Amanita Designs and Chuchel. How ignorant Americans bullied a Czech studio.
The ignorance of those who see blackface in a charming point and click adventure.
Amanita Designs is a Czech video game company that makes very whimsical and mirthful games such as Machanarium and Botanicula and Samrost. Very artistic and just a delight for everyone.
Unfortunately the main character of their game Chuchel, was changed due to an outrage mob. Originally, the character was said to resemble black face.
to quote from the steam forums talking about this
Originally posted by tholyy:
Why the hell someone sees Chuchel as blackface?Because they really want to see that in Chuchel. There is no hard thinking to do on the question.
And there will surely be no end to the way people like to project things that way.2019 just started, enjoy =’]
Jan 1, 2019 @ 2:41pm
A number of websites encouraged people who had not necessarily played the game to flood the youtube videos. There’s also been a flood of posts on here and other avenues from people who aren’t actually amanita customers but joined in with the outrage horde.
Judging from recent reviews and forum activity, it’s all dying down and will hopefully go back to normal soon, at which point you’re more likely to be able to communicate with the devs if you are genuinely still upset about the redesign.
Sadly the change as thrust upon them from angry people was here to stay.
The idea that the main character like that could EVER be short hand for the history of black face and the like is IGNORANT to the very history and the very idea of what blackface is.
This is blackface
The main character of Chuchel’s original design was NOT that.
The problem with this is it’s like being upset at Darkwing Duck’s nemesis being called NegaDuck. It is a blistering ignorance of what and why such black face and words are offensive and even what it is.
So much so that people who have appointed themselves as agents of justice have took issue with a non-American company about American problems and expected them to know and censor according to the sensibilities of people who don’t even know what black face is.
It’s a grand sort of America-centric self-centeredness (sorry for the redundancy).
Sadly, that loud ignroant mob made itself known and tried to damage a game that was made by non-Americans. I can more than understand why people would want to avoid racist stereotypes that are said to cause “harm”. I can more than understand the distaste at ideas and sentiments that are racist. But this wasn’t that. At all.
Offense and taking it has become a cudgel for the self-righteous. It’s sad and awful to see creative expression so beat down like this because of the ignorant sensibilities of those who cannot be considered honest. Passionate, but they didn’t even check if something was honest or not.
In fact, they outsourced their opinions to an outrage mob that lied to get clicks for their website to incorreclty (maybe even maliciously) falsely, accuse Amanita Designs of racism they did not commit.
I would hope they change it back if only to do the right thing and stand up to such dishonest outrage seekers. Even if they had the best intentions, the fact they didn’t check if the actual design was blackface or not.
Too many times we’ve seen people who aren’t black take offense to what is not offensive on behalf of others.
Too many times there are black individuals talked over and denigrated if they “step out of line” to a very white and liberal understanding of what is “politically correct” in media.
Good intentions pave the road to hell.
I would hope they change the design and restore it to its original beauty. If only to stop the racists that wanted it changed to orange in the first place.
A bunch of very irate and mostly white (though that shouldn't matter) Americans bullied a foreign company over offense over something that wasn’t extent.
The people who took offense were part of a LIE.
Lies are bad.
I don’t know how to make this more simple for those who don't know anything about this situation to understand how insane this de-facto censorship was and still is.
And why it’s ok to want it to change back and how it would be a moral imperative to change it back if only to stop a lie.
“But it was so long ago, dont’ worry about it you are worried about something…”
That’s like saying it’s not ok to be upset about an injustice that happened a week ago. I’ve had that said to people that thought a week was a long enough time to excuse abuse.
What is wrong is wrong no matter how much time passes. That’s like saying “oh the Pulse massacre happened so long ago, get over it”. While i can understand this to a point… we don’t seem to apply the same logic to statues of those who defended slavery and fought to preserve it. Nor should we.
(I strongly disagree with dismantling such statues it because we need bad monuments to continue to exist to remind us of our sins. and that erasing the past is going to have the same sins repeat and and pretend it didn’t happen. That doesn’t have us fix lingering problems of racism. That’s another topic altogether.)