In a hastily released game, questionable ‘animal protection organisation’ PETA has launched an attack on Mario for wearing fur in Super Mario 3D Land.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sounds like a lovely, brilliant organisation. After all, who wouldn’t want animals to be ethically treated? Animal cruelty is a horrible, unfortunately widespread thing that should be stopped. And so one might think that when PETA release a game to aid their campaigning, we could all get behind it. Right?
Well, in Super Tanooki Skin 2D, players “direct a bloody, skinned raccoon dog as he chases a tanuki fur-suited Mario through a surreal fur farm where raccoon dogs are routinely skinned alive for their fur.” The game’s logo is Mario in his Tanooki suit, holding the head of a dead raccoon as it drips blood onto the floor.
I don’t know whether Nintendo has given PETA permission to use Mario’s likeness in its game, but somehow I doubt it. “The different forms that Mario takes make no statement beyond the games themselves,” a spokesperson told Eurogamer.
Still, you might think, maybe their anger’s misplaced a little, and maybe they’ve gone the wrong way about it, but it’s all in the name of a good cause, yes?
The fact of the matter, unfortunately, is that PETA leader Ingrid Newkirk has some questionable views on things. She has repeatedly slammed medical research on animals, which – while I’d argue it’s misguided – doesn’t sound like too unreasonable a stance until she says that even if it were the only way we could find a cure for diseases such as AIDS and cancer, she would still rather these illnesses continued to kill people than for animals to be harmed for the sake of enormous, life-saving scientific advancement.
And while it’s been repeatedly officially denied that PETA have had anything to do with many attacks on animal testing laboratories, along with death threats sent to those who work at them, Newkirk has publicly stated that she supports such radical measures in theory. So she sounds like a nice lady. It’s worth being absolutely fair and saying that the two PETA members charged with terrorism offences were later acquitted.
(By the way, PETA euthanises an estimated 85 percent of the animals it purports to protect, saying it would be “unrealistic” to do otherwise. [EDIT: Actually, the latest figures suggest it was almost 94 percent last year.] It continues to say killing animals for food and scientific advancement is wrong, but feels that killing animals because you have run out of room in your shelters is perfectly okay.)
Anyway, that was just a little rant about PETA and Ingrid Newkirk, who incidentally has compared her organisation to those who worked towards the abolition of slavery in North America.
I don’t think Mario is the problem here.
(Cheers, Game Informer!)
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PETA’s just grasping at straws here. This is somehow even worse than their ridiculous attack on Battlefield 3 because it features “gratuitous violence towards rats” (which is just this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gbzXp0H8DA). What about Modern Warfare 3, PETA? Terrorists killed a flock of pigeons with a bomb-laden truck in that one! WHAT ABOUT THE PIGEONS, PETA?
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Joannes Truyens (November 15th, 2011)
nice piece on PETA, mainly cos I’m with you 100%. Best bit though, when I went back on the front page its currently sitting next to an animation of Mario in the tanooki suit
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James Haresign (November 15th, 2011)
If I was PETA, I’d be more concerned about the Goombas and Koopa Troopas that Mario kills without a second thought for their well-being. The man really is just an animal-hating bastard. He shows more compassion to a toadstool than animals. Imagine the giant bee he had to butcher to get his bee outfit…
On a serious note, animal rights shouldn’t really be ridiculed, but PETA are a joke. Arguably this campaign is getting lots of attention due to the controversy, but is it actually going to raise awareness of animal rights and make a difference? It doesn’t seem to actually teach anything about how animals are abused for fur in real life, and they surely can’t be saying Mario wearing fur encourages fur trade? I just don’t get the point of it.
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Jamie Donnelly (November 15th, 2011)
Most of PETA’s activities tend towards simply stirring up controversy without engaging in any kind of meaningful dialogue about the issues they’re ostensibly trying to raise. The “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” and “holocaust on your plate” campaigns immediately jump to mind.
Also, as you say, surely it makes more sense to criticise the fact that Mario jumps on apparently sentient creatures and crushes them to death, rather than his wearing of a Tanuki suit?
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sqrrl101 (November 15th, 2011)
The thought that his suit may be made of fake fur, never seemed to cross their minds…
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Emily King (November 15th, 2011)
Just tried playing the game itself, and it’s really rather poor. Given PETA’s multi-million-dollar budget, I would have thought they could do something a bit better quality.
http://features.peta.org/mario-kills-tanooki/?utm_campaign=Mario%20Kills%20Tanooki&utm_source=PETA%20Pitch&utm_medium=Media
Also, they have “Super Tofu Boy”, a lame parody of Super Meat Boy laced with super subtle pro-vegan propaganda.
http://features.peta.org/super-meat-boy-parody/
Phrases scrolling along the bottom include:
“Tofu Boy is not only sexy, he tastes good too!” (complete lie – tofu tastes of bugger all, and even with sauces I’ve never had a nice piece of tofu)
“Over 27 billion animals are slaughtered every year in the U.S.”
“You could save 100 animals per year by adopting a meat-free diet.” (These two don’t really add up – if stopping eating meat saved 100 animals per person, then the US giving up meat would save 3 billion animals. So what’re the other 24 billion being slaughtered for?)
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sqrrl101 (November 15th, 2011)
Oops, no, 300m (approx US population) times 100 = 30bn, so they’re roughly accurate if their assumptions hold. My mistake!
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sqrrl101 (November 15th, 2011)