LM's daddy is a big ole racist
So recently, as some may know, both Mammamer and myself spent a bunch of money... just 'cause, really. (I like to think it was to keep sane, but we may be too far gone.)
She spent hers on some shoes; I spent mine on a couple games from Europe.
One, Eiertanz, which comes in a real egg carton with rubber eggs, one wooden egg and colorful dice, is essentially a children's party game where there's lots of hiding eggs in armpits and under chins, chicken noises, stealing eggs and running around the table. Looks fairly brilliant.
The other one (and the whole reason for the order in the first place), Chinatown, is a vastly out-of-print, vastly expensive collector's item. It's supposed to be a negotiation game, where you're trying to build runs of the same kinds of businesses on New York city blocks. There are occasional payout rounds where you see how financially successful your business empire gets, but the whole crux of the game centers around your ability to negotiate with other players about location and type of business.
As the game is supposed to be set in New York's Chinatown in the 30s, I was slightly disquieted but eventually OK with the fact that there was a guy with a giant coolie hat on the side of the box.
The order arrived last night, and yes, I had another episode of "game porn": tearing the shrink off the box and punching out pieces and looking at currency.
And then the shock of discovering that some of the pieces are, um, culturally insensitive. I don't think the game rises to out-and-out overt racism -- it's not as if the guy in the coolie hat on the cover is done in some racist caricature with glasses and buck teeth -- but the small business tiles go from innocuous ("Ming's Antinques") to a bit shocking ("Hop Sing's Fine Chinese Food") with the tin-eared design. Then there are others somewhat in between, such as a detective agency ("Charlie Chan's") or a chain of sporting goods stores ("Ping and Pong's"). I think I'm on the point of discovering why the game is so long out of print.
Those wacky Germans. And of course they have no history of intolerance to draw from.
The reason I don't think it rises to overt racism is subtle, but I think it helps (albeit only by the tiniest amount) that the game is set in 30s New York, where to my knowledge there were actual Chinese laundries, fireworks shops, garment factories and antique dealers. If I had to guess, I'd also say people wore coolie hats back then too. Another reason I'd point to would be that present-day Germany (board game Mecca that it is) is fairly conscious as a society of presenting the face of tolerance -- its Turkish guest worker issues and neo-Nazi embarrassments notwithstanding.
I also have Samurai, which while being a brilliant game and one of my favorites ever for its simplicity and depth, uses a ching-chongy typeface for its tiles, the same kind of typeface used in advertising sushi restaurants in the 70s. I would never give up Samurai, as the game is too brilliant for that. A visiting friend of friends, just off the plane from living in Japan, alluded to the slight obnoxiousness in the design but was quickly seduced by the game itself.
There's also Puerto Rico (as yet unplayed), which has a lot of tiny brown wooden discs representing what the rulebook calls "colonists" arriving on ships to tend the fields and man the factories, but anyone with half a brain and a passing knowledge of history can figure out what those counters are really supposed to represent.
Chinatown is more direct about its tin ear, I guess.
I'm hoping that Chinatown will provide similar gaming jollies that will rise above its disquieting components. I'm not sure I'm willing to sell or trade it regardless, just because it comes from a line of games that are extremely well-regarded, as Samurai is. It may also just skate by, by virtue of the time period it's set in.
As you can see, however, my white liberal guilt is pegged, redlining, and ready to break the meter.