On Penny-Arcade, Self-Censorship and Sensitivity, Plus Our Open Letter to Penny Arcade
Recently, popular webcomic ‘Penny-Arcade’ pulled a line of merchandise from their stores centered around fictional creatures called ‘Dickwolves’ whose only known attributes were that they were a: wolves and b: raped people. The Dickwolves originated from a comic satirizing the casual way that certain videogame genres interpret moral choices within their universes; ie, a character the player controls is ‘Good’ or ‘Evil’ to the extent they complete largely arbitrary tasks that the game can evaluate, rather than any true, deeper sense of morality (which a videogame cannot evaluate at any rate).
That comic was interpreted by rather humorless people as being a joke about rape, rather than a joke about videogames and their internal mechancis, despite the fact that one of the two characters in the comic was not human but rather a bipedal, clothed, talking Wolf creature.
Because in real life it is frequently the case that magical talking animals fail to stop other mythical creatures from violating human beings.
Penny-Arcade’s official response, in comic, drew humor from this odd fixation on the imaginary misdeeds of a fantasy monster.
Later, the Dickwolves were subsequently re-imagined as a mascot animal of a hypothetical, yet generic, professional sports team (ala the Bulls, the Rams, the Falcons, etc) emblazoned on shirts (like those sold by pro-sports teams):
These shirts in turn offended the previously mentioned humorless individuals even further, and led to, in essence, a call to boycott the Penny Arcade Expo, a gaming-themed convention hosted and organized by the ever-growing Penny-Arcade apparatus.
At which point, Penny-Arcade caved, and has now pulled the shirts from sale:
It’s true that we have decided to remove the Dickwolves shirt from the store. Some people are happy about this but a lot more of you are upset. You think we’ve caved into to pressure from a vocal minority and you’re not entirely wrong. let me at least break down why we did it though.
First of all I would never remove the strip or even apologize for the joke. It’s funny and the fact that some people don’t get it, or are offended by it doesn’t change that.
…
PAX is a different matter though. We want PAX to be a place were everyone feels welcome and we’ve worked really hard to make that happen. From not allowing booth babes to making sure we have panels that represent all our attendees. When I heard from a few people that the shirt would make them uncomfortable at PAX, that gave me pause. Now whether I think that’s a fair or warranted reaction doesn’t really matter. These were not rants on blogs but personal mails to me from people being very reasonable.
…
Now for some people removing the shirt isn’t enough. They don’t want to come to PAX or support PA because of the strip or because they think Tycho and I are perpetuating some kind of rape culture and that’s a different matter.
Our thoughts:
1) Caving in to a vocal minority because you’ve upset them, rather than the fact that they changed your mind, opens the door to any other group applying similar pressure in hopes of a similar response (as we shall see shortly).
2) The accusations of promotion of a ‘rape culture’ by selling a shirt with a wolf logo on it are utterly farcical, especially considering that the ‘Dickwolves’ merchandise is itself satirical of the professional sports industry, a real cultural movement/business culture that is, in fact, plagued with actual depravity, violence and abuse, and whose fans often erupt into violence or rioting at the drop of a hat, particularly after big games.
However, the die is now cast, as they say, and The Zombie Rights Campaign is nothing if not punctual, so in the spirit of this capitulation/consideration of a minority point of view, we have decided to strike while the iron is hot with our own reasonable demands, in the hope of receiving similar consideration from these icons of the gaming community:
To Tycho and Gabe, aka Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik:
Greetings from The Zombie Rights Campaign, the world’s premiere and preeminent advocacy group for the rights and concerns of the Differently Animated, who you may better know as ‘Zombies’.
We are writing you today to voice our concerns in light of your recent decision to modify your merchandising operation out of sensitivity toward attendees of your popular gaming convention PAX.
While our organization feels the decision to stop selling the controversial ‘Dickwolves’ merchandise was neither justified nor required by good taste, we applaud your willingness to meet your audience halfway on accomodating minority viewpoints and making the holders of said viewpoints feel at ease.
Toward that end, we are writing you today in the hope of bringing our concerns, no less valid than those voiced over ‘Dickwolves’, to your attention in the hopes of receiving similar consideration.
First, the Zombie Community has long felt slighted, insulted and looked down upon by your comic and your organization. It does not take great effort to provide evidence of these slights and insults (for example, here: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/2/4/ or the storyline beginning here: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/8/9/) within your body of work.
Given this obvious animus, it is hard to interpret the sale of this particular garment in anything other than a discriminatory and defamatory light:
“Life’s a Lich”? The obvious punning of the common name for a subset of the Differently Animated community with the pejorative term ‘bitch’ is bad enough, but considering the treatment of Liches by the gaming and fantasy-oriented communities, the shirt is a borderline call for violence against them, reinforcing (as it does) the concept of a power-mad immortal creature, shambling upon the Earth in blind pursuit of its own eternal ambitions.
‘Where, oh where,’ this garment asks, ‘are the noble adventurers who can put an end to this abomination?’
In truth, they’re usually not far from the poor, innocent Lich, who only wants to shelter their phylactery in peace and continue with their charity work, perhaps the baking of cookies for a local orphanage. (The charity work naturally varies.)
Second, your efforts to promote inclusiveness and tolerance at the PAX conventions is a good first step, but we feel compelled to ask, at this juncture, that in addition to those who feel uncomfortable, rightly or wrong, around ‘Dickwolves’ merchandise, that you consider the many Zombie-Americans (as well as other Zombie nationalities of course) who feel great offense, and even personal threat, from the Anti-Zombie ‘games’ and merchandise often on display at conventions such as your own.
You took the initiative to ban ‘booth babes’; good for you. However, when was the last time a ‘booth babe’ ever made someone fearful for their Unlife? When have ‘booth babes’ ever, even in fiction, slaughtered entire crowds of Undead individuals, say, in a mall or other semi-public space? Is the objectification of paid female models somehow more offensive than the wholesale massacres of the Differently Animated shoved into the public consciousness by the videogaming industry?
We of course know the answer to be ‘No.’
So the Zombie Rights Campaign calls upon you to take similar steps to make Zombies feel at greater ease attending your fine conventions. First, might you consider moving the Anti-Zombie games on offer at future shows into a separate, but functionally equivalent, space on, or even off of, the main floor? Zombies who seek to attend your show and gather news and sneak peeks at, say, the next generation of Wii games or a hands-on trial of the 3DS shouldn’t have to shuffle, downtrodden, between banks of monitors displaying the savage murder of their virtual brethren while caffeine-fueled nerds cheer the carnage on all around.
It’s a distinctly hostile environment for our clients, as you might well imagine, and one that only you have the power to ameliorate.
Finally, your efforts to provide inclusive panels at the conventions is a laudable goal, but we have to ask if you have, in fact, been doing enough to include Zombie Friendly events and personalities at your conventions? Have you given the Zombie subset of the Gaming Community a chance to speak their minds and voice their concerns, as well as air their grievances about an industry that, more than any other, perpetuates negative stereotypes and perceptions of the Differently Animated?
Have you, in fact, done enough to make Zombies and their representatives feel at home at PAX? It’s a question that only you, yourselves, can answer, but I think if you look deep within your hearts, you’ll know there is more, much more, that could be done.
So, to summarize:
1) Penny Arcade as a comic has much to answer for regarding its depiction of the Zombie Community.
2) The sale of the Penny Arcade ‘Life’s a Lich’ shirt should be discontinued immediately as a show of good faith to said Community
3) Greater efforts to include Zombies and their advocates at PAX events should be made in the future.
We look forward to your response and continuing this dialogue, and thank you for your time.
Best Regards,
John J Sears
President of The Zombie Rights Campaign
www.zombierightscampaign.org
About The Author
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by jamesjnixon, John J Sears. John J Sears said: Our open letter stating concerns of Zombies vis a vis gaming and popular comic Penny Arcade can be found here: http://bit.ly/hWJZF6 #zombie [...]
First of all, your satire is amusing but misses the mark. Zombies are not real, and I doubt that you know any personally. Rape victims however, are real, and numerous. In fact, you probably know one. If they haven’t mentioned this fact to you, maybe it is because they afraid to be laughed at as overreacting losers, as your satire implies.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘satire’ Peter, as The Zombie Rights Campaign is completely serious on the issue of Zombie Rights, and we would sincerely appreciate some moderate concessions being made by the gaming industry to make events like PAX more accomodating to our clients.
That having been said, my post in no way implies that rape victims are ‘overreacting losers’. The beauty of an accusation that someone ‘implies’ something is that you need no textual hook to make it, isn’t it? You just need an opinion and the ability to be easily offended, or feign such offense.
Which seems to be the whole point here. A single comic, explicitly about and set within the world of a videogame, from a long-running comic series that is explicitly about gaming, referenced a vile act by an entirely fictional species of monster. Despite being about seventeen steps from referencing any real world event, and involving no real people, not even any ‘real’ people within the fictional context but rather NPCs and player avatars, some individuals chose to be offended by a fictional situation within a virtual situation within a comic. They then make grand accusations about fostering an entire ‘culture’ of rape in the real world, based on said comic and some merchandising about said comic.
I sincerely doubt most people making this Olympic-level leap of logic are in fact rape victims themselves. The internet is full to overflowing with self-righteousness, and there’s nothing like a crusade to draw out the scolds.
Fiction is fiction. Lolita doesn’t make people seduce little girls, Moby Dick doesn’t make people hunt whales, and Dickwolves don’t spontaneously generate a ‘rape culture’. Every single day people slaughter hundreds of thousands, millions of virtual lives. Many of those lives are Zombies. Yet, somehow, no one is all too upset over virtual murder on a vast scale, while the mere satirical implication of rape in one, extremely narrow, entirely fictitious setting has caused all this hullabaloo. If Dickwolves promotes a ‘rape culture’, then surely Call of Duty promotes a murder culture, against Zombies and non-Zombies alike. Why isn’t anyone up in arms over *that*? Have we suddenly decided that murder is a far less serious offense than rape?
We here at the ZRC frequently criticize Anti-Zombie media products. We discourage people from purchasing them, and encourage people to sell or make and definitely to buy Zombie Friendly products. But ultimately, there’s a difference between calling out and criticizing media and claiming that your discomfort is more significant than someone else’s, indeed, everyone else’s free speech. If you don’t like Penny Arcade, don’t read it. Shockingly, most people on Earth don’t. If you don’t like a Dickwolves shirt, don’t buy it. Blog about it. Urge others not to buy it. But this stuff where people try to stifle the conversation based on their innermost feelings is slippery, dangerous territory.
That having been said, the bell was rung, so the ZRC wanted to get our concerns in the door, since this seems to be the acceptable method to address them now, in lieu of winning people over with honest intellectual debate in the marketplace of ideas. Pathos, not ethos, and definitely not logos, eh? I guess that’s where we’re headed now.
Wow, you really completely missed the point there, didn’t cha?
Who completely missed what point now?
Adding that when people come to THE ZOMBIE RIGHTS CAMPAIGN and then try to convince me not to campaign on behalf of Zombies I always kind of wonder about the state of global literacy.
There are multiple factions in this little brouhaha, and they all have different points. Which one did you mean?
[ETA: Dang, too slow. Way to steal my thunder MISTER SEARS.]
Okay, I’ll bite.
The point that your missing, friend, is that people aren’t really that upset about The Sixth Slave comic. Sure, it’s triggering and all (look it up), but that’s not what gets people up-in-arms. What riled people up is the “Breaking it Down” post and subsequent actions.
You see, it’s not okay to mock trigger warnings. It’s not okay to pretend that Rape Culture (again, look it up. It’s been around a lot longer than Penny Arcade. No one said they created it) doesn’t exist. It’s not okay to make a shirt that boils down to “Team Fictional Rapist Character.” It’s not okay to say that you don’t want PAX to be triggering, take down the shirt, and then brag how you’re going to wear the triggering material around PAX. It’s not okay to harass a rape victim on twitter saying that she should be raped to death for expressing her opinions.
These things; these things are not okay.
exhominem:
Err. I haven’t done any of those things, so I’m not sure why you’re complaining to me.
Who precisely HAS done them?
As for your jargony, non-standard use of the word trigger: please don’t try to give me homework assignments. I’m not ten years old and you’re not my homeroom teacher, ok?
Who gets to define what is a ‘trigger’? You? Is there a sage council that makes these determinations, grey robed men and women huddled over the Book of Fate, writing the names of the Damned into its pages in ink mixed with blood?
I haven’t mentioned this on the blog before, but both the art director and myself are card-carrying, dues paying members of the ACLU, so any arguments in favor of censoring speech and expression go very short distances with us. Harassment is another matter, and a crime in many jurisdictions. Printing a shirt? Not (generally) harassment, and constitutionally protected speech. Ditto for wearing it.
I didn’t say Penny Arcade created rape culture per se. I joked about Dickwolves creating one ex nihilo (which they clearly can’t), or more seriously, promoting one (which I don’t think they do).
If one is to take the stance that any and all humor and entertainment must be banned if it offends anyone, then you start a race to the bottom, and the end result is that nothing of value will ever be created again.
The art director has informed me what these ‘trigger warnings’ are, and… wow. Can you honestly not see how uselessly high in the noise to signal ratio that is bound to become?
I mean, if you have to post a warning at the top of a discussion for anything in it that might offend anyone, a: the list of potential triggers is infinite (and thus unintelligible) and b: the inevitable overuse will thus make them quickly ignored by all. Somewhat like spam.
Can you imagine how many ‘trigger warnings’ you would have to put before any decent length discussion of the Holocaust? Your warning section could grow to novel length.
Plus, again, you’re dictating the content of free expression based on personal, subjective standards, which is silly, narcissistic and self-important.
I’m not saying you did anything, nor am I complaining to you about anything. I’m just trying to show you the point. Hell, you support zombie rights, that gets you pretty far in my book as-is. I just noticed that I think you missed the point in all this brou-ha-ha. Namely, people aren’t mad about the comic. They’re mad about the response Penny Arcade had to the comic. No one is calling for censorship. At most, it’s criticism of art.
I’m not trying to give you homework, I’m just trying to help you get the point. Fact is, however you define a trigger, it’s a bad thing, and the original strip may very well have been triggering. But, like I said, the Sixth Slave wasn’t the issue, and it wasn’t the point.
As for creating rape culture, I agree, Mike and Jerry can’t and didn’t create it. But can they promote it? Sure. And they promoted it by ignoring the concerns of rape victims, creating a shirt that advertised “Team Fictional Wolf Rapists”, and finally, acknowledging the shirt as a problem, taking it down, and finally bragging about wearing said offending material around PAX, as Mike did on his twitter. As for harassment, a quick look at @kirbybits twitter can provide some pretty disheartening examples of PA’s “supporters” throwing out some pretty hateful vitriol, including suggestions that a rape survivor be raped to death.
Once again, no one’s taking the stance that anything should be banned or censored. The point isn’t to get them to take down the comic strip or infringe on PA’s artistic integrity. The point was to get the shirt taken down because it was triggering and may have very well created a hostile atmosphere towards women at PAX East. The shirt was taken down. Success! But the way in which it was taken down suggested that rape victims should not attend PAX, and, in fact, should be blacklisted from attending. Not to mention the shitstorm Mike brought down on Twitter.
Just so we’re on the same page, I’d recommend catching up with the whole story here:
http://debacle.tumblr.com/post/3041940865/the-pratfall-of-penny-arcade-a-timeline#notes
Or at the very least considering the actual issue as it was described here:
http://kirbybits.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/here-is-a-thought-why-i%E2%80%99m-not-speaking-at-pax-east-2011/
The point of a trigger warning isn’t to warn people about every objectionable thing they might see on the internet, it’s to allow people with PTSD to avoid experiencing flashbacks and other symptoms.
See here for a fuller description:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning
Do you not understand that shirts are art too, and that coercing someone to take down a shirt is, in fact, coercing them into self-censorship?
I mean, at least be honest with yourself about your goals. You approve of censoring an artist’s design because it offended or upset someone else. You approve of censorship of private artwork displayed by private individuals. It just happens to be on their chests.
As for having ‘supporters’ do things: please. If someone who supported Zombie Rights, or the ZRC, went off their nut and did something crazy, that wouldn’t make me responsible. Given the sheer size of the PA fanbase there are surely rapists, pedophiles, murderers, maybe a few animal torturers in their readership. So? Does that somehow make them responsible?
If someone goes out and bashes someone else in the head for talking about claw shrimp, that doesn’t mean PA should never print a claw shrimp shirt, it means that someone out there was frikkin crazy. Which is not really news.
FYI, PTSD triggers are innumerable and impossible to predict as well. I had a relative by marriage whose father was a Vietnam vet. His PTSD trigger was wind chimes, because they sound like shell casings hitting the ground.
Someone might have PTSD triggered by oranges. (Or is that too Godfather of a reference?)
It’s up to each writer to choose how they frame and present their own work, but I find the entire concept self-important. Everybody is going to have their own idea of what a trigger is, and who decides which ones are important enough to be required?
Whoever’s loudest, shrillest, most demanding, most willing to put themselves on the line to be offended by others and then claim they are horribly wronged by the offense.
In other words, trolls.
This is the internet, after all.
Criticism and censorship are not the same thing. No government forced Penny Arcade to take the shirt down. No IPs were banned. Some people criticized it, and, as a result, Penny Arcade chose to stop selling the shirt. Don’t get it twisted, I don’t support censorship, but I do support free speech, and therefore criticism. Criticism is a much a part of free speech as anything else, even if it does lead to self-censorship.
The issue with PA’s supporters is that they were tracking back to Mike’s twitter account before posting vile, hurtful threats to the opposition; so PA claiming ignorance doesn’t hold much weight, nor did they ever claim ignorance. Eventually (i.e. today) they finally put a stop to it and insisted their followers stop, so they had to know about it, but it took a good long while for Mike and Jerry to step up.
PTSD triggers may be innumerable, but claiming that this invalidates any effort to ward them off sounds pretty close to indulging in the Nirvana fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
Just because trigger warnings are not a perfect solution does not mean they deserve to be mocked and derided. As for who decides what warrants a trigger warning and what doesn’t, your right, the onus does fall on the author to present their material in the way that they so choose.
Nothing is ‘required’, per se. There is no internet police enforcing the proper use of trigger warnings. Trigger warnings are simply a tool that allows authors to present their work in a more sensitive manner.
Part of what makes PA’s comic what it is, is that it’s not sensitive, though. So bringing up trigger warnings in response to one of their comics is like baking a cake at a chili cook-off. Their response to all the people ‘baking cakes’ was rightfully “what are you doing here baking a cake?” Which pissed a vocal minority of people off, because they are offended that PA hates cake. Except PA never said they hate cake, they just said it wasn’t welcome at their chili cook-off.
It’s not like when PA was going up against Jack Thompson that they were supporting people killing hookers and shooting cops GTA-style (and no one said they were, except UNREASONABLE PEOPLE like Jack Thompson). And they’re not supporting “rape culture” with dickwolves here.
No one is bringing up trigger warnings in regards to a ‘comic.’ The issue at stake is that PA chose to mock trigger warnings, a tool used mainly to help provide safe spaces for rape survivors and other victims of PTSD on the internet. Which is kind of a shitty thing to do.
I feel like you may not be taking rape culture seriously, or even believe that it exists. If I’m reading too much into your comment, forgive me. However, if you doubt rape culture exists, I would recommend reading up on it a bit more, including examples of it’s prevalence in american / western culture:
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html
The difference between criticism and censorship, exhominem, is that with the former you seek to persuade and the latter you seek to silence. Gabe said on the PA news page that he’d found the anti-Dickwolves arguments completely unconvincing, but that he felt they had to pull the shirts because of the pressure people were putting on PAX. People weren’t trying to persuade Penny Arcade; they weren’t even engaged with the original subject material for the most part. Instead they flung hysterical accusations about wildly, talked about how someone wearing a *t-shirt* would make them uncomfortable and presumably unsafe in a public space, and generally acted like if the world didn’t walk on eggshells around them it was an assault.
I’m not that engaged with Twitter’s power user stuff, I use tweetdeck, so I’m not sure what you mean by ‘trackback’ there. Do you mean that they referenced Mike with @comments? Because I know just from the ZRC’s twitter feed, email and facebook that you can get so many comments directed at you that you miss responding to them all, or even reading them all. I cannot imagine the traffic that the PA guys get. They haven’t responded to my emails, but I don’t consider it an affront, or allege that they’re committing some profound lapse by ignoring me. I accept that they are busy individuals, and if they respond to the ZRC, great. We’re open for dialogue.
It’s not a nirvana fallacy to point out that your plan cannot work, and is completely impractical. You’re the one suffering from a delusion if you think ‘voluntary’ censorship of content and expression does anything but stifle free thought. Typically the backlash produces more, and angrier, forms of the very material you seek to restrict. I suppose you’re a big fan of warning labels on cds, or the MPAA using its control over the theatre chain cartels to block the release of movies it finds objectionable, too? How about the Comics Code? How’d that turn out, do you think? All examples of ‘voluntary’ censorship and warning labels, and the chilling effects that those labels have, whether government imposed or not.
I’m mocking trigger warnings right here! I think they’re a bad idea, impractical, and bound to fail. You’re not making any ground up accusing PA of doing something I’d do myself.
Honestly. What good would it do if I used Trigger warnings here? If I put a bunch of flags at the start of every post about violence or depravity or Anti-Zombie prejudice?
Trigger Warning: Anti-Zombie Violence Discussed below. Trigger Warning: Anti-Zombie Videogames Discussed Below. Trigger Warning: Graphical Illustration of Anti-Zombie violence below.
It’s up to an author, but I firmly believe that warning labels are stupid, they never work, and invariably they become the new ceiling for what is and is not acceptable to discuss or produce. Look at the PG-13 phenomenon with movies if you need to understand how warning labels work in practice to turn a dynamic marketplace of ideas into a stratified mess.
I think your getting your facts a little jumbled. No one that I know of sought to silence Penny Arcade, more to persuade. If the the goal was to silence, people probably would have been satisfied with PA pulling the shirt and not really understanding the concerns of their fans.
You see, it’s not perfectly clear, but it seems like Courtney Scranton, a female game designer and rape survivor, was invited to speak at PAX East. She declined, citing the fact that the shirts were triggering for her and would make her uncomfortable at a con that is ostensibly all about inclusivity. Apparently other people felt the same way so that PA decided to pull the shirts in an effort to keep PAX inclusive. However, in the same news post, Mike effectively blacklisted anyone who disagreed with the shirt from attending PAX, and bragged about wearing the material that the rape survivors found triggering to the con.
Courtney Scranton’s goal was never to ‘silence’ Penny Arcade. She simply pointed out that an offensive shirt, if worn at and endorsed by PAX, would cause her severe distress. “Uncomfortable” is the wrong word to use when describing a rape survivor’s reaction to a trigger.
Again, if you look at the timeline, you can see that on January 30th, at least, Mike was aware that his fans were threatening a rape survivor’s life in his name. Rather than publicly denounce this action, he chose to reprimand, privately, one fan. So, once again, the argument that Mike at least had no idea that this was happening for at least the past week holds little water.
http://debacle.tumblr.com/post/3041940865/the-pratfall-of-penny-arcade-a-timeline#notes
Trigger warnings are in fact effective in the context that they are primarily used, as in providing safe spaces for rape survivors on feminist blogs. They are not meant to stifle or silence, and they rarely do. Graphic descriptions of rape, violence, and sexual assault are commonplace on feminist blogs. Except that in this case, people who may experience severe symptoms from reading this material are warned before-hand.
I don’t think anyone is seriously expecting you or PA to put trigger warnings on your site. The issue is more in mocking a practice that helps rape survivors participate in online discourse. In fact, the very idea of a trigger warning is the antithesis of any rating on a cd or movie, the goal isn’t to silence the original author, but to allow others, namely rape survivors, who are often marginalized in our society, a voice. By being sensitive to the
needs of others, we allow them to truly express themselves, without fear of the severe stress caused by triggers. Again, more clarification can be found here:
http://objectifythis.com/2009/10/what-is-a-trigger-warning/
Nobody ever admits that the goal of their warning labels is to silence others. They *always* trot out an argument like yours, that it enables some group or other to participate more fully in discussion, and it’s almost always a lie.
The Comics Code was *purportedly* done to protect children so they could participate, ie, read comics. The MPAA claims it’s protecting families and kids, while in reality it was established to protect movie stuiods and theatre chains from criticism. The ESRB is much the same. (and I’ll note that PA did ads for the ESRB’s rating system, so they’re reaping what they helped to sow).
I have no problem with mocking any sort of warning label. I also highly resent this notion that you’re advocating here, that people doing things ‘in your name’ makes you responsible for their actions. Mike isn’t Osama Bin Laden, and twitter isn’t an Al Queda get together. It’s not his responsibility, at all, to make anyone do anything on twitter. His mistake, to my mind, was to ever talk to a troll directly in the first place. That only gives them the attention they so badly crave.
I repeat: do not engage with obvious lunatics on twitter. I mean, it’s *twitter* for crying out loud. Twitter is a natural amplifier for internet stupidity. Thank the dark gods they don’t allow images beyond user icons or we’d get a 4chan singularity.
I never caught Mike’s mockery of a Trigger Warning before; it’s spot-on. It’s precisely what I would do. But coming from a guy who helped draw art for the ESRB it’s also a tad hypocritical, or at least, inconsistent.
I’m not sure we ‘took issue’ with their decision, so much as used it as a springboard to make our own, far more reasonable demands. We’re not saying that Capcom can’t go to PAX, or even war Resident Evil shirts, we just would prefer if they do it off to the side. Toward the back. Maybe they can clean out a machine room, put their displays next to the boilers.
Update: Comment edited after a commenter and the Art Director both thought I was confusing on my discussion of the Comics Code. To reiterate: the stated purpose of a censorship body is almost never ‘We want to censor people to stave off anyone else doing it/stifle creativity/protect our industry’. They usually use the ‘Won’t somebody think of the children?’ angle. Like the Comics Code used/stemmed from Seduction of the Innocent and the attendant hullabaloo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_of_the_Innocent
Dark gods I made two spelling errors in that last update. I feel deep abiding shame.
I don’t think we’re gonna see eye to eye on trigger warnings. That’s fine, we can agree to disagree. But excusing that they made fun of trigger warnings doesn’t excuse the rest of their response. I’ll even accept that twitter should be ignored. I don’t even use the service.
Still, the central point remains that Penny Arcade was accused of contributing to rape culture and then dismissed this claim in such an outlandish and mocking way as to, in fact, contribute to rape culture. If the criticism had been ignored, it probably would have been a non-issue for most people.
But they didn’t. They made a comic diminishing and mocking the concerns of rape survivors and their allies, then put out a shirt so fan’s could support a team of fictional rapist wolves. This is the point you missed in your article completely. No one really cared about the initial comic. But the reactionary, mocking answer to criticism leveled at the first comic, the cruel antagonism of their fanbase, and finally the advocation of turning PAX East into an unsafe and exclusionary space, this is what people had a problem with.
Now you’re really going too far.
Penny Arcade’s response comic does not contribute to ‘rape culture’. Free and open discussion, including humor, including humor about ghastly events, contributes to *human* culture. There are real things that contribute to our society and its perverse view of sexual assaults, and I’m sorry but a snarky comic here or there isn’t remotely comparable.
PA put out a shirt you dislike, for reasons we can’t know, but most likely were: to make money. Penny Arcade is a business.
Having said that, what is so wrong with ‘supporting’ a fictional team of rapist fantasy animals by wearing a t-shirt, precisely? It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, to quote Thomas Jefferson. Dickwolves are not real. No matter how much you ‘support’ them, they will not actually appear and rape anyone. No matter how much you condemn them, they won’t ‘stop’ doing it in your imagination either.
The fact is, you do not know why they sold the shirt, and if you’ve got internal corporate emails that outline their marketing strategy, I suggest you take them to Wikileaks. Who probably won’t care, to be honest.
I have also seen no evidence that they wanted to turn PAX into an exclusionary space, and definitely none that they wanted to make it ‘unsafe’. Mike simply stated that he would wear his shirt. So? He’s already said he does not regret making the shirt, or the comic. Why should an artist not be proud enough of their work to display it?
Ahh.. there’s the rub. You don’t think he should be allowed to be proud of it, to display it. Because his opinion is different than yours, and therefore uncivil, and therefore ‘exclusionary’ and ‘unsafe’.
A comic, mocking the criticism of rape survivors and their allies, put up by a major organ of gaming culture, perhaps even the face of gamer culture, is significant. It sends the message to PA fans and gamer culture that it is acceptable to mock and deride a minority of gamers, that is, rape survivors, when they have the audacity to complain about triggering materials. Furthermore, putting out a shirt that further antagonizes, triggers, and belittles this minority is problematic and significant. It is pointless to speculate on the intentions of PA in putting out the shirt. What matters is the effect. And the effect was to hurt a significant minority of PA fans and PAX attendees.
As for PAX being exclusionary, I’d direct your attention to Mike’s post taking down the shirts:http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/1/28/
In particular, I’d direct your attention to the end of the second-to-last paragraph, where Mike writes: ” I’ve gotten a couple messages from people saying they are “conflicted” about coming to PAX. My response to them is: don’t come. Just don’t do it. In fact give me your name and I’ll refund your money if you already bought a ticket. I’ll even put you on a list so that if, in a moment of weakness you try to by a ticket we can cancel the order.”
Now that sounds a lot like blacklisting. The critics, those who were conflicted about coming to PAX over this, are effectively dis-invited. People who might be triggered by the shirts, i.e. rape victims, are simply not welcome at PAX. Which seems pretty exclusionary to me.
As for Mike saying that he will wear the shirt at PAX, it sends a strong message. The message is that he does not actually believe wearing the shirts or selling them is a problem. Maybe he doesn’t believe people would actually find them triggering, or maybe he simply doesn’t care. I won’t speculate at motivations.
Also, I’d appreciate it if you’d lay off the ad-hominem attacks. Speculation as to my motivations is unwarranted. I pointed out that you missed the point, you asked me to clarify it, and that’s all I’ve done. An artist has every right to be proud of his work. But if PAX is inclusive, and wearing a shirt makes a significant minority experience trauma and therefore excluded. Well, why wear the shirt to that particular event?
That’s not blacklisting. That’s called a ‘refund’.
Now it’s *you* who are trivializing a real life tragedy, the actual loss of careers and freedom due to, say, the Red Scare here in America. Giving someone a refund on a ticket, beyond your legal obligations to do so, is polite customer service and not remotely comparable to taking away their future because they attended a Communist party meeting in college.
Which, in case you’re not aware, is precisely what happened. Here. In America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Not inviting someone to your event isn’t blacklisting someone. Why don’t you go read about what blacklisting actually looks like so you won’t look so incredibly foolish using the term to describe a ticket refund. I’ve had tickets refunded before. I wasn’t blacklisted.
Mike wearing the shirt sends precisely the same message that he sent in the post taking them down from sale: that he still believes they are harmless and that he was right to sell them.
Or it could just send the message that he really doesn’t care that much about how some people choose to paint him as an extremist for wearing a shirt, even after he (foolishly) caved in to their initial demands.
Or perhaps, he just really likes it. Maybe it’s comfy.
You haven’t given me a single reason to suspect, even remotely, that this entire controversy for you doesn’t boil down to you disagreeing with someone and trying to shut them up by accusing them of wrongdoing. You repeatedly ascribe points of view to other people, but don’t like it when it’s done to you.
Perhaps there’s a lesson there.
“Blacklist” is a general term that originated as early as 1649. The Hollywood Blacklist may be the most common point of reference, and certainly the scope of it pales in comparison to most others, but my goal was not to explicitly reference that dark time in american history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklist
The term blacklist refers to a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. Mike claims that if people wish for a refund because they object to the shirts, they will also be put on a list that denies them entry to PAX. Seems pretty cut and dry. People object to the shirt, they aren’t welcome at PAX. If they change their mind and want to go to PAX, nope, sorry, they can’t, they’re on a list that says that they may no longer attend a supposedly inclusive event.
I wouldn’t call Mike an ‘extremist’ for wearing the shirt after he took it down; but it does seem hypocritical, doesn’t it?
Again, your getting pretty ad-hominem. If I really wanted to ‘shut up’ Mike and Jerry (let alone even that I, or anyone else possibly could) how would arguing here serve that end in any way, shape, or form? For the last time, the article seemed to have missed the point of the controversy, and I’m trying to elucidate it. I’m not ascribing any viewpoints to anyone. I don’t guess at anyone’s motivations or intentions. If you think I did, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It’s a pointless exercise to try to mind-read.
You are either the most literally-minded person I’ve ever had the misfortune of speaking with or are being intentionally obtuse.
A: it was an offer for a refund. you aren’t compelled to take it. Even if you read that once as seriously stating that upon taking it you won’t be allowed to repurchase tickets later, which is a logistical *absurdity* considering the size of the convention and the fungibility of tickets, no one, absolutely no one, is compelled to take him up on the offer.
B: the ‘moment of weakness’ part is almost undoubtedly a joke.
Let me spell this out for you: you cannot put yourself on a blacklist in this manner. Nobody is DENYING these people anything;even being overly literal like yourself and taking the offer at face value, they’re being offered an ADDITIONAL PRIVILEGE THAT HAS A PARTICULAR COST ATTACHED. Even if Mike did put these people on a list not to be resold to, that would be a perfectly reasonable and practical business decision. Let me break the news to you: it costs money to sell someone a ticket. How many times should PA eat the cost because someone decides they’ve been offended?
No one out there has a fundamental right to go to PAX. You are choosing to look an offer of a refund as an insult and not an olive branch. That’s your hangup. It’s irrational, unfounded, and unfair, and just another example of the persecution complex so readily evident in so many people on the Dickwolves issue.
I haven’t missed your point, Exhominem; I think it’s insane, self-righteous, humorless nonsense.
If people jerked my chain by buying tickets then demanding refunds because of some ginned up controversy unrelated to the service I was selling tickets for, I probably wouldn’t give them the refund in the first place, but if they did get one, I would absolutely refuse to sell them anything, ever again, if possible.
Consider this notice for the ZRC store: there are no refunds because after buying something you later consider me to be a prat.
I mean, do we have to give refunds to someone who bought a shirt last month because they’re a big Mubarak supporter and we’ve come out in favor of the Mummies in Egypt?
I’m done talking with you in this particular forum, btw. This has eaten far, far too much of the ZRC’s time. I’ve made another thread about the Dickwolves controversy, for anyone who’s following the discussion, it’s over here: http://zombierightscampaign.org/blog/?p=1429
Alright, it’s your blog, and if we’re done, then we’re done. I’m sorry we couldn’t agree with each-other, but thanks for engaging with the topic nonetheless.
We’re done here on this entry, at least. Sorry for coming off as snippy. I really believe what I said, but as ZRC President I need to work harder to maintain decorum.
It’s what the Zombies expect. Decorum. That, and rights.
Main reason I’m responding is I noted that you brought up the CCA and the ESRB a few times in your comments, and I don’t think in either case their use was quite appropriate. As my senior project for my history BA was on the CCA, I tend to perk up whenever it’s mentioned so I had to respond.
The CCA was not created to protect ‘the children’, but to protect the comic industry itself. The comic industry, during the height of McCarthyism, was under a very real threat of having the US government step in as content overseers. As a last response to this, they created the CCA as a sort of governing body to avoid that rather unpleasant fate. There were some notable casualties of the CCA (EC Comics was no longer able to produce almost any of their line, though some of that was intentional due to a personal dispute with Archie Comics) but most of the companies survived and continued whereas . The people who drove the initial anti comic drive (Dr Frederick Wertham, for example) often found that comics under the CCA were worse than before, as publishers simply obscured and continued their objectionable content.
As a censorship heavy body, the CCA largely stifled progress in quality or complexity of the genre until Marvel broke the CCA’s back in the early 70s. The actual code had restrictions on the horror genre, drug use, and passages such as ‘Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals’. Not exactly an environment which creative storytelling flourishes.
The ESRB is markedly different in that the intent is to protect the industry is through classification without censorship. The main argument against the gaming industry was indeed the oft abused ‘we must protect the children!’, so the ESRB established a rating system so that people buying the games would have a base idea of what contained what. The base idea of giving the uniformed buyer an idea of what to expect and so be able to make better informed decisions is a reasonably good one, and having worked in a gaming retail store I can tell you it was actually a rather valuable tool.
So in essence the goals of the ESRB ratings are to educate regarding content, not regulate via restrictions or censorship. That is what the PA guys were promoting when they did those ad spots. Any censorship done by studios in response to ESRB ratings has been done by the studio or publisher for financial reasons. That is not to say that I find the system perfect; I would prefer that people took responsibility for judging game content themselves. Sadly, that seems to much to ask sometimes.
Anyway, the point of this was to address your comments regarding possible hypocrisy in their running adverts for the ESRB. The ESRB has never been a censorship board, and lumping it in the same category as the MPAA and CCA is rather unfair. Its a ratings board established to educate the buyer with clear markings, as a response to potential government censorship. The PA ESRB ad campaign was quite clearly promoting ‘know what games have what content and make an informed decision’, and promoted the ESRB ratings as a method to do so. That hardly relates to the matter at hand, and to me seems a metered and noble goal.
Regardless, as said before I really did enjoy your comments and viewpoint. Thank you much.
First, my comment about the CCA was meant to be sardonic; I know perfectly well what their actual purpose was. But the propaganda purpose was to protect children. Hence the Congressional hearings and the death of EC (well, the non-Mad parts)
Second, you’re sadly mistaken if you don’t know that the ESRB is a censorship body. Look at the ‘Hot Coffee’ Grand Theft Auto scandal, where they forced the recall of untold thousands of copies of a game by punitively re-rating it to punish the publisher for… leaving in some commented out code. Which is asinine; by their logic, Windows and Linux would also be Adults Only, containing as they do literally thousands of obscenities and expletives in the code comments.
The fact that the vast majority of game stores in America will not sell an A/O game, to anyone, for any price, means that the ESRB sets an effective ceiling on the permissability of Adult, or rather, mature, content in the American videogame market. They know this, and they’ve used it, as previously mentioned, to assault game publishers they felt had crossed them.
In this way they are every bit as much of a censorship body as the MPAA, which also does not ‘force’ cuts or edits on anyone, but merely mandates them to receive acceptable ratings.
Wasn’t my intention to argue so I shall not reply further. I respect your knowledge and am impressed with your writing talent, but in this you are wrong. The hot coffee topic was not driven or initiated by the ESRB, making its inclusion specious. The commented code concept is intentionally misleading as the content of the commented code was the issue, and Rockstar believing that commenting content they deemed not acceptable for release equaled removal is foolish at best. If Microsoft left a porn scene in Windows 7 commented out they would receive exactly the same heat when someone inevitably found it.
In any event, fair weather and good travels.
No, the content of the commented code is not the issue. It is quite common to leave unused and unsupported code in the final release of software products, especially if it has been completely removed from user accessibility. For one thing, this helps to track and, if necessary, quickly reverse changes that have been made, for software stability and safety, as well as maintenance and patching.
In order to access this code in the GTA case, one had to violate the EULA and use hacking tools to manually alter the program. There was no legitimate in-game way to access the disabled code.
The fixation on ‘hidden’ code, and the clear retribution when it was enabled by hackers, considering the fact that commented code is the norm and not the exception, betrayed two things about the ESRB. 1) that they were technically illiterate and 2) that they were completely and utterly dependent on the game publishers in order to generate their ratings.
These facts embarassed them greatly. Hence their retribution. Has any software firm ever been so severely punished for outside coders hacking their product before, in the history of the United States? I sincerely doubt it. In every other situation, when a hacker alters code to produce an undesired, even negative result, the onus is on the hacker, not the firm that made the hacked code (though criticism may be leveled at them for lack of security, mind you). Yet here, it was as if they had committed a serious breach of ethics to forget/fail to remove some early, incomplete development code.
Microsoft would not face the ‘same heat’ in the scenario you describe for one very important reason: only software deemed for ‘entertainment’ is subject to the whims of the ESRB censorship authority. Windows 7 is not ESRB rated.
As someone who hangs out in the place that trigger warnings came out of – please make fun of them. Please make fun of them all the time so maybe asshole control freak women will stop using them to censor everyone around them. Which is what they are for – trust me I’ve watched the same women turn around and pull crap you wouldn’t believe. Most of them are hypocrites. Though of course, it’s okay when they do it.
I make fun of things that don’t work, not because I don’t sympathize with the desire to shield people from unnecessary pain. I really don’t know what your issue with women is, GL, but that’s all on you. The ZRC believes in full equality and respect for all, Zombies and Living, Men and Women.
Honestly stuff like this makes me wish I’d been more diplomatic. Yeesh.
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