An influential Islamic group successfully protested against the video game Faith Fighter, pictured above and also after the jump, claiming that it was offensive to Muslims, Christians, and just about all of humankind. The game, made by Italian design company Molleindustria, features such religious figures as Jesus, Mohammad, and Ganesh duking it out martial-arts style. I think the Globe and Mail describes the game best:
In the game Faith Fighter, caricatures of Jesus, the Prophet Muhammad, Buddha, God and the Hindu god Ganesh fight each other against a backdrop of burning buildings. God attacks with bolts of lighting and pillars of fire while the turbaned Muhammad can summon a burning black meteorite.
Which is hilarious, just because the whole thing sounds so dumb. Molleindustria claims that the game was meant to “push the gamers to reflect on how the religious and sacred representations are often instrumentally used to fuel or justify conflicts between nations and people.” But the game’s website declares, “Give vent to your intolerance! Religious hate has never been so much fun!” Uh, OK.
Whatever. The point is, some Italian company made an offensive and silly game, religious groups understandably got pissed, and the game had to be revised to be not so offensive (now there’s a big black dot over Mohammad’s head, you see). So while Molleindustria has gone on to make Faith Fighter 2, I’m left here with a nagging question: how far is too far in storytelling?
The situation obviously draws parallels with the Danish Mohammad cartoon incident several years ago. And while neither are prime examples of changemaking artists struggling against censorship, they both do give rise to this issue. For me, part of the thrill of storytelling is that it has the potential to change lives. I could name a hundred books (and so could you) that change the way we think and how we see the world, by pushing at what we have conventionally known as “acceptable.” Controversial, in other words, can be good.
But where do we draw that fine line between “controversial” and “offensive”? I’d think that Faith Fighter would fall into the latter category, if only because I just don’t believe Molleindustria’s claim that their aim was to break down religious barriers by, well, breaking religious figures’ bodies. But a book like American Psycho, for example, exemplifies the struggle in straddling that line.
First let me say: American Psycho is a good book. I get it. Bret Easton Ellis was studying materialism, banality, and the senseless violence that results. Part of the point of his whole story was based on shock value, on making the reader put down the book for a moment and think, holy shit. But there were a couple of scenes in there that certainly went too far (if you’ve read the book you’ll know immediately what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t read it I will spare you the details). That much-valued shock became gratuitous, and all I wanted to do was just put that book down, track down Ellis, shake him, and say, “I got the point already, so why did you have to keep going and going and burn such awful images into my brain? Why??” Maybe he’d throw himself at my feet, sobbing, and beg for my forgiveness. Or maybe he’d say that was the point, to shock us until we couldn’t take it anymore. But really, who’s to decide who is right here? The author or the reader?
On that note, as the readers/gamers/viewers/etc, what do we do with stories that overwhelm us? Throw them away? Try to remain open-minded? Like the storyteller him/herself has to struggle with toeing that line, we have to decide how much we will allow this story to influence us. Obviously, this isn’t easy. How are we supposed to know what we should be open-minded to if we’re closed-minded to it in the first place? What if what we had always thought as “too far” might be perfectly normal by any other standards? What if it’s not the author that is being controversial, but that we ourselves are not progressive enough? How do we make that distinction?
I think I’ve posed about 500 questions in the above paragraph alone, and I don’t have the answers to any of them. But it’s worth thinking about. Personally, I tend to stay pretty open-minded and am willing to seriously consider any argument as long as it’s posed intelligently enough, but there are a few hard rules from which I never waver. Don’t hate someone solely based on their race/religion/gender/orientation/etc. Don’t tell me that my life is damned unless I live it in the way that you see fit. And I’m not down with ignorance. Or mass murder. But beyond that, all I have to say is: talk to me, tell me your story, and I will listen. Maybe I’ll regret it later, but I won’t know until I hear you tell it. And, when all is said and done, I’d rather be exposed to something that “goes too far” than miss a chance to experience something truly meaningful.
