{"id":4766,"date":"2023-02-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/atomic-heart-criticised-for-racist-caricature-in-one-of-its-soviet-era-cartoons\/"},"modified":"2023-02-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T00:00:00","slug":"atomic-heart-criticised-for-racist-caricature-in-one-of-its-soviet-era-cartoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/atomic-heart-criticised-for-racist-caricature-in-one-of-its-soviet-era-cartoons\/","title":{"rendered":"Atomic Heart criticised for racist caricature in one of its Soviet-era cartoons"},"content":{"rendered":"
Atomic Heart<\/a> is being criticised (via Resetera<\/a>) for the presence of a racist caricature in one of the old Soviet cartoons that air in the game’s Resident Evil-style save rooms. Those rooms, which serve as a brief respite from the game’s robo-bashing combat, offer players a chance to kick back for a bit and watch old episodes of Nu, Pogodi! (Well, Just You Wait!) a beloved Soviet children’s cartoon that first aired in 1969. But at least one of the episodes featured might be a bit too reminiscent of its era.<\/p>\n Nu, Pogodi! is, in essence, Soviet Tom and Jerry, starring an impeccably-dressed Soviet disco wolf (Volk) as he tries and fails to get his hands on a mischievous hare (Zayats). Atomic Heart is being criticised for a segment in episode 12: “Museum,” from 1978. In a quick flash on the screen, the pair’s antics cause a statue—a racist depiction of an African tribesman—to fire the bow and arrow it’s holding, setting off a Rube Goldberg-style sequence of chaotic events that eventually deposits Volk in the sarcophagus of Ramesses the Great. You can see the episode in question on YouTube<\/a> (content warning for racism).<\/p>\n It’s the kind of thing—like Dumbo or the Jungle Book—that would get a “This programme includes negative depictions and\/or mistreatment of people or cultures<\/a>” warning if it were shown on streaming services like Disney+ or Netflix, and it’s disturbing that it’s included in Atomic Heart without any warning or contextualisation. <\/p>\n I’ve reached out to Mundfish and Focus Entertainment to ask if there are any plans to address the clip, and I’ll update this piece if I hear back.<\/p>\n Mundfish might yet patch the game to deal with the issue, but I suspect it didn’t even occur to the studio that it might be a problem during development: Nu, Pogodi! is a treasured icon of 20th-century Soviet and Russian culture. Like Cheburashka<\/a>, it’s a symbol of childhood that’s near and dear to the hearts of millions of inhabitants of the former USSR, a fixture of museums of Soviet culture<\/a>, and even appeared on Soviet postage stamps in 1988<\/a>. In Russia, where a racist parody of Barack Obama<\/a> appeared on government-funded TV as recently as 2020, the notion that anything problematic could be in the cartoon would likely sound bizarre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Atomic Heart is being criticised (via Resetera) for the presence of a racist caricature in one of the old Soviet cartoons that air in the game’s Resident Evil-style save rooms. Those rooms, which serve as a brief respite from the game’s robo-bashing combat, offer players a chance to kick back for a bit and watch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1045,2035,1044,2089,1245,1038,2031,129,1047,1043],"tags":[1056,2040,1055,2090,1248,1048,2036,1049,1058,1054],"class_list":{"0":"post-4766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-apple-news-format","8":"category-atomic-heart","9":"category-channel-gaming-software","10":"category-focus-entertainment","11":"category-fps","12":"category-gaming-software","13":"category-mundfish","14":"category-news","15":"category-serversidehawk","16":"category-type-news","17":"tag-apple-news-format","18":"tag-atomic-heart","19":"tag-channel-gaming-software","20":"tag-focus-entertainment","21":"tag-fps","22":"tag-gaming-software","23":"tag-mundfish","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-serversidehawk","26":"tag-type-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}