… but sadly it’s not the good kind. I don’t have a PS3 because other than Metal Gear Solid 4, I find Sony’s game library to be quite lacking and one game does not justify the cost of entry for me. Also I’m not ready to jump on the BluRay bandwagon just yet. I am, however the proud owner of a PSP which makes a great portable emulation station.
Today I heard about an online, multiplayer game that Sony will be releasing for the PS3 that caught my eye: Fat Princess. A quick blurb from the official site:
Frantic and fun, Fat Princess pits two hordes of players against each other in comic medieval battle royale. Your goal is to rescue your beloved princess from the enemy dungeon. There’s a catch though: your adversary has been stuffing her with food to fatten her up and it’s going to take most of your army working together to carry her back across the battlefield.
With up to 32 players fighting over the titular Fat Princess, this sounds like it could be a really fun game.
Or could it?
Soon after I read about the game I was clued in by Kotaku about a minor "controversy" that surrounds this game. As is inevitable in a world where online communication makes everyone with an opinion a syndicated columnist (like me), someone somewhere was offended by the content of the game.
I found the article on Feminist Gamers to be interesting though implying that the game objectifies women or promotes "fat-bashing" to be a bit of a stretch. I suppose the princess is objectified as a prize to be won either with cake or with an army to bring her back to the castle… but this is hardly the "objectification" we get from game or the media in general today. But I suppose that when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
It wasn’t until I read the linked post from the shakespearssister blog and I found myself compelled to dust off my blog and give my two cents. I was astounded by the author’s amazing ability to read subtext from the extremely sparse description of the game:
—but the only thing I can’t figure out is why anyone would want to rescue a fat princess in the first place, since everyone knows that fat girls are unlovable human garbage at whom any sensible bloke would sooner hurl invective than cast a longing glance.
Nobody likes to be ridiculed for their gender, race, sexual preference, or physical attributes but to make such a statement only implies one thing: You are really trying to make yourself mad about this. In the end you’re a being as much a troll and the very people you condemn.
My absolute favorite part:
I’m positively thrilled to see such unyielding dedication to creating a new generation of fat-hating, heteronormative assholes. It’s not often I have the opportunity to congratulate a cutting-edge tech company on such splendiferous retrofuck jackholery.
I did have to look up heteronormative, and learning a new word I suppose wasn’t a total loss. Is the game going to create a new breed of heterosexual elitists because the princess is (by virtue of title) female and the knights male? That notion collapses under the weight of it’s own absurdity.
But why am I spending any time writing about a game I will likely never own or play? Because it’s not about the game. It’s about bigotry.
In the spirit of full disclosure I’ll say that I’m a heterosexual, monogamous, caucasian male who is fairly in shape. Clearly there’s a little bit of me for everybody to hate. Before you call me a fat-hating homophobic racist I’ll say that for more than ten years, the love of my life was a latina who referred to herself as "pleasantly plump." Regardless of whether or not you believe this, one of my closest and best friends is a feminist (I’m looking at you hedgehog).
Now then, back to the ranting…
Bigotry disgusts me in all its forms save for one: Bigotry-ism. I absolutely despise bigots of all kinds. I suppose that makes me a bigot but I don’t lose any sleep over it.
Even though the post on Feminist Gamer seemed intelligent and thought out, any sympathy for the plight of women who are tired of the media stereotyping and objectifying them quickly evaporates when one reads the comments by the author in reply to her commentators. I appreciate that 99 out of 100 comments came from assholic trolls who revel in stirring trouble and in essence validate the author’s views, but her replies to the comments that she let through are just infantile at best. When your best retort includes mocking the other’s grammar, know that you are losing the argument or just running out of steam. I’m not totally unsympathetic. Sifting through hundreds of hateful comments of questionable literacy is bound to make anyone testy.
It was amusing to read the comments on the other site though. Nowhere is the pack mentality more evident. To disagree one mystically gets transmogrified into a troll, a douchebag, a bigot, or worse… a man. The highly-caloric irony here is that you come off the biggest bigot of the lot. Fire and brimstone! Damn all those who hate women, large or small. If it’s bad to "fat-bash" (your words) why is it better to "man-bash?" (my words).
Any argument containing "White heterosexual Christian men have persecuted [insert group here] for generations" instantly boards the failboat which rams against a failberg, sinking into the failsea. But since DiCaprio dies in the end, I suppose we can all agree it’s a win-win.
You cannot "fight" bigotry with more bigotry. It doesn’t work that way. Unless, of course, it’s the aforementioned bigotry-ism.
Objectification of women will always exist in any medium as well as a slew of other unpleasant -isms. The world is not here to make you comfortable or to make you feel better about yourself, only you can do that.
Getting up in arms about Fat Princess is tantamount to a slow news day.
