Rangerphiles Against Gadget Erotica
| Fan Campaign | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Rangerphiles Against Gadget Erotica, or R.A.G.E. |
| Type of Campaign: | webpage, group |
| Aims: | anti-NSFW fan art |
| Participants: | Julie Bihn (founder) |
| Date Started: | 1998 |
| Fandom: | Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers |
| Campaign Website: | http://juliestudio.com/rage/index.html |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Rangerphiles Against Gadget Erotica, also known as R.A.G.E., was a campaign by Rangerphiles (Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers fans) against adult art of Gadget Hackwrench. It was founded by Julie Bihn in 1998, around the same time as Rescue Our Animated Rangers.
Reasons
The Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers fandom is unusual amongst online fandoms: While most fandoms see Rule 34 as a given and porn as part of every fandom and usually have a great deal of members who openly enjoy it, and some other fandoms even give the outward appearance of being about fan porn, the CDRR fandom ist amongst the very few who oppose porn. What makes it even more unusual is that this fandom disapproves of and resists pornography in spite of having a famously very attractive female lead character.
CDRR fan art started out as soon as personal Web pages became possible. Before there was the RRDatabase or even only the Internet Gadget Archive, they were the only way to publish fan art. Some individuals took the given opportunity and used such Web sites to publish pornographic drawings of Gadget.
This annoyed the Rangerphiles for four reasons:
- They saw it as inappropriate. For them, Gadget is a character, even one with surprisingly much character depth for a female cartoon character of her era. And not an object of lust.
- Posing for porn is out of character for her. She would never do that. Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers depicts her as rather modest. And the Rangerphiles are very strict when it comes to keeping the Rangers in character.
- Worse yet, pornographic depictions of Gadget are usually utterly off-model. She is shown having a human body with a pair of human breasts and human genitals, but with Gadget's usual head and tail attached. Again, as much as the episodes may vary in their faithfulness to the model sheets, the show clearly defies all of this.
- And worst of all, Gadget porn was often shamelessly plastered on the very frontpages of these Web sites with no content warning whatsoever. So when Rangerphiles thought they had discovered an interesting new Ranger-themed Web site, they opened it, just to be confronted with Gadget porn right away. And so was everyone else who was just interested in the show, be it people who fondly remembered it from when it was still on free TV (before September 1993), be it parents with cable who wanted to look up their kids' favorite cartoon and stumbled upon a list of CDRR themed links. The fans risked being perceived by the general public as a wretched hive of perverts when most of them were the exact opposite in reality.
In order to protest the rampant and unconcealed spreading of Gadget porn on the Web, Julie Bihn started Rangerphiles Against Gadget Erotica in 1998, a few months after the first and most of the time only CDRR message board, The Acorn Cafe, which has banned erotic and pornographic images from the very beginning. Its goal was mostly to raise awareness; it is not known whether R.A.G.E. has ever actively taken actions to have Gadget porn removed or whether these actions were successful.
Official Statement
This page is on behalf of the Rangerphiles on the Internet who are sick and tired of seeing pornography featuring Gadget (or any other Rescue Rangers character) online. We don't intend to change anyone's ways, but merely inform others of our views and the reasons behind them. We singled out Gadget for our campaign because the vast majority of the Ranger erotica out there features her.So why does Ranger pornography bother us?
1. Pornography as a whole demeans women, objectifying them. We hate to see our caring, kind, brilliant Gadget turned into image meant solely to arouse people. She is much more than just a body.
2. Ranger erotica could endanger all Ranger web pages. If Disney sees a pornographic picture of their characters, they could be driven to attempting to force all Ranger sites off the Internet, just trying to keep up the facade of running a 'family' company. Most people would take their sites down if they received a threat from Disney's lawyers, even if their site had nothing offensive...and that would mean no more Ranger information or clean Gadget pictures, among other things.
3. Gadget herself would be against her naked body being plastered all over the Internet. In the episode "A Fly in the Ointment," Gadget gets her body switched with Dale's, so she has his body below the neck. The first thing she does is slip a paper cup over herself, forming a skirt to cover herself (since Dale doesn't wear pants). Also remember Gadget's almost Victorian nightgown and her modest swimsuit from "Shell Shocked." This is a mouse who takes cares not to show too much of herself, even while her companions go pantless.
4. Rescue Rangers is marketed towards, and appeals to, children. Many people feel a need to make the Rangers a bit more 'adult' by giving them more advanced stories in fanfiction and the like, but it should be remembered that there are unsupervised children roaming the Internet, and they could easily stumble across an unsuitable picture of Gadget while searching for "Rescue Rangers." Not only is this wrong (and illegal), but it could result in parents getting a negative image of Rescue Rangers. (And, if we want to have any chance of getting Ranger merchandise out there, we need the help of parents, who, aside from core Rangerphiles, are the most likely to spend money on Ranger toys.) To put Ranger erotica on your site is bad, but to put it up without an 18+ warning is downright despicable and irresponsible. If you must put it up, at least put up a warning as well.
5. Giving Gadget the body parts of a human while her male companions are free to go pantless without scandal is an unfair double standard (and incorrect--check out "Double O' Chipmunk").[1]
6. Making Gadget 'sexy' by drawing her with no clothes isn't much of a challenge. Draw anything naked, and some people will be turned on by it. Drawing Gadget with clothes and still making her beautiful (like they did on the series) is much more challenging and appropriate, and success is infinitely more impressive. You will be rewarded by the praise and admiration of Rangerphiles of all ages, tastes, and genders.
Please think twice before putting Gadget erotica on your web site.R.A.G.E.[2]
Necessity nowadays
The aforementioned free Web sites with openly available, unprotected porn have disappeared from the Web or at least become very hard to find, now that link lists have become obsolete due to the arrival of search engines and most links being broken anyway. And while Rule 34 still applies to Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, the main place to upload Ranger porn nowadays is deviantART which protects it from the public eye.
R.A.G.E. itself has faded into obscurity and fandom history, but its ideals live on.