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Getting offended: the new national pastime
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Sure in your opinion and my own opinion it'd be a dick move and the reason they don't do it is because it would cost them viewership. I'm sure others wouldn't see it as a dick move though.
Yes. It isn't like they couldn't have known that they might mention child murder. Futurama isn't a kids show, and it isn't like the jokes showed a lack of understanding of actual child murder. Fuck, the Simpsons still makes joke about child abuse with Homer strangling Bart. The number of children actually murdered by robots who stuff children into booths or sell them to Chinese restaurants is 0. Complaining about a joke because it uses something tragic as part of the joke or because it reminds you of something awful is a shitty reason to complain about a joke.
I'm sorry if I came across as sanctimonious - that wasn't really my intent.
Edit: People about 100x more eloquent and articulate than me already covered what I tried to say:
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showpost.php?p=16159620&postcount=925
Then they needed that follow-up disclaimer to clarity that they don't condone rape and that rape is bad, then, so why are you bitching? Could it be that you're offended that they did exactly what you demanded because doing so showed just how stupid you are?
Why don't you look up the stats on car crashes. Everyone is several times more likely to be hit by a car than any girl at any time in any place is to be raped, yet a bus coming out of nowhere and hitting a guy is an incredibly common joke. If someone tried to insist that we can't tell traffic jokes, we'd tell him to stop being a fucking idiot. Do you know what I'm going to tell you right now?
Are you seriously unable to understand the difference between choir boys and priests? Only one of those two is a victim, and it isn't the priest.
The 'slippery slope' argument, that they would be forced to label every and any kind of triggering content in the end, doesn't stick either. And so what if they do put up 'this webcomic might be triggering' every time, if you know they don't put that up just to be edgy, but to genuinely help people not to get triggered, what's the harm in that?
Triggering content is different from offensive content in the sense that you cannot expect someone to have control over how they get triggered by something, it's a purely emotional response that they victim to. You can lay the responsibility not to be offended on the reader's behalf, not to be triggered not so much, they need clear warning or it is already too late. The only other trigger besides rape that isn't extraordinary (as far as I can remember, can you think of others?) is domestic violence and maybe child abuse.
Now, the reaction comic might be genuinely offensive in that Gabe & Tycho completely missed the point why people got offended by the comic in the first place. It's too bad that that blogger also misses the point of the original comic being about trivializing rape instead of actually trivializing rape but I think she's on the mark about the triggering nature.
For example, Family Guy is a show that is known for using potentially controversial subject matter. Watching the show and then getting angry that it uses controversial subject matter would be pretty goosey, since you knew that there was a high probability that it was going to contain this material in the first place.
When you read Penny Arcade, you know that there is a high probability that violence, sodomy, dick explosions or fruit fornication is going to occur. To read it and then get offended when your particular trigger criteria is met and then COMPLAINING ABOUT IT is simply being self righteous if not hypocritical.
If you don't like potentially controversial and edgy comedy then this strip simply isn't for you. If controversial subject matter may offend you and it can trigger a psychological relapse of previous traumatic events, then this strip probably isn't for you.
I'm not about to watch an hour of Glen Beck and then write an angry letter about how much he offends me because I knew beforehand what I was going to watch. I'm not so self important to think that he should change his show to match the criteria of what I want to watch.
Gabe and Tycho do have standards, you might not have noticed, but they never make offensive religious jokes or misogynist jokes or racist jokes. Those are all things people can just get offended by, so why not exclude something that might trigger reliving a traumatic experience for a significant amount of people as well?
? Or ?, more specifcally?
I agree with the rest of your post, though.
...I think Mike and Jerry just got troll'd.
To the extent that people are pissed about the Dickwolf comic, it looks like they're much more pissed about Mike and Jerry's callous response to the fallout.
Obviously, Mike and Jerry have the right to be dicks about people who don't like their comic, but they still acted like dicks. I've certainly lost a lot of respect for them. Friday's comic does trivialize rape, and mocks people who rightly get offended at rape. Mike's idiotic response, where he wonders why people don't get offended by the fruit fucker "raping" non-sentient fruit for the same reason, is a little infuriating.
In the end, they come off as whiny, entitled boys who don't like getting called out on their privilege. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are barely any women who post on Penny Arcade. The aspect of gamer culture that Penny Arcade sort of embodies is notoriously sexist. If Mike and Jerry want to see themselves as the "ambassadors" of this culture or whatever, it would be nice if they demonstrated some maturity about this instead of reverting to South Park bullshit.
It's sort of a logical fallacy to say "well I've done this before and no one complained then so I guess that makes it OK". You can criticize stuff even if it's happened a lot before.
Also, what Qingu said.
And I don't mean that in a way where I'm all "That's not funny, as a rape survivor wymin I insist you stop supporting the patriarchy."
Rape jokes are lazy, stupid, and lame.
'Rape' is such a visceral word that people drop it and expect it to be funny. The jokes themselves are often weak and predictable, but since they drop the 'rape' bomb it's suddenly 'oooo edgy'.
As a rape survivor, I don't really enjoy the word 'rape' being thrown around casually because hey! words mean things! No, you weren't 'raped' in Starcraft, you died in a video game. It's annoying when dudes appropriate the pain and fear and violence of rape so they can make a totally brotastic shorthand about how much it sucks to have to pay a fee at the bank or how hard a game is. But Wednesday's comic was probably the best possible example of a rape joke - it's meant to be a shorthand about how awful those conditions are and how the hero is awful for leaving him behind. Ultimately, in a lot of contexts, I can ignore the 30 seconds of discomfort.
But the idea that you can make a comic (like Friday's!) hilaaarious by just peppering it with the word rape and not adding any real joke, or that you have some inalienable right to tell a rape joke at a crowded party full of strangers, is dumb as hell.
I mean, presumably you believe that Penny Arcade should have the legal right to make stupid and offensive comics—i.e that Lord Obama's socialist internet censors shouldn't have the power to erase it from the nets, or that they should be thrown in jail for trivializing rape.
This has been a point of confusion in this thread.
It was heavily peppered with sarcasm.
If it is just the mention of the word rape that triggers it and not the actual supposedly offensive manner of the joke, saying that it contains rape wouldn't exactly help because that would require using the goddamn "trigger."
Because artists shouldn't be limited to what might not offend people? If I were Jerry or Mike and someone told me they couldn't read my comic anymore because one particular strip offended them, I would laugh in their face...if I deigned to recognize their existence at all. Peons and all that.
And maybe they just don't make racist or misogynistic jokes because they don't want to. Why assume it's because they are afraid of offending people?
Once you have a large enough readership, it is impossible to not offend anyone, or to not put anyone off. Hell, some people will be offended by your inoffensiveness.
edit: Okay, I just viewed the two comics in question. Don't find them funny at all. I do think Friday's comic is excessively offensive. But I feel that the reputation of an artist is a commodity they are free to spend however they like.
Seriously he says he's getting raped to sleep every night by "the dickwolves", like they're a ravening pack of raping rapewolves, a known, and terrifying force of imposed sleep-rape in this hypothetical world. I laughed because I thought of a commoner having to fail a save VS spell to fall asleep while being raped by a wolf. The links here to our reality are not so strong as to offend people who are rational.
I don't believe they've made jokes about "lynching," for example. For whatever reason—maybe because they don't want to offend blacks, or maybe because they just think it's juvenile and distasteful.
The fact that they don't have the same sensitivity about rape is exactly what so many people are pissed about. That rape is just this shock value thing that you can sprinkle on a joke to make it even more extreme, and then when people get offended you get to mock them, strawman their concerns, face the camera and say "rape" seven times, and you "win" the discussion, lolz.
Putting up two words 'trigger warning' is not a limitation at all. It's very wrong to equate triggering content with offensive content. Even something that would talk about rape as a serious matter or in a purely informative nature like a news item can be triggering, intent does not enter the equation. Since it's not intent that makes something require a trigger warning, you can hardly argue that it would be limiting to artists.
I dare say I can. Unless the content can actually cause a negative physical reaction - like strobe lights in a film potentially inducing an epileptic seizure - "trigger warning" is neither necessary nor good. There are so many potential psychological triggers out there that an artist being required (legally or even through societal pressure) to put up a "trigger warning" severely limits that artist's freedom of expression. Part of freedom of expression is the ability to offend and shock.
While I don't find the rape jokes funny, and I do find them offensive, I think an artist's right to be offensive in an artistic construct is equivalent to a reader/viewer's right to be offended by it.
Of course, I don't see any problem in trying to educate Jerry and Mike on why such comics are both in poor taste and simply unfunny anyway. And why it is condescending to use an entire strip to lecture people on why being offended by something is silly. That's just absurd. You write what you want, but you don't get to tell people "how dare you get offended by this?"
But they're not obligated in anyway to have sensitivity about rape. Having a personal reason to not make a certain type of joke doesn't mean others shouldn't make jokes about it either.
When we make a Hitler joke, the undercurrent that strings the joke together is GENOCIDE IS REALLY REALLY BAD. Likewise, a Dickwolf joke hinges on the undercurrent that SLAVERY AND RAPE IS REALLY REALLY BAD.
Yes, lots of women are raped. But there are lots of horrible crimes out there that people have suffered. We can still joke about (and simulate!) war with no guilty feelings, though I can guarantee many of PA's readership has lost loved ones to war. Some former PA readers may have been murdered. Certainly many have been burgled or defrauded or assaulted or discriminated against. But we can joke about these things; hell we *have* to so that we can bring attention to the injustices of everyday living. But somehow rape is special. Why? Because it's about sex? Because you've hijacked into a no-men-allowed issue, and the PA creators are men?
Certainly many Holocaust survivors saw Monty Python's "Mr. Hilter" skit. Were they crossing the line then? Nobody seems to think so. Monty Python didn't need to show actual burial pits and emaciated prisoners to get some gallows humor out the Second World War. They just needed Hitler as the ridiculous over-the-top representation of it (a role he played finely enough in life, let alone in death). Likewise, PA didn't show us the kind of situations that real women suffer in real rape, because that has nothing to do with the joke. They need just invent the "Dickwolves" as some kind of over-the-top representation of brutality and evil.
This is precisely an issue about emotion over logic. Not that I'm too terribly surprised.
Nobody thinks "Genocide is really, really bad" when they see Hitler mentioned anymore.
And that's exactly the point. The whole tragedy of the Holocaust has been relegated to a meaningless punchline.
How is this Not a negative physical reaction?
People do not have the right to not get offended, sure, but if you think photosensitive seizure warnings are appropriate, you can hardly argue trigger warnings are not appropriate having read the above.
Well, there's two reasons the joke is funny. The basic reason is the structure of the joke: "Ha ha the WoW hero is so callous WoW games are so silly."
The other reason is the bizarre and shocking imagery of dickwolf rape.
This second reason doesn't "illustrate" how horrible rape is. That's absurd. The dickwolf joke uses rape to be edgy and extreme.
Friday's comic does the same thing, to an even greater extent.
My ass. Where do you think Godwin's law comes from? Why do you think Holocaust deniers get so much scorn. WWII set the tone for the modern world, with Nazi Germany considered the de facto height of organized human evil, often to the point of cliche.
It's not trying to illustrate it on purpose, but the idea here is that you imagine for a second what waking up every day to brutal beating and equally brutal rape is like, conclude "that's horrible, this slave must be freed at once," and the joke goes on. Perhaps you don't find the idea of being raped by a Dickwolf horrible, but I certainly do.
I do think people who are callously and defensively insensitive about rape are assholes.
And not "It's edgy and offensive to joke about the Holocaust, shock humor, lol"?
It is such a cliche at this point that invoking Hitler or the Holocaust no longer provokes anything but dismissal or laughter. The only response you get now is "I was wondering how long it would take someone to Godwin the thread" and everyone else ignores the post.
Yes, SERIOUS discussions and thought about the Holocaust still occur, but mentioning them in any context other than a conversation specific to those topics is akin to not posting. The allusion is utterly devoid of gravity at this point, specifically because of its overuse in being compared to situations that don't even remotely share the same gravity as the Holocaust.
Which is exactly what is happening (or has already happened) with the word "rape." The difference between the Holocaust and rape though is that the Holocaust is over, even if memories and trauma still linger, while rape happens daily.
So jokes like this absolutely trivialize the problem. Even though I think artists have the freedom to offend, I am glad people speak up about it, because they have just as much of a right to be offended, and rape is not something that should be trivialized.
It depends on the joke. And who's making the joke. Why, are you just constantly on the lookout to look down on your nose at other people for "trying to be edgy"?
So, I guess my answer is "I don't know. I don't presume that I'm clever and sophisticated enough to know the inner thinking behind everybody who has ever made a joke involving the holocaust, or indeed any subject typically seen in black humor."
I find this whole idea of "trivialization" to be pretty fucking silly. It's like you think that because people can talk about something without wanting to kill themselves, it means they don't think that thing is bad.
Why do you think "trying to be edgy" even has artistic value?
Edginess relies on the potential to offended, shock, or discomfort people. Not necessarily you in specific, but others (or the plural "you" - i.e. the entire potential readership).
So if people never got offended by anything, edginess couldn't even actually exist as an artistic tone.
Therefore, it is absolutely right and okay for people to get offended by rape jokes.
QED.
However, I don't make such jokes to a wide audience, and if someone ever gets offended my response wouldn't be "DUH THE HOLOCAUST IS BAD SORRY I DIDN'T MEAN TO MAKE YOU WANT TO KILL JEWS HOLOCAUST HOLOCAUST HOLOCAUST"
I just think we should be honest about what shock humor is. It's juvenile, it's often very lazy, and while it can be very funny, it's not above criticism, and it can trivialize sensitive subjects.
What? Literally, I don't understand your post or how it follows from anything I just said.
Obviously the person thinks rape is bad. However, the fact that he (and it's almost always a he) chooses to use the word "rape" to describe getting beaten in a videogame does trivialize the actaul trauma of rape. In fact, that's sort of the whole point of saying it—you're using an extreme word to describe a mundane problem in a way that's shocking and potentially offensive.