Lana Polansky
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” -Soren Kierkegaard
The past few weeks have been dogged by some rather unsavoury aspects of videogame subculture regarding rape culture and the treatment of women. Each of these turns have been met with trenchant criticism, and reasonably so, but in each case there has also been a rebuttal in defence of these artefacts—and among the most misappropriated arguments is the misguided perception that critics and concerned individuals are calling for censorship of the medium.
I would like to take a moment to clarify what censorship actually is, and how we can differentiate it from censure (condemnation, criticism or reproach). Censorship involves the suppression of undesirable material in media or art. This can be done through legislation or policy-making, and to some extent can be achieved implicitly through social stigmatization and shaming.
It was the Tentacle Bento situation which seemed to cause the greatest “censorship” anxiety thus far, for no other reason than Kickstarter was pressured by an onslaught of reports to remove the game from its website—a game, I might add, that according to Kickstarter’s own terms of use should not have been there in the first place and it reserved every right to cancel. You might be tempted to ask why other Kickstarter projects which similarly violate Kickstarter’s terms of use haven’t also been taken down. Good question. It might be a matter of a lack or incapacity for proper oversight. There are, after all, tons of projects posted to the site, and who knows how stringently Kickstarter’s submission policies are even enforced if a project doesn’t receive a massive influx of reports. At the point that Tentacle Bento did, Kickstarter evaluated the project and determined it was unsuitable for the site. It can do that, because it’s a private enterprise. I’m not interested in having a debate over whether or not companies qualify as private individuals, but a company like Kickstarter unequivocally has the right to control what gets attached to its name and what doesn’t. It also has the right to listen and respond to consumers who find something on its site distasteful.
I understand that this is old news, yet I feel I have to go into some detail here. Kickstarter did what it was allowed to do as a company on its own site. It did not stop the game from being created indefinitely. It did not try to litigate against the creators. No one has done very much to stop the game itself from being made and sold. The only thing which has been done, however, is that Kickstarter heard mass amounts of criticism and responded to it in a way which it saw fit. Ultimately, this is part of “freedom of speech”—that is to say, we have the freedom to express ourselves (barring physical assault and libel legislation), and we also have the freedom from having to brook or acknowledge the expressions of others. Kickstarter has that freedom, and so does every individual who blocks you on Twitter. This is part of a social contract in which we may express our feelings and thoughts, but not to the extent at which what we say or do is imposed on others. No one is forced to listen to us and no one has to dignify what we say. In this way, the “censorship” ordeal has less to do with the kind of government suppression to which it is usually associated and much more to do with fears of social pressure, which is more closely related to censure and ultimately, self-censorship.
Since I began this piece talking about Tentacle Bento , let’s continue in chronological order. Brendan Keogh ‘s and Patricia Hernandez ‘s pieces on rape culture drew the attention of Michael Thomsen, who wrote the infamous (and some might say ignominious) “headline” post in defence of the Hitman: Absolution trailer on Kill Screen. The piece received considerable criticism from various commenters (myself included, for full disclosure). Founder Jamin Warren later posted an apology on Kill Screen , denouncing the piece for being poorly-researched, hastily-written, dismissively inflammatory and as such not reflecting the standards Kill Screen has set. That being said, the piece was not retracted and, except for the formerly-linkbait headline, has not been changed.
What’s notable about the piece however is that it seems to conflate artistic intention or message with sometimes subtle or unintentional cultural narrative. What’s more, it attempts to redeem the trailer for this kind of artistic insight—one, which, being that this is a trailer made by a PR company, it likely does not have. If anything, the trailer seems to reinforce a cultural narrative paralleling female sexuality with violence or aggression, and it’s that juxtaposition which unsettled so many people, drawing in outrage and censure. Beckles, a blogger at Scones and Jam with Ramblings responded to Keogh’s piece with an insightful, if indecisive look at the history of censorship in American film, relating it back to the trailer. In it, she writes,
“I like to think I’m anti-censorship, and that if art has a point to be made, that it should be allowed to make that point in whatever way it sees fit, even to the point of using disturbing imagery or ideals. That said, the thing I find most disturbing about the game trailer Brendan references, and more broadly the recent cinematic craze for ‘torture/ gore porn’ is that the violence and the sexualisation of that violence doesn’t appear to exist for any reason other than to appeal to an audience. By virtue of existing purely to ‘entertain’ beyond any other reason, this sort of tripe does normalise abhorrent behaviours, there’s no two ways about it. “
What she’s saying is that the media which displays problematic material for the sole purpose of using it to entertain, or does so uncritically, has this nasty habit of normalizing or trivializing the thing it is portraying. As a result, this feeds into our perception of those concepts and informs our worldview. This has been true of all human culture since time immemorial . On the other hand, we self-censor all the time. This is not a call to “bowdlerize” works of existing art—that is to say, have undesirable material actively removed from art by some nominally moral authority that isn’t the original author—but an acknowledgement that most or all cultures have taboos, golden rules, and social contracts. Sometimes these exist as a result of hegemonic influence or self-preservation, but just as often they exist because without them the social fabric would be disrupted, members of society would be harmed, and society itself might ultimately devolve into a form of chaos. Part of this includes the act of self-censorship. Sometimes we don’t say or do things because we understand them to be harmful, hurtful or destructive. Sometimes we don’t tell our friends some of the less-than-gracious things we may be thinking about them to spare their feelings. Tangible or intangible, we do it to avoid negative consequences for ourselves and for those we care about. So why are we getting so worked up about the effects of strong criticism on a larger scale?
Foz Meadows’s incisive article, “ Rape Culture in Gaming ,” thoroughly defines rape culture as an entity and how it intersects with gaming culture. She clarifies that “rape culture” is not something which necessitates rape actually occurring, but creates a climate in which rape is both a higher threat, and is less likely to be taken seriously. She relates the distinct sense of threat women face to being held at gunpoint, writing,
“In that sense, it doesn’t matter if they really planned to shoot me, or if the gun was even loaded. The point—the effect—is power and coercion, and only someone who was completely callous, stupid, oblivious or a combination of all three would argue that the threat of being shot—and the subsequent change to my behaviour—was meaningless unless I actually was shot.”
All cultures have artefacts. True to form, things like the Hitman trailer, Tentacle Bento , the new Tomb Raider trailer and the like all represent and contribute to a culture in which rape—and by extension—sexual objectification and aggression, are treated like a lazy device, taken for granted, trivialized or even glamorized in our art, media and discourse. Do things like this denote a worldview of the culture from which they derive?
Take a look at the vicious opprobrium Anita Sarkeesian is getting for a series of videos that hasn’t even been made yet. Chief among the censure that she’s receiving includes threats of rape, murder and other forms of sexualized denigration. At once met with denials of misogyny and rape culture in games and, by the same token, a volley of slurs and sexual threats, Sarkeesian’s project has become a target for intimidation and silencing tactics.
Remember how I said that sometimes social pressures materialize out of hegemonic self-preservation? Who is it protecting to threaten Sarkeesian? What social fabric is being defended by opposing her with violent bile? In fact, doesn’t this work against many of the values of freedom of speech—the ones in which all people must feel okay engaging or disengaging in discussion without being suppressed or threatened? Of course, no one is explicitly censoring Sarkeesian. However, the kind of rage her Kickstarter has been receiving denotes a kind of pushback from a culture that has, for a long time, portrayed gender in a specific way, and has also learned to perceive any criticism as a personal attack. Of course these people have the right to complain, to not donate to the Kickstarter, to not watch the videos. But when we have cultural artefacts which normalize rape, and many self-proclaimed members of that culture using that terminology flippantly or menacingly, have we not managed to construct a culture which promotes, preserves, and to a certain extent even values sexual assault, aggression and objectification? Have we not created a culture where people have self-censored—to the point of not even revealing their gender online—for fear of negative consequences ?
So when people censure those things which seem to promote these kinds of values, they are not actively censoring them or banning them just by challenging the concepts they contain. When critics dissect a work of art and identify problems, this does not include actively removing the concepts themselves from all other work. What is important is that for all these criticisms, censorship itself is not being imposed. Rather, the aim is to produce a culture in which people do not have to feel constantly threatened, in which people do not have to hide who they are online, in which people can engage in dialectics or discourses without having to fear their opposition. The aim is not to legislate or to bowdlerize art as it is now; it is to produce a culture in which people do not generally wish to create art which perpetuates harmful narratives or stereotypes from the outset. Meadows writes,
“…The point is that in a healthy culture, there would be no need to censor such images, because participants in that culture would have enough respect for women to neither create nor demand them as mainstream in the first place.”
And to this I add: there would be no need to actively censor because participants in that culture would take responsibility for the things they do and say. The Kierkegaard quote I used was said somewhat tongue-in-cheek (he was not advocating against freedom of speech), but the point here is that people, when challenged with the problems present in the ideas they regurgitate, would rather hide behind the mighty shield of the “freedom” and even deny the existence of a problem than to actually do the hard part: introspect, and think about why those ideas are being challenged. This happens every time a self-proclaimed gamer cries censorship over criticism of their subculture, rather than honestly engaging with those criticisms and trying to understand them. We are all free to think however we like—no one can police that, although culture will have an effect on it—and if Kierkegaard was right and we do have agency and freedom, we can also accept the responsibilities that come with them.
Further Reading: Octopus Sashimi: Examining the Polemics of Tentacle Bento (Medium Difficulty)
I’m Not Offended: The State of Discussion and Contagious Ideas (Medium Difficulty)
Pandora’s Lunchbox: Deregulating Decency with Dorks’ Dollars Medium Difficulty)
Nuns With Guns: Grindhouse, Hitman, and Gamer’s Expectations (Medium Difficulty)
