Mega Man 2/Taser Death Parody Has Canadian Officials Up In Arms

LanceHeart

January 5, 2008

It was not too long ago when Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski found himself at the mercy of Royal Canadian Mounted Police officials in a Vancouver airport, wherein the men resorted to using tasers which seemingly brought Dziekanski’s life to a tragic end.
Since then, videos of the incident have been posted to YouTube (warning: not for the weak at heart), and word has slowly gotten out.

One person who was aware of the incident, Vancouver resident Mike Greenway, created his own video about the incident. Using a ROM hack of Mega Man 2, Greenway places Mega Man in the role of a RCMP official who encounters the panicked Dziekanski (portrayed by his head on Dr. Wily’s body), and pulls up his subscreen of options which include “use restraint” and “call a translator” before settling on “tazer mercilessly” and proceeding to do just that.

Of the nature of the video, Greenway commented to Canada.com that “the video was really more of a statement on police Taser use than anything. The video that I made is a tongue-in-cheek parody about the incompetence of everyone involved, not police brutality.”

This didn’t set well with Canadian Polish Spokeswoman Aga Magdolen, however. “This tragedy should not have been portrayed as a game. It is disrespectful to the victim, his family and the Polish community.”

Nor was RCMP Staff Sgt. John Ward amused. “Any right-thinking person who would look at the video would be offended by that. A gentlemen lost his life and it is in extremely poor taste.”

A spokeswoman for Polish Ambassador Piotr Ogrodzinski by the name of Marta Grywalska doesn’t quite see it the same way, however. “The public was disturbed by the event. This is how the subculture reacted to it.”

The video has garnered a lot of attention through sites such as Canada.com, Game Politics, and Game|Life, raising not only controversy about the taste of the parody, but also awareness of the act which inspired it.

News Credit: Game|Life, Game Politics, Canada.com