Black Content Creators Push Back (Again) Demanding The Removal of “Black Face Bubba” From Dead By Daylight
Dead By Daylight is often said to be the “Super Smash Brothers” of Horror Franchises. From Freddy Kruger and The Shape to the “Red Pyramid Thing” and Nemesis — Dead By Daylight has bent over backwards working deals with various license holders to bring these characters to life. However, one of those characters has an equippable cosmetic that is being used to enact racist harassment. And black content creators have had enough.
Bubba Sawyer or “Leatherface” from The Texas Chainsaw massacre released in Dead by Daylight in September of 2017. Following Michael Myers, Bubba was the 2nd licensed killer to enter the fog and was a notably large win for developer Behaviour Interactive as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre clearly inspired key mechanics for their title such as Killers hanging their survivor victims on meat hooks. Alongside Leatherface’s foray came different cosmetics players could earn for free simply by playing. When controlling the chainsaw wielding cannibal, tossing one of the four base survivors on a hook 25 times in total, grants you the ability to wear their skinned face atop your own. The lore accurate way of unlocking additional cosmetics certainly sounded great, but also ushers in a glaring problem that ripples throughout the community still today. Specifically, the issue of hooking the first black person included in Dead By Daylight, Claudette, 25 times and wearing her face. Black face.
Black content creators have repetitiously brought this issue to the forefront several times over the years, voicing extreme discomfort with the masks implications and usage. Twitter user @tanibeax and Dead By Daylight broadcaster posted a tweet humbly requesting that Behaviour Interactive remove the Claudette mask from the game.
It would appear that Tani’s tweet somehow provoked a weekend long “discussion” where the loudest and often most melanin lacking individuals came to the defense of the cosmetic, citing that the removal of Claudette’s mask specifically equates to “reverse” racism and that removing the equippable does nothing to solve the actual problems of racism within the game.
When sitting down in a Discord interview with Tani, she pointedly had this to say, “Inclusion shouldn’t be harmful.”
Many users pushing back against the removal of said cosmetic claim that stronger moderation tools and moderation feedback would be more appropriate than removing the black-face mask. While there is something to be said about reporting within DBD and its effectiveness, Dead By Daylight content creator SistaKaren (TheSistaKaren on Twitter) had this to say.
“There will always be people who use this cosmetic to act out racist fantasies. Reporting each individual won’t change that. It’s past time to take away the tool.”
Tani echoes the exact same sentiment in a separate Twitter discussion thread, stating: “How the player plays in the game doesn’t change the fact that this cosmetic is blackface. The other problem with this cosmetic is that it gives players like this a tool to make it obv of their racist intentions.”
In this way, it appears the issue comes in two parts: the mask being black face, and the usage of the mask to make racial targeted harassment more obvious.
“It’s the blackface + being racist in game.” Tani says.
To fully grasp the issue, I think it is important to understand the history surrounding black-face and impact it still has today. In the 1830’s the first Minstrel Shows began to take shape. These shows featured white male minstrels — traveling musicians — applying burnt cork or shoe polish to their faces, dressing in tatters and mocking enslaved Africans with distorted depictions.
“These performances characterized blacks as lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice” says the National Museum of African American History & Culture.
Quite frankly, Minstrelsy was a manipulative means to regularly dehumanize Black individuals, planting the subconscious seeds and stereotypes that can be seen still today. It didn’t take long for roving or traveling shows to begin selling out, elevating white men to fame in the process. Thomas Dartmouth Rice was one such man, rising to fame and popularizing the “Jim Crow” character who’s nomenclature and likeness would later be adopted for a series of anti-black laws that would see birth in the North and spread throughout the country.
Minstrel shows continued throughout the years, warping and pervading most of Broadway and early television, even being cited as the inception for cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse. Television gave black face and minstrelsy a much larger audience, which led to further normalization of the harmful stereotypes that white people themselves had conceived, further rationalizing the dehumanizing Jim Crow laws. As black face continued to be used as entertainment, the divide between white America and their accountability for slavery and racism grew wider. In fact, mobs began enacting violence against African Americans. While technically illegal, rabid pale droves would often accuse black men of sexual transgressions against white women to justify murder — the accusations all based on the harmful seeds planted by white people and blackface minstrelsy.
It wasn’t until 1964 when Lyndon B. Johnson signed the civil rights act, that segregation was legally struck down. Jim Crow laws touting the black face that cropped up 130 years earlier, were officially outlawed. But unfortunately legally striking down the laws, doesn’t automatically remove the racism that had been fostered for over a century, and it certainly didn’t restore the lives of the countless that perished under the mantle of slavery, blackface, Jim Crow segregation, and white mob justice.
Today, times have mostly changed. Blackface, even written and performed by prominent black comedian Dave Chappelle, is widely known to be unacceptable, crushing intent and satire with the weight of its own disturbing history. The social media era we live in also ensures that even politicians are checked when blatantly augmenting their skin. Despite the cultural outlaw of outright black makeup, subtle forms of blackface still exist today in the form of excessive tanning, blackfishing and more.
“It went from tanning to be a little golden — like not to look so pale — to looking like me,” Tani said.
Unlike in the 1830’s however, excessive tanning and body augmentations are ways for white culture to adopt and move closer to blackness — not distance from it — without actually living a black life. A life that because of the white institutions of slavery, blackface, and Jim Crow, is still rife with systemic racism, injustice, prejudice and pain. Blackness has become a social currency for non-black individuals to wheel and deal in to elevate their status.
“Social media really picks at the black woman. Like really takes the features they idolize but then they go and they drag, and they humiliate, and they degrade black women.” Tani pointed out.
Fast forward to the conversation surrounding Bubba and the question of whether or not he is wearing blackface — this is something for black creators and black players of Dead By Daylight to decide. It shouldn’t be hard to understand how anything remotely adjacent to black face isn’t acceptable.
In August of 2020, Dead By Daylight community manager known as Not___Queen was invited on the SistasOfTheFog podcast to discuss a wide variety of topics, one of which being the “Leatherface Claudette blackface” as she aptly named it. It also seemed implied that the existing contract and license holders are holding up the change or removal of the offending cosmetic more so than anyone at Behaviour Interactive. However, well over a year later and there has been no visible movement from the developer and no mention of an update shared with public, leaving some to feel neglected or left behind by the lip service of the developer.
While it has been several weeks since the “discussion” sparked on Twitter, I know that tension for many — primarily black women — is still high. It appeared clear that some of the community would prefer to keep their digital shiny coin than to listen, empathize and support black people when they say that something isn’t right.
