Historical accuracy in popular media is one issue, but today's "Unleash Your Inner Viking" trailers for Assassin's Creed Valhalla peddle disproven misinformation that supports dangerous ideology – we're talking toxic masculinity at best, and white supremacy at worst.
Here's how:
Here's how:
The trailers follow a group of caryoonishly-inept losers going to a camp in the woods to learn how to solve their life problems by placing AC:V and then Acting Like A Viking – in practice, this means: being angry and rude, threats of violence, and actual violence.
It's played for laughs, but this perpetrates the ideas that:
1) Vikings were angry brutes who solved everything with violence.
2) Vikings had to use violence because if they didn't their enemies would (most viking violence was directed at innocent monks at sacked monasteries)...
1) Vikings were angry brutes who solved everything with violence.
2) Vikings had to use violence because if they didn't their enemies would (most viking violence was directed at innocent monks at sacked monasteries)...
3) Therefore if YOU want to stop the world from walking all over you, you've got to man up and fight back – in the campgoers' case, against an acquaintance & a barista. Moral of the story being it's okay to throw a piping hot drink in the face of someone who got your order wrong?
In part 3, the one campgoer who addresses the problems with the camp is drugged and sent away to Greenland – lesson learned: conform or else.
And even after bucketfulls of historical inaccuracy and the insinuation that Vikings killed and so should you, there's one core issue –
And even after bucketfulls of historical inaccuracy and the insinuation that Vikings killed and so should you, there's one core issue –
The framing device of "people go to camp in the woods to man up like vikings" mirrors real-life camps attended by white supremacists to reinforce their worldview and indoctrinate others.
This association is more damning for Ubi since Vikings have an established WS/neonazi fandom.
This association is more damning for Ubi since Vikings have an established WS/neonazi fandom.
Historians have been working for decades to detatch Vikings from nazi propaganda (1930s and modern), and this marketing piles those associations back on for crude slapstick and 6th grade bodily humor.
I am shocked that these videos ever got made; by a videogame company, no less.
I am shocked that these videos ever got made; by a videogame company, no less.
There are developers & historians at Ubisoft working hard to make this a great and historically-grounded game, so it's even more inexcusable to see these dangerous tropes in promotional material when other historical aspects *are* handled well.
Getting history wrong is sometimes harmless and sometimes misleading, but here, it plays into decades of hateful, violent, and dangerous bastardizations of Scandinavian culture that have no place in a game or its advertising.
These three videos should never have been made.
-B
These three videos should never have been made.
-B
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