Suckers, USA: still associating this image with the real Barack Obama?
“So what if Obama were a Muslim or an Arab?” asks CNN anchor Campbell Brown in a blog-ish article on the site’s frontpage. She’s responding to a question posed to senator McCain at a Q & A session in Minnesota where a wary bumpkin (I’m being nice) declared “I don’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s an Arab.” Brown’s also responding to the surprising (not really when you think about it) number of videos popping up on YouTube highlighting this oh-so-American behavior.
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“No?”
These views represent an unfortunately large demographic more interested in the presidential candidates’ Sunday morning activities than the relative merits of their radically different policies. Remember, their votes count just as much as sanr peoples’ (assuming they’re able to distinguish polling places from, say, their elbows).
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“Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha,” a candidate says to himself.”
This has all been said before, but I just want to ask “is this really 2008?”Now, the videogame industry finds itself thrust onto a similar stage by one of its own–an individual who just so happens to allegedly be Muslim.
Last week, a post appeared on the official Sony message boards from a user by the name of Solid_08. While playing the yet-to-be-released LittleBigPlanet, Solid_08 heard “some very familiar Arabic words from the Quran” in one of the game’s licensed songs; a piece by the master of the 21-string Kora, Toumani Diabaté, called Tapha Niang.
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The song.
Solid_08 listed his findings as follows
“1- In the 18th second: “كل نفس ذائقة الموت” (“kollo nafsin tha’iqatol mawt”, literally: ‘Every soul shall have the taste of death’).
2- Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: “كل من عليها فان” (“kollo man alaiha fan”, literally: ‘All that is on earth will perish’).”
This Solid_08 claims “We Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quaran deeply offending. We hope you remove that track from the game immediately via an online patch, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.”
To give his demands more weight, he explains how other titles such as Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Zack & Wiki, and Call of Duty 4 all contained “objectionable material to Muslims” and the subject in question was either removed before its release or in later shipments.
Keep in mind, this post was made roughly five days before the game’s release. Unless the company altered their typical shipping schedules, the game was probably already in the backrooms of retailers across the country.
Here’s Sony’s reply
“We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologize for any offence that this may have caused.”
Only after taking action did Sony contact a number of prominent Muslims, all of whom said that, while it’s officially a no-no, mixing words from the Koran with music was is big deal by today’s standards. Also, nobody from the company even tried to find out if Solid_08 was on the level. For all anybody knows, he or she might have been Bobby Kotick–or some anti-Islam nutjob trying to make the Muslim gaming community look like Republicans bad.
It was pushed.
Yet the publisher caved without so much as a whimper. Since this is Sony’s biggest game of the holiday shopping season, and their David to Nintendo’s Jolly Green Giant, at this point they’ll probably do just about anything to get it out the door and into consumers’ hands. Yet, even if this song had been deemed “offensive” earlier in development, the industry’s history indicates the answer would be a most definite “yes.”
Aside from the indie market, no company dares to potentially face any bigger-picture scrutiny and possible lawsuit/s; as baseless and creatively strangling as they may be.
Where is our videogame version of Madonna making love to a black Jesus or Marilyn Manson ripping Bibles onstage while engaging in a nice wholesome round of sodomy? Can you imagine what music would be like without the influence of the African diasporsa or even something as simple as Elvis shaking his hips?
For awhile, Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto series was all but dubbed “king of the envelope pushers” by its detractors for its murderous depictions and sexual situations. A lost lawsuit later, it’s nearly forgotten its own past, treating it like an adolescent misstep; the gaming equivalent to getting caught staring through a cracked wall into the girls’ locker room. Without those individual products doing their thang, it’s easier for people like Solid_08 to have their manipulative whining yield favorable results. Take notice, Bill Maher, Religulous 2 is basically writing itself.
Creatively, the industry needs a good kick to its male reproductive organs – the assailant preferably donning a steel toe boot. Because while the previously mentioned musical acts still enjoy the artistic freedoms they continue to fight for, we in the adolescent videogame industry are still eagerly tuning in to CBS to hear Gene Autry sing Blueberry Hill, offense to Mr. Autry of course.
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