Cisne writes

Image: Mason Kimbarovsky on Unsplash

We set the scene: four epileptics sitting in a Discord server, bitching about the way movies seem to want us dead. This week’s topic is Space Jam: A New Legacy, but we have had this exact conversation many times before: we had it with Incredibles 2, we had it with Into the Spider-verse, we had it with The Mitchells vs. the Machines, we had it with Cyberpunk 2077, and we will keep having it for a long time: modern media has too many strobes and too little warnings.

Learning about the hazards present in modern media tends to follow the same formula nearly every time: the movie, show, or videogame is released as usual, at some point a viewer expresses concern over the effects used in it. Usually, this viewer has a photosensitive loved one, or is photosensitive themself, which resolves with the warning traveling across social media after someone has already suffered from a seizure, as it was the case with Incredibles 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Cruella, and most recently Space Jam: A New Legacy.

Sometimes companies will issue an official warning, but they tend to be reduced to an online statement and a piece of paper at the entrance of the movie theater advising viewer discretion. Other times, like in the case of Into the Spider-verse and Space Jam: A New Legacy, no official warning is ever issued. Official warning or not, the “courtesy” of a warning rarely comes on time.

Let us rewind and go back to our tiny-group discussions. The questions we have are always the same: what do these big companies want in exchange for a timely warning? And what will it take for people to stop claiming that we are censoring artists by asking for safer media? An unfortunate mix of events made me come up with a terrible idea that might just work.

“Epileptic reacts to strobes” I type into the server.

“They might take actual notice for once” someone replies, “Considering how protest in the past usually doesn’t get noticed until you nearly kill yourself”.

Next thing I know I am actually considering the idea, thinking and overthinking the possible outcomes; on one hand, if this hypothetical reaction were to gain traction, we could increase awareness and create an actual impact. On the other, I don’t feel like further endangering my brain, and I don’t want to encourage other photosensitive people to follow suit. Because that’s what it is, epilepsy is a neurological disorder, and every seizure is a punch to the brain. People can die during a seizure, it’s not uncommon to hear it as a cause of death… Why is a potential death my ticket to be noticed?

Let’s go further away, let’s go to the kind of attention I would get based on the kind of attention I have received in the past over comments in social media: a few people getting the point, many people telling me I should just not watch, and the restless fans of strobes berating me about how I am censoring artistic vision, to which I respond every time: thank you for being a reasonable person, I wouldn’t watch if I had a proper warning, and that is not how censorship works.

There is also the answer I am yet to receive, but the one that many people have already experienced: blatant assault. I wish I were exaggerating.

Last year, journalist and fellow epileptic Liana Ruppert published the article “Cyberpunk 2077 Epileptic PSA” for Game Informer, where she related her experience suffering a seizure while playing the videogame. The good part about this story is that CD Projekt Red, the studio behind the game, reached to her to improve the game’s accessibility. The bad one? People started to send her GIFs with flashing lights with the explicit purpose of inducing a seizure.

As it turns out, an epileptic reacting to strobes is not the powerful PSA one imagines.

Image: Liana Ruppert

Don’t get me wrong, Liana Ruppert had a great impact on Cyberpunk 2077. As it was mentioned, the studio contacted her to get input about how to make the game safer for photosensitive people, and most of the suggested changes were adopted, including the muting of some colors and the addition of a warning at the start of the videogame, but there are still some harmful effects in the videogame with no way to turn them off.

Improvements were made, but it’s still such a little change in the grand scheme of things: there is still a long way to go in terms of awareness and choice. There are still no formal regulations that require companies to warn for potential seizure inducing content, the closest we get to that is the way the UK and Japan refuse to distribute material that hasn’t passed the Harding Test, which scans the content and flags this kind of material. Many movies have been altered in order to be able to pass the test, but those new, safer versions are only ever distributed in the UK and Japan, how do they expect us to think these are innocent mistakes when they have alternative versions ready for the countries that force them to act safer, but for the rest of the world they keep using the one that has been proven to induce seizures? I am all for creative freedom and the use of strobes and bright colors in situations that call for them, but I am also an advocate for freedom of choice, these companies have the means to create and offer alternative versions of their media to their public, movie theaters already offer 3D and 4D experiences, streaming services offer interactive shows, and videogames are the peak of experience diversity, why don’t they add seizure free experiences to their endless list of innovation? Why don’t they allow us to choose an experience that doesn’t end with us in a hospital bed? Why do we have to get hurt to be noticed?