Tuesday, September 05, 2006

An Outsider's Perspective on South-Asian Media


Since I'm still researching on digital war games for my PhD thesis, planning to include non-Western examples in the final chapter to broaden topic a little, I recently found out about an example from Bangladesh, a game called Arunodoyer Agnishikha or Bangladesh-71, set in the 1971 "war of liberation" (sic!) against Pakistan. The second game from Bangladesh, however, is called Dhaka Racing and does not have military connotations at all. It seems very much tailored to a local audience; they even make fun of the "Rickshawalas" in the game as well as in real life which is probably pretty much an inside joke.
Now, since I am thinking about cultural dispositions towards digital media technologies, it is striking that e.g. in India, both animated films (Hanuman, Lord Ganesh) and digital games (Ashoka) from the outset seem to focus on mythological themes rather than war or lifestyle (or is mythology in this sense part of 'lifestyle'?). At least that's the tiny fragment of it that I could observe from a European POV so far...
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that animation and digital media production is increasingly being outsourced to India by US and other companies which might create a desire to produce something genuinely rooted in one's own culture?
If you happen to hear about other, especially military-themed examples, I would be eternally grateful for suggestions :) I already asked a friend who is in Egypt and Lebanon on a regular basis to buy all games from the region he can find like Under Siege and Quraish; I just hope this doesn't interfere with my plans of working in the US sometime... ;)
Best wishes from Bonn,

Stefan

1 Comments:

Blogger Parmesh said...

Hi Stefan,
Lovely post. Check out the catalog of Virgin comics india. More of mythology..... and yes, I agree with you, mythology is certainly a part of lifestyle. In fact, I was at the giant Ganpati immersion in Bombay just a few days ago... check out the pictures.

September 09, 2006  

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