Duke Nukem Forever and 'Rape'

[MarxII]

I've honestly never got the whole 'alien insemination' as a storyline prop. Aside from the fact that it's fairly damned gross, it seems terribly unnecessary. I mean, it's a considerable stretch from a biological standpoint, and rather difficult to justify narrative-wise without recourse to Snidely Whiplash logic.

 

[WindKnight]

I bet the same people that dislike this also think Postal 2 was shitty and offensive?

You do realise that those two words describe postal 2 perfectly?

 

[Alucard788]

Newsflash some men find 'rape' not funny in any context, and in any way.I'm not gonna laugh and cheer at the hive just because it's in a video game.

I'm really starting to feel like an alien or something...like my brain actually does work differently from other guys.

I'm some kinda freak...because I didn't laugh.

No your definatly not a freak. You didnt find it funny, but does that mean others arn't allowed to?

Just a quick question would have been less offended if it was in a movie instead of a game. why does it matter that its from a game?

I'd have been equally grossed out if it had been a movie, live play, or any theatrical element.

I never said that anyone else wasn't aloud to find it funny...anyone can find anything funny...however what makes me so frustrated is that while people may have the right to enjoy the Hive level...what they don't have the right to is to belittle other people who think it's gross.

Edit to remove last bit because that was kinda trollsih of me...I'm sorry i wont do that again.

...but really this is it i'm out of this thread a of now. It's just tiring trying to defend myself and my dislike of the level.

 

[TheXRatedDodo]

I bet the same people that dislike this also think Postal 2 was shitty and offensive?

You do realise that those two words describe postal 2 perfectly?

Of course I do, but it knows it's shitty and offensive. The self-aware irony makes it. ^_^

 

[Enkidu88]

I bet the same people that dislike this also think Postal 2 was shitty and offensive?

You do realise that those two words describe postal 2 perfectly?

Of course I do, but it knows it's shitty and offensive. The self-aware irony makes it. ^_^

I read that as Portal 2 at first and I was about to write up a huge angry rant here. Good thing I reread the post before writing it! =P

On Topic: While I didn't find it as offensive as Jim did, I certainly didn't see any humor in it either. There was nothing in the level that was even mildly funny. Though it was literally impossible for me to dislike Duke any more than I already did by the time I finally got around to play the Hive level, so his "You're fucked" comment just cemented my hate rather than deepening it.

 

[Belgian_Waffles]

If anything is played for laughs why bother being offended by it? There's no point to any of it, just have fun. If you thought it was offensive don't get your panties in a knot about it (It says on the back of the box that it's meant to piss people off.) If you thought it was funny good for you. We're all entitled to our own opinions, but if we try to get this stuff removed just because it might be a tad bit uncomfortable then we're just shooting ourselves in the foot as a media based society.

 

[Seifen]

I just thought the whole level was a weak attempt at making fun of twisted japanese hentai...but I can see how alot of people wouldn't follow the twisted joke because they've never seen how screwed up a japanese hentai is....

 

[Acier]

Ok, so my comment is most likely going to be ignored since it's already in the forth page but whatevs.

As a female gamer I watched the hive, and it did make me really uncomfortable. Maybe it's just a sex perspective thing, but yeah, I'm never going to play this game now.

What I find more concerning than the content is what things like this do for gaming's image in the mainstream, and how so many people are jumping to defend it. Someone mentioned Troma films which I think is an interesting comparison. Now I enjoy my share of grindhouse and exploitation films, but how Troma is treated in the film world and how Duke Nukem is treated in the game world are two entirely different things. Troma, and most other exploitative films, are in the fringe of film. If you want to find them they're there, but they are no means mainstream. Why are we raising a character, who if they existed in film would be on the fringe and at best B-grade fun, to a AAA pedestal? This humor being in one of the most anticipated mainstream games is the problem, not that the humor is in a game. Gamers do nothing to help their image when they defend Z-grade writing and entertainment to be accepted as AAA grade level.

 

[AT God]

If you play through the game and still feel it is promoting rape you should retire because you cannot comprehend the game anymore. Reading the box and content warnings, yes the game can seem horrible, but if you play it you quickly realize it is all in fun, if you don't like it, stop playing.

The game is a throwback to games with good comedic writing and massive amount of gameplay.

 

[funguy2121]

Jokes about rape are not funny.

Bull. Fucking. Shit. It's not the joke itself that is offensive, it's a combination of the pre-conceived notions you personally have on the issue and the context of the words and/or imagery used.

(1)Case in point - google "George Carlin rape". The video I viewed was somewhat poor in quality so I won't post it here, but it proves the point.

(2)Besides, the level basically spoofed Aliens almost entirely - if you're offended by DN:F's parody, then please tell me you're equally, or more, offended by the source of the parody.

(3)And speaking of being offended by games, I've got a question about this whole issue: Why is it that people are more easily offended by rape in an imaginary world...but not as much as the fucking real one? Doesn't it make more sense to anyone that if you were going to combat the issue of rape, you'd start in places that actually matter? Like, say, I dunno... *shrugs* the Catholic church? Or, perhaps, genital mutilations? Aren't these forms of rape, as well?

(4)Like Jewish circumcisions? Or the Muslim practices of removing a woman's clitoris? These are issues I'd go and tackle first before ever complaining about it in a game. (5)See, the logic behind this is fairly simple: to my way of thinking, if I take the time and energy to address and solve the issue in real life...it probably won't show up in the fake one!

I'm not, in any way, defending real rape of any kind whatsoever. However, what I am saying is this: I realize that rape is a real thing, that it irrevocably changes those who experience it, and that the best way to solve this issue, IMO, is by focusing on where it happens and what the conditions were that allowed it to happen in the first place.

Not. As profound. A way to convey your sentiments. As you think.

It's funny how anyone defending anything, especially an amateur work retreading ground that's been covered much better before and pandering to the bigotries of the underdeveloped, will co-opt the language of civil rights proponents. Here you try to lay my objection to a "look at that ***** being tortured and raped to death" joke on some hangups that you imagine I have. As a human being, I have many, but that isn't one of them. So let's get this out of the way first. The "writers" of the Duke games (read: line-stealers who don't want to credit Raimi, Campbell, Carpenter et al for their lines and have actually lost a criminal suit for it the same way that Vanilla Ice lost to Bowie and Queen) are not Tarantino. They are not Stephen Colbert or Mike Meyers. They aren't even Suda 51. Duke Nukem is not the game equivalent of Airplane!, not by a long shot. So even if I'm dead wrong and Duke really was intended all along as homage or satire, let's not pretend that it's good, or even professional, homage or satire. If it is satire, it's the video game equivalent of a Wayans brothers film, artless referential humor searching for material in areas that ran dry decades ago, by writers who don't understand the difference between id and insipid. An Aliens parody is hardly groundbreaking - just ask Mel Brooks. And it's not groundbreaking because it's in a videogame, either. I'm sure you don't need examples for that. If my 12-year-old cousin who doesn't quite get what makes the humor of Carlin, and Bill Hicks, and Patton Oswald and David Cross work tries to come up with his own controversial humor and ends up sounding like a racist, pompous ass, I'm going to call him on it. Most people would. If you're going to compare Duke to a stand-up, let's be accurate and compare him to Larry the Cable Racist and Dane Cook.

(1) I am aware of "laugh not to cry" and I don't think it's impossible to use the concept of rape in a funny joke. One of my favorite up-and-coming comedians, whom you should totally check out, is Donald Glover. Two jokes that he's told have become two of my favorites. One explains in vivid detail why a woman never has a "crazy guy" story ('cos if you have a crazy boyfriend, you're gonna die), and another deals with a misunderstanding he had when his foster parents were trying to explain molestation to him as a boy and he thought they meant that the word indicates a grown up trying to force a child to put his own dick in his butt. The review, and some of my comments earlier, already characterized quite well the nature of the rape jokes in Duke. They aren't exactly "laugh not to cry." They aren't exactly sophisticated. As I told y'all before the game even came out, it was going to prove to be crap because the developers have made a product to sell to an audience that they think are dipshits.

(2) LiquidGrape and I have debated before how much of any of the Alien movies was meant to be erotic. I personally think Liquid is reading too much into the face-hugger thing as a rape metaphor, but Liquid's a very intelligente person and I could of course be wrong. If you know Ridley Scott at all (and you strike me as a person who knows his directors), you know that he's never made a film celebrating forced intercourse. Wow, that was a funny sentence. I can't believe I'm having to argue this. Fuck it, I ain't doing it. I don't find any of the Alien movies offensive, and even the worst of them (not counting the non-canon AVP debacles) were still works of art and not regurgitated pop culture references like Duke.

(3) A statement posed as a question, predicated on a false assumption. You're asking me to hold your hand quite a bit here, but OK...no one that I know of, even on the Escapist, thinks that real-world rape is hunky dory while for-the-luls rape in a shitty game is egregious.

(4) Seriously, with the hand-holding! If you really think that circumcision is rape, then I'd recommend you open up another tab and visit dictionary.com. That's not a sarcastic or snarky comment. I'm serious. And you're off topic. Referencing Catholic churches and molestation won't make you sound like Hicks or Carlin.

(5) But that's NOT logical. Logic is based on rational thought. An idea ceases to be rational if you let it sit because it sounded good in your head, and never let it play in the real world or test it. Still off topic.

If you enjoy Duke, then I say enjoy the Hell out of it and ignore what people like me say. But I think it's a shit game, and throwing in a bunch of shitty jokes to market as controvesial to people who miss being able to tell blonde jokes in the workplace won't change that for me.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Wait, people actually pay attention to Jim? Weird. I'm not kidding, I seriously thought that this website just ignored him.

Some of us do...

Didn't even realise. Carry on, then.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

Ok, so my comment is most likely going to be ignored since it's already in the forth page but whatevs.

As a female gamer I watched the hive, and it did make me really uncomfortable. Maybe it's just a sex perspective thing, but yeah, I'm never going to play this game now.

What I find more concerning than the content is what things like this do for gaming's image in the mainstream, and how so many people are jumping to defend it. Someone mentioned Troma films which I think is an interesting comparison. Now I enjoy my share of grindhouse and exploitation films, but how Troma is treated in the film world and how Duke Nukem is treated in the game world are two entirely different things. Troma, and most other exploitative films, are in the fringe of film. If you want to find them they're there, but they are no means mainstream. Why are we raising a character, who if they existed in film would be on the fringe and at best B-grade fun, to a AAA pedestal? This humor being in one of the most anticipated mainstream games is the problem, not that the humor is in a game. Gamers do nothing to help their image when they defend Z-grade writing and entertainment to be accepted as AAA grade level.

Pretty much this. I don't think anyone is saying you shouldn't enjoy DNF, but at least be enough of a (wo)man to admit that it's a bad game and that it's pretty much a guilty pleasure of yours. Don't try to defend it as a high class game because it frankly isn't.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

SNIP

My response SNIP

Response to my response SNIP

OK, let's be clear on DN:F. Yes, having played the game in its entirety, I agree most definitely that it is artless, referential humor. Wasn't a good game, but it wasn't a bad game either and I wasn't expecting anything great about it. It's main problem in my eyes was it was trying to be too much artless, referential humor and not enough game (though the back of the Heinous Anus can had me ROFLing for about five minutes straight, as were my uncle and brother). You are also correct that the writers are not of the movie directors' caliber; although you give them more credit than I, because I believe that there weren't any writers to a Duke Nukem game.

The main issue with the level in question is, and I believe you can agree with me on this: Is this scene more parody/satire or more crude, tasteless and insensitive imagery and visualization? In my view, it's roughly equal parts of both. And as others have said:

It seems to me like it was trying to be very serious, and emotionally involved, but they still wanted the game's humor in it. If we remember, Duke is kind of an asshole: it's what HE would say.

I'll admit even I smirked : the game manages to blend the humor in without changing the mood to much.

I don't even see him make a smart ass remark about the women: heard him say "Not even I can save you now". and "Sorry babe, it's better this way".

The TONE he said it in was a soft, paled, and guiltily mumble. It was characteristically un-duke like.

And Duke, of all people, saying, "Not even I..." He's gave up; he admitted his own faults; thats shows a duke as a more human character, not just a physical embodiment of pure pride and ego like Jonny cage or Vegeta.

That ONE line; where he makes a comment in a sarcastic tone; those were two girls he seemed to know. He then got INRAGED after they died.

It also seems to me to be a Aliens parody. Both show sexually-inspired violence in the forms of aliens, duke even makes a comment about silicon based life; the xenomorphs are silicon based life forms.

Regardless of whether or not you think rape jokes are acceptable, that scene is still a complete mess and really highlights the chief problem with Duke Nukem Forever; it's trying to be to many things at once.

Look at that scene. We can see it's trying to invoke disgust in the player through graphically detailed body horror. It's supposed to fuel the players drive to take down the aliens after seeing the horrible things they have done. However, mixed into this scene are juvenile jokes. We have Duke Nukem cracking puns at women who are about to explode with alien babies and slapping wall tits while tortured women moan in the background. The scene is trying to be funny, creepy, horrifying, and light-hearted all at the same time.

You have any idea how much that fucks with tone? You can't put all those things into one scene and expect it to work. The player gets conflicting feelings, they feel like they should be laughing right now but at the same time they're supposed to be disturbed. You can't have it both ways Gearbox. Either you make a genuinely disturbing scene or you keep making dumb tit jokes. Trying to do both at the same time creates one big mess.

Personally I don't take Duke Nukem Forever seriously enough to be offended by anything in it, but this scene speaks volumes about what is wrong with that game.

The level had a duality, but it was implemented extremely poorly. I know it was a spoof of Alien, but when they tried that in Duke's universe - it came off as a rape joke of a quality very reminiscent of Tracy Morgan's gay rant. (No pun intended, seriously)

As for points 3-5, the main message I tried to convey there was that dealing with rape, and issues similar to it, in reality would be a more effective method than to decry it in virtuality. Forgive me for going off-topic; it touched off a series of thoughts in my head and I ran with it. I'll save those for when a thread regarding this issue does arise. Oh, and I'm not trying to sound like either Carlin or Hicks; however, I will say that I learned a great deal from these men.

 

[Blackpapa]

Forgive me for this but I have to ask...

What would it actually take to offend some of you? Do you just shrug and feel nothing over everything? What is your 'line'? What does it take to make you feel ill and grossed out?

I felt ill and grossed out when it turned out Fallout 3 wasn't a reincarnation of Van Buren but Oblivion with guns and glue-huffingly idiotic writing. I felt the same when I found out activision, owing it's existence to PC gaming now gives it the middle finger, declaring there won't be LAN support.

I'm feeling similarly now that the IP of games I really enjoyed, like X-Com is raped by moronic FPS spinoffs. When's the last time you saw a game like X-Com Enemy Unknown come out?

I'm feeling similarly when ubisoft and similar companies makes it clear they treat me like a potential thief and lock down the product I paid for, rendering it unusable with layers of broken, shoddy DRM.

I'm just as shocked when I see Sony's practices and policies, the abhorrent and vile way they deliberately attempted to exploit the justice system just to stick it to geohot even more, or the way they treat their consumers like garbage.

There are many, many things that ire me. Many companies, many policies and many decisions. In light of all that, rape jokes are the least of my concerns.

I'd really like to know because I find it, ever so slightly, disturbing that only a real handful of us guys had a strong negative reaction to the hive.

Edit to add: I also find it interesting that people have said 'We all can agree rape is bad'. Well ok but then how can you find this funny and rape not funny?

Are Germans funny?
Hell no, even South park established they're the biggest bores in the world.

Are Norwegians funny?
I don't hear anybody laughing.

Are Irishmen funny?
Sort of.

Then why is a joke about a German, Norwegian and Irishman walking into a bar funny?

Well, it's the same reason why rape isn't funny and rape jokes are.

I know it seems like I'm making a big deal out of all of this but I do find it really interesting the entire split that is happening over this game... mainly among us males. There seems to be a real divide between "Hah that was so funny!" and "Dear god that was sick and disturbing." With the joking side often belittling and mocking the side that is offended.

No, you're wrong. The divide is between people who find the joke deeply hurtful, insulting, inappropriate and whatnot.. and the people who may or may not share that sentiment but think that this kind of irrational chest-thumping is a gross overreaction.

 

[daemon37]

If you are outraged by this kind of thing, THAT'S FINE WITH ME.

Personally, I find fictional wrongdoings far less offensive than real-life ones. Here's a taste of what the real world has to offer, in case you've been avoiding the news: http://www.smh.com.au/world/pakistan-police-detain-nineyearold-schoolgirl-wearing-bomb-20110621-1gce9.html

These are the kinds of things I get outraged about. Whether or not a fictional character has sympathy for another fictional character's death doesn't really bother me.

EDIT: No I didn't think the scene was funny, but I wasn't offended by it either.

 

[Dingo John]

Wait, people actually pay attention to Jim? Weird. I'm not kidding, I seriously thought that this website just ignored him.

Some of us do...

Didn't even realise. Carry on, then.

You misunderstood. Let me clarify:

(...) I seriously thought that this website just ignored him.

Some of us do...

Clarified!

 

[funguy2121]

snip

I'm not crying out in protest against Duke, and I'm not aligned with the feminist who tried to get Wal-mart to boycott it before it came out. The "rape joke" or whatever you want to call it was an example of how low-grade the game is. I think the best analogy would be (and this is an informed analogy, as I'm not exaggerating regarding my former neighbors) would you rather hang out with your friends and drink a bit too much and get silly, or would you rather go next door and hang out with your crackhead neighbors, one of whom is a low-rent prostitute? As a proponent of free speech, I think that Duke's right to express disgusting things (even if it's a result of a poor understanding of sophisticated comedy) and my right to call the game out for it are of about equal importance. In the end, with comedy, intent doesn't much matter when delivery fails. When dealing with extremely controversial comedy, if you can't make your intent perfectly clear, the blame falls on you when everyone gets outraged. If you make your intent clear and it still doesn't go over well with some people (see: Family Guy), that's on them. Hell, I think Seth McFarlane would agree with me in that I enjoy provoking the self-righteous indignation of people who are offense-aholics, as they aren't doing anyone, least of all their pet causes, any good. The hack writers of Duke didn't deliver. Their jokes were poorly written and delivered worse, so if anyone thinks even that they're condoning rape, which of course they aren't, they have at least as much responsibility for this than anyone else. Serial pisser-offer Sarah Silverman wrote in her memoirs about a very uncomfortable zone that any vaguely hot-button comedian gets into, where some bigot laughs at the part of the joke that isn't the punchline, because they don't get that the joke is about them. Everyone else does, except for the one drunken racist/sexist/homophobic/general asshole who guffaws at the wrong time. I don't remember what it's called but I'm also dehydrated and tired. I'll try to look it up later if I remember - she conveyed it far more eloquently than I am now.