 99 on any shelves there. Am I wrong? I also doubt that one comic alone will be able to reverse perceptions about Islam and extremism, either in the Islamic world or the rest of the world. But its still an admirable effort, and what it has undoubtedly proven is that you can create a home-grown industry for things like comic books in the "third world". If so, why not RPGs?
Meanwhile, let's go to one country that's been a massive exporter of culture: Japan. For at least the last few decades, everything Japanese has been cool. And yet, I think we don't entirely get their culture, certainly not the average person, and I think that the white-boy otakus out there probably don't either. I'm personally of the opinion that, in the most basic of terms, the Japanese are insane. They spent a little too long in isolation, got bombed a little too hard in WWII, and now they're just batfuck nuts.
Want proof? Ok, but don't say I didn't warn you. This is a
real movie trailer, its not something someone made up as a joke. This is a real movie!! The horror!! Geisha... is robot!!
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Dunhill Shell Diplomat + Stockebbye's Bulls Eye Flake
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