Let me get straight into this: I think that a
small part of the fandom — a small but rather vocal part — has a serious problem with thinking misogynistic "humour" is okay. A few of the blind commentators suffer from this, but here's a more recent example: the excellent animator JanAnimations put out a short video called
Button's Adventures. Nothing wrong with that at all: it's a cute little tale about a gaming-obsessed colt called Button Mash, and I may review it properly at some point. Suffice it to say for now that the animation is great and it's worth watching despite an uneven story.
As I say, there's nothing wrong with
Button's Adventures at all. However, some other bright spark (
not JanAnimations!) has taken it upon himself to make a highly NSFW 20-second video called
Button Mash's Extra Adventures. Now changed to
Mutton Bash's Adventures. You'll notice I'm not linking to it. This basically consists of Button (who's just a kid, remember) forcing his mother to give him oral sex. The video's maker says in the description that "I'm sorry, I had to." But you know what? You
didn't have to. You didn't at all. You
certainly didn't have to make the "joke" into a public YouTube animation of your own with the original VA's voice.
What depresses me even more is reading down the comments to that
Extra Adventures Mutton Bash animation. In among all the one-liners (which, okay, is what you get on YouTube) there are a few brave commenters who call the creator out on this and say, "Actually, I don't think underage incest rape jokes are very funny." They don't threaten to call the police or anything, just say that they think there are red lines and that this crosses one. The brutal, vitriolic response that these people get in return is deeply, deeply depressing.
I hate to break it to you, guys, but if someone doesn't think this sort of thing is appropriate, it
doesn't necessarily mean they're utterly devoid of a sense of humour. It's certainly possible for something to be simultaneously very funny and extremely tasteless: Chris Morris's
Brass Eye special, which I thought was excellent, is a classic in that regard. And you can hate something without thinking it's hate
ful: for me, that'd be the .MOV series. But you don't get a free pass for stuff like
Extra Adventures Mutton Bash simply by saying, "It's a joke. Lighten up!" Sorry, but no.
Oh dear... Well when someone says "I had to" I'd appreciate it more if they'd give at least a half decent explanation why. It didn't need to exist, it's cheap and - even putting aside any offence it causes - it's not even amusing. So really, nobody "had to" make it. Frankly though, with the scum out there (as proven with recent Ask trollings) who can't be shamed and won't back down, it's easier if people just ignore it. The best weapon against trolls is quite simply to ignore them, because they hate that. There's nothing they can do if they seem invisible.
ReplyDelete(Of course anyone who retaliates against that kind of crap is accused of "butthurt." If someone in the street went up to a troll and called them every vile name they could think of, in the middle of a crowded city, would the troll just grin and say "well played, son." Or would they "get butthurt" about it? So oddly enough if you insult someone, there's a fair chance they're likely to be somewhat miffed. What else do those lardy zitbags expect?)
Just saying "it's a joke, get a sense of humour" doesn't cut it. Would Hitler have been able to use that one?
I was definitely in two minds about posting this, precisely because of the point you make about ignoring stuff. But in this case, I'd had enough and needed to write somewhere. This seemed the most appropriate place.
DeleteOh sure, I don't see any harm in mentioning it here. Just that if someone leaves a comment on the actual video, that's just playing into the zitty hands of the trolls. But I do think you were right to mention it here.
DeleteAbsolutely right to mention it. "It's just a joke..." is a line that's been used far too many times to try to justify all manner of things over the years. Very, very rarely have I ever seen a case where it's been used and people responding negatively have been over-reacting. This particular thing sounds just awful though...I shall be making a point of avoiding it. But hey, i'm probably just over-reacting because I have kids myself and am being over-protective...clearly I need to get a sense of humour -.-
ReplyDeletedifficult topic! I just had to comment :3 this became a long ramble :D go caffeine!
Deletehumour is a very weird thing. Outrage and humour do tend to go together weirdly well, especially when it's things you wouldn't expect, and people love it! Generally I think that's because humour has been used to expose poorly understood (or even false) appropriateness. People express their frustration at the seemingly empty 'proper' thing in various ways, but laughter is a favourite.
But if this had been an actual child and its mom, nobody would have been laughing. People understand that there's nothing empty in the horribleness of damaging an innocent child by forcing it into sexual activity. So why are so many people laughing at a cartoon pony doing the same thing? Well I suspect it's mainly because they can't see the harm. They aren't watching a real child be damaged. They don't realise, or more likely don't accept, that it might be construed as belittling pedophilia in general. The content provider here is the person with the greatest responsibility here, and there is a suspicion that he or she might have been pandering to the audience of generally young, poorly informed and irresponsible people (troals) in which case FOR SHAME /) *waves hoof* There is also the fact, as you point out, that this is someone else's IP in the first place, and when you add that to the morally dubious content it's very bad form to use it.
However, the key point is whether and to what extent pony based representations of incest a pedophilia are evil, which is an argument I've come across before in relation to the NSFW elements of the fandom. I personally think that allowances need to be made when it comes to neutral (or even positive) representations of the bare fact of incest, rape etc. That is because I think the bare facts of these things tend to have morally contestable elements to them, as both are complex cluster-concepts with a core evil and peripheral maybe-evils. The closer the represented image comes to the core evil, of course, then the less contestable it becomes, and the more offensive.
To bring this great long ramble to a conclusion :p the fact that it's ponies isn't gonna be enough for me, but there is a further question: the more that the character is recognisably abused, and the perpetrator an abuser. This particular thing doesn't step over the line of endorsing abuse, and I think just about manages to stay within the bounds of moral contestabilty. But our 'outrage' is certainly understandable.
ups I meant to reply to the mane post, not to teh person above me :3 never used a blog thing before you see
Delete@Tad: It's a particular shame because the Button's Adventures short itself is really good. There's plenty of stuff in this fandom I don't like -- FiW is about as far as I go in the direction of Dodgy Junction -- but this just seemed unpleasant first and funny, if at all, a long way second. Really, though, I don't know whether I'd have made this post had it not been for the horrendous way those who complained were treated. I'm not having the argument that YouTube should be like 4chan and allow anything at all to pass.
Delete@abrony-mouse: Don't worry about commenting in the wrong place: Blogger's comment setup is confusing, and I've done the same thing more than once!
DeleteThank you for your long and interesting comment: clearly you need to caffeinate before posting more often! I don't think something like this should be illegal or banned, precisely because of the fact that it's a cartoon. I personally think it's revolting and not even slightly amusing, but all I really ask is that those who think that and say so aren't savagely attacked in response. As I touched on in response to Tad's comment, not everywhere is 4chan, and in most places there do need to be *some* limits. Even when I'm on the other side: I disagree with Yamino over Derpygate, which I just missed by coming into the fandom a bit late, but I thought the way she was attacked for expressing her strongly-held opinion was appalling.
I do quite genuinely think the MLP fandom is generally a pretty nice one. I may well be somewhat sheltered in that I've almost never been on 4chan and UKoE is notable for its ability to keep things (mostly) PG-rated but also allowing adult topics to be discussed to some extent -- the thread on the proposed UK internet filters is a good example. But I would unhesitatingly plump for the pony fandom over the furry fandom (which I'm not knocking; I've made some wonderful friends there) in terms of pleasant atmosphere, camaraderie, etc. All that said, I see and hear a few too many "Now that's a rape face" type one-liners in things like blind commentaries, and that both annoys and upsets me.
Also, I like your portmanteau creation "troals" -- it's perfect!
Oh dear, I found out about MuttonBash (on Deviantart)...I found a picture of incest from him, and reported it to Deviantart. I doubt it'll get taken down though.
ReplyDeleteIf I wrote a comment to that bad video, I'd tell them I reported it for sexual content. I feel so bad for the original VA...I hope the person who did that video is permanently banned from Youtube and the video is gone. They really do NOT sound right in the head...it reminds me also of this sh!tty anime named Kodomo no Jikan...
There even was something like that in FiW's "Foaly Matripony" (which I noticed you gave a 7/10)...WHY?? People were saying "oh Francis is adopted" but I think I heard he ended up marrying Twilight so they still made him a pedophile.
On a side note, I first heard of the whole "Button's Adventure" characters from this pic of Button's mom here (and the artist gave her a fan name; Love Tap): http://img13.deviantart.net/417f/i/2014/140/c/e/love_tap_s_bikini_by_itoruna_the_platypus-d7iv6wi.png
I'm looking at the original short right now, which is good, and it's a real shame that they had to turn Button's mom into a pedophile.
but I think I heard he ended up marrying Twilight so they still made him a pedophile.
DeleteHonestly, FiW makes almost zero sense unless you've seen (not just read) the episodes it's based on, so I'm not sure I can explain very well. But by the time they actually marry, both Shiny and Twi are adults, so while it's (possibly) incest, it's not paedophilia.
I see now (sorry for the long reply)...still comes off as creepy incest to me. What were they thinking?
Delete