Reflections

The project we did was on gender stereotypes. The biggest reason we ended up going this route was because we’re all gamers. Some of us console or computer, others pencil and dice, and a combination therein. The majority of our group takes exception to the fact that men and women have expected rolls in some form or another. It’s problematic to say the least. We wanted to combat this as best we could. The way we went about that was to create a card game.

We created a scenario where you have to pick very gendered and stereotyped characters to solve a solution based on their stats. The ability to solve the situations was dependent on the diversity of the team you picked, and the scenario they’re in. So if you pick the Military General, the Scientist, and the Engineer, (which are all male characters) that’d be a really great combination in some situations. It leaves you out in the cold though when you need a woman’s touch. And it’s the same way if you pick all female characters. Sometimes a man is just the right guy for the job.

That’s the really important thing about our game, and something we worked on extensively. You need all sorts on a team. I mean look at the Avengers. Tony Stark is a megalomaniacal, alcoholic, egomaniac. He’s just as important as everyone’s favorite Star Spangled Man with a Plan. And too be fair, Cap has his own fair share of shortcomings. Cap is too humble, Tony is too proud. You put them together and you get something that resembles some version of a proper team. And that’s the next stage we wanted to add to our game. Put in perks for picking characters that didn’t seem like they’d go well together. Bonus to stats if you put the Housewife and the Gamer on a team together.

There was also some critique of our game that I really want to address. A classmate told us that our game wasn’t feminist, and even more it was actively misogynist. I want to take a minute to retort. So feminism doesn’t mean women don’t have to be housewives anymore. It means women have the freedom to choose what they want to do with their lives with no judgement. It also means that men and women are equal. So yes, we did use misogynist stereotypes. We also used misandrous stereotypes. Some men rock as stay-at-home dads. We used these stereotypes for a reason.

The stereotypes are so ingrained in us one way or the other and we don’t even realize it. The point was to make people think about the stereotypes and realize they have biases. The only way we’ll succeed as a culture or a society is by admitting everyone has equal value.

That’s sorta what led to it being a game. We didn’t want to address it head on. We wanted it to be subversive. We wanted people to play thinking it’s a game, and finish realizing it’s social commentary. On that I think we succeeded.

Do You Feel Like a Hero Yet?

There is an abundance of violence in video games. There always has been. Except for maybe Pong. Even the earliest games were violent. Space Invaders, Missile Command, Galaga. I could go on for days. Now I know you’re probably thinking “that’s not super violent. There wasn’t any blood or gore.” And I would agree. But you’re still shooting at alien space ships or blowing something up. The only reason there wasn’t any gore is because the tech didn’t exist yet.

Now the tech does exist, and killing in video games can be a brutal thing. That gets into a very serious moral gray area. Does it make me a bad person if I blow this dude’s head off in order to save the world? Well, I mean, the world isn’t gonna save itself, so I guess I better perfect my shotgun decapitative abilities. And trust me, I’ve been gaming since before I could walk. I’m an ace with a shotgun.

But see that’s where the issue is. When I say “blow this dude’s head off” it’s glib and insensitive. I’ve got a slough of clips from badass kills I’ve gotten. When playing online, games award you for getting killstreaks. That word is a thing. Killstreak. And it’s a good thing. You know who else had a kill streak? Jack the Ripper. Not exactly the person I want to be associated with.

So that brings up this question. Do you feel like a hero yet? After all the death, and all the murder. After lighting an enemy on fire and chuckling as he runs off the roof of a skyscraper. After shooting an enemy in the leg and walking over to watch him bleed out. After bashing an enemy’s face in and putting a bullet in their skull. After watching the life fade from the eyes of these characters. Do you feel like a hero yet?

A common game mechanic is the, I’m gonna call it a morality meter. For those of you that don’t know, several RPGs and other games have instituted a morality meter. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic lets you become a Jedi, or turn to the Dark Side. Fable has a good/evil ranking that allows you specific powers and abilities based on which path you choose to follow. And there’s an interesting thing that happens with these mechanics. Even though gamers play games where they slaughter people in droves, they still typically lean toward the just side of the morality meter (Lange). Peter Molyneux, a developer from Fable said this about the morality meters.

“…in a game like Fable, we spent hours; we spent months, months and years crafting the evil side of Fable, and only ten percent of people actually did the evil side. Come on. You’re supposed to be gamers.”

So it’s this very interesting dichotomy that occurs when you look at the morality. When gamers clearly know when the choice good or evil, they will usually choose good. However, if you look at a game like Grand Theft Auto V there is no morality meter. And that makes that game a whole different animal.

Now I’m going to admit, I’ve run around on killing sprees in GTA. Most people who’ve spent more than five minutes with the game have done the exact same thing. In the campaign though there’s a very grotesque torture scene. You’re playing as the most sadistic character in the game, Trevor, and when you start the torture he’s very excited about it. Let me put this in perspective. Trevor curb stomped a guys face in because he walked in on Trevor sleeping with the guy’s girlfriend. Trevor then gives the dude’s brother a chunk of his brain of his boot to bury.

So needless to say, Trevor has some issues. So the options the game gives you are to choose how to torture this guy. Waterboarding, hooking him up to a car battery, taking a wrench to his crotch and knees, or take pliers to his teeth. As the torture progresses Trevor gets progressively less enamored with the torture. After the torture sequence Trevor is told to kill the man. Instead Trevor delivers him to the airport and feels guilty for what he (and the gamer) did. The torture is graphic and ugly. I had trouble watching it, much less playing it. I think that proves something very interesting. Grand Theft Auto is totally aware of it’s fanbase. It knows that gamers run around murdering people for kicks. And in this one sequence it makes the gamer as uncomfortable as possible. It’s saying that mindless killing isn’t okay. (Heron)

So Trevor pretty obviously wouldn’t be the go to choice for a hero in any video game. He’s unbalanced, homicidal, and downright terrifying. But he did save that one mans life. My question would be, since he did the morally just thing, does that make him a hero? There are dozens of games where the “hero” of the game is a corrupt, morally bankrupt, asshole. The protagonist of Gears of War is in prison when the game starts. I think that people like these morally bankrupt characters being the heroes makes us as players feel better. If these questionable people can be morally heroic, why can’t we?

I want to go back to the title for a minute. It’s not my question, it’s actually a quote from the game Spec Ops: The Line. In the game you play as Captain Martin Walker, and his adversary says to him “Well done, Walker, you’ve done what the storm could not, destroyed the damned 33^rd [battalion]. Do you feel like a hero yet?” For those of you who don’t know, a battalion is up to 800 soldiers. And the 800 soldiers that you killed were Americans. They were fellow soldiers. You burn them alive with white phosphorous and then walk past them and watch them die. And then you find out that in addition to the soldiers, you also killed a couple hundred civilian refugees. Men, women, and children. It shows you a mother holding her child and they are both blackened from the fire. Then the game asks you, “Do you feel like a hero yet?”

Loading screens now commonly offer hints or tips about the game. Occasionally they’ll say something about the lore of the game too. Spec Ops: The Line takes that convention and throws it out the window. Instead it uses it to attack the gamer. The loading screens say things like “White phosphorous is a common allotrope used in your slaughter at the Gate. It can set fire to soldiers and the innocent civilians they are trying to help,” directly after you use it, or they’ll say “The US military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn’t real, so why should you care?” all to make you feel guilty for what you’re doing. They present dialogue on the senseless killing in video games by saying “To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless,” or “How many American’s have you killed today?” But video games are supposed to be fun, right?

That gets into this idea of cognitive dissonance. And if you’re wondering what that is I can tell you that “Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two conflicting ideas simultaneously.” And you’re never gonna guess where I got that definition. Well, maybe you are. I got it from the game. Ya, from Spec Ops: The Line. They are painfully aware of the situation they’re putting the gamer in. They’re doing it on purpose, and they’re doing it very eloquently.

I think this is a very important concept, cognitive dissonance. Both Grand Theft Auto and Spec Ops: The Line are badgering you with dissonant cognitive ideologies the entire time you’re playing the games. While you are torturing someone, or slaughtering innocents the game is saying “Are you completely sure that’s what you should be doing?” It’s taking your previously held ideals about video game violence and turning it on its head. It’s presenting a Call of Duty or Splinter Cell: Blacklist style violence while simultaneously vilifying it. And the game is presenting it so subtly that by the time you realize it, you already agree that maybe that last torture sequence wasn’t necessary.

That brings me to another point. Torture, and it’s in Splinter Cell: Blacklist. So just a superfast summary of the game. Sam Fisher, former C.I.A. stealth super-spy is out to save the world by preventing a terrorist from attacking America right here at home. Alright, so he’s operating somewhere in the Middle East to get info about the terrorists and he finds a few potential “informants.” As Sam, you sneak up on them, shoot two and grab the third to have a conversation. With a very sharp knife. You stab the guy and through an interactive torture sequence use the control sticks to twist the knife. After getting information “it’s ‘moral choice’ time, for Sam has to choose whether to kill or knock out his freshly tortured victim. Let’s review: a moral choice — after an interactive torture sequence” as stated by Tom Bissell, a video game enthusiast and critic. He makes a very good point here. As gamers, we’re somewhat desensitized to things like torture and war or whatever it is we’re gaming through. That doesn’t make any of that stuff okay though. Then going back after torturing someone and saying “oh, I’m gonna be a nice guy by not killing you.” Doesn’t that seem a little self-congratulatory? The moral choice should not be in whether he lives or dies, it should be in whether or not you give them PTSD.

And that’s where I’m going to draw to a close. I’ve said a lot about the morality of video games; but what it really comes down to is the person. There are games like Spec Ops that are designed to make you think. There are also games like Call of Duty that no one plays for the story. Just for the running and gunning. I don’t think either game is better or worse than the other. When it really comes down to it, it’s not about the game. It’s about the player, and what choice you will make.

Sorry “Bro,” Games Aren’t Just for You

Okay so before we get started I’m gonna point out that I play video games. And I play them a lot. I get into tons of genres. Adventure, FPS, Platforming, Racing, RPG, Survival. You name it, I’ve probably tried it, at least when it comes to the genre. I’ve been gaming since I could walk. I’ve been to midnight releases of big games. I’ve lost save files and been upset about it for weeks. Hell, I’ve got a game right now that I’m refusing to play because it glitched and I lost all of my in-game currency.

I’ve got a group of friends that I game with. We get online, we kick some ass, we take some names, and of course, we give each other shit constantly. If someone were to listen to the conversations we have while we’re playing 75% is probably making fun of each other, 20% is #realtalk. For those of you that aren’t hip, that’s basically just talking about our lives. The other 5% is about the game we’re playing. You get to a point where you just run the mission and based on each person’s strengths and weaknesses someone else picks up the slack.

In my squad I’m usually the wheelman, I’m the best driver in most games. My friend Bacon is the pilot and sniper. He also runs enforcer (that means he just goes hard and gets stuff done). Beast is our jack of all trades. You name it, he can do it. Ninja is always running back up for the squad. She’s always got the team’s six. Mopping up enemies we missed, calling in reinforcements, or setting up the next job. She’s our fixer for most things.

Yes. You read that right. I said she. Ninja is a girl. She’s also a crazy badass. And I don’t think my squad gives her enough credit for what she does, myself included. I was chatting with her about this and she said she gets really annoyed because she get’s more flak if she messes up. If Bacon, Beast, or I screwed up the same thing we wouldn’t have been given as much crap as Ninja gets. And in looking at it I totally agree with what she’s saying.

She also doesn’t play with really anyone except for us. We all know each other irl. The guys in the squad, we don’t usually mind playing with new people for a bit. Whenever we get someone new though, Ninja gets really quiet. When she finally does speak up she’s instantly hyper sexualized It’s bullshit that just because she’s female and likes xbox that she automatically is put in the line of fire for her hobby.

Women are the majority of gamers. Ninja has kicked my ass to the curb more times than I can count. It’s high time that the industry starts making more games with strong, non-sexualized, female protagonists. The reboot of Tomb Raider is one of the highest rated games of the past three years. The Last of Us has another extremely strong leading female cast. It’s a widely regarded, critically acclaimed game. Clearly there is a space for female lead games. The gaming industry just needs to realize that these games have an audience that avidly wants more.

Comics and Journalism

Joe Sacco hit on a very select niche that I am very impressed by. He’s found this ability to translate these very intense and horrific things in a way that some people can relate to. Moreover, he’s addressing issues that we as a western culture have trouble understanding. Especially when he covers anything that’s going on in the Middle East. Americans especially tend to disregard the Middle East as a conglomerate of terrorists. We don’t as a whole care enough to figure out what is going on before we form opinions on it.

Sacco does something else very interesting. He inserts himself into his comics. He talks more about that in an interview with Grand Valley State University. He addresses how there are so many journalists that go into the Middle East and say they’re completely objective. His opinion is that it’s impossible to report anywhere objectively. That’s something I completely agree with. If you’re going to report on anything, you’re gonna have to know something about it, that means you’ve formed opinions about it.

Even if you haven’t researched it or looked into it, you’ll still have opinions on any issue. Look at gay marriage, abortion rights, gun rights, the war in the Middle East. everyone always has opinions on these issues. That’s part of being human. I completely agree with Sacco’s sentiment that it’s better to report and say what you think rather than reporting like you’re a fly on the wall just saying “he said/she said.” It doesn’t do anything. You can’t be objective, it’s not possible. We need to embrace our subjective ideals and run with them.

I have a couple issues with Sacco’s work. The first one is that it sounds like he’s making the effort to try and make the stories and atrocities that he’s reporting on accessible. He uses comics in an effort to make the events easier to understand. While I appreciate the effort, I think the comic created a feeling, at least for me, of being thrown into the deep end. It made it very difficult to read. He didn’t pull any punches, which, of course, he’s a war reporter. He wasn’t pulling any punches with his illustrations either. It made it difficult to read in the same way it’s difficult to look at pictures of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina or World War II prison camps.

Combining that shock level with such heavy and complex issues is what lost me. I was interested in the stories, and I really thoroughly enjoyed his writing, and I liked his illustrations. I would’ve read just the picture book, as well as just reading his prose. The combination was too much for me. Part of that is because of the knowledge that those pictures are real things, and the words are about real things. It’s a problem I admit to having as well as, as far as I can tell, most other people in Western culture. We’re very adept at the “Out of sight out of mind” mentality.

I suppose that is part of Sacco’s point. And I respect that, but I don’t know if I’m quite ready to take it on.

Your Favorite Take-Out Order is Bullshit.

 

A Review of The Search for General Tso

Written for Cracked

 

You’ve gone to the same little hole-in-the-wall Chinese place for fifteen years. Every time you call it’s the same.

“Hey, I’d like one order of General Tso’s chicken. White rice, please. Two stars. Uhhhh, Caleb. No, no Caleb. With a ‘C.’”

Fuck it. They always get your name wrong. Three times a month for fifteen years and they still get your name wrong.

“Twenty minutes? Great thanks.”

Have you ever really thought about where that dish came from though? Have you considered who General Tso is? You’re probably thinking something along the lines of “uhh, he was probably some famous general.” No shit, Sherlock. “He like, probably had his personal chef make it or something. It caught on or something. I dunno.”

Okay so first of all, that’s not even a little bit true. Secondly, go watch yourself a documentary. Calm down, it’s only an hour and fifteen minutes long and it’s about food. Even better it’s on Netflix. If you don’t have Netflix there is a very different conversation/intervention to be had. Grab your favorite Chinese comfort food, shut up, and watch.

It’s called The Search for General Tso and I promise it will make you feel like an asshat for craving Panda Express all the time. Just be prepared because we’ll talk about more than just food. You watch as we spend the entire movie experiencing the interplay between Chinese immigrants, Chinese food, and the development of the two in America.

The film appears like a crime documentary. The search for a missing person, and the only way to discover the truth is to go back in time. I promise there will be a few things to laugh at. Opening with a brief history of General Tso and who he was we learn that the origins of the (in)famous chicken. This leads to an investigation of the mass immigration into California during the Gold Rush from China.

This of course led to the Chinese Exclusion Act. Because if a group of people is going to sign a bill excluding a certain demographic from basically everything, it’s gonna be those damn ‘Mericans. After this, there is about 100 years of institutional racism toward Chinese-Americans. The only work they could find was in laundry or restaurants and they figured out how to tweak their food just a little bit so the racist Americans would actually eat it.

However, during World War II and the rise of Chinese Communism, being Chinese or eating Chinese food was again unacceptable. Because Americans are judgmental assholes. This changed again in 1972. That just happened to be the the same year Nixon had a widely televised meal with Chairman Mao. Just a coincidence? Sure. Okay. Within ten years Panda Express opened. We all know how big they are. Ultimately Chinese food became American cuisine. So the question is, is that cultural appropriation?

Do yourself a favor, go watch The Search for General Tso. An uncompromising look at Chinese-American culture and how food affects that.

Update February 23

NPR has just published an article talking about the same issue as the aforementioned documentary. Read it.

The Search for General Tso. Dir. Ian Cheney. Wicked Delicate Films, 2014. Film

 

Comics, Culture, and Connection

When you sit down and read Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” you can’t help but identify with the characters. Moreover, you can’t help but to identify with the struggles she’s going through. And to be clear, the Iranian Revolution is not something that you can really relate to unless you’ve gone through a revolution. Last time I checked, most people in the Western world haven’t had a revolution in at least a couple decades. How does she do this?

She gives her story pictures. She makes a graphic novel. All of her illustrations are extremely simple. This allows you to take them in and process all of the meaning behind one simple picture rather than get bogged down in how beautiful the pictures are. Julie Gerstein talks a bit more about that here.

Specifically I want to address something she talks about in reference to Art Spiegelman’s Maus. She talks about how he turns the story of The Holocaust into something about cats and mice. This allows us to connect or disconnect from it in a productive way. Whichever we have to do, it allows us to talk about it. Instead of talking about Nazis and Jews, we’re talking about cats and mice.

What I want to address is how not only comics, but also film allow to do a similar thing. Most notable is the work of Disney Animation Studios and Disney/Pixar. When you think about a movie released by either of these studios you have to consider the theme. I’m going to use The Lion King as an example. And since I’m a film major, SPOILERS.

So in the Lion King our protagonist’s dad is killed and he spends the rest of the movie blaming himself for his dad’s death. NO MORE SPOILERS. So of course the theme is don’t get trapped in a stampede of wildebeests. Okay so actually the theme is coping with grief and learning how to move on. Now we can all watch this movie and say “Hey, I’ve lost someone. I know what Simba is going through.” From there we can talk to other people who relate to Simba.

I want to be clear none of these people would start off talking about themselves. They would talk about Simba first. They would externalize, or disconnect. This allows them to talk about the heavy, deep, dark stuff in their lives that they’ve never known how to talk about. Because let’s be real, death is hard to talk about. Disney addresses a lot of these serious themes and they’ve recently been dabbling in abuse, anxiety and depression, and the struggles of growing up.

Disney has something of a monopoly when it comes to widely accepted family entertainment. Something about 5 theme parks with another on the way. Dreamworks has begun to follow suit as well with some success. I think it’s widely important that our most popular pop culture mediums allow us to discuss such difficult topics so easily. The only way we solve problems is to talk about them.

Exemplary Documentary

Documentaries fill a very interesting niche in the United States. We all love to learn. We love hearing about nonfiction. Michael Moore talks about this briefly in his 13 Rules for Making Documentary Films. While reading this one of the things that popped into my was  Serial. A podcast that could be argued is something of a documentary. Really, in my opinion, the only difference between investigative journalism and documentaries is that one of them is on screen. I find Serial, This American Life, Criminal and other nonfiction podcasts are more accessible than a documentary. This is said as a film major, mind you.

What really got to me was Mr. Moore’s first rule of documentary filmmaking. You can’t ever turn off the stuff you learn as a film major, so you’re always analyzing. When I’m watching a documentary I’m analyzing it the same way and so many of them are just pedantic. It’s a lecture rather than something interesting and engaging. NOVA does a really excellent job of creating engaging and interesting nonfiction TV shows. And I think there’s value in those shows. A lot of value. I have a younger brother that’s a brilliant scientist and he got interested in science through Mythbusters.

The biggest issue documentaries have is that they get such a bad rap. Nick Fraser talks more about this here. I agree with a lot of what he’s saying too. People don’t like documentaries anymore, and I find that so strange since we enjoy stories so much. We as a culture love the idea that something can be, to turn a phrase, stranger than fiction. I’m so curious as to how we have this fascination with stories and yet we knock them.

Now I do realize I’m arguing both sides at the same time. I do think a change needs to be made. Millennials are into quick and dirty intake of information. We live our lives at 140 characters a minute (I think I’m over the limit with this one). If there was a way to do documentaries in quick snippets that would be great. In my last post I talked about the value of reality TV with Sweatshop- Deadly Fashion. It is a documentary, and it’s in a format that is accessible to Millennials.

As an aside, I thought about not linking Sweatshop again, but I realized that if I was reading this, I wouldn’t want to go back and find the link. I think that’s really telling on some level about the ideas of Millennials. That’s another blog post for another day.

Netflix has been getting into the nonfiction too. Most successfully they’ve recently released Making a Murderer. It’s a TV show that’s told as a story or drama. Humans love stories, no matter where they’re from. We all love a good story. In my experience, the worst documentaries don’t tell a story, they just throw information at people.

The way I see it to make a documentary you have to find information, make it a story, and then make a movie. Like Michael Moore said, don’t make a documentary.

Reality TV- cont.

There was an episode of This American Life I was listening to the other day. It was talking about status updates. The episode can be found here. I just want to focus on the first act in which a trio of 14 year old girls were interviewed about their Instagram usage. It’s only about fifteen minutes long. Instagram is really beneficial for them. It helps their confidence, and I think thats really cool. I see a trend here though. Reality tv is typically viewed by the same demographic that religious uses Instagram. Both of these clearly have benefit in some form or another. So why is it that we as a culture are labeling things young women enjoy as inherently vapid and senseless? I’m guilty of it too. I’m pretty sure I used the word vapid in my last post. I think it’s high time we stop policing what women or anyone for that matter are allowed to enjoy and stop making them feel guilty about how much they love the Kardashians.

Reality TV- A Force for Good or Evil?

So I just watched a ted talk on why reality tv is important. You can watch that video here. I suggest you watch it and then come back. And I mean, I guess I agree with the guy on some level. I definitely agree with the Mr. Rogers bit. Fred Rogers is a HUGE deal. This is a video of him accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award. He doesn’t make it about him, and instead he makes the entire audience cry. The man is a saint and there’s endless value in what he did. However I don’t know if I’d consider it reality television.

That’s the really big issue I had with this ted talk is he never once defines reality tv. Not explicitly anyway. When I think of reality tv, I think Jersey Shore and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. It’s like porn, I’ll know it when I see it. And I suppose maybe his lack of explicit definition is part of the point he’s making. Reality tv is a MUCH bigger genre than we think about. And like in Sweatshop- Deadly Fashion (linked here) it can be used for good. I mean, Anthony Bourdain taught me tons about culture and food with No Reservations and I suppose that’s reality TV too. Do I see value in reality tv? Depends. I still think E! network is vapid.

I want to talk about Sweatshop for a minute.

That shit is unbelievable. I mean, I know these awful things are happening and they’re treated horribly. That’s just how the world is though.

That right there, what I just said, is something of a westernized excuse to get out of doing anything about it. Hannah Clare McFarlane does an excellent job of pointing out that excuse, although she doesn’t call it that. Her article here talks about how even though we all know there’s awful things happening, we don’t do anything to change it. McFarlane does an excellent job of pointing out that this show makes the situations EXTREMELY real. I can’t even imagine going to the grocery store with only nine dollars to spend on groceries. I also think it’s pretty cool one of the trio got We Need $160 tattooed in support of raising the minimum wage. More on that movement here.

The most interesting part of the Sweatshop show for me was how at the beginning the show the trio are all super bubbly and excited about the experience. Like, ya I get it’s cool to go to a new place and learn all these new things. They seemed really oblivious to the conditions though. They were learning quickly and first-hand how awful the conditions really are.

That’s a big part of why I think the reality tv angle was so great for this. Because it took the demographic that stereotypically watches reality tv and is oblivious to issues like sweatshops and puts them in it. And then markets it to the young people of the world to see this stuff and make it clear that it’s problematic. Hopefully the result will be that the young adults who see this will strive to make a difference.-

Tarantino, Heteronormativity, and Brotherly Love

Gender Performativity in Reservoir Dogs

This was an article I had to read for a film class I took last year and I thought it was a really interesting analysis of our culture. Lemme know what you think!