So the new Borderlands 2 DLC (Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep) is out. If we think back to February of this year we can all remember the arguments that popped up not only around Tiny Tina’s dialogue in some of the earlier game content, but the uproar around writer (and the brother of Tiny Tina’s voice actor) Anthony Burch’s Twitter conversation with gamers who thought that the “trope of ‘white girl talkin’ like them urban folk'” had to go and that while they liked the other characters in the game that she was a “profound misstep” that amounted to “verbal blackface”.
While Burch seemed to be immediately on the defensive about the Tiny Tina character, he did end the conversation by saying that he would consider writing her differently in future DLC. Call me a bit of a pessimistic, but I strongly suspected that this was Burch’s way of wrapping up a conversation that was way too uncomfortable (and unprofitable) for both him and Gearbox. It seems likely that they let him know in no uncertain terms that it was a conversation that he should have never entertained in the first place.
Enter the new Tiny Tina DLC 4 months after the first shit storm and Burch and Gearbox are back and seemingly pissing in the wind. Or at least spitting in the faces of the folks who complained about Tiny Tina in the first place. (N.B. Gearbox claims that the current DLC dialogue was written before the February uproar). In only segment when another character, Free Lily, asks Tiny Tina is making all of the dwarves look like Salvador from downstairs Tiny Tina responds by asking Sal if it’s ok to which he responds “That’s awesome!”. Tina’s final quip on the subject? “Booyah. Not racist” (which also seems to be a play on the equally offensive “No Homo!” that was fortunately fairly short-lived).
Those of you who have ever talked socio-linguistics with me before know how I feel about the notion of “Black English” which Burch’s critics are accusing him of putting in the mouth of Tiny Tina, but for the rest of you here’s a rundown. I don’t think that any language or dialect belongs to one race of people. I think that it is all geographic. People learn to speak the language of the people around them in one manner or another. I’m from Detroit where I have have seen Black, Arabic, and Caucasian folks all speaking the same dialect with the same inflection (and not as poorly as Ashley Burch does with Tiny Tina). Hell, I am more offended by her misappropriation as a non-geographical speaker than I am as a non-Black speaker. But, that being said, Tiny Tina is not without her problems. She is represented as a part of an urban “core” where the people are senseless, violent, and sexualized and sexualizing. All of these things are all built into her dialect and word choice. I listen to her and I see Halle Berry in the horrible blaxploitation movie BAPS. Tiny Tina is urbanexploitation. I’ve seen it before and it pisses me off. I see it in Last of Us and it pisses me off (and I will write about that later). But, like I said, that’s just me and my experience.
Come on, Gearbox…really? Do you really want to throw that big “Fuck you!” out there? Even if Gearbox doesn’t see Tiny Tina’s persona as being problematic why would they insist on baiting their customers? Some folks are questioning whether or not this was a friendly jab on the part of Gearbox, but can something like this ever be friendly or light-hearted? In this case it is not only about intent, but about perception as well. While Burch may not have intended to offend with what some may feel was the equivalent of “verbal blackface” what was more significant (and more important) was the way some folks perceived it. It is impossible (and unprofitable) to actually say “Well I didn’t mean it to be racist so I’m not changing it” and even if there is a refusal to change it is counter-productive to make a joke at the expense of the people who were offended in the first place.
Thoughts?
3 thoughts on ““No Homo”, I Mean “Not Racist”: Come on Gearbox!”
I always tend to think of so-called Black English as a socioeconomic thing. When I’m being informal (or, y’know, I’m angry/drinking), I often default to speech patterns related to said dialect because I grew up in poor neighborhoods in southwest Little Rock, and as you say, I picked up what I heard. I know a lot of folks who grew up lower middle class (and worse) from all around the country who speak in similar fashion. My southern accent gets worse in those moments, and so does my reliance on dialect. I’ve talked about this a lot with my girl from Flint, because it’s a tendency we both have, and regionally, Flint and Little Rock are pretty disparate. Our dialects are peppered with different flavors of slang that are regional, but we employ a lot of those same speech patterns. So environment, geography, class… all of the things.
I’m pretty sure I had a point in this, but it might have slid away from me.
An immodest rebuttal:
I’ve been mulling about this for a while now and I’ve realized my target has shifted somewhat. Initially I was appalled at the idea that Tiny Tina was racist because she’s essentially Ashley Burch with pitch correction added in, yet no one critiqued HAWP as racist when Ash said phrases like “BOOYAH” or referenced dropping mics (this sounds like I’m making an unfair dig perhaps, but I’m not intending to). I’ve backed up on that somewhat, though I disagree that what Burch was writing was verbal blackface.
My issue is with a phenomenon I like to refer to as “Harvey Dent Syndrome”: the first two people who took issue were Mike Sacco and Malcolm Christiansen. Now I don’t know if Burch identifies as a person of color or not (though they do make reference to being brown in the “Red Faction” episode), but what I DO have a problem with is when these two white guys start throwing these accusations at one of the few head writers in the industry who is of color. It’s insulting at best and at worst perpetuates the idea that the minority experience is monolithic and must be legitimized by white voice.
So if I were Burch, I absolutely would’ve put in that new DLC as a nice Fuck you to those two specifically. Is it the right thing to do? No. But when I hear white guy number 1 and white guy number 2 claiming to know what is or isn’t black I get understandably pissed. Now we can go back and forth on whether or not Tiny Tina is racist, but that’s not the point for me anymore. The point is that I don’t need some white dude telling me what is and isn’t racist, I already have plenty of experience dealing with that.
If there was a like button there, I’d hit it.