I almost didn’t want to write about this because the whole situation has given me a near migraine with the number of times my head has hit my desk since first hearing about it. For those of you just catching up, Kickstarter recently pulled the plug on a campaign by Soda Pop Miniatures to fund their title, Tentacle Bento. What is Tentacle Bento you ask? In a nutshell, it’s a creeptastic game “spoofing” anime (but made by a crew from the West) where the end goal is to rape as many cute ladies as possible. The whole thing is done in lovely pastel colors so it’s totally not violent or gross or anything like that – it’s, as it’s creators would have you believe, subversive, edgy, fun! (Is your head on your desk yet?).

As usual the Borderhouse crew is on top of things with an insightful and poignant analysis about why the game’s existence and appeal is damning and damaging not just for gamer culture but for popular culture at large. You can check out contributor Alex’s insightful write up about the whole affair here.

Rather than recap Alex’s excellent take on the whole mess, I’ll add my own two cents to the mix. The most chilling aspect of Soda Pop Miniature’s marketing of Tentacle Bento is their own obtuseness about the fact that they’re making a rape game. Simply put, they really just don’t get it. These folks seem to be so blinded by their own privilege that they can’t possibly conceive of the fact that they’re making a game that trivializes rape. I mean the core object of the game is literally raping (oh I’m sorry, “snatch and grabbing” to use their words) as many girls as possible. If you can’t see how that’s royally fucked up I don’t think I can have a meaningful conversation with you.

The developers haven’t, as of my writing, commented publicly on the critiques to their game. They did, however, include this statement on both their kickstarter and website’s funding page: “We are firmly against the depiction of violence against women in any regards.”

Yup.

If you are, in fact, against the depiction of violence against women – in ANY FORM – how do you not understand that a game that involves “collecting” women and using assault as a mechanic is a form of violence. I mean seriously Soda Pop Miniature crew – read your OWN WORDS.

The company calls their game “cheeky satire” but it seems that they don’t actually understand what either of those words means. (Much like how most of the privileged internet doesn’t grasp the true and appropriate usage of the word “censorship.”) As far as I can tell, there’s not a trace of irony or sarcasm present in the video for or pitch for Tentacle Bento. If this game is meant to satirize the genre of anime that fetishizes tentacle rape then why are players rewarded for subduing and conquering as many women as they can – that’s not satire, that’s just literally the genre they claim to poke fun of. (I’m not seriously trying to “fix” the design of this awful game, just attempting to keep my palm from smacking my forehead again).

Moreover, if your game is actually supposed to satirize this genre, then why is one of the donation incentives an opportunity to have a WOMAN YOU KNOW DRAWN INTO THE GAME?!!! You read that right – one of the prizes for funding this game is getting your own wife or girlfriend (or potentially non consenting woman because how the hell do these folks know) drawn in as a character in the game! Yup, with or without their consent you can include the women in your life as fodder for the “mischievous” rapey monster villain in this game. All in good fun right?

Here’s the thing – I know there are those who will read this and wonder why I, or others aren’t up in arms about murder in games or violence in games in general. The thing is, I can’t, for the life of me, think of a game where the primary objective is to murder children or where murder is normalized and trivialised in the way that rape is in Tentacle Bento. And while video games, especially, are rampant with violent content, I can’t think of a game where, even as a villain, my primary core gameplay objective is the destruction and assault of totally innocent parties as it is in Tentacle Bento.

And the thing is, we know, and it’s culturally accepted, that murder and violence are wrong. They’re abnormal – they’re scary. The same is not so true with rape. We still live in a cultural climate where most victims don’t report their rape, where rape is not seen as a big deal, where victim blaming is prevalent, and where, yes, in 2012, some folks still think women are asking for it. As Alex so rightly pointed out at the close of her piece, “Tentacle Bento may just be a drop in the ocean of rape culture, but every drop counts, and no individual or private company is obligated to support such a game.”

While I applaud Kickstarter for pulling the campaign, to me, common sense dictates that it shouldn’t have even been up there in the first place. I don’t know what I’m more bothered by, the fact that Tentacle Bento exists, that gamers are defending it, or that there’s enough of an audience for it that it’s on its way to being funded….

After I watched “Win, Lose or Draw,” the season-four finale of Parks & Recreation that aired last Thursday night, I knew I’d end up watching it again on Hulu the following day. And that’s not just because I loved the episode – it’s because I knew there were at least five minutes of the episode that I hadn’t seen yet.

Of all the TV shows on the air, Parks & Recreation has most fully embraced the idea of the Hulu-friendly extended director’s cut. The “Win, Lose, or Draw” director’s cut, which adds over six minutes to the episode that originally aired on NBC, has plenty to recommend it to hardcore Parks & Recreation fans – but it also botches one of the episode’s most pivotal moments. Though director’s cuts have existed in film for decades, in versions as essential as Blade Runner’s “Final Cut” and as inessential as the Justin Bieber: Never Say Never Director’s Fan Cut, the TV director’s cut is a relatively recent phenomenon. (The only other example that jumps to my mind is the DVD-only extended Glee pilot, but feel free to correct me in the comments.)

Parks & Recreation has been releasing extended episodes as far back as season one, when the “Rock Show” finale got an “extended producer’s cut,” but the last weeks of season four took the trend to a new level: Of the 22 episodes in Parks & Recreation’s fourth season, four appeared on Hulu in a “director’s cut” or “producer’s cut” version, and three came at the tail end of the season. It’s become increasing clear that the real way to watch Parks & Recreation isn’t on Thursday nights; it’s on Friday mornings, when the director’s cut of the episode alongside the version that aired the night before. (It surprises me that Parks & Recreation, which needs every live viewer it gets, would go so far to incentivize waiting to watch on Hulu the next day – but that’s another blog post.)

But the director’s cut of “Win, Lose, or Draw” is particularly tricky because it’s both better and worse than the version that originally aired. In the original version of the episode, Leslie learns that Ben has been offered a job in Washington, D.C. immediately before she goes to vote for herself for City Council. When she starts crying in the voting booth, it’s both a reaction to the idea of losing Ben and a culmination of all the emotions that have built up over the course of her campaign – now that the election is officially out of her hands, she can finally take down her armor (and unsurprisingly, Amy Poehler knocks the scene out of the park – now if ever, this is her Emmy year).

But Michael Schur’s “Win, Lose, or Draw” director’s cut reinserts a quick scene at the start of the episode that undercuts all the power of Leslie’s voting booth scene. As Leslie addresses her friends/campaign workers at brunch, she begins to deliver a thank-you speech before breaking into tears. “Again?” says April, before Tom takes over, rolling his eyes and calls Leslie “an embarrassing disaster.” The scene was rightly cut – it adds almost nothing, and detracts from both the dramatic arc of Leslie’s story and the strength her character has shown all season.

What makes things even more complicated is that the “Win, Lose or Draw” director’s cut also adds a detail that makes a storyline significantly better. The director’s cut restores a scene in which Ron, who disapproves of the whiskey selection at Leslie’s election-day party, pulls out a bottle of Lagavulin scotch and says to the bartender, “nobody touches this but me.” Later in the episode, he cancels the obviously distraught Ben’s gin and tonic order in favor of a glass of Lagavulin scotch. Though the scene exists in both episodes, it’s only in the director’s cut that we fully understand the generosity of Ron’s gesture.

As TV audiences continue to migrate away from live viewing and toward streaming, directors and producers will have more room to reinsert scenes cut from the original broadcast. It’s an exciting opportunity, but it has to be used judiciously – “more” isn’t always better, and most cut scenes are cut for a reason.

BBC’s hit Sherlock provides a fascinating model of unconventional relationships that stands out from almost everything else on the air right now, and Alyssa’s interview with Steven Moffat last week in which the relationship between Sherlock and Holmes came up was a fascinating glimpse into Moffat’s mind as a creator. I have my own issues with Moffat (oh, do I), but one thing I have to admit he’s done brilliantly with Sherlock is expose audiences to the idea of complex emotional connections between human beings that are not necessarily based on romance or sexuality. And I’m glad to know that this is a deliberately and carefully thought-out choice on his part.

A lot of asexual Sherlock fans read Sherlock as asexual, and there’s certainly ample reason to think that; he talks about being married to his work, and in the original canon as well as Moffat’s work we don’t necessarily see evidence of sexual relationships or sexual attraction. The tension that ran between him and Irene in “A Scandal in Belgravia” was not quite sexual in nature, although it was sexualised; it was an expression of emotionality between a man and a woman who are baffled and excited by each other in a way that didn’t look like sexual attraction so much as it did intellectual and emotional stimulation.
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When my friend Brandy asked me to accompany her to a “women’s arm wrestling event” a few months ago I happily obliged. As it turned out I was about to participate in the first ever meeting of the “Boston Arm Wrestling Dames,” or BAWD, a local branch of the Collective of Lady Arm Wrestlers (CLAW).

I recently came across two posts by Salty Eggs’ staff writer Tara Nieuwesteeg that tackled the sport – particularly whether events like the one I attended – are feminist in nature. In the first post,  “Ladies Arm Wrestling is a Thing,” Nieuwesteeg writes:

It’s not completely clear why this is a feminist endeavor. Yes, it’s females doing something cool. As with roller derby, here are a shit-ton of like-minded people who probably feel very strongly on things like reproductive rights, equal work for equal pay, women’s healthcare, and a general message of promoting women as people. Don’t get me wrong: What they’re doing is awesome. But should ladies’ arm wrestling really take off (which I suspect it will), it would be nice to see these women use their collective arm strength for something not just awesome, but maybe a little bigger, too.

In the original posting, Nieuwesteeg’s commentary was prompted as a reaction to a NYT article that called the sport “feminist.” However, after hearing from participants, and supporters of CLAW and its chapters, she was still hesitant to apply the label, titling a follow up post, Is Lady Arm Wrestling Feminist? Yes, But…

As with many commenters on the original article I was unsure about why Nieuwesteeg questions whether these events are feminist in nature. She answered, in the follow up, by addressing commenters and arm wrestlers directly:““Calling something “feminism” just because it consists of women doing something fun and bad-ass isn’t enough anymore.””

The mission of CLAW is to “empower women and strengthen local communities through theater, arm wrestling, and philanthropy.”  Yet somehow, this mission falls short of feminism in Nieuwesteeg’s view because it is somehow not enough or perhaps too frivolous.

Here’s where I disagree with her – and with the “but” in the title. As I posted on twitter, there’s always room for any of us to do more or do bigger , but what does “bigger” mean? And what qualifies as big enough to be feminist? While CLAW is fairly young as an organization, it’s had an impressive impact in its short existence – and it continues to grow at a rapid pace with leagues springing up all over the country. (Boston is about to host it’s second “brawl” and has already had to switch to a much larger venue).

Poking around on the CLAW main site, and visiting the sites and pages of a few other affiliated chapters, it’s easy to see the reach the wrestlers and these events have had. During the inaugural event I mentioned earlier, the Boston arm wrestlers raised $2,000 for Elizabeth Stone House, a local charity that works with homeless families and helps victims of domestic violence. CLAW reports over $175,000 raised for charities ranging from domestic violence shelters, family planning advocates, rape crisis centers, LGBTQ organizations, and many many more.

I would argue that CLAW, and its spinoff organizations, are not about just fun and bad-assery (and even if they were, why does that exclude them from feminism). At their core, the arm wrestling events that CLAW puts on are about empowering women whether through entertainment or advocacy – and I fail to see what is not feminist about that. Moreover, womens’ arm wrestling is a subversive form of entertainment. Having attended a bout in my home city, I can say, confidently, that this is not anything near what you’ll find on main stream television – this is not male-gaze driven entertainment – it’s about women’s voices.

I find something inherently troubling and dangerous for feminism as a whole if, within the movement, we are questioning the identities of those participating in events like womens’ arm wrestling bouts.  CLAW provides a safe space for women to embody characters, satirize pop culture, politics and current events, while socializing and effecting meaningful change in their own communities.  Why, I wonder, does it seem to Nieuwesteeg that these things need to be exclusive?

While I don’t believe it was the intention, Nieuwesteeg’s posts are indicative of a problematic and exclusionary attitude prevalent in the overall movement today. Personally, I find it neither productive, nor helpful, to question the identity of anyone who self identifies as feminist or to infer that their own particular brand of activism is lesser because it does not meet some as yet determined standard.

As women (and feminists) we’ve got enough on our plates finding our own spaces and making our voices heard – does publicly diminishing the efforts of other women, by suggesting they “do more,” really help?  There’s a suggestion in here that the women involved in arm wrestling events do more – without really knowing, fully, what it is that they all do, or are inspired to do by these events, in the first place.

By Zack Beauchamp

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising, given the fraught political debate, that the most interesting televised take on inequality is snuck in through metaphor. More surprising, though, is that the vehicle is a kids show airing on Nickelodeon. Yet it’s true: The Legend of Korra (the more-than-worthy sequel to the beloved Avatar: The Last Airbender) has been directly channeling the some of most philosophically sophisticated arguments on the morality and politics of redistributing wealth. It’s both a valuable public service and a joy to watch.

Korra is set in a world where some people, referred to as benders, have the ability to manipulate the four elements (water, earth, fire, and air). Benders have huge natural advantages over non-benders: being able to shoot fire out of your hands or freeze people in blocks of ice clearly gives you a decent leg up in a fight. But the show digs a layer deeper than that obvious use, creating a 1920s-esque industrial millieu wherein the social order constructed and maintained on bending abilities. Electricity is generated by firebenders who can manipulate lightning, the main professional sport is a sort of bending boxing, and so on.

The main thematic arc of Korra comes from a clear implication of that premise: benders and non-benders are not each others’ social equals. Because so many important roles are open only to benders, non-benders are systematically disadvantaged, denied access to important sectors of government and the economy. The police force, for example, is made up of specialized earthbenders who can manipulate metal. This state of affairs raises a basic moral question: is it acceptable to structure a society where the luck of being born a bender plays such a huge role in shaping your life chances?
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