That Time Warner Bros. Beat Up A Queer Character For Pride (The Jimquisition)
Pride is never short of corporate exploitation, and every year companies compete to see who can put their foot in it the hardest.
This year, Warner Bros. offered players the chance to beat up Poison Ivy for prizes in Injustice 2. The problem with this is that Ivy is one of the very few canonically queer characters in mainstream comics.
If you don't SEE what the problem is, you might be in line for a job at WB!
That Time Warner Bros. Beat Up A Queer Character For Pride (The Jimquisition) (YouTube)
Comments (20)
Happy Pride indeed. It's important to stay positive.
I've had something like this in my game for years. I balanced it out by letting you beat up a religious biggot that hates gays, then acts gay after being defeated because he was in the closet all along.
Wait, what?
I had to skip this video since Sterling uses a slur a lot of the LGBT community has tried to convince Gay/Bi men such as myself that it's cool to just throw casually around. (queer) Like... this is a word that was screamed at us as violence was done to us, so it's kinda something a lot of us will never accept the casual use of or especially the promotion. Like imagine if gay/bi men ran around saying "it's cool to deadname and wrong pronoun intentionally trans people now #pride" Anyhoo, I'm sure Jim meant no malice, but in my lifetime I've had rocks chucked at me and an ex while the word was shouted at me, and many gay/bi men have had similar experiences so we're just not cool with it.
Every single term used by the LGBT+ community has been a slur. Reclamation has happened to most of them. Queer being re-rebranded a slur was a trap by TERFs, starting on Tumblr and then spreading out from there after it proved successful there. It sucks to see people allowing TERFs to win.
*video says the word asexual* Ah, I am seen.
I hear that. I was excited enough that we made it into the acronym. Seriously, though, came back to the video to thank Steph for the little bit of solidarity. I've more and more been coming to realise just how privileged I've been in my own life to, for the most part, have friends and family who do see me so I'll always cheer for anyone doing their bit to make sure more people have that.
Not thinking about things. The capitalist way.
Question: I am a The Straight. Could this whole fiasco have been avoided if players were able to play AS Poison Ivy and beat up other characters, excluding Harley Quinn? Would that turn the narrative on its head, or are there problematic elements I'm missing there, too?
That's the suggestion I see most often, is just... playing as Poison Ivy. Or you know, they could come out with like a... Batgirl event and reveal she's pansexual or something, add more people to the gay roster. But they'd never do that :P
I commissioned a drawing from an artist friend (S. Harriet), portraying Poison Ivy growing flowers that have hormone phials in the middle, because she knows HRT should literally grow on vines.
Jesus Christ. What's next, Red Dead Online having a "beat up freedmen!" event for Black History Month?
Don't give them ideas.
As you said, actual corporate PRIDE would be funneling their lobbying money into equality and pro-LGBTQIA2 laws. But equality and happy people are bad for business apparently. I'd guess happy, secure people are less exploitable and gosh how could corporations ever survive? 😡 Gods damned Disney and Warner Bros and nearly every other corporation on this planet. 😡 The shirt worked brilliantly with the green screen and thank god for you James Stephanie! 😃
I am positive that the discussion went something like: "its June, let's focus on elevating those people again. Who do we have that is out of the closet?" "No one sir. At WB, we have no publicly queer faces in any of shows." "What about Dawson? Maybe a cartoon character. Did we ever say that Velma was gay?" "... well we do technically own DC and they technically have a single out queer person and we do technically have a mobile game were we can sell loot boxes but..." "do it. Next item on the agenda?"
Happy Pride Jim! Its pretty disgusting how corporations pander during this time of year. Great video.
Cishet and grey as they come here, the issue is still glaringly obvious to me. I mean the choice is so 'on the nose' that is almost unbelievable that it was borne of thoughtlessness rather than genuine hostility.
Thank you. I appreciate you using rationality and compassion to temper your views, rather than just immediately jumping to black-and-white polarized thinking.
I didn't think this year could get any stupider. Good job WB!
What the actual fuck, WB? That is beyond braindead.