Masked Warriors, Eh?

I like the trailer below and not because of its association with a video game — even though it happens to be one of the better on-going FPS series. This teaser doesn’t show any gameplay or say much of anything about COD: Ghosts, what it does show however are references to various cultural and historical masks used to represent their theme, “Masked Warriors”. There are certain masks in particular that mean something to me:

Deep in the misty mountains of Papua New Guinea reside the Asaro Mudmen of the Eastern Highlands Province. Their traditional masks are used to fend off their enemies in tribal warfare.

Though I am not an elder and their story doesn’t belong to me, I believe sharing their part of the world is important:

Long ago, there were two warring tribes in the Highlands. One tribe was driven back into the Asaro river where they realized they could not defeat the other, so they thought to scare them away instead by enlisting the help of spirits. These tribesmen didn’t dare cover their faces in mud from the Asaro river directly because legend told that mud from the Asaro was poisonous, so they mixed the mud with river stones and crafted strange and unusual clay masks to resemble spirits. When they emerged from hiding the rival tribe fell for their trick and fled never to return again, and the art of making mud men masks was and still is kept within the Asaro people.

I have no authority when I speak of the Asaro Mudmen, but like any good story passed down through generations, the essentials of what the masks represent are retained — a founded tradition of a warrior culture. I found it cool that Activision used their image to personify that.

I’m not a Highlands man, but Tolai from Rabaul, and like every tribe in PNG — recorded and unrecorded — the Tolai people also have their own masks:

Duk-Duk dancers in the Gazelle Peninsula, New Britain, 1913

Duk-Duk (pronounced ‘Dook-Dook’) is a secret society, part of the traditional culture of the Tolai people of the Rabaul area of New Britain, the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea, in the South Pacific. Duk-Duk only appeared with the full moon. The society’s practice has been dying out since around the start of the 20th century, but Duk-Duk dancers are now featured as tourist attractions. ~ wikipedia

That’s where I come from. Yes, the world is an interesting place and PNG has so many different colours and traditional dresses, I’m not going to do them much justice by featuring them alongside a videogame. Speaking of which, I should probably say something about the game too… Umm… Way to market, Activision 😛