When I was a sophomore in high school my friend had this theory that you could say something totally obscene in a public setting and immediately start clapping compulsively and making funny noises, and the transgression would be overlooked by the greater distraction. I decided to test this theory by calling the new girl we knew a particularly offensive word, all in the name of science. I approached, she said "Oh hey Pat!" and gave me an M&M. I ate the M&M.
Offensiveness reserved for after the break
I said: "Bobbi, you are a cunt."
She said: "What!?"
At this point I should've followed through with the intent of the experiment, but I foolishly confused a potential control group that has been clearly insulted with the test group.
"You. Are. A. Cunt."
I learned a hard lesson that day. No matter how rationally clothed or chuckly you think it is, some words really hurt people, and then those people hurt you. It is with this perspective that I review Cunt, a punkish shooter by the dynamic duo at Komix.
Cunt is art is the same sense that the writings of Marquis de Sade are art, or in the sense that the gold trade is a free market. It satisfies the theoretical definition, but it's totally fucked. Imagine William Burroughs and Sinistar had a butt baby with cybernetic implants; this is the game it would make. You control a penis moving in a circle with the A and D keys, aiming and firing with the mouse; your goal is to destroy the boss monster, a ghoulish cunt, while avoiding the various diseases it tries to give you. Also, doing drugs will make you appear cool to others, give power-ups. Is it sexist? It makes Duke Nukem's stripper-cide look like a Virginia Woolf seminar. It's also a hell of a game, and totally punk.
Where is the value, you might ask? The gameplay glorifies male genitalia while demonizing the female as not only a source of dangerous plague, but a stern eyed opponent to be mastered. The gameplay is punishing and cruel to the player as the aesthetics attempt to be towards women. Even the intro flirts with callousness as well, insisting that if you're bothered by it, "don't play this fucking game." The only comforting element is the smooth crooning romance song playing as the soundtrack, remixed like Fonzy's abortion.
All that said, I really like that this game was made. It was just now, as the menopausal couch began to ooze yeasty discharge with a squint, soft-serve sound effect that I decided I would play it no more. I mean, I beat it. And this game is totally punk. Jesper said that Braid is like punk rock in its embrace of low-budget freedoms, but dude, this game is just punk. Even the name screen, which shows a graphic of the two creators tonging in prone position, was probably done with this mentality like, "hey people might speculate we're gay together or something because this game is all down on the vagina, so why don't we play at that and fuck with people even more?" Somewhere Zen Master Mumon and de Sade are playing Go and wishing they had a nice web game to discuss.
Irony?
Isn't it possible that there's an ironic and/or subversive aspect to the game? Which is to say -- by making the misogyny blatant, laying it out there so clearly, it also makes it more vulnerable and open to understanding and criticism. To me it plays like the Fruedian subconscious of the arena shooter -- we're used to piloting spaceships shooting bullets -- ejaculating phallic symbols to even the slightly semiotically aware -- and wiping out gigantic *mother*ships (which, more often than not, give birth to smaller competitors &c &c). Cunt is every arena shooter laid bare -- Komix surrealistic style of game art exposing its fragic core.
That's a good reading of it.
That's a good reading of it. It's also a trap for people who would be offended by it, but they're not mutually exclusive.
Really
Is it really misogynistic? I mean, I know you "play" a set of male genitals and you "fight" female genitals. But...it's just so over-the-top, its impossible to take seriously on any level. I don't think you can say it has any particular position, other than "It's fun to make games featuring genitals!". It's like saying Zelda games are environmentally harmful because they encourage you to cut grass and uproot bushes.