If the torso didn't have blood splatters I would chalk it up to simply being a sex trophy. But instead, the blood celebrates the violence taken to collect the trophy -- you wouldn't clean up a mark of glory. The blood makes the prize more of a prize. And more horrific.
I'm guessing because you have sex + violence and that's not usually a healthy combo. It is definitely a rape culture type of object.
It's not the deadness that matters. Hacking a woman down to her sexual parts in a violent display of power has, if nothing else, rape undertones.
Based on the screenshot Zeke posted in the parallel discussion in the #1reasonwhy thread, that may actually be plausible.
What an amazing course of study this offers in how to take a horrible fucking situation and make it worse.
Not surprisingly, comments on the various sites reporting on torso-gate strongly suggest that mankind (the male part, at least) is in fact worthy of immediate extermination.
BTW, I had thought it was only Astromarine overreacting, but given the Likes he's collecting, I do apologize if my comment upthread was offensive to anyone. I certainly didn't mean to minimize this horrid misogyny by comparing it to some sniping over trigger warnings. I only meant to suggest that the sniping was distracting from the point at hand, which is, in fact, horrid misogyny.
I know it's too much to hope that the douchebag who thought suggesting that it might be a trans woman would be a hee-larious response actually face some repercussions for his goddamned actions but jesus h christ what an asshole.
Has one good thing ever come from these corporate representative Twitter accounts? Ever? Because ever since every company on Earth got the brilliant idea to start tweeting because "social media is important," it seems to be one screw-up after another.
Well, you know how it is. If the brutalized, dismembered, anonymous corpse is of a cis woman, it's a horrific outrage, but, hey, if it's of a trans woman, why, then it's hilarious, right? Fuck this hobby, fuck transmisogynist pricks, fuck scared little boys pretending to be men and bro-fisting each other as they attack and mock everything that scares or confuses them. Damn every last one of those fucking scum. I need a stiff fucking drink.
Well, if all you philistines didn't realize it's but a clever joke and riff on traditional 'busts' then it's your own fault. Even that idiotic piece has to admit at mid-point that seeing it as objectification of women 'might not be wrong'. Which should've been a wake-up call to stop (if he really had to begin at all) but, welp.
And he actually wonders why women fled his forum for this one? He couldn't make it more hostile without putting up a sign in crayon that said "NO GURLZ ALOWWED".
Goddamnit. All the comments so far are fawning over his argument. What the fuck is wrong with this world?
Jesus christ, can they dig any deeper ? @tintower @thetoiletduck Please read the rest of my timeline where I addressed my mistake too, I meant no offense directed at any group.— Maurice Tan (@Pewology) January 16, 2013 Please tell me he is without a job tomorrow.
No, he'll still have a job. Because women, trans and cis, aren't really people. And they certainly aren't The Target Audience so who cares what they think, right?
Sadly you are right, I fear. And sadly they will not really lose any money from it - some (like myself) will stop buying their games, some assholes will buy them to support the poor, beleaguered men, and most won't care.
Tom's argument is pretty weak-sauce. First of all, that's not what a "bust" is in sculpture. Second, I think it's pretty obvious to anybody with a passing familiarity with art that, sure, the intent was probably a visual nod to something like this torso of Aphrodite. Fine. The question then becomes one of artistic intent--or it would, if an artist had had a hand in this presentation at any point in the process. A time-damaged ancient Greek sculpture of Aphrodite says something very different than a video game's bloody, dismembered torso of an anonymous woman in 2013. It's not a "clever" visual reference any more than Family Guy is clever for making jokes that amount to "hey do you recognize this pop culture thing?". And the argument that horror movies and games have been doing misogynistic, distasteful things like this for ages so we should all just pipe down and not buy it if we're going to get our panties in such a wad is just pathetic. Heaven forbid publishers get "cold feet about the intersection of horror and sexuality" and give their statements and their audience more thought than a 14 year old boy. Heaven forbid we demand better. Edit: Also, I'm not even saying that this basic idea couldn't be something clever. As it stands it's gross and repulsive, but art can be those things and still be art. But for it be worthwhile, it would have to be saying something. You'd have to have an intent. I don't know what that would be, necessarily, but there could be something. It would take nuance, and it would have to be more than "haw haw look at this tore up torso's tits and also this kind of looks like a thing I saw in art class" but a good artist could make a run at it. And even then, I don't think "zombie game collector's edition memorabilia" is the right venue for any such statement.
It's pretty much just sycophants left over there and we're kicking him around here instead of in his comments section. We've given him enough page views with our links.
Holy shit. I am just now catching up with all this (been a hellish couple of days at work) and there are no words to describe the level of disgust and revulsion I feel upon seeing that "collectible". Who the fuck would want that? Seriously, WHO THE FUCK?!? What I can describe is that today my shame in my hobby is at an all time high. What is horribly ironic is that just this morning (prior to learning about the Riptide Collector's Edition) I was thinking about "gamer shame" and considering coming here to start a discussion about it. I had wanted to have a thoughtful discussion on the reasons why, as a 42 year old husband, father and responsible adult, I am scared to talk about my hobby anywhere but on the internet in an anonymous forum with mostly strangers. Why is it that I can talk to my neighbors about sports, movies, TV and even politics, but I can't tell them what a blast I am having playing this game called XCOM? Why is it that when I talk to other dads up at school and they start talking about how they liked Lord of the Rings when they were a kid, and man aren't the movies just amazing, I don't feel comfortable mentioning LOTRO or any of the other great video game adaptations of the material? I wanted to talk about why our hobby has this stigma of being "juvenille" and how the same society that delights in grown adults who are married with children going out on Saturday night and getting hammered at a bar would consider video games to be irresponsible and childish behaviour. I wanted to really delve into the psyche of the gamer, and explore why we feel shame in our hobby and often feel the need to hide it from our social peers. Today I realize that this shit is EXACTLY why I feel the shame that I do. Until my hobby stops churning out misogynistic, juvenille and purille fucking crap like this bikini bust bullshit it will NEVER be seen as a pursuit for mature adults. It's impossible to defend video gaming when they undermine you at every turn with disgusting shit like this. FUCK YOU DEEP SILVER. I will never spend a dollar on anything that has your name attached to it from this day forward. My open letter to the industry would be a single sentence : GROW THE FUCK UP.
The argument that this is a nod or parody of the busts of antiquity falls down when you consider that it makes no contextual sense - the game (as far as I can tell from Wikipedia) isn't set in Rome or Athens or, to run with the island motif, Crete, Rhodes or Capri.
And the pristine breasts scream that the artist wasn't trying to skewer the inappropriately placed sexuality in games, but rather fully part of it. The issue isn't that it's a torso mangled by zombies. It's that it's conspicuously mangled. Even if it's a parody of an ancient statue, the problem bit is still entirely there. A mangled corpse is icky, but entirely within appropriate bounds for a zombie game. The mangling isn't the problem, it's the selective mangling that exposes a problem. And especially when combined with other actions by the same company that lead you to the conclusion that this was not a one off mistake.
