PETA suddenly vexed by Samba de Amigo, Cooking Mama
It was just a matter of time until a post about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (appropriately tagged as “wingnuts”, joining some fine company alongside articles regarding the Westboro Baptist Church) finally appeared on our quiet little blog. What took so long? While PETA has flirted with the entertainment industry before, this is their first incursion into videogame territory – in more ways than one.
It started with Samba de Amigo, one of the delightful little oddities which sprang-up during Sega’s Dreamcast era. Like a few other franchises from those days (Jet Set Radio still not one of them, much to continued annoyance), the anthropomorphic corpse of Samba has recently been exhumed and given new life on the otherwise safe and pedestrian Nintendo Wii.
Like many of the Sega’s experiments with the bizarre, no one really noticed aside from the old hardcore gamers… or folks like me, who still have Gunner’s Arsenal jerseys with Dreamcast sponsorship hanging in our closets. Oh, and PETA, who have somehow mistaken the title for some kind of virtual animal abuse. To the dismay of reasonable human beings everywhere, Sega caved to PETA’s demand to pull advertising. They received chocolates for their compliance. Vegan, of course. Probably carob.
As if the incident with Samba de Amigo wasn’t ridiculous enough, the upright citizens at PETA have now turned their eye towards Majesco’s Cooking Mama, which they have parodied in the form of a flash game. The goal is to convince Majesco to develop an entirely-vegetarian edition of their cutesy chef simulator – even offering to help promote it.
I have to wonder: if it weren’t for the virtual nature of the “offending” material, would PETA be taking such an outwardly-cordial approach in this case? Afterall, it’s exceedingly difficult to splash buckets of fake blood on a collection of pixels and polygons.
No related posts.
I think you’re really being disingenuous here. PETA doesn’t have a problem with the GAME but with using CHIPANZEES in the commercial. Quite a difference. I think PETA do spend too much time, money and effort fighting against things that in the grand scheme of things don’t really make much difference, but it’s certainly nice that someone DOES give a damn. It’s like this: You can choose to look around at the world with cloudy eyes and not see reality, or you can actually see the world around you. It makes things like carnivals or whatever, impossible to enjoy. You have to figure out how awake you really want to go thru life. The fact is, there is ugliness and brutality in the world just as there’s beauty, and the question is how much you’ll allow yourself to see.
I agree with MC on the first point.
Then he/she/it got kinda weird. Oh, and their Cooking Mama thing is one of their more bat-shit crazy ideas.
Yeah, I’ll grant you that first part. These things happen when I’m in a rush. Unfortunately, it’s also getting pretty damned hard to think any better of these folks. Maybe they even deserve the kind of knee-jerk reactions they receive.
I keep hearing news recently about brutality at puppy farms and the like… wonder why PETA doesn’t seem to be terribly vocal about that. Guess there’s more publicity in goofy flash games.
Considering PETA bought a domain specifically to denounce one company for buying from puppy mills, yeah, I’d say PETA is somewhat vocal about that. But when do you hear about PETA when they’re not comparing things to the holocaust or parodying video games?
I don’t like PETA either, because a lot of their advertising tends to be culturally insensitive and/or misogynistic, but the Cooking Mama thing is probably one of the most sane things they’ve done.
Considering PETA’s relatively-sane use of relatively-peaceful protest actions (not to belabor the point of dumbass shock tactics or occasional ties to arsonists), “bought a domain name specifically to denounce one company for buying puppy mills” doesn’t strike me as a particularly sharp criticism.
I’m not saying that PETA should employ the same ridiculous stunts on every case of animal abuse which gets dropped on Ingrid’s desk, I just find it odd how drastically their fervor dies down when dealing with things which actually matter.
Whats a matter peta stupids dont like a cooking game involving meat? WHY DONTT YOU TAKE YOUR WEIRD VIEW OF ANIMALS AND GO RIDE A BICYCLE ACCROSS A MINEFEILD CARRYING BOTTLES OF NITRO-GLYCERINE