Funny or Offensive?: Schizophrenzy, the Game
Mar 2 2009 | Comments 11
You have to play this game in order to judge. Aaron writes:
Liz, please check out this game on cartoon network’s adult swim website. Is it funny or offensive? In this game the guy has all kinds of visual and paranoid hallucinations and delusions and has to find blue pills he uses to keep the “sanity” level full. I guess we have to keep a sense of humor but I do think this game is a little insensitive to people with mental illness.
Play it here.
liz | 3:48 PM | Funny or Offensive?
The caption to the game reads “You’re hallucinating. Might as well enjoy it.” Hadn’t something similar been said about rape? How insensitive!
Also, during the game the player him/herself will “experience” several visual “hallucinations” as various grotesque and gruesome images are flashed on the screen as the character’s “sanity” level decreases. There are also imitations of auditory hallucinations on the game’s soundtrack, (voices whispering, etc.). Very disturbing. The character’s paranoia is also made fun of as he thinks the mayor of his city is out to get him.
OMG I think it would be totally funny if someone created a game where like a guy has colon cancer.
It’d be like we get to give him a rectal exam (space bar to make him squirm!) then needs surgery where we’d get to be the hijinx causing amateur surgeon. Like one level would be losing surgical tools in his abdominal cavity (extra bonus points for sponges) and removing polyps (But watch out, don’t cut out too much or his guts will be swiss cheese!).
And, like, it’d be totally rad to have a level where you gotta chase the guy during his chemotherapy with a bucket to catch whatever comes out (oh boy, that’s a lot of vomit! left and right arrow to outrun the stream, up arrow to jump over a slippery patch!). Then we’d have to collect more tools like a washrag, soap, scissors adhesive remover, etc. and then to change his ileostomy bag (extra life points for successfully juggling the full bag across the screen without dropping it!).
And the tag line would be “But doooon’t let that stoma get infected!” Harhar.
I generally like Adult Swim but I agree this is insensitive and very sad. Maybe if we all e-mail them they will have a change of heart. I see a big difference between enjoyable idiocy (South Park immediately comes to mind) and this. Maybe they think they are showing people what schizophrenics experience. If only they could help people feel the pain…
I’m going to throw this out because it’s akin to my hearing the word “whacko” and “sicko” thrown around the staff room in the urban library where I work. It was in the context of:
“We have more ‘whackos’ coming in because of the recession and the staff needs sensitivity training to deal with them.”
It did not go unnoticed by me nor unmentioned to my supervisor (who knows I have a controlled mental illness), and I received an apology.
The third-largest city in the United States…
I like McBeth’s take on it.
Yes. It is offensive, I have a brother with schizophrenia. “OH HE IS SO COOL BECAUSE HE IS INSANE AND SEES HALLUCINATIONS LOLOLOL!”.
No.
It is not “cool”. He has destroyed his relationship with his entire family and is now locked up in a psychiatric ward for an unknown amount of time. He was almost shot to death by the police because he was acting crazy with a knife on his front porch.
I’ve endured 16 years (my entire life) of him and his mental illness. It has left me severely mentally scarred.
It isn’t cool or funny.
It is messed up.
Offensive.
…or we could enjoy the freedom of speech and freedom to interpret and express our visualization of one’s environment. It’s true it could be interpreted as offensive, and I have a close friend who has it and i sure as hell wouldn’t be like “check out this game”, but on the other hand, this being America and all, people ostracize, make judgements, generalizations, abstractions and such every bloody day. For example, the bans on gay marriage or abortion are ridiculous and offensive to those opposed, but the country’s leaders won’t change or reconsider just based on the fact that they offend gays or pro-choicers. My point is, yeah, it can and probably will be deemed insensitive by certain people- they have every right to think it is- but Adult Swim is based on that very intention of providing a wide variety of entertainment that at heart is expressing the notion that offensiveness is an intrinsic part of free speech that people will have to learn to respect. Even I take offense to some things, but you still should respect people’s right to say it.
the material here is only as offensive as you make it, by getting this upset over something all you’re really doing is proving you can’t take a joke
“The caption to the game reads ‘You’re hallucinating. Might as well enjoy it.’ Hadn’t something similar been said about rape? How insensitive!”
Not only have I never heard anyone say that (sorry, I’m not friends with many rapists), but I’m surprised you automatically made that connection. Oversensitive anyone?
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