Still from 'Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp.' All photos courtesy of Netflix

Warning: Light spoilers ahead.

In the same way that camp life isn't real life, our camp selves aren't our real selves. Or maybe our camp selves are our hyper selves: exaggerated, lustful, fearless, occasionally violent or rogue extensions of us, our ultimate id selves that emerge in those summer weeks devoid of parents and enforceable rules. It's a time for firsts and experimentation, like a trial run for late adolescence. In one of my favorite camp stories, a friend of mine, Chris, explored his repressed homosexuality at a Christian camp, of all places, the summer before eighth grade. "One night, after our counselor had gone to sleep, my cabinmates and I sat around in a circle, daring each other to show everyone our dicks," Chris told me. "This one guy got all of the attention due to his extra hard, extra large cock. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. So I dared him to touch my dick, which he did. Then, he dared me to touch his, and I did, probably for much longer than he held mine. The next day, he came to me with complete regret and said we should never have done that. But all I could think about was how wonderful and unexpected the whole evening had been."

David Wain and Michael Showalter's 2001 film Wet Hot American Summer, set on the last day of camp at the fictional Camp Firewood in the year 1981, took the already ridiculous, reckless, formative moments that define camp life and exaggerated them to full-blown absurdity. Michael Ian Black and Bradley Cooper, for instance, play counselors who acknowledge their attraction to one another, get it on in a toolshed, then get married. The camp's sci-fi nerds, led by David Hyde Pierce and Janeane Garofalo, prevent a falling piece of NASA's Skylab from crashing directly into the camp. The camp cook (Christopher Meloni) suffers from PTSD after serving in Vietnam, and is guided to spiritual enlightenment by a talking can of vegetables that claims to be able to suck its own dick. And Molly Shannon, the arts and crafts counselor, in the fallout of a failed marriage, in turn falls in love with one of her pubescent campers. Wain and Showalter's camp served as a petri dish for breeding the next generation of comedic weirdos. The film, however, bombed hard at the box office, only bringing in a little over $295,000.

Over the years, though, the film became a cult favorite. In an interview with Time, Janeane Garofalo recalled being approached on the street and outside standup shows by young fans who would quote the film to her, years after its release. Business Insider credits the rise of the DVD for spawning an underground movement of WHAS fans, who began attending midnight screenings in costume (the ultimate mark of cult status).

And now, today, 14 years after the film's release, Netflix has released Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, an eight-episode prequel starring the entire original cast, plus Jon Hamm, John Slattery, Elizabeth Banks, Jason Schwartzmann, Kristen Wiig, and Michael Cera, among other guest stars.

The fact that the original actors are 15 years older than they were when the film was released, yet are still reprising their characters two months before the events of the film, is precisely the joy of the show. In 2001, they were already too old to play teenage camp counselors. A decade and a half later, the effects of their aging and our understanding of what these actors have done in the time since make for some highly meta humor. Where Bradley Cooper was relatively unknown prior to the film, it's impossible to separate the Cooper of First Day of Camp—constantly trying to avoid Amy Poehler's advances—from the ubiquitous A-lister we know him as now. Likewise, Poehler and Paul Rudd are now comedy mainstays, and watching them together recalls all the moments we've seen them perform together since the original film's release (e.g., Parks and Rec, David Wain's rom-com parody They Came Together). Christopher Meloni was already a star on Law & Order: SVU when the film was released, but watching him skip menacingly after Ken Marino through a forest while yelling, "I'm going to smoke you out, like a salmon," is worth a Netflix subscription on its own.

Amy Poehler and Bradley Cooper

It's Michael Showalter's transformation, however, that makes for the purest physical comedy in the show. Fourteen years ago, he was a romantic lead, the floppy brown-haired, conventionally cute boy pining after the camp's hottest female counselor (Marguerite Moreau). Now he's 45—and it shows. First Day of Camp plays this up hard, putting him in tight shirts with the sleeves cut off, a puka-shell choker that only serves to accentuate the sheer size of his neck and double chin, and Netflix's Worst Wig.

Wain and Showalter directly address these age differences, as well as the absurdity of adults playing children. A 12- or 13-year-old girl suddenly gets her period for the first time, runs into a bathroom stall, and emerges transformed into a 40-year-old Marisa Ryan. In a move that parodies Never Been Kissed, a 41-year-old Elizabeth Banks plays a 24-year-old journalist going undercover as a 16-year-old counselor at the camp. Her trick for passing as a teen? A single side barrette.

Everything fans loved about the original Wet Hot American Summer—the sendup of coming-of-age films, the tightly packed jokes, the ironic campiness—only gets better in the show. Stretching out over four hours, First Day of Camp gives itself breathing room to explore bizarre character backstories to frame the many subplots we remember from the film. The cook is revealed to be the sole possessor of a secret government code that makes him the target of a hired assassin (played by Jon Hamm) working for President Ronald Reagan (also played by Michael Showalter). David Hyde Pierce is shown disgracefully falling from his position as a "damned good" professor of astrophysics when an altercation with his academic rival turns violent. And the romance between Michael Ian Black and Bradley Cooper is sparked when they are assigned to wear a two-person zoot suit for Camp Firewood's annual counselors' musical.

We're a world inclined to distrust prequels and sequels on principle, but Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp makes the campers and counselors who populate Camp Firewood all the sillier, all the weirder and grosser, and we're all the better for it.

Henry Davis around the time he was booked in 2009. Photo via Ferguson Police Department

One night at around 3 AM in September 2009, Henry Davis was pulled over on Interstate 270 in Ferguson, Missouri. The 52-year-old welder was taken to the local jail, where he was booked for driving whole intoxicated and informed that there was already an outstanding warrant for a man with his name—albeit a different middle name.

Once he was confined, according to a federal lawsuit Davis filed in 2010 that was finally allowed to go ahead this week, an inmate in the cell next to his had a mat to sit on. Davis asked Officer John Beaird if he might have one, too.

"Because it's three in the morning," he later testified, according to the Daily Beast. "Who going to sleep on a cement floor?"

According to Davis's suit, that set off an argument that led to five officers swarming the scene, and one named Kim Tihen hitting Davis with a closed fist and with handcuffs, while another cop named Michael White kicked him in the head. Davis's face—as clearly captured by his subsequent booking photo—was soon dripping with blood. Some of it got on the uniforms of Davis's assailants, and he was charged with four counts of property damage.

A US appellate court judge just ruled this past Tuesday that Davis had the right to seek damages from the troubled city, as well as Beaird, White, and Tihen. (According to Reuters, however, the judge—bizarrely—did not allow Davis to dispute the property damage claims.) He's claiming that his civil rights were violated under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

That we might celebrate the fact that a black man who was jailed, brutally beaten, and charged for bleeding on police officers' uniforms being allowed to sue the most notorious small-town police department in the country is a testament to the dire state of affairs in America right now.

Things could well have turned out differently for Davis if it weren't for the events that gripped Ferguson and much of the country almost exactly a year ago. Last August, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot there by a white police officer, setting off protests across the country and a national conversation about the racial politics of policing.

(A grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Brown and has since left the city's police force, in November.)

In March, the Department of Justice completed an investigation into the municipality which found that police and city officials colluded to prey on minorities as a money-making scheme.

But Davis's lawyer alleged the same kind of behavior six years before that report came out. In the original complaint, he wrote that constitutional misconduct in Ferguson was "persistent and widespread."

Tihen, the officer who allegedly hit Davis with a closed fist, was later elected to the Ferguson City Council. Some news outlets are reporting that she is still in that position, although the council's website does not list her as an active member. When reached by email, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III said in an email: "She did not run for re-election in April. Don't believe everything you read in the media. lol."

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Robin Douglas of the Church of the Holy Smoke. Photo via Facebook

A few months ago, Robin Douglas, the self-proclaimed lead pastor of the Church of the Holy Smoke, put up a large tent in his backyard in White Rock, BC so that he and his fellow congregants could gather to smoke and have what he describes as "deep spiritual discussions."

But after many complaints from neighbours about noise and smoke coming from the tent, the city ruled that he must take it down by the end of Friday and clean up the mess around it. Douglas says he won't budge and that the city is persecuting him for his unpopular religious practices. He isn't too bothered by the whole ordeal though because he has almost found a permanent building for the church.

VICE spoke with Douglas about his church and his big plans for rolling it out across Canada.

VICE: What is the Church of the Holy Smoke?
Robin Douglas: We have roughly 300 members signed up as actual members of the church. Then nine pastors, three of them are local. We work through this one tent. We believe that cannabis helps heal the mind, spirit, and body. People gather here for socialization, to sit down, have discussions of things that are important to them. People who have cancer or going through cancer treatments come to hear talks and get support. We're open to everyone though who wants to take part in this.

How did you get involved?
I was in a house fire and when the house burnt down, they dragged me out of the house, and I ended up in a wheelchair for four and a half years. At one point, I was very depressed, tried to kill myself. But the more I used cannabis, the more enlightened I became, and the more spiritual I became. And every time I met with like-minded people that helped me start using it, we would smoke or eat cannabis and be able to see other things more clearly. I'd be able to relax, slow down, and not only physically, but spiritually heal from within. Now, I've been out of my wheelchair for five months and I've got my ability to walk, to do everything. I owe it all to cannabis and Mother Earth and the strength she's given me to go on in life and I want to share that with everybody else.

What do you guys believe?
We want to share the goodness of what Mother Earth has given to us with everybody else. We support cannabis as a religious sacrament. They say I'm a walking miracle all the time. But, no! I'm not a walking miracle. That's not it. I was just given a purpose, a big purpose in life, and that is to promote Mother Earth's end and her most miraculous plant in this world. That is cannabis. Cannabis can be traced back to the times of the Egyptians—it was found in tombs. Cannabis oil in the tombs. The fact is, there's a long history of cannabis use in religious ceremonies and practices. I just discovered it in the last few years, and I am truly blessed by it.

Why did you set up a tent in the first place?
We didn't have enough room in the house to set up. We looked at the size of the yard and decided that for the time being, until we get a proper structure, that we would open a tent in the backyard since we are surrounded by a six-foot fence. Nobody can see in, nobody can see out. Privacy is guaranteed.

What will you do if city officials come to take your tent down?
We are a non-violent, peaceful, loving people and we will not resist whatsoever. If the city wants to tear us down and ban our religious beliefs, that's up to them. We will not support their criminal acts. They'll have to tear it down themselves. Let 'em have it. We'll just continue our work out back here anyway. We support cannabis as a religious sacrament and that's what's really upsetting them. It's not going to change our direction, it's not going to change who we are. It's not going to change the fact that we're going to continue to be here and have activities here regardless if there's a tent or not.

Canadian Cannabis: The Cash Crop

How is cannabis a religious sacrament?
At certain levels of using it, you get a euphoria. Almost like a spiritual zen where, personally, I go into this almost comatose situation where I'm sitting there and I can actually feel everything around me. I can understand everything around me. It opens my mind, body, and soul, and I'm able to see deeper into what is really going on and the problems Mother Earth and society is having. And the violence and the horror that surrounds us. I'm able to formulate in my mind, in prayer, while I'm using cannabis, to reach out and help certain people in their spiritual walk. I believe in the Bible, I believe in the Qur'an, I believe in all the Holy Books, but I also believe that Mother Earth put cannabis there for us to use responsibly, just like wine. Every sacrament has a reason, and mine for cannabis is to get spiritual enlightenment

How did you become the church's leader?
Eight or nine months ago, there was a bunch of us sitting around for the church meeting. I said that we need a leader, someone to take over. So the pastors elected me as leader and that was it, there were no other steps to take. Just an in-house election of pastors in the area who elected me to the position. They call me the Pope of Pot.

What sorts of things do you do with the church?
I don't sit here day in and day out and get high. I help people. I drive all over the country. I do all sorts of stuff. If I were high, I wouldn't be able to do it. I don't sit around—and neither do my pastors—and get high for the hell of it. We actually do things and when we use it, we get relaxed and feel more around us. I go on a spiritual journey. Most people that use cannabis just to get high are misusing it. It shouldn't be misused.

I also go to different hospitals. Now we work with 12 cancer patients who I visit constantly in hospital. We have six other patients with disabilities in hospitals and care homes, so I visit with them and supply them with cannabis and ensure they have their medications and needs met. If they have problems with social workers or not understanding stuff, I sit down with any administration to help these people get what they need and be an advocate for them in the use of marijuana in their treatment.

Where do you get your weed? Do you have a prescription?
I have growers that supply us. We have donations of cannabis from several different growers who support our work and what we're doing. I don't have a prescription. I won't go to a doctor. I don't believe this is a doctor or medical thing. I believe this is a spiritual thing. I will not ask the government's permission or a doctor's permission. The spiritual aspect of it has nothing to do with the medical aspect of it. These medical dispensaries, they're using it to get rich. And that's what medical dispensaries are about: money. You come to our church and you say I'm sick or I need to be fed or I need to have some cannabis to make me feel better, we'll give it to you for free.

That's really nice. Are you ever worried about facing criminal charges?
I'm not scared of getting arrested. I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not selling pot to kids or the general public. I'm not selling anything except a spiritual ideal. And that's not illegal.

Are you trying to register your church?
Yes. We have applied for charitable status. We're waiting for an answer to figure out if we're a non-profit. Until then, we've consulted a couple lawyers who said they're going to take on our fight and, hopefully, we'll be recognized by the courts and the government of Canada. And once we challenge the law on the spiritual aspect, which we sincerely believe we can win, we'll stand up and say yes we are a church and you are welcome. We are in the process of talking to two different lawyers from Vancouver right now. Both contacted me and said yes we are interested in this and want to help. My own personal lawyer has recommended I get somebody a little bit more knowledgeable about the constitutional issues.

Who are these lawyers? I'd like to chat with them about their thoughts on your situation.
I don't know if they're willing to talk right now. But we are very sincere about what we're doing to the point where I've put myself out there and say, "Hey, arrest me if you want." But police say they won't do it.

What's next for the church?
Church of the Holy Smoke is going to be a major movement across Canada and the government is going to have to recognize us soon. Considering our humble beginnings, it's pretty exciting. We're already expanding, we are quite a large movement already. We have two in Edmonton in Alberta opening churches now. One in Calgary opening a church. Two in Port Coquitlam. Saskatchewan soon, Winnipeg soon, there's a gentleman there. We have professionally made posters and everything. We also have a person in Montreal who's looking to open a church and also in Ottawa.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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But what's going to happen with Orlando Lassi's popularity surges again? Photo via Flickr user digital cat

Read: In Defence of the Senate, House of Scum and Villainy

It goes without saying that in our wild and wacky post-Y2K, macro-anti-probiotic, who-wore-it-better world, people care about celebrities a lot. Some would even argue that we care about celebrities too much! While there's no consensus on that yet, surely we can all agree that the Michael Jackson superfans of Munich are in another league.

Since the day after Michael Jackson's death in 2009, an unsanctioned shrine has developed and been maintained outside the Bayerischer Hof hotel, where Jackson frequently stayed when in Munich. It's grown into something of a tourist attraction, with fans from around the world leaving flags and other trinkets when they pass through the city.

However, in a tale as old as time, humanity was not content to worship and exist in peace. The need for power and control, an instinct as human as breathing and calling your ex after drinking too much whisky on a Tuesday, has driven a wedge between two rival factions of MJ fans. That discord has resulted in an ongoing battle for superfan supremacy. The feud between MJ's Legacy and MJ Memorial Munich is so intense that Bavarian authorities are threatening to close and remove the shrine; it has escalated to physical altercations, and one fan claims someone threw a glass votive-holder at her.

"The organisation MJ's Legacy thinks that it has exclusive permission from the city to decorate and maintain the memorial," said MJ Memorial Munich member Bettina Alde.

MJ's Legacy organizer Nena Snezana Akhtar had a different story.

"For some time, a group of four people has come together to rally against our work," Akhtar told AFP news agency. "They remove our decorations, take down our posters and crush the flowers we plant."

A spokesperson for Bavaria's cultural ministry told reporters that "this is an absolute final warning. We tolerated this memorial until now, but we've heard from the police about disputes between fans, and there have even been criminal complaints."

In a letter to the fans in question, the ministry wrote, "If peaceful coexistence between the different groups of fans behind the Michael Jackson memorial is not possible, then sadly the memorial will have to be removed."

The shrine, located at the base of a statue of Renaissance composer Orlando Lassi, might be one of the most contentious celebrity fan sites in the world. Which, in a way, is in itself a fitting tribute to an unquestionably talented but very divisive figure in the pop culture landscape.

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Watch: Australia's Biker Club Crisis

In Australia, if you're a backpacker on a 12-month working visa looking to stay for a second year, you're required to do three months of work in a regional or rural area. Most of the time, this takes the form of fruit-picking and other unskilled farm work. When the three months are up, the employer signs off on your visa application to confirm you've done the time and you go back to cruising the nation's highways in obnoxiously painted campervans.

But while this sounds like a fairly reasonable arrangement, it has long been shadowed by claims of harassment and exploitation, with some farmers reportedly seeking payment to sign work orders. Now, new reports have emerged that allege some farmers in Queensland are using this position of power to coerce female workers into sex, according to Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, Kevin Cocks.

"He (the farmer) went straight away, 'I'm going to sign this, but only if you sleep with me,'" said German backpacker, Daphne, in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). She also said she'd been warned about her employer from other backpackers on the farm. Her claims, and over a dozen others, are now being investigated by the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commission (ADCQ).

Commissioner Cocks also spoke with the ABC and outlined the way the state's Wolf Creek-style remoteness exacerbates the issue of shady employers pressuring travelers into sex. "Often the contractors provide accommodation as well, so women are being put in quite vulnerable situations," he said.

Estonian-born journalist Katri Uibu encountered the issue firsthand last year. Writing about the experience for The Drum , she described the feeling of dread brought about by continued sexualized comments from her employer. "I learned to push my suitcase against the door, so I would hear if the farmer ever did decide to 'surprise' me."

According to Commissioner Cocks, in Queensland's Lockyer Valley alone, at least a dozen direct and indirect reports had been made to community members over the past 18 months. His statements were confirmed by a Queensland Police spokesman, who said there had been issues with farmers harassing foreign workers.

It's not the first time the 417 visa has come under fire. Earlier this year, Four Corners reported on the wider exploitation of workers. Individuals were partaking in work that was either unpaid, or fell far below the national minimum wage of $17.29 [$12.64 USD] per hour. It was estimated that labor hire companies were making millions of dollars from withholding pay.

Many backpackers reported working up to 18-hours a day without any time off. Queensland vegetable farm worker Molly described the experience as, "like we were going back in time. It was crazy, the way we were being treated was inhumane." Some women also said they felt specifically targeted and had experienced sexual harassment.

In response to those allegations, the National Farmers Federation announced they were developing a Best Practice Scheme for Agricultural Employment. The Federal Government also responded, bringing in reforms including mandatory pay stubs for all workers employed under the visa, which speaks to the lack of regulation in place at the time.

It's unclear what changes will be made this time around, or how effective any changes will be. With over 194,000 417 visas granted last year, that's a lot of people—many very young—in places where internet and phone reception is limited, and access to transportation is difficult without help from the people you'd hypothetically be trying to get away from.

A good place to start could be the prosecution, or at least the blacklisting, of employers reported to police and immigration officials. This is something which hasn't happened so far. Another step could be finding a way to encourage more travelers to speak out about their experiences. But with the perceived threat of non-renewment hanging over them, this will be a challenge. As Daphne said to the ABC, "I wanted to leave but the problem was that I couldn't because I needed that visa."

Follow Wendy on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Rennett Stowe

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A judge on Thursday threw out a lawsuit that attempted to secure the release of two captive chimpanzees on the basis that they deserve to be recognized as people. Barbara Jaffe, a New York State Supreme Court Justice, issued the final ruling. Jaffe oversaw all of the proceedings in this recent case involving two lab chimps at Stony Brook University named Hercules and Leo.

In April, Jaffe accidentally triggered internet excitement when her ruling was interpreted as a writ of habeas corpus, a legal recognition of the right to have a day in court. Since only humans have such legal rights in the American justice system, that would have been massive. She later amended her May 6 order to remove the phrase "writ of habeas corpus," a move that quashed any notion of a personhood precedent.

Representatives of Stony Brook University, who want to keep their chimps locked up, and representatives of the Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP), who say that chimps are people squared off in court on May 27. Much of the NRP's argument was articulated in stodgy legalese, but they touched on slavery, abortion, and Guantanamo detainees to spice things up. The NRP also pointed out that pets can inherit their owners' money in the State of New York, and that "The only one who could do that would be a 'person.'"

It didn't work. Today's ruling tossed out the lawsuit. But Jaffe didn't take a totally hard line against animal personhood as a concept. In her ruling, she seemed downright conflicted, pointing out that in the past, only "Caucasian male, property-owning citizens were entitled to the full panoply of legal rights under the United States Constitution."

She also tacked on a 2003 quote from Justice Antony Kennedy, lamenting a ruling that didn't further the cause of gay rights: "Times can blind us to certain truths, and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress."

She did not, however, quote the extremely relevant film Ted 2—a recent courtroom drama/jizz comedy starring Mark Wahlberg, about a sentient Teddy Bear who sues to have his personhood recognized. Ted (Spoiler) wins on the basis of self-awareness and "capacity for empathy," both of which have been demonstrated in chimps. Sadly, movie courtroom scenes are still not legally binding.

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Audrey Dubose, mother of police shooting victim Samuel Dubose, addresses mourners at a July 20 vigil at the corner where her son was shot by University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing. All photos by the author

If not for the tiny camera on University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing's uniform, the July 19 death of Samuel Dubose in Cincinnati would be just another racially-charged police shooting of an unarmed black man shrouded in questions.

But footage from Tensing's body camera, which was required by UC's police department, shows apparent lies in Tensing's statements about Dubose's death, as well as inconsistent statements on official police reports by responding UC officer Phillip Kidd. The misleading statements from responding officers about the incident raise larger questions about what's happening when police aren't being filmed and whether departments like the city of Cincinnati's should be required to wear them. The Cincinnati Police Department has also been involved in high-profile shootings in the past, but doesn't have body cameras for all its officers.

"This is the most asinine act I've ever seen a police officer make," said Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters at a July 29 press conference announcing the grand jury's decision to indict Tensing on murder charges. Deters said body camera footage was pivotal in the investigation into Dubose's death, clearly demonstrating that Officer Tensing was never in harm's way.

The video footage of Dubose's brutal shooting convinced an Ohio grand jury to indict Tensing on murder charges, despite his claim of facing mortal danger during the routine traffic stop over a missing license plate. He has pleaded not guilty and was released on $1 million bond Thursday.

Kidd and another responding officer, David Lindenschmidt, were subsequently suspended by the University of Cincinnati police department.A grand jurydeclined to indict the two on Friday. Neither Kidd nor Lindenschmidt made assertions that they saw Tensing dragged in testimony given after the initial police report.

Tensing's official story, echoed in statements by Kidd, is that he followed Dubose from the corner of Vine and McMillan Streets, near UC's campus. Dubose pulled over about half a mile away from campus in a lonely pocket of Cincinnati's Mount Auburn neighborhood, known locally as "the hole" for its isolation below a large hill holding the city's looming Christ Hospital. There, on a nearly empty street, Tensing approached Dubose's Honda Accord.

Tensing asked Dubose for his license, which had been suspended in January, according to the Ohio Department of Motor Vehicles. Dubose refused to provide his license or exit his vehicle, according to Tensing, and an altercation took place as Dubose became belligerent. Tensing claims his arm got stuck in the steering wheel and that Dubose began driving forward, dragging him. At that point, Tensing says, he shot Dubose once in the head. Tensing says he then fell to the ground, sustaining mild injuries. The car rolled for another block, then crashed.

Tensing's story recalls—a little too neatly—another incident in Cincinnati's past. In 2000, Cincinnati Police Officer Kevin Crayon was dragged to death by a car he was attempting to stop driven by a 12-year-old. Crayon shot the boy before falling under the car.

But Tensing's body camera footage shows a far different scenario. In the video, Tensing does repeatedly asks Dubose for his license, which Dubose says he doesn't have. But instead of getting belligerent, Dubose is apologetic.

"I just don't," he tells Tensing. "I'm sorry sir. I was just going to go in the house." Dubose then tells Tensing he lives right around the corner. "I didn't even do nothing," Dubose says as Tensing begins to pull his car door open.

They would be his last words. Dubose grabs the door car door with one hand and starts his car with the other. A second later, Tensing shoots him in the head. Dubose, dead instantly, is no longer holding down the brake and the car begins rolling forward. Tensing, rising to his feet, chases the car with his gun drawn.

A memorial in Mount Auburn, Cincinnati at the site of the shooting death of Samuel Dubose

Later in the video, Tensing describes to other officers how he was dragged by the car. Kidd, on the scene, replies, "I saw that."

A subsequent incident report repeats the lie. "Officer Kidd told me that he witnessed the Honda Accord drag Officer Tensing," wrote UC police officer Eric Wiebel in a July 21 incident report, though the footage shows Tensing was never dragged and was not in danger.

"I think he just lost his temper," Deters said of Tensing's actions on the video. The prosecutor has suggested UC's police department be disbanded and patrol of the school handed over to the city's police.

The words are shocking coming from a prosecutor, especially one with as conservative a reputation as Deters. Just weeks before, Deters faced big controversy for callinga group of African Americans facing charges from his office "soulless" and "irredeemable."

Deters' bold statements underline the power of the evidence in the case. For the Dubose family, that's a silver lining in the tragic death of their son, who they say was a popular music producer and entrepreneur who was the father to ten children.

"I thank God that everything is being uncovered," Audrey Dubose, Samuel's mother, told reporters after the indictment was announced."This one did not go unsolved and hidden... my son was killed by a cop unjustly. I gotta know many more are killed unjustly. I'm going to be on the battlefield for them."

Beyond Dubose's case, data showing whether body cameras work to hold police accountable is still being developed. As the New York Times reports, the public's perception of police has shifted thanks to the pervasive use of recording equipment, both on police and civilian bystanders. But data to suggest that cameras lead to concrete changes beyond public perception is still scarce.

Last year, the National Institute of Justice began funding a study on police use of body cameras in Los Angeles designed to reveal the equipment's impact on crime and police-community relations.

Another study performed in 2013 by the Rialto Police Department and University of Cambridge criminology professor Barack Ariel found that body cameras used by the Rialto, California, Police Department decreased use-of-force incidents 50 percent over a 12-month period compared to a control group of officers.

Police departments across the country have been slow to adopt body cameras. In an NIJ survey conducted in 2013, about 75 percent of responding departments said they did not use the devices.

Even the Cincinnati Police Department, which has been lauded by experts and national media for its police reforms, has yet to fully adopt the technology.

The reticence to use body cameras comes despite transparency efforts in the department underway since the 2001 police shooting death of an unarmed black man named Timothy Thomas, which led to widespread civil unrest in the city and federally-enforced changes to the CPD. The city's police force began a pilot program testing the devices this year.

Evidence similar to that in Dubose's case may have been useful in many other police-involved deaths, including the August 9, 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. That shooting by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson sparked national outrage around police killings including weeks of civil unrest in Ferguson.

Since Brown's death, other police-involved killings, including that of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina, have stoked further outrage. In that incident, video recordings made by a bystander revealed a story different from statements given by officers. Scott's killer, former officer Michael T. Slager, was indicted in June for that shooting. Slager claimed that Scott had taken his Taser and posed a threat to him. Video showed Slager shooting Scott in the back as he fled from the officer.

Some are quick to point out that body cameras aren't the whole answer and don't address deeper racial issues inherent in many high-profile police shootings. Body camera skeptics across the country sayoverly aggressive policing is common in neighborhoods like the one in Dubose's Mount Auburn, which is76 percent black and has a median household income of just $16,000, according to US Census Tract data.

The underlying socio-economic challenges inherent in many black neighborhoods patrolled heavily by police contribute to the disproportionate presence of blacks in the justice system. Ohio, for example, has 2,336 black and 422 white prisoners per 100,000 people despite the fact the state is 83 percent white, according to 2010 US Census Data.

But even if the video equipment can't solve the systemic problems, it might shine a light on individual cases.

Among those cases is another recent police shooting in Cincinnati. Quandavier Hicks, 22, was killed June 9 by Cincinnati police officer Doris Scott, who was not wearing a body camera.

Scott and her partner, officer Justin Moore, were responding to a report that Hicks was menacing a woman he knew. Officers showed up at his apartment in Cincinnati's Northside neighborhood. They sayhe came to a door in the building's second floor hallway with a .22 caliber rifle. Scott shot and killed him.

But Hicks' family questions that sequence of events, calling him a kind and gentle man. His mother, Erica Woods, drove 800 miles from Georgia the next day to see the scene of his death. In an interview with me at a June 11 rally, she said doesn't believe the official story. A CPD investigation into Hicks' death is ongoing nearly two months later. No video of the shooting exists.

Nick Swartsell is a reporter covering politics and social issues for CityBeat, Cincinnati's weekly paper. Previously, his work has appeared in the Texas Observer, the Texas Tribune, the Dallas Morning News and the New York Times. Follow him on Twitter.

*Correction 8/1: An earlier version of this article suggested Tensing did not fall to the ground during the altercation, but he does seem to momentarily lose his footing.

The King George brothel in Berlin

You might have noticed a shit-storm of controversy around sex work in your newsfeed this week: Amnesty International was accused of siding with pimps, there were lots of open letters, and there were even more opinions. Lena Dunham got involved.

The beef is based on Amnesty's proposal that sex work should be fully decriminalized, as the charity believes this will make things safer for sex workers. Some people disagree; most conspicuously some of Hollywood's leading ladies, including Anne Hathaway, Carey Mulligan, Kate Winslet, and the aforementioned Lena Dunham. According to those in opposition, Amnesty has climbed into bed with a bunch of pimps, while the organization's supporters argue that decriminalization is the way forward for sex workers.

Managed to miss the whole thing? Here's a breakdown of what happened.

What Did Amnesty Actually Propose?

On July 7, Amnesty issued a draft policy proposal, suggesting that the criminalization of sex work harms those most in need of protection, i.e. sex workers themselves. The proposal follows a two-year consultation and is backed up by numerous studies from organizations like the Human Rights Council, United Nation Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, the Commission on Human Rights, and UNAIDS. On a global scale, Amnesty argues that decriminalization offers sex workers better legal protections and makes them less vulnerable to exploitation from third parties.

Then Came the Letters...

On July 22, an open letter was released by The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), calling on Amnesty to reconsider its proposal. "If you decriminalize the people who profit from the exploitation of others, you just give them more license to do so," Taina Bien Aime, executive director of CATW, told me.

Religious organizations are well represented on the signatories list, alongside anti-trafficking organizations, feminist groups, and aforementioned celebrities. There are a handful of academic references, but op-eds on the Huffington Post are also used to back up claims.

Then, in response to CATW's letter came two more open letters voicing support for Amnesty: one by the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), the other by the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers (ICRSE). Both are signed by sex worker-led organizations from all over the world.

People Suggested That Prostitution Is a Form of Torture

The CATW letter suggests that sex work is violence against women and links to a list of BDSM services in a German brothel. "Amnesty fails to understand that prostitution is tantamount to torture," claims Prostitution Research, the organization founded by sex work abolitionist and researcher Melissa Farley, who signed the letter.

"You get a situation where the person in power can purchase the right to exercise their sexual fantasies," says Aime. "It could be anything: urinating on the person, raping the person, dehumanizing them. Our view is that prostitution is inherently discriminatory; a cause and consequence of gender-based violence."

Luca Stevenson, a UK-based sex worker and coordinator of the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers (ICRSE), isn't impressed.

"Amnesty is doing groundwork with actual victims of torture and many sex workers in criminalized environments are being violently abused all over the world," he told me. "To point at BDSM services in a German dungeon and conflate this with actual torture is completely wrong."

Related: Watch our documentary 'Sex Workers in Saarland'

Amnesty Was Accused of Protecting Pimps

The CATW letter claims Amnesty is siding with "buyers of sex, pimps and other exploiters" and a #NoAmnestyForPimps hashtag was created. The charity says its position is being misrepresented.

"Most laws that criminalize sex workers are operational laws; laws on prostituting, living off the proceeds or the promotion of sex work," Catherine Murphy, advisor for the Amnesty International Law and Policy Team, told me. "We can't just look at one law that's related specifically to the direct selling of sex. This isn't about the rights of pimps, or so-called pimps, or rights of buyers; it's about the rights of sex workers and how their lives are being affected by a range of laws that states around the world use to police and punish sex work."

Stevenson says that criminalizing any aspect of the job simply makes violence more invisible. "If sex workers could report to civil courts and to the police, exploitative third-parties, and abusive clients would have less power," he says.

But Amnesty Says It Isn't Calling for One Big Pimp Party

Amnesty isn't proposing a free-for-all when it comes to sex work. Even under full decriminalization, governments would play a role in regulating the industry and Amnesty suggests states should "ensure that sex workers are entitled to equal protection under the law and are not excluded from the application of labor, health, and safety and other laws."

Those Big German Brothels Were Cited

The celeb letter to Amnesty uses Germany as an example of policy gone wrong. However, Germany has legalized sex work, bringing it under state control, rather than decriminalizing, which leaves sex workers free to organize as they want, within the parameters of the law.

Numerous sex worker-led organizations, as well as UNAIDS, WHO, and The Lancet, are calling for a replication of the New Zealand model. According to the New Zealand government, since decriminalization in 2003, sex workers are more able to turn down clients and report abuse.

There Are Fears That Decriminalization Would Increase Trafficking

CATW are concerned that decriminalization will lead to more cases of human trafficking, although evidence from New Zealand does not suggest this is the case. Conversely, in Norway, where the buying of sex has been criminalized, human trafficking cases reached a record high last year.

Amnesty points out that the proposal should not be considered in isolation from its existing human rights policies, including those on trafficking.

Amnesty Was Accused of Promoting "Gender Apartheid"

According to the CATW letter: "Should Amnesty vote to support the decriminalization of pimping, brothel owning, and sex buying, it will in effect support a system of gender apartheid."

UK sex worker Molly Smith called the comparison "disgraceful" and told me: "It's noticeable that the signatories of the anti-Amnesty letter are predominately white: they have no business comparing anything to apartheid, let alone policies that are used to target and deport migrant women, especially black migrant women."

Not All Sex Workers Want Celebrities' Support

"I think for lots of non-sex working women, there's this real symbolic investment in the idea of 'the prostitute,' who is considered a metaphor for the oppression of 'all women,'" Molly says. "When sex workers start to talk back, we disrupt this easy fantasy whereby we can be used to ventriloquize the concerns of non-sex working women."

And Some Want Decriminalization

Lucy, a London sex worker in her early twenties, told me: "Decriminalization would mean when I'm on my way to see a client, I'd know that if something went wrong, I could go to the police. It would mean I could work with friends in a house together for safety. It would mean that friends of mine who work in saunas or parlors would be entitled to decent hours, sick pay, and other basic labor rights that other workers take for granted."

In the End Everyone Still Disagrees

"We understand people will be critical of us," Murphy told me. "But we know that human rights abuses against sex workers are occurring, and that there's evidence to suggest criminalization is linked to these abuses. As a human rights organization we have a responsibility to look at that."

"We welcome common ground but this can't be found on decriminalizing pimps and brothel owners," says Aime. "I hope Amnesty will see the light."

Follow Frankie Mullin on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Stephen Melkisethian

Check out more VICE coverage of the police:

Young, Black, Trans, Arrested: How Women Like Meagan Taylor Are Made Invisible

Why It's Almost Impossible to Reform America's Police

How Eric Garner's Family Is Coping with Their Loss One Year Later

'You're Really Being an Asshole, Officer'

In the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and Ralkina Jones, the conversation surrounding police violence in the US has become more immediate than ever before. Brown, Martin, and Garner's deaths at the hands of police officers have forced many to confront the persistent reality of racism in the United States. The effects of this racism extend beyond direct physical violence; these cases can also have dire implications for the mental health of marginalized communities as well.

Psychological and psychiatric organizations like the APA already recognize that sustained racism and discrimination can be emotionally taxing on minority communities. In recent years, mental health institutions have paid increasing attention to the ways in which the black community internalizes its everyday experiences with racism. Studies have revealed that these experiences actively produce stress and cause trauma for those exposed, which begs the question: Can simply growing up black in America cause permanent psychological harm for an individual? Can the reality of being a person of color cause something as extreme as PTSD?

To get some answers, VICE spoke with Dr. Shawn O. Utsey, a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, about the unseen, psychological consequences of being black in America.

VICE: You've written a few papers on race-related and racism-related stress and trauma. Can you tell us a bit about your work?
Dr. Shawn O. Utsey: My work examines the psychological and physiological effects of race-related stress, and that typically includes racism. But there can be race-related stress without racism. There are some things that you might hear people commonly refer to as the "Black tax." It's the cost of being black that may not be the consequence of racism. For example, you move to a community and you have difficulties finding a place to do your hair. That's not necessarily racism, but it could be stressful.

But more often than not, race-related stress involves the impact of racism. Most people tend to think that you have an experience of racism and it upsets you, and as a consequence of you being upset, you experience stress, and that's what makes you sick over the course of your life, that chronic exposure to stress. But my work now is looking at it from a different perspective: prolonged activation. It's not necessarily the fact that you've experienced racism. It's that you've experienced racism and it stays with you.

The other phenomenon that I'm studying now is anticipatory race-related stress. You haven't even had an experience, but you anticipate it happening, and you are stressed just by anticipation. So, I'm about to go shopping at the mall across town, a predominantly white-mall. I anticipate that they're probably going to follow me around. They may even treat me with disdain. So I begin to prepare in anticipation of racism I might or might not encounter. As a consequence, I'm stressed, even in the absence of racism.

So the race-related stress is connected to the overall marginalization of black people in the US, not just individual racist events?
Yes. In fact, I did a study that examines not only the effects of racial trauma but the intergenerational transmission of that trauma. I went to Oklahoma and I interviewed the survivors of the race riots of 1921, and interviewed their descendants. I wanted to see the degree to which people who've encountered racial trauma, not only carry that trauma, but how they pass that trauma on to their descendants across generations. Now there's a lot of empirical work with the descendants of Holocaust survivors and there is some foundation for that thinking. But I think that the argument has been that the trauma has to stop. For black folks, you can't really argue that the trauma has stopped. It's more about the chronic exposure to racism than it is traumatic experiences.

What are the kinds of stress and trauma exhibited by communities that experience instances of police violence?
Typically, you'd think that a sense of helplessness in response to state violence would be more egregious because the actors are immune from prosecution. But in the case of white Americans, who have committed egregious acts of violence against black Americans, we have seen similar outcomes, i.e. no prosecution, or a prosecution that results in no contest, as in the case of George Zimmerman. It's not much of a leap from the helplessness that many black Americans feel about the acts of violence by citizens versus the acts of violence by the police.

It's not simply when the police are violent or the legal system doesn't protect blacks. It's also heavy-handed when black folks are seen as the transgressors. The relationship between the law enforcement and the black community goes back to slavery and the slave patrols. The slave patrols were in place to protect the white community from enslaved black people. In South Africa, during the apartheid, the police and the army were there simply to protect the white community from the black masses of Africans. That's the role of the police in many societies, to protect whites from blacks. This is why the violence is part of our police culture. Slave patrols were one of the first forms of law enforcement in this country.

What kind of psychological symptoms do black people experience as a result of that inherited history and the experience of living in a racist society?
There's this concept of "post-traumatic growth," and that suggests that the response of many people to trauma is growth, not necessarily pathology. Now, in the early history of psychology, the argument was that black people would go insane under the burden of freedom. This is not some racist skinhead—these are the most prominent psychologists of the day, like Carl Jung, saying that black people would go crazy under the burden of freedom. You have people like William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs who wrote about "black rage." In fact, Cobbs and Grier, who were two black psychologists, talked about this rage that was right below the surface of all black people, ready to explode, as a consequence of the chronic exposure to racism.

Now, those people who do experience some psychological pathology as a conduit for racism are probably already at risk for other kinds of stresses. So racism becomes a form of stress. But if you experience stress based on your racial group membership, even when that stressor is over, it's not done for you, because the possibility of future stressors remains. Your skin is still black. I think that you might be at increased risk as a black person, but it doesn't mean that you experience official pathology as a consequence of being black.

There was a study that was released recently from the University of Bradford that talked about how people who are following news events on social media, the study suggested that they were exhibiting symptoms of PTSD. Is it possible that there could be a similar phenomenon within the black community, who are following news about the killings of unarmed black men?
That makes sense, but it's not PTSD. PTSD means something happened, a month ago, a week ago, and you are still exhibiting symptoms. Here's my political opinion: This is the nature of the black experience. There is some degree of healthy behavior that I see exhibited when these events happen. Obviously, you hate to see them happen so frequently. But I'm much happier seeing black folks up in arms about something, trying to get change. Just a few years ago, we were talking about how young people didn't see race, that they thought race was a thing of the past. But now I'm seeing young people becoming activists, leading movements. This is healthy behavior.

Would you say that activism or organizing can be a form of healing for the black community?
Absolutely. For everyone.

Follow Tasbeeh on Twitter.

Back in November, the BangBros porn network released a new video in which the Lebanese Christian Mia Khalifa and Cuban Juliana Vega portray a daughter-mother Muslim duo getting down and dirty with daughter Khalifa's biker boyfriend—all while wearing hijabs. Entitled Mia Khalifa is Cumming for Dinner, the video was (to our knowledge) the first major-studio, well-produced, and widely disseminated American porn scene featuring an Islamic headscarf as a key prop. Predictably, the scene immediately gained notoriety it touched off holy hell across the internet. Most of the commentary surrounding Khalifa's scene focused on the hate she's received. But many (including VICE) also speculated that the success of the scene might trigger a new wave of hijabi porn in major, mainstream studios.

That day has come: PornFidelity's Women of the Middle East, set for release August 5, is the first feature-length hijabi- and niqabi-centered porno. And despite being touted as a shift away from the use of Muslim dress as an abstract erotic prop, it's about as culturally-sensitive as you'd imagine.

In the months following Khalifa's scene, a disturbing trend emerged from the cascade of veil smut: Unlike some amateur veil porn, which can be read as an expression of Muslim sexuality or a glimpse into the reality of outwardly conservative societies, mainstream vein porn uses the hijab as a bigoted tool, symbolizing the "demure Middle Eastern woman" in need of sexual conquest or salvation at the hands of white men.

To its credit, Women of the Middle East tries something slightly different. Each of its four scenes feature a different type of veil—hijab, niqab, khimar, and burqa—and each scene is meant to highlight or provide social commentary on a different aspect of women's status in the Islamic world.

If that strikes you as a bit high-concept for a porno, that's understandable. And your skepticism is deserved. While the script tries to mix up the status quo of white male domination of brown women with a scene featuring a dominant veiled woman, and attempts to portray the lesser-seen world of conservative Muslim prostitution, it does so very ham-fistedly. What pops out may not be a demur hijabi getting gangbanged by aggressive Americans, but it's still a fetishistic fantasy rooted in a white savior complex with a heavy garnish of Arabo-Muslim stereotypes.

Previews for the film open with text from its non-Muslim producers unambiguously condemning veils as a sign of women's blanket oppression in the whole Middle East and calling for their removal. The intro sets the tone for a movie that conflates a vast swathe of diverse cultures, fashions, and social conditions into one big Muslim-y mixing pot of reductionist preconceptions. At its core, the film is a prime example of banal ignorance fueling bigoted imagery.

VICE caught up with Kelly Madison, the mastermind behind the concept, script, and casting of Women of the Middle East. As our interview made clear, nobody on the production team seemed particularly bothered with cultural sensitivity or rudimentary research. We asked her what she thinks of the hijabi porn wave, her bids at social commentary and portrayal of the veil, and how she thinks consumers will receive her new film.

VICE: Why did you just decide to make a movie about veiling now?
Kelly Madison: [My husband and I] were talking about the Mia Khalifa incident. She basically went from having a hundred followers on Twitter to, after she did this scene... her Twitter basically exploded. With it came a bit of a backlash, but we thought: Okay, that's cutting-edge. How do we approach it in a way where it's not just taking a girl in a burqa doing a gangbang?

I wanted something with a little more intelligence. There's not a lot of intelligence in porn [laughs]. But something that had a little bit of my own voice in it saying: Hey, what's done to these women isn't cool. But at the same time, they're these beautiful, sexual beings and I want to show beautiful Middle Eastern women in a porn.

Trust me, the hardest part of it was casting. Not a lot of Middle Eastern porn girls.

Khalifa got some threats over her scene. Did any of the actresses you cast have any trepidation about doing this project after that?
When I talked to Nadia [Ali], she was pretty thrilled with it because I was showing it in a light where it wasn't that bad even if people from her own country [of Pakistan] saw it. It wasn't like she was doing a gangbang with five big black dudes. It wasn't completely offensive. The guy I had in the scene with her, [the director and Kelly's husband, Ryan Madison, who acts in every scene], I was portraying him as being Saudi [like her character], so it wasn't as controversial and crazy as we could have made it. She was happy about that.

Everyone else was pretty much onboard. They liked it. They had fun with it. I don't really ever force anyone to anything that they don't want to do.

What specifically can we expect to see in Women of the Middle East?
First and foremost, I want to make sure that everyone knows I'm not trying to incite another Charlie Hebdo incident. But [out four scenes] basically represent different women from different regions in the Middle East, different kinds of ideas. [We're] trying to be a little titillating, obviously, with the different kids of traditional dress. But I started the video by [thinking]: For Middle Eastern women, veiling is not just a way to suppress her sexual freedom, it's a symbol for all the human rights violations against these women like rape and domestic violence.

[It's about] taking the veil off. Not condemning the Muslim religion, but showing that it's sexually suppressing for women not being able to show their bodies, being hidden. So we thought we'd hit on that taboo... with an undertone of social commentary.

The first scene that we do with Karmen Bella is some kind of rebel post somewhere in war-torn Afghanistan. It's not cruel and crazy like ISIS. I wasn't trying to glorify that. But more like a female Robin Hood renegade group that's striking back at the civil leaders [who are] taking foreign aid money, stuffing their pockets with it, and meanwhile suppressing women and girls.

I thought: I'm going to do something crazy and put a niqab on her so she's naked with just a niqab. She has a guy chained up in the desert like a dog. She takes him back to the camp and he's submissive at first. But obviously this is porn. This isn't a social document [laughs]. Eventually they get along and find some common ground inside the tent and obviously sex ensues. But that was my idea, showing the women being in power—completely naked with nothing but a niqab on her. That in itself is kind of shocking, especially for us here in the United States.

A little of it's for shock. A little of it's for fantasy. —Kelly Madison

Do all of the scenes have the same female domination inversion going on?
Each one's kind of different. The second one is a commentary on Saudi Arabia and the crazy rules that are there, where women can't drive. They can be raped. They can be beaten. They have no rights. So I have ... Nadia being this doting little wife, doing everything for her husband. But she sneaks away and takes the car. He finds out and he's so pissed and threatens to stone her and beat her. She says, "No, no, no, I didn't do anything wrong!" And in the end, after he does an aggressive love making, so to speak, he finds out that all she was doing was running down to the dry cleaners to get his clothes for him before he was finished enjoying his dinner. So he kind of felt like an asshole afterwards.

Those two are the most social commentary ones. I have another taking a girl who happens to be half-Persian and half-Tunisian, Arabelle Raphael, and I was just like: Okay, I have to do this classic belly dancer girl fantasy. Then the fourth one is with Nikki Knightly, where I just wanted to show something that's not often played out onscreen, which is prostitution in the Middle East.

It's not like I did a whole lot of research for this. (I mean, come on, it's porn.) But I did a little bit. Prostitution has increased in countries like Jordan and Lebanon because of all the refugees. They need some kind of way to make money. There's also a lot of increasing prostitution in Iraq because of the Iraqi War.

So here [Knightly] shows up in a full-on burqa. That was kind of cool to juxtapose that: Here she's a prostitute, yet she still has to be covered in public. A little of it's for shock. A little of it's for fantasy. It's basically just having fun with the whole idea and showing these women as sexual beings, not just covered-up.

Since veils have been in the public eye for so long, why haven't we seen an all-hijabi movie like this one before now?
You can feel the energy when somebody does something different. We all follow each other and copy the hell out of each other. That's what this industry does. So we did [this film] as fast as humanly possible [after Khalifa's scene, which was the first] to beat anyone who was doing anything like it and get it out there first.

It was so much fun doing the costuming. Some of it I got right, some of it I'm sure I got totally wrong. But it was fun, it was challenging. —Kelly Madison

When hijabi porn cropped up with Khalifa, people though it would be all about subjugation. Do will be see more of what you're doing, or more of that in the future?
I think there're a bunch of people out there who'll just say: Hey, throw a niqab on a girl for shock value and have her in the middle of a gangbang. Just try to make the fast cash and move on. Not that I'm not money-motivated by doing this project...

Your video starts with an explicit anti-veiling message: "Take off the veil, they're a symbol of oppression," or something like that. But what about women who freely choose to wear veils?
I can't put all the social commentary in that I'd like to [in a porn]. I'm not doing a documentary on the suppression of the women.

I could maybe, in Part II, have [a scene] with: "Hey take the burqa off! No, no, I don't want to!"

But even if some of the women say they don't want to take the burqas off, it's because when they do they get sexually harassed in the streets. They get beaten. For a woman who has total freedom here in the United States, I totally support them on that. But it's not like I'm running for office. I'm trying to do a pornographic movie that entertains and excites people.

Nice shade of nail polish here.

Part II? Does that mean that the scenes you've previewed online are doing well?
We've seen a decent spike [in traffic online]. At first I thought: Oh god, we're going to scare off our members. But I haven't had a single negative response from the updates that we posted.

Is there anything else that you want to say about this project?
Porn is fantasy and it is fun. Some of the most beautiful women in the world are form the Middle East. And to show them in a beautiful way, done up in their traditional garments and showing them as beautiful, sexual beings, it's fun for me as a producer.

Sometimes I think porn is very limiting by not being able to get some of your personal social commentary out there. So for me to be able to get a little something going, it's cool. At the same time, I've still got to keep it safe—not go totally out there. Nor do I want to do anything highly offensive to the Islamic people.

It was just a fun project to do. It was so much fun doing the costuming. Some of it I got right, some of it I'm sure I got totally wrong. But it was fun, it was challenging.

Whatever could this picture mean for the words below?

Hey, I'm Mike, the video games editor here at VICE. We've probably not met IRL, and likely never will, but hey, thanks for clicking your way to this page. I appreciate it.

Now, you might not know this, but VICE was founded in 1994. A lot of video games have come out since then. Shit loads. Most of them have been okay, tolerable, even decent in places; and some of them have been irredeemably shit. Others, a select few, have been indispensable, the games that everyone should have played. And because VICE is 21, here are 21 of those games, presented in no particular order, based on several weeks of conversations with VICE Gaming contributors and the in-house editorial team, tweets from readers, and real headaches. Maybe you've played a bunch of them and this is a nice nostalgic kick for you. Maybe you've not played a single one. But I'm going to keep this short, and let your own curiosity carry you into deeper discovery.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000, multi-platform)

Didn't matter if you could skate for real or not, five minutes with this and you were fully fluent in the language of the sport: the varial heelflip, the indy nosebone, the pop shove-it, the manual, and the rocket air. Okay, maybe more like 15 minutes. And even then you didn't always know how you were doing the moves, and you sure as shit weren't always landing them. But anyway: what a game. Fluid controls (once you had them committed to memory), quick-session gameplay (making it ideal for pad-swapping between mates), and a memorable soundtrack (how many albums did Styles of Beyond sell off the back of this?) made for one hell of a distraction from lectures, homework, getting the bus to the office, and feeding the cats/kids (select as appropriate based on your own experience). Watch it in action.

Shenmue (1999, Dreamcast) and Shenmue II (2001, Dreamcast and Xbox)

There's going to be a few entries like this so get used to it, situations where we can't just pick one game from a series. For Shenmue, it makes sense to include both of the games released so far, as they're parts of the same story—one that is still unfolding, as producer Yu Suzuki is currently making a third installment. What Shenmue provided was real freedom within an immersive open world in a way that'd rarely, if ever, been realized previously. The player's character, Ryo Hazuki, could call on neighbors (mostly by just letting himself in), and the game's mix of puzzle solving, investigation, and combat made for a singularly compelling experience. It could be incredibly slow at times, and the dialogue is awful, but there's something to Shenmue and its sequel that, even when played today, is just a little bit magical. It shouldn't work, but it does superbly. Watch it in action.

Resident Evil 4 (2005, multi-platform)

The game where survival horror met third-person shooter action, and neither genre would be the same afterwards. In many ways it's the perfect game in its class—both the blueprint and the best, still. Say no more. Watch it in action.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (1999, multi-platform)

The fighters amongst you have spoken. This second update of Street Fighter III, which came out two years earlier, brought back a favorite character in the shape of Chun-Li and introduces Makoto for the first time. It plays, fundamentally, the same as all Street Fighter games: one on one, with the player whose health bar doesn't fall away first being the winner of (usually) the best of three bouts. Street Fighter IV is also excellent, of course, but there's something about the flat-yet-physical art style of 3rd Strike, and its so-90s soundtrack, that's just so moreish. Watch it in action.

Hotline Miami (2012, multi-platform)

Made by two-man Swedish team Dennaton, Hotline Miami merged trigger-finger twitchiness with a methodical attitude to clearing out its stages, the player reaching an almost meditative state as they unlock the puzzle of each array of rooms, bottlenecks, and chokepoints. There's a fascinating story beneath the pixel-art violence, too, involving the Russian mafia, the Miami underground and our antihero protagonist Jacket's meltdown into a surreal unknown. It's hard. Punishing. But then, it has to be. Amazing soundtrack, too. Watch it in action.

Super Meat Boy (2010, multi-platform)

Another indie production, Super Meat Boy is an incredibly tough platformer where the slightest misjudged jump can kill. But it totally nails that just-one-more-go factor, which keeps you locked into its sadistic world until you get past that series of buzzsaws which have ended your little Meat Boy several times already. There's a plot, sort of—rescue Bandage Girl from Doctor Fetus—but Super Meat Boy is really all about the precision gameplay in the same way that the first Super Mario Bros. was—just with lots more blood. Watch it in action.

Journey (2012, PlayStation 3 and PS4)

Thatgamecompany's beautifully short and perfectly formed adventure had me crying real tears. It's wonderful in a way that games so rarely can be, subtly tugging on the emotions over its duration until it peaks at a stunning crescendo, and the waterworks commence. I wrote about it in greater detail over here. Watch it in action.

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos / Dota (2002, PC and Mac)

Is this Blizzard's real-time strategy peak? It just might be—but it's like an alien language to anyone who never bought into the preceding games. The plot is a minefield of unpronounceable characters and dramatic events, but if high fantasy was your thing in the early 00s, and you had an internet connection, there was a good chance you were playing this. The game's world editor produced the wildly popular mod Defense of the Ancients, maybe better known simply as Dota, a multiplayer online battle area twist on all things Warcraft which is, via its 2013 standalone sequel, the most actively played game on Steam today, with some 900,000 daily users. Watch it in action.

Related: Watch VICE's five-part documentary on eSports

Wipeout (1995, multi-platform)

The game that effectively sold Sony's PlayStation in the UK, this future-set racing game felt like a vision of sport several years from now slapped into your face with the weight of an anvil, where techno was in, tires out, and its developers Psygnosis, based in Liverpool, were coolest games-makers in the world. Looking back, it's slightly less fun than something like Mario Kart, but as a showcase for what this new console on the block could do, Wipeout was really something else, and helped to push Sony's machine ahead of its rivals. Played in HD today, it's still a slick mover with a propulsive soundtrack. Watch the HD version in action.

Super Metroid (1994, Super Nintendo) and Metroid Prime (2002, GameCube)

Super Metroid was a SNES essential, a sprawling, enveloping sci-fi adventure with an open-world, go-anywhere map—new areas becoming accessible via power-ups—and multiple endings depending on how good a player you were. While it's only in two dimensions, the sprite work is consistently stunning, and the atmosphere the game generates is comparable with today's first-person titles—which is where Metroid Prime comes in, as the first game in the Metroid series to opt for said perspective. Initially, its makers at Retro Studios were criticized for putting the player behind the eyes of Samus Aran, but the reviews speak for themselves. It went a long way towards changing attitudes to first-person gameplay, too—all of a sudden, having sights on the screen before you didn't mean that all you had to do was shoot things, with Prime placing great emphasis on exploration. Watch Super Metroid in action.

Katamari Damacy (2004, PlayStation 2)

You roll stuff up—stuff like cats and ships and lamps and cattle and trees and toys and fish and schools—into massive balls to remake the universe after the King of All Cosmos has wrecked it all on a drunken binge. I fail to see how this isn't one of the greatest things of all time. The name translates, from Japanese, to "clump soul." Again, amazing. Watch it in action.

Pro Evolution Soccer, the Collina and Henry years (2003-2005, multi-platform)

FIFA is the best football simulator on the market right now. But it wasn't always this way. In 2003, Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 3 absolutely stormed home consoles with a bunch of amusingly named unlicensed players and a bloody referee, Pierluigi Collina, on the box. With more realistic AI and ball physics than any previous football game, and occasionally hilarious commentary, it became the new standard, and maintained its champion form for the following couple of years, where French forward Thierry Henry crept onto the cover. In 2005 he faced off against England's Brave John Terry, as you can see above, but he was absent the next year, replaced by Brazilian player Adriano, and didn't the game suffer. The age of FIFA had begun, and by FIFA 10 the PES series would never be able to catch it. Watch it in action.

Metal Gear Solid (1998, PlayStation)

Without Hideo Kojima's PS1 masterpiece, who knows where the stealth genre would be today? Its cutscenes went on too long, and its character names were, well, odd, but MGS was one of those games that burned itself into the memory, never to be removed by future interactive adventures. A generations-spanning, critically acclaimed franchise started here. Watch it in action.

Portal 2 (2011, multi-platform)

Darkly funny, fascinating, brain-turningly treacherous, visually arresting... Portal 2 is simply a joy, from beginning to end. Valve's "proper-game" sequel to its considerably shorter release of 2007 turned a handful of great ideas into a fully fledged, wholly awesome trip through Aperture Science as you knew it, and beyond. How Valve squeezed so much variety out of the sole weapon available to Chell, the portal gun, is something of a magical mystery that I never want to see the boring reality of. Portal 2's local co-operative mode, in which you and a friend control the robots P-Body and Atlas, is one of the best things you can do with a partner when there's nobody else around, apart from, well, you know what. Cleaning the bathroom. Watch it in action.

Quake (1996, multi-platform)

From the makers of Doom, id Software, Quake is the first-person shooter that popularized multiplayer competition in the genre (for a skipload of people). Also: rocket jumps. Also: plays amazingly well even now. Also: Nine Inch Nails. Watch it in action.

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WarioWare, Inc: Mega Microgame$! (2003, Game Boy Advance and GameCube)

Microgames. That'd never work. Except it did. And it was brilliant. Whatever you do in it though, however great you get at each over-in-seconds challenge, Wario still fucking hates you. What a dick. Watch it in action.

Grand Theft Auto (1997, multi-platform), Grand Theft Auto III (2001, multi-platform), and Grand Theft Auto V (2013, multi-platform)

Couldn't separate them. The freedom the first game gave you was incredibly refreshing, and the radio-style soundtrack provided its primitive visuals a real connection with the real world. The third game's move to 3D was like nothing seen before, and gave amazing weight and depth to the series' now familiar crime capers, and the fifth GTA might just be the greatest video game of all time. It's certainly right up there. Watch the original Grand Theft Auto in action.

Demon's Souls (2009, PlayStation 3) and Dark Souls (2011 multi-platform)

When is a game like running a marathon? Rarely. Never? Hardly. That's how Edge's Jason Killingsworth summarized Dark Souls, a diamond-hard RPG that continues to fascinate newcomers and provide return-play appeal to its passionate hardcore fanbase. Wrote Killingsworth: "Dark Souls' vertigo-inducing breadth makes it the gaming equivalent of a marathon... Reading War and Peace? Dark Souls immerses us in war, and lots of it. But it also lets us taste the most incredible peace—sublime moments of quiet interspersed between the violence like rests in a musical score." Says it better than I ever could—and Demon's Souls is where From Software's Souls series (which includes Dark Souls II and Bloodborne) began, a dark and dangerous game of immense challenges giving way to incredible satisfaction. Watch Demon's Souls in action.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, Nintendo 64)

All the awards. All the review scores. Ocarina of Time had to be in here, somewhere. It's the best Zelda game, and perhaps the greatest role-playing game ever created. You might not get to create your own character, but that doesn't prevent so many moments in this exquisitely fashioned fantasy epic from connecting with you on a deep and lasting level. Almost every 3D game since this, and Super Mario 64 (wait a minute), has a degree of debt to pay to its design. Watch it in action.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015, multi-platform)

It's the gift that just keeps on giving, an action-RPG of unparalleled intricacies and astounding scope. This spot was reserved for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, so if you'd like to pretend that's here, cool. But I had a change of heart after spending another evening with Geralt and his pals, and I'm just... I don't think I'll ever tire of The Witcher 3. It really feels like a forever game. Watch it in action.

Super Mario 64 (1996, Nintendo 64), Super Mario Galaxy (2007, Wii), and Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010, Wii)

The greatest video game character the world has ever known, in the greatest platform games the world has ever known. Again, there is no point picking a favorite. Play them all. Each is a perfect ten. Game over for everyone else. Go home. And cry, if you're a spiky blue mascot. Watch Super Mario 64 in action.

It would be remiss of me to not at least mention some other games that came up, but didn't quite get as much support as those above. In no order: the Pokémon games, The Last of Us, Halo: Combat Evolved, StarCraft, Chrono Trigger, Bayonetta, the Mario Kart games, Half-Life, BioShock, Ikaruga, Theme Park, Ico, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, OutRun 2, Vanquish, the Mass Effect games, and GoldenEye 007. All, decent.

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Lauren Chief Elk (left) and Yeoshin Lourdes, the co-creator behind the #GiveYourMoneyToWomen hashtag. Photo courtesy of Lauren Chief Elk

When #GiveYourMoneyToWomen started surfacing on my social feeds last month, I thought it might have something to do with the way in which women are underpaid at the office. Brilliant, I thought, Give your money to women as a way of balancing out gender-based income inequality. But the idea behind the hashtag was even better than that: Women were banding together to demand payment for all the emotional work we do that goes completely unpaid—the exhausting work of being a tolerant, gentle, nurturing, listening woman in our relationships with men, at all times. Women put up with a lot of bullshit, and we have a science-backed term for it: Emotional labor. And as with any kind of labor, women are now ready and eager to get paid.

In the words of Jess Zimmerman, "Men like to act as if commanding women's attention is their birthright, their natural due, and they are rarely contradicted. It's a radical act to refuse them that attention. It's even more radical to propose that if they want it so fucking much, they can buy it." Bitch better have my money, indeed.

At the head of this movement is Lauren Chief Elk, an activist, prison abolitionist, and domestic violence victim advocate. She's also the driving force behind the viral hashtag #GiveYourMoneyToWomen, five words that practically beg the basement-dwelling men of the world to throw up their fists in indignation (before slamming them against their keyboards):

This kind of slime is hardly a surprise for any woman who has been on the internet for more than five minutes. What is more surprising about #GiveYourMoneyToWomen is the empowerment and community it has spread in its wake. Chief Elk has succeeded in starting honest, open dialogue, amongst women and between women and men, about money, labor, and knowing what you are owed. Theory and idealism have their place, but #GiveYourMoneyToWomen has inspired women to demand recognition within a broken reality. When you find yourself in a system that profits off of you and has done so for centuries, it's time to stake your claims.

In an attempt to shed more light on what this movement is actually about, VICE spoke with Chief Elk about her work as an advocate, her reasons for starting the hashtag, and the reality of an economic system that builds its wealth on women's unpaid labor.

VICE: Hey, Lauren. Could you tell us a bit about your background as an organizer? How did you come to start the #GiveYourMoneyToWomen movement?
Lauren Chief Elk: I've been heavily involved in this kind of work since high school, so going on ten-plus years now, and I've been involved in rape crisis advocacy and domestic violence victim advocacy. I also worked in organizing and policy at the governmental level and nonprofit level. Violence against women advocacy has been the center of my life and work, for my entire adult life and teen life.

Women of color have been rejoicing in song over this whole movement.

Does your work helping victims of domestic violence tie into the idea of #GiveWomenYourMoney at all?
The hashtag came out of a lot of things. As a prison abolitionist, and as someone who is thinking of alternatives to justice for power- and gender-based violence, monetary compensation has been something that I thought of as a really good alternative. What is an alternative? Making people financially responsible to you, making your abusers financially responsible to you. [The hashtag] came out of my own praxis for justice in regards to that. It also came out of just thinking about what women have to do all day every day, whether that's in marriages or relationships or work environments—anything really. The type of labor that we are expected and required to do all the time.

What kind of responses have you received from women?
Honestly, it's been overwhelmingly white women who've been upset about the hashtag. Women of color have been rejoicing in song over this whole movement. It has been overlooked by mainly white women who've been like, "This is ridiculous and giving feminism a bad name, what do you think you're doing." It's been interesting to see the racial divide.

Why do you think that racial divide exists?
Well, historically speaking, white women are also the beneficiaries of a lot of women of color's work, and also accrue lots of capital which white men in this country have. I think it's on par with the anger toward Rihanna's "BBHMM" video, with Rihanna kidnapping the wife and people being angry. Because she's a rich white women—even middle-class white women in general are beneficiaries of historical wealth in this country. [These are the same women who were] mad about the article on the "wife bonus," saying "This isn't feminism, getting money from your partner or men is not feminism," all this kind of stuff. It's interesting, because they are the biggest voices about the pay gap and wage equality.

What we have to put up with [as women] is expensive. Especially in violent situations. So to think that financial retribution is some kind of absurd idea of justice is, to me, absurd. This is reasonable.

What do you think of the whole "wife bonus" debacle?
The wife bonus is important. Women who are making their spouse's lives and careers their job should be compensated for it. Stay-at-home moms work multiple jobs. They act as cooks, chauffeurs, nurses, therapists, maids, personal trainers, teachers, tutors, personal assistants. And this labor is rarely recognized, especially monetarily. Wives should be getting bonuses and entire paychecks regularly.

I'm on board with your cause, and it makes a lot of sense to me. But for people who are confused or angered by it: How can cold hard cash rectify gender inequality?
In terms of this stemming from my ideas of justice, what we have to put up with and deal with [as women] is expensive. Especially in violent situations. Trying to get out of violent situations costs a lot of money: you need transportation, somewhere else to stay, you need to feed yourself, you need medical attention for the abuse you've accrued, for your children. You've gotta eat. You have to probably quit your job if it hasn't already been sabotaged. This can accumulate to hundreds of thousands of dollars, very quickly. So to think that financial retribution is some kind of absurd idea of justice is, to me, absurd. This is reasonable. This should be number one.

What about less extreme situations, where women aren't in explicitly abusive situations but are performing a great deal of emotional labor?
Emotional labor—the amount of things that women have to do, acting as the therapist to men; absorbing everything that comes out of them with a happy face; swallowing our feelings to not make things more complicated; learning that if we do start voicing displeasure, that's probably not going to get a positive response; always having to be happy and peppy and taking care of their feelings and their outbursts—whether that's in a work environment, relationship, or friendship, it's a lot of work to just put up with what's dealt out. I think there are lots of overlaps between emotional labor and abuse, having to navigate [around men], having to dance around their hotspots, dance around what they're going to be laying out on you. It's a ton of work. It is wearing and draining.

And god forbid you say something to them that is trying to put them in check. That's also work, having to [tell them off] or hold it in.

Or being responsible for educating them.
Exactly.

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When I shared the #GiveWomenYourMoney sentiment on social media, one woman got very upset in particular. She argued that men do emotional labor all the time, too. "All of my best friends are guys," that sort of thing.
There might be these individual instances [of men performing great feats of emotional labor], but that's not the structure we live under. We live under a heteropatriarchal structure, which is why we call this a gender-based violence. We live in a male-dominated world, and that's part of why there is so much interpersonal violence and why the overwhelming perpetrators are men. These individual instances happen, but I'm not really worried about that. There's this thing called male privilege. That's what I'm more worried about. Also, who has all of the fucking wealth? Who has all of the power? Oh my god, one time you had to deal with a woman's emotional outburst, poor you.

Could you give me some more specific examples of emotional labor?
Acting as a therapist to men. Putting on a perky face for that. Having to be a yes person, always saying "Oh yes," and "You're so right," and "So great." Absorbing whatever kinds of outbursts they have—it's mostly always anger—and having a happy face on and nodding. Emotional labor is also hiding your feelings, not challenging, not voicing your displeasure for whatever reason, just keeping things inside. That's a lot of work, to swallow your feelings in fear, like If I voice this, things are going to get really bad for me in this environment. It wears down your self-esteem, your sense of self, your confidence, all sense of your being! This is heavy! It's heavy to do this and have to do this all of the time.

I go on Twitter enough to know that men are very angry. Very, very angry.

Should we just stop? Stop playing therapist, stop staying quiet, stop doing the labor we aren't being paid for? Or are there risks to opting out?
There are a lot of risks. Turning back to #GiveYourMoneyToWomen, a lot of the risks are monetary risks. If you don't do this [emotional labor] anymore, you could lose your job or your relationship or literally lose everything because all of this stuff is expected. It's sucks because a lot of the time women are told—and men have this in their heads too—that we are just inherent caregivers and nurturers, here to just take care of you. So when that gets disrupted, especially in an emotional sense, that's when they—this is going to be when empires crumble. When that is realized and women cut it off, truly, it's going to be when empires crumble. Because this [emotional labor] is so expected in any interaction when men interact with women. This [idea] started with Bardot Smith. Oh yeah, no, fuck this. Men get so much from us, they drain us for our knowledge, our support, our validation, our attention, no! If you want this, hand over your fucking money. Give me your cash, right now, if you want all of this.

This all ties in so seamlessly with the grim reality of being a woman on the internet.
I go on Twitter enough to know that men are very angry. Very, very angry. All the ideas about why we should be getting financial compensation—between talking about violence and abuse, between talking about how women teach them things every day, between taking care of them and them demanding things from us, the whole spectrum—there was a lot of anger. In a bigger, structural sense the [idea behind #GiveYourMoneyToWomen] is how we also fix things like the wage gap and wage inequality. This is how you literally shift capital. You hand it over for all of the things that we expect women to do that they are unpaid for. Talk about capitalism and the exploitation of labor: This is it.

On that note, are there other groups that are doing unpaid emotional labor? For instance, people working in the service industry for minimum wage, they still have to grin and ask us how our day is going.
I definitely think that. If we understand history, the basis of capitalism as we know it in the US came from the exploitation of indigenous and black people and specifically indigenous and black women. Looking at these frameworks is important. We're talking about money, capitalism, to specifically look at how the conditions of black and Native people still enable the United States and this whole Western economy to be the powerhouse it is. Where did it start? How did it get this way? We have to look at the position of women of color in the context of completely unregulated domination and exploitation in this capitalist system. A way to fix that is to shift the direction of capital, to start reversing things.

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