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Home Front: Culture Wars
"Edgy" "artist" makes "Christ Killa" videogame
2007-04-17
Having gone to art school and spent some time in my youth convinced of how brilliant I was because I was "An Artist", I can say with some confidence that most of what passes for art these day—especially cutting-edge, avant-garde art—is not art. It is self-indulgent, pseudo-intellectual, emotionally-arrested posturing that is usually fixated on bashing authority and religion and celebrating self-gratification. Which brings me to "Christ Killa," the creation of "multi-media artist" Eric Medine, whose gallery, Niche L.A., describes it as follows:

Described as the ultimate arbitration between politics and Christianity, “Christ Killa” is a video game linked to video projectors and television monitors. A first person shooter in which the player shoots hordes of homicidal Jesus Christs, the game landscape is filled with Googled images of Christian propaganda posters, religious shrines such as St. Peter’s in Rome, and clichéd representations of Christ who constantly mumbles messages of tolerance and compassion.

The audience is invited to participate in the carnage by playing the video game and watching short videos of the game in action. The winner with most Christ kills will be awarded with a trophy at 9:00PM.

Medine's site has the following info:

The year: 2099.
The place: the planet earth.

The end of the world has come and gone. The entire population of Earth has been swept up into heaven, sinners and virtuous alike, leaving a ruined landscape devoid of life. In a last effort to save humanity, a lone scientist clones Jeesus H Christ from a piece of the Shroud of Turin in the hopes that he can repopulate the earth and create a new civilization. But something goes terribly wrong...

Your task: to rescue Earth from being completely over-run by a horde of murderous Christs.

Your weapons: a few crappy guns.... But can a hail of bullets stop the Son of God?

Your name: Christ Killa!

Michelle Malkin dares Medine to make a similar video game featuring some other major religion:

You want edgy? Go ahead and create "Mohammed Killa." Replace the Homicidal Jesus Christs with Homicidal Mohammeds mumbling cliched messages of peace from the Koran. Fill the "game landscape" with Googled images of Muslim propaganda and sacred mosques while the Homicial Mohammeds blow themselves up in crowded schools, restaurants, buses, and markets.

Put that on exhibit. Go ahead. Be a maaaverick "artist." Show us how brave you are at offending all people of faith.

Double dare you, Mr. Medine.

He won't do it, of course. Not because he isn't irreverent enough. Based on personal experience, I'd say that Medine and "artists" like him aren't interested in mocking or making "statements" about religions they don't know anything about. Rather, they have some sort of personal, emotional relationship with Christianity, and they are clawing and scratching, like angry rats, at what they perceive to be a threat to their (choose one) way of life, thought, politics, ideologies, etc.
Plus, they know that the Christians won't come hunt them down and kill them, so they get the emotional high of "speaking truth to power" and "sticking it to the man" completely risk free. If they were to pull a similar stunt insulting Islam, they'd be running a non-trivial risk of actual violence (see, e.g., Salman Rushdie).

Consider, too, that the hallmark of a bully is that he only fights people who are not capable of beating him.

Did I mention that this sort of "art" is an emotionally-arrested posturing that is fixated on bashing authority and religion and celebrating self-gratification?
Posted by:Mike

#7  Tasteless infantile pap. What do you expect from someone whose big achievement is a video game? Just because you have a right to do something does not make it the right thing to do. This lesson seems to be lost on a generation whose sole claim to fame is offending for offense's sake.
Posted by: Zenster   2007-04-17 17:38  

#6  Good point Fred, Filthy stinking degenerate cowards, with the narcissicistic high thrown in a bonus
Posted by: Vinegar Ulogum7733   2007-04-17 15:00  

#5  Anybody up for a "Whack A Jihadi" mod?...
Posted by: mojo   2007-04-17 12:33  

#4  You can "mod" Half-Life (and HL2) quite easily.

might be fun to have Exploding Zombie Mohameds V Civilisation mod.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles in Blairistan   2007-04-17 11:41  

#3  Back in college I was dating an English major, and at her request went to a few "poetry readings". In the truest sense of friendship, my roommate and a couple of other friends went along, too.

After a couple "performance art" pieces, a scruffy fellow read a poem, dedicated to his girlfriend, titled "Melissa in Capitalism". Afterwards, my roommate leaned over, and in a stage whisper, asked "Did he just call his girlfriend a whore?"
Posted by: Rob Crawford   2007-04-17 10:21  

#2  Ooooooooh, Eric! It's marvelous! So...cutting edge! And "Killa"! Incorporate the black thing! Fabulous! Simply fabulous! So...street!
Are the Christ's made out of chocolate?
Posted by: tu3031   2007-04-17 09:31  

#1  Ho-hum. Been done, seen it. You want to be edgy? Make a game that you take a pig and fire shit at Mohammend. That's edgy.
Posted by: DarthVader   2007-04-17 09:21  

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