ToeJam & Earl: A Look at Afrofuturism in Video Games

 To grasp the concept of ToeJam and Earl you must first look at what it is trying to be. ToeJam and Earl is a video game from the 1990's that introduced these funky alien characters, obviously based on popular hip hop culture at this time, and brought them to earth on a wrecked Spaceship that they must rebuild so they can go back to their home planet.

ToeJam and Earl are alien rappers who are foreign creatures on earth, and they battle several different type of villains on their adventure. Interestingly enough, the developers have ToeJam and Earl fighting an all white evil group who don't understand the aliens hip music, slang, clothes, and obvious alien features.  The soundtrack for the game is a mix of African funk and hip-hop and the character designs are obviously critiques of urban culture at that time. After the games release, several publications noted the satire the game designers had for urban culture at the time and several designers for ToeJam and Earl have states their vision was to skew the perception of urban culture by making it alien - making it foreign.

The Wikipedia page for ToeJam and Earl states, "ToeJam & Earl has been called a surreal, comic satire,^[1] and a "daringly misanthropic commentary on Earthly life".^[2] The game's protagonists, ToeJam and Earl, have been described as a "three-legged red alien" and "fat orange alien", respectively.^[3] ToeJam wears a large gold medallion and a backwards baseball cap, while Earl is marked by high-tops and oversized sunglasses; both outfits are "over-the-top appropriations" of 1990s urban culture.^[1] Their speech features California slang.^[4]" 


ToeJam and Earl is interesting because it has only recently been recognized as a work of Afrofuturism. It took looking back at the direction of the game to realize what they had subconsciously created in a video game. ToeJam and Earl is the story of alien rappers who can't fit into Earth culture and must build a starship to head back to their funky roots, a seemingly simple story that we see in many pieces of Afrofuturism.

How do we interpret Butler's intentions in Dawn?

What is the primary goal of the Oankali? What is the importance of the Oankali creating/redefining our current understanding of humanity? What is Octavia Butler trying to suggest with the human characters split reactions to the redefining of humanity and what is at stake/to gain in this new form of humanity?