Arts
Salutations and consolations, old chums! It’s-a-me, Dixby Karavaggio. Join me, won't you, kiddos, as we reenter the hallowed year of 1991! In this issue we’re gonna collect as many rings and keep as many chaos emeralds away from Dr. Robotnik as we can, all while avoiding sharp objects, drowning, and Robotnik’s Badniks, those animal slaves powering fiendish, robotic exoskeletons. I’m talking about the most famous hedgehog to lace up a pair of running shoes, to enjoy his own mega-lucrative video game franchise, and to hide his shame as Hollywood tries to make him a film star. With its 1991 release Sonic the Hedgehog changed video games forever. But in this game, as in this issue, rings and extra lives aren’t the only things at stake. What about the animals, captured and forced into serving Robotnik’s diabolical schemes? Yeah, I wanna talk about them. The manipulation of animals in service to the advancement of human medicine, science, body transformation, and education is a long, global, fascinating history. So why am I looking to a 30-year-old 16-bit video game for context on this history? Because I think there’s more to the arguments for and against these practices ostensibly aimed at enhancing and improving human lives. And how these arguments manifested, perhaps inadvertently, in the popular, media of the 90s. You know, the usual stuff we like to talk about on this show! In lieu of taking a hard, graphic look at the conditions of animals undergoing testing and experiments and how the rights of these animals are of lesser value than our lives, the more advanced species … why did Sonic the Hedgehog present to us a world populated by weaponized, mechanized animal slaves? Volume I. Issue 4. Welcome to the next level!