The Weekly Stuff #338 – Final Fantasy VII, Video Game Pricing, and TV’s Reckoning with Blackface

This week’s episode is a real humdinger of tonal and topical shifts. We start with some Final Fantasy VII chat – Sean having just played Crisis Core, the PSP spin-off, and Jonathan having just finished this year’s Remake – Jonathan reviews Minecraft Dungeons, and we discuss how weirdly prescient Steven Spielberg’s Jaws feels in a moment of profound government incompetence. For the news, we discuss reports that video games might be moving to a $70 price point for the new generation, and the weird state of video game pricing over the last generation. And then we jump into some really heavy topics, first discussing J.K. Rowling’s abhorrent, hateful screeds against transgender people, and then talking about the sexual assault allegations that have rocked the fighting game community. Finally, we look at how American TV has been responding to the Black Lives Matter movement, both in finally realizing white people probably shouldn’t voice black characters in animation, and in how they’re treating recent material, from shows like 30 Rock or Mad Men, that used blackface. This is a complex issue that demands a fuller understanding of historical context, and we try to give some of that while also discussing the many ways these producers and companies could go further to educating and making amends instead of just scrubbing the internet of problematic material. Time Chart:Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:05:00Final Fantasy VII Stuff: 0:05:00 – 0:49:22Other Stuff: 0:49:22 – 1:04:12News: 1:04:12 – 2:07:45TV, Voice Actors, and Blackface: 2:07:45 – 3:07:24Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!Subscribe for free to 'The Weekly Stuff' in iTunes!Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter!Follow Sean Chapman on Twitter!  Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.comSubscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://www.japanimation-station.com Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vKSubscribe to our YouTube channels! Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcastSupport the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuffOriginal Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman