I just discovered DailyKos and after lurking for a couple of weeks, I’m SO excited to start positing Diaries here!!! What a great community. So excited to join in and cheer on the blue wave!
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As a Gamer-American, feminist, and supporter of progressive principles, I always go out of my way to support Nintendo products. They’ve been long known for their principles of diversity and inclusiveness going as far back as 1986’s Metroid, where robotic suited space warrior Samus Aran revealed herself to be a woman, shocking dudebros everywhere. I am a proud owner of every Nintendo Console: The NES, the Game Boy, the SNES, the Game Boy Color, the N64, the Game Boy Advance, the Gamecube, the Nintendo DS, the Wii, the Nintendo 3DS, the Wii U, and now the Switch.
In Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Donkey Kong, his grandfather Cranky Kong, and his nephew and niece Diddy and Dixie Kong are celebrating his birthday when the entirety of Donkey Kong Island is covered in snow! A motley crue of penguins, otters, polar bears who call themselves the Snowmads, seeking a new home arrive. What happens next deeply troubles me as a progressive: Instead of offering some bananas and balloons to share, Donkey Kong and his clan immediately attacks them. Remember, this is a “family friendly” game.
The cycle of violence perpetuated against the Snowmads by Donkey feels awfully familiar. In a country where Trump openly spreads contempt about Mexican families, black football players, and LGBT soldiers, Kong's quest to expel the ice creatures, many of whom migrated to DK Island to escape rising sea temperatures due to global warming, reflects the modern "Keep America Great" ethos to a T.
Donkey Kong, who, unlike countless thousands of Goombahs, Lakitus, and Koopas crushed under Mario’s boot, benefited from restorative justice after kidnapping a woman for sexual purposes,
fails to offer the Snowmads the same chance to integrate. Instead, in a display of toxic masculinity that would make Putin blush, he destroys as many of them as possible, collecting all of the bananas he can on the way. Under fascist societies, many who fear immigrants and minorities often hoard their money in fear of it being taken by the “other.” Perhaps Donkey Kong’s ICE-like attitude comes his own toxic masculine inadequacy, as he himself was bested by an Italian immigrant: A blue collar plumber/doctor/tennis player/golfer/kart race named Mario. To quote Hamilton’s Lin Manuel Miranda: “Immigrants get the job done!”
I believe Nintendo can do better and so can America. I’ll talk to y’all soon.