Video: The Clash of Digitalizations – The Devolution of Arab Men from Humans to Digital Fodder

Saud al-Zaid presents his interesting PhD-thesis, he is himself very doubtful about: Is it bigotry vs. racism or is both that thrives programs to use prejudice and political nihilism.

Starting with Francis Fukuyama (The End of History) und Samuel Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations) al-Zaid dives deeply into the imagery of first person shooter games, from Castle Wolfenstein to Call of Duty. Diving into it, for a long time the gold old’n’ugly german nazi fitted best as an impersonation of the evil, in the end being it Hitler himself the player has to fight.

These days arab males are made (constructed) to impersonate the evil, having Mr. al-Zaid admitting that he feels threatened through this image change in the last decades. His talk brings in an important dicussion about culturally as well as technologically driven images of evil and good, latter being in most commercial games (of course) mainly white man.