A Year in Review 3: Journal Articles

In addition to the many books I had to read, I think I should include academic journal articles and other bits from the academic world. Apologies for no pictures in this post. Academia is a boring, pictureless world of grey graphs and grey lines in multiple shades...of grey.

It is sort of amazing how much knowledge I have consumed in the past year. It's little wonder I felt overwhelmed, tired, depressed, and withdrawn at the end of it.

Reading these sorts of things is extremely necessary (or so I have been socialized to think) to cut through the personal biases, generalizations, and other noise that comes with culture. You cannot completely cut through these things, but it sometimes helps to try. Each article represents a unique moment in time, or catalogs an event over a period of years.

The power of academia isn't in what it is learning but in what it catalogs, what it explains. As with all knowledge, acceptance of things like this should come with reservations. Everything academia publishes is only correct for so long and even then "correct" is suspect.

Useful is probably closer to what journal articles end up being. Caveats aside, here are a group of articles that have stuck with me since I read them.

Aoyama, Yuko, Hiro Izushi. 2002. “Hardware Gimmick or Cultural Innovation? Technological, Cultural, and Social Foundations of the Japanese Video Game Industry.” Research Policy

ABSTRACT:

This paper examines the role of creative resources in the emergence of the Japanese video game industry. We argue that creative resources nurtured by popular cartoons and animation sector, combined with technological knowledge accumulated in the consumer electronics industry, facilitated the emergence of successful video game industry in Japan. First we trace the development of the industry from its origin to the rise of platform developers and software publishers. Then, knowledge and creative foundations that influenced the developmental trajectory of this industry are analyzed, with links to consumer electronics and in regards to cartoons and animation industry.

Video games are unique in that they are cultural objects infused with technological symbolism. At times, we laud video games for their ability to make us feel. Other times, we are amazed by the sheer amount of power a video game contains. Throughout their history, many different cultures have contributed to what eventually became video game culture. This particular article is useful insomuch that it traces the problems and benefits of how culturally close a hardware manufacturer is to a software producer. Given the recent Xbox 360, I wonder and hope for an update to this article.

Becker, Howard. 1967. Whose Side Are We On?. Social Problems

INTRODUCTION:

To have values or not to have values: the question is always with us. When sociologists undertake to study problems that have relevance to the world we live in, they find themselves caught in a crossfire. Some urge them to not take sides, to be neutral and do research that is technically correct and value free. Others tell them their work is shallow and useless if it does not express a deep commitment to a value position.

This dilemma, which seems so painful to so many, actually does not exist, for one of its horns is imaginary. For it to exist, one would have to assume, as some apparently do, that it is indeed possible to do research that is uncontaminated by personal and political sympathies. I propose to argue that it is not possible and, therefore, that the question is not whether we should take sides, since we inevitably will, but rather whose side are we on.

This particular article comes up every year and is central to my current thoughts on minority vs majority groups. Take, for example, video games. Most game studies folks take great care to design studies that incorporate independent games. They do this because, it seems, it is easier to gain access and, for whatever reason, minority groups "need" to be studied. What this ends u p doing, as Becker points out, is simply adding to the general malaise against the larger group. Without the larger group, the minority group gains access to more things but at a certain point that group will be abandoned for the next minority group. In order to combat this, more research needs to be done on the majority groups. In video game terms, this means that more work should be done with larger companies. The data these companies would provide would offer quite an amazing amount of useful data.

Consalvo, Mia. 2006. “Console Video Games and Global Corporations: Creating a Hybrid Culture.” New Media Society

ABSTRACT:

This article argues that the contemporary console video game industry is a hybrid encompassing a mixture of Japanese and American businesses and (more importantly) cultures to a degree unseen in other media industries, especially in regard to US popular culture. The particularities of the video game industry and culture can be recognized in the transnational corporations that contribute to its formation and development; in the global audience for its products; and in the complex mixing of format, style and content within games. As an exemplar of this process, the Japanese game publisher Square Enix is the focus of this case study, as it has been successful in contributing to global culture as well as to the digital games industry through its glocal methods. That achievement by a non-Western corporation is indicative of the hybridization of the digital games industry, and it is examined here as one indicator of the complexities and challenges, as well as future potentials, of global media culture.

I have been excited by any work that makes an effort to separate games that come from different cultures into different types. This particular piece is a foundational one for my thesis. In many ways, I want to present video games as something that is created by culture. I want to add to this sentiment that video games.

Connell, R.W. and James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. "Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept." Gender and Society.

ABSTRACT: The concept of hegemonic masculinity has influenced gender studies across many academic fields but has also attracted serious criticism. The authors trace the origin of the concept in a convergence of ideas in the early 1980s and map the ways it was applied when research on men and masculinities expanded. Evaluating the principal criticisms, the authors defend the underlying concept of masculinity, which in most research use is neither reified nor essentialist. However, the criticism of trait models of gender and rigid typologies is sound. The treatment of the subject in research on hegemonic masculinity can be improved with the aid of recent psychological models, although limits to discursive flexibility must be recognized. The concept of hegemonic masculinity does not equate to a model of social reproduction; we need to recognize social struggles in which subordinated masculinities influence dominant forms. Finally, the authors review what has been confirmed from early formulations (the idea of multiple masculinities, the concept of hegemony, and the emphasis on change) and what needs to be discarded (onedimensional treatment of hierarchy and trait conceptions of gender). The authors suggest reformulation of the concept in four areas: a more complex model of gender hierarchy, emphasizing the agency of women; explicit recognition of the geography of masculinities, emphasizing the interplay among local, regional, and global levels; a more specific treatment of embodiment in contexts of privilege and power; and a stronger emphasis on the dynamics of hegemonic masculinity, recognizing internal contradictions and the possibilities of movement toward gender democracy.

This article created a lot of really useful knowledge for me. Anyone tired of discussions about hegemony, feminism, and various other tedious (because of social barriers to discussion, not because of the topic) material should read this article.

Connel and Messerschmidt remove a ton of barriers in the discussion of gender by re-establishing gender studies as both male and female, not just inequality between the two because males, like females, do not actually meet the expectation of the hegemony. In the end, the most basic thing to take from this article is that we are not being complicated enough when it comes to studying gender.

Jones, John E. 2005. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Case No. 04cv2688

INTRODUCTION:
On October 18, 2004, the Defendant Dover Area School Board of Directors passed by a 6-3 vote the following resolution:

Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of Life is not taught. On November 19, 2004, the Defendant Dover Area School District announced by press release that, commencing in January 2005, teachers would be required to read the following statement to students in the ninth grade biology class at Dover High School:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.

This judgement has been frequently handed to me over the years but 2010 is the first time I have actually read it. Because I live in Texas, school books, school subjects, and other various things around school have been extremely important. The loss of things like Benjamin Franklin, various Mexican War issues, the trail of tears and other tragic moments for white americans will lead to a generation of kids striving to be more white than they are already covertly pushed into.

This particular judgement is striking because of the extremely careful wording the judge used. In almost all ways, this judge shut this argument down. It is a solid piece of writing and the careful writing is indicative of the growing problems that have been created through the intensifying frequency of "innovation". I really recommend this as a "must read."

Latour, Bruno. 2010. An attempt at writing a “Compositionist Manifesto” New Literary History

A prologue in form of avatar:

If I had an agent, I am sure he would advise me to sue James Cameron over his latest blockbuster since AVATAR should really be called PANDORA’S HOPE! Yes, Pandora is the name of the mythical humanoid whose box holds all the ills ohumanity, but it is also the name of the heavenly body that humans from planet Earth (all members of the typically American military-industrial complex) are exploiting to death without any worry for the fate of its local inhabitants, the Navis, and of their ecosystem, a superorganism and a goddess called Eywa. I am under the impression that this film is the first popular description of what happens when modernist humans meet Gaia. And it’s not pretty.

The REVENGE OF GAIA, to use one of James Lovelock’s titles, results in a terrifying replay of Dunkirk 1940 or Saigon 1973: a retreat and a defeat. This time, the Cowboys lose to the Indians: they have to flee from their Frontier and withdraw back home abandoning all their riches behind them. In trying to pry open the mysterious planet Pandora in search of a mineral —known as unobtanium, no less!—, the Earthlings, just like in the classical myth, let loose all the ills of humanity: not only do they ravage the planet, destroy the great tree of life, kill the quasi Amazonian Indians who had lived in edenic harmony with her, they also become infected by their own macho ideology. Outward destruction breeds inward destruction. And again, like in the classical myth, hope is left at the bottom of Pandora’s box —I mean planet—because it lies deep in the forest, thoroughly hidden in the complex web of connections that the Navis nurture with their own Gaia, a biological and cultural network which only a small team of naturalists and anthropologists begin to explore. It is left to Jack, an outcast, a marine with neither legs nor academic credentials to finally “get it”, yet at a price: the betrayal of his fellow mercenaries, a rather conventional love affair with a native and a magnificent transmigration of his original crippled body into his avatar thereby inverting the relationship between the original and the copy and giving a whole new dimension to what it means to “go native”…).

I take this film is to be the first script that doesn't take ultimate catastrophe and destruction for granted —as so many have before— but opts for a much more interesting outcome: a new search for hope on condition that what it means to have a body, a mind, and a world is completely redefined. The lesson of the film, in my reading of it, is that modernized and modernizing humans are not physically, psychologically, scientifically and emotionally equipped to survive on their Planet. Like in Michel Tournier’s inverted story of Robinson Crusoe, they have to relearn from beginning to end what it is to live on their island —and just like in Tournier’s fable, Crusoe ultimately decides to stay in the now civilized and civilizing jungle instead of going back home to what for him has become just another wilderness. But what fifty years ago in Tournier’s romance was a fully individual experience, has become today in Cameron’s film a collective adventure: there is no sustainable life for Earth bound species on their planet island.

So, while studying modernization and the theories that go along with it, I ended up reading a ton of Bruno Latour. At this point, the fans of Latour seem more like rabid Star Wars fans than they do philisophs or professionals so it's hard to cut through that sort of stuff to get at what he is talking about.

This article, if you can stomach reading Latour, is interesting because of what it signifies. At some point, as masculinity came under fire, and with it, modernization theory, feminism gained power. Along with it, things like living in harmony, being at peace, and other "female" designated behaviors began to permeate popular culture. This movie, Avatar, symbolizes a general switch away from trying to conquer nature to giving up the frontier and heading back home. That living within nature is probably more of a benefit for the planet...and us...than it would be living through science as nature.

Messner. 2005. The Male Consumer as Loser: Beer and Liquor Ads in Mega Sports Media Events. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
INTRODUCTION:

The historical development of modern men’s sport has been closely intertwined with the consumption of alcohol and with the financial promotion and sponsorship provided by beer and liquor producers and distributors, as well as pubs and bars (Collins and Vamplew 2002). The beer and liquor industry plays a key economic role in commercialized college and professional sports (Zimbalist 1999; Sperber 2000). Liquor industry advertisements heavily influence the images of masculinity promoted in sports broadcasts and magazines (Wenner 1991). Alcohol consumption is also often a key aspect of the more dangerous and violent dynamics at the heart of male sport cultures (Curry 2000; Sabo, Gray, and Moore 2000). By itself, alcohol does not “cause” men’s violence against women or against other men; however, it is commonly one of a cluster of factors that facilitate violence (Koss and Gaines 1993; Leichliter et al. 1998). In short, beer and liquor are central players in “a high holy trinity of alcohol, sports, and hegemonic masculinity” (Wenner 1998).

This article examines beer and liquor advertisements in two “mega sports media events” consumed by large numbers of boys and men—the 2002 and 2003 Super Bowls and the 2002 and 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues. Our goal is to illuminate tropes of masculinity that prevail in those ads. We see these ads as establishing a pedagogy of youthful masculinity that does not passively teach male consumers about the qualities of their products so much as it encourages consumers to think of their products as essential to creating a stylish and desirable lifestyle. These ads do more than just dupe consumers into product loyalty; they also work with consumers to construct a consumption-basedmasculine identity relevant to contemporary social conditions. Drawing on insights from feminist cultural studies (Walters 1999), we argue that these gendered tropes watched by tens of millions of boys and men offer a window through which we can broaden our understanding of contemporary continuities, shifts, and strains in the social construction of masculinities.

This article came up a few different times this year and I think the spirit it captures might actually be more accurately portrayed through the movie Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. This article traces the impact of feminism on males through beer advertising for major sporting events, particularly, the Super Bowl.

Feminism has had a huge impact on men, maybe moreso than it has had on women. It is rare to see articles like this and while this particular article has a lot of methodological issues, it is useful. Between this and the Connell/Messerschmidt article, a person could make some interesting arguments.

Wajcman, Judy. 2007. “From Women and Technology to Gendered Technoscience.” Information, Communication and Society

ABSTRACT:

This paper situates current discussions of women's position in ICTs in the wider context of feminist debates on gender and technology. While a common trend among early feminist theorists was a profound pessimism about the inherent masculinity of technology, this was replaced during the 1990s by an unwarranted optimism about the liberating potential of technoscience for women. This article gives an account of both technophobia and technophilia, arguing that recent approaches drawing on the social studies of technology provide a more subtle analysis. Avoiding both technological determinism and gender essentialism, technofeminist approaches emphasize that the gender-technology relationship is fluid and flexible, and that feminist politics and not technology per se is the key to gender equality.

I think that this abstract speaks for itself. This article and the next are a comprehensive examination of feminist thought about technology.

Wajcman, Judy. 2010. “Feminist Theories of Technology.” Cambridge Journal of Economics

ABSTRACT:
Feminist theories of technology have come a long way over the last quarter of a century. The expanding engagement at the intersection of feminist scholarship and science and technology studies (STS) has enriched both fields immeasurably, and I will largely focus my reflections on the literature associated with these sites. I begin by highlighting the continuities as well as the differences between contemporary and earlier feminist debates on technology. Current approaches focus on the mutual shaping of gender and technology, in which technology is conceptualised as both a source and consequence of gender relations. In avoiding both technological determinism and gender essentialism, such theories emphasise that the gender-technology relationship is fluid and situated. These deliberations highlight how processes of technical change can influence gender power relations. A feminist politics of technology is thus key to achieving gender equality.

I got into technology studies because I was writing a paper on Science Literacy and STEM education tactics. The article linked above is a great overview of two things. 1). A history of feminist thought with regard to technology and 2). Why that history went the way it did. If you have ever wanted to link feminist thought to technology, this piece is really great.

Williams, Dimitri, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo, and James D. Ivory. “The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games.” New Media Society

ABSTRACT:
A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. This innovation enabled the results to be analyzed in proportion to the games that were actually played by the public, and thus allowed the first statements able to be generalized about the content of popular video games. The results show a systematic over-representation of males, white and adults and a systematic under-representation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly. Overall, the results are similar to those found in television research. The implications for identity, cognitive models, cultivation and game research are discussed.

This article does a good job at pointing out the, systematically, the over-representation of white males in video games. The authors take their findings and place it within the literature on television research. This step makes this piece extremely useful for any research projects that involve digital groups in a wide-range of disciplines. The section "Why game representations matter" is very exhaustive.

The end

I think that this is a pretty nice review for the things I found interesting last year. My selection process is mostly 3 from each type of semester (Spring, Summer, Fall) and a floater. I have to wonder what will happen once i'm out of school.

Resolutions?

I spent a lot of 2010 in the midst of a great deal of stress that was unavoidable. Most everything in my life suffered. 2011 will be a year of re-establishing that which I lost in 2010 and putting forth a lot of effort to get into a PhD program. I've been writing a research philosophy lately. I might actually be on my way to creating a 5 year research plan. 2011 will be a year to remember!

A Year in Review 2: Books

I read a lot this year. In fact, I think I read more this year than I have in most years previous. In the light of the new year, despite being 4 days in, I thought i'd put up a quick retrospective on the books I read for 2010. As I tried to do in the last post about the new year, I am including books that weren't first published in 2010 though some of the stuff I read was just released.

Because this is about 2010, i'll put up 10 books that impacted me. I will put these in alphabetical order by author.

Azuma, Hiroki. Otaku: Japan's Database Animals.

Throughout college, publically and personally, I struggle with acknowledging I am a fan of Japanese things and violently denying that fact. I am of two worlds. The shame of the Japanophile haunts me. The tag of Otaku continually follows me. As I have gone through my Masters, I began to realize that this label, this aversion to belonging to a community of people who are mostly denied a place in common society, is probably worth studying. Throughout the years, discussing various aspects of the Japanese culture with my old language and culture professor, I began a journey to understand what it was that I was all at once attracted and repulsed by.

At random, I came upon this book by Azuma. It is one of the first real attempts, I think, to bring the philosophs from Japan into an American scene. Who knew that the Japanese loved Hegel and, through Hegel, the Frankfurt folks? I certainly did not.

This book traces the development of the Otaku in Japanese popular culture and it does so with a sense of wonder that can only be called Japanese. By the end of this book I was so hopeful yet so depressed that I didn't know if I could really bring myself to look through it again for references. The reaction I got from this book tells me that anyone who has ever wondered about Otaku, Anime, or just Japanese pop culture, really needs to read this book.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space.

Early in the year, at the end of the Fall semester 2009, I began to really enjoy the use of Twitter. While I have made some mistakes in how I communicate through it, the amount of knowledge it has opened for me is somewhat staggering. Chris Lepine, a doctoral student in Edmunton, Alberta in Canada, recommended this book by Bachelard as a book that people interested in design might enjoy.

My initial thought was that I typically avoid psychological texts insomuch that blending them too much might be a problem later in my professional life. However, on a whim and during a particularly long bus ride to Austin from school, I made it through most of this book.

The most basic thing I took from this book is that we are all raised somewhere. The place where we are raised reflects a general sense of how we perceive the world later. As such, in application of these ideas, a designer will take from their childhood and development portions of this and place it in what they are making.

I am obsessed, continually, with this very idea. After all, design cannot happen without reference. To design is to critique. To anyone with time and to anyone who can stomach the stuffy, complicated, prose of an academic philosoph, I really recommend this book.

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games.

I learned a lot about the world through video games. As a child, health problems kept me out of social circles and made it difficult for me to form relationships as a normal child would. As such, I was given a heroic amount of video games and would often spend time going through them, noticing how different the ones made in this crazy Japan place were from the ones that came from America. With this thought in mind, I read Persuasive Games at the behest of a slew of people, most notably Simon Ferrari, and I was extremely happy with what Bogost had to say.

The thing I took out of this book was that the narrative of a game in addition to the things we call rules form an argument about something. Namely, the narrative and the mechanics are inexorably linked and that link coincides with societal norms and values. In what may be my favorite example of how games reflect culture, Bogost discusses the rules for food that govern Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.

In this section, he outlines the negative connotations of fast food. Fast food is traditionally associated with the lower classes. As such, the lower classes have weight problems. Weight problems are associated with laziness and the lower classes are therefor associated with being lazy and fat. Now, Rockstar, whether meaning to or not, created a world for CJ that includes only fast food.

The interesting thing here is that this is a social critique. Basic sociological theory posits that we are all trapped by the conditions we were born into. Education levels, healthiness, work ethic, socioeconomic status. To make a long argument short, the lower classes (working classes) eat fast food because there is no other choice because that choice isn't known. Fast food restaurants are traditionally associated with urban centers and the general socioeconomic conditions of urban areas are traditionally very low.

This is an oversimplification but the gravity of this appearing in a game like Grand Theft Auto does two things, 1). It reifies the idea that the poor only want fast food and 2). It calls to attention the fact that the poor only have access to fast food.

Bogost's book, for that reason (even if i'm getting it wrong), was amazing.

Daniels, Jessie. Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights.

One of my favorite faculty members I help is one Dr. Barbara Trepagnier. Her book, Silent Racism, introduced me to a lot of concepts and ideas that would form the greater part of what I was interested in as a Graduate Student. One day, I went looking for more books about similar concepts. I was all at once interested in how race was portrayed online and how race came online.

On Amazon, I found the book mentioned above and posted it to Twitter. A little while later, I recieved a mention on Twitter from the author and so I started following her. A few replies, a brief presentation in the department, and a bunch of direct messages and emails later, I find myself writing a book chapter on race and video games with Dr. Daniels. This particular story is probably one that is found a lot on Twitter.

The book though, is a historical treatment of white supremacy and how it found its way online. It also discusses the idea of cloaked websites or, those websites out there that seem to be one thing while actually being a way to hurt an idea. For example, anti-abortion websites meant to feel like abortion communities or websites of people who love wal-mart that is actually run by wal-mart.

The ideas, treatment, theories, and data in this book really make it worth far more than an academic text about an idea. I try and push this book on most people I meet and hope to see it keep appearing in the various circles of people online I talk to.

Dematteis, J.M. and Mike Zeck. The Amazing Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt.

I grew up with people who loved comic books. I love video games and digital media. Last year, thanks to the "Black Spider-Man" incident, I somehow ended up writing about and reading about comic books.

I was interested in how Spider-Man developed over time, through various writers all coming from mostly the same background, and how the sense of place that is Brooklyn changed given the amount of time that has gone by since the comic first appeared. This particular comic, a story about a hunter incapable of understanding or dealing with defeat, really hits a lot of points that resonate with the "whiteness" of comic books.

If you haven't ever read this particular comic, I really recommend it. Defense of my statement will come as we get closer to my presentation on the subject in April.

Jin, Dal Yong. Korea's Online Gaming Empire.

So, Korea is one of the most interesting game designing places that isn't Japan or America. At least, this is what I have heard. It is almost impossible to find good data or historical development texts anywhere. This book does an amazing job at what it says it will:

"This book examines the multiple causes of growth of the online game industry in Korea. First, this book explains why and how the Korean government adopted new economic and cultural policies to develop the online game sector as a cutting-edge business and cultural icon. Second, it examines the role of Korean and foreign-based transnational corporations in the online game industry...The relationship between international transnational coroporations and Korean-based transnational and national corporations will also be examined. In this light, the book discusses the impact of neoliberal globalization on the game industries and on government policy." (page 9).

I really hope that more video game studies take the form that this book did. The impact of a video game, especially large games, is much more than most people realize.

Latour, Bruno. War of the Worlds: How about peace?

This particular book has had an impact on a lot of the things that I do. It is perhaps the most clear and distinct example of what the work of Bruno Latour has to offer to the body politic as well as the language that surrounds many of the issues central to modernization, globalization and neoliberalism.

"Whatever follows modernism at least has the advantage of being clearer. There is no doubt that the war of the worlds is taking place; unity and multiplicity cannot be achieved unless they are progressively pieced together by delicate negotiations. Nobody can constitute the unity of the world for anybody else...by generously offering to let the others in, on condition that they leave at the door all that is dear to them..." (p.30).

This particular lesson is really difficult to swallow. However, it is a lesson that all of us need to swallow.

Video games reflect the nature of the systems we live in. No matter the game, the inequity present through who plays and how they play reflects a system that has had an impact throughout the world. I can only hope that the "punk" game makers in the indie scene will pick up on the old punk movement and produce work that actually escapes this system instead of adding to it. This book was heavily on my mind this year as I watched the indie game scene take its current shape.

Lingis, Alphonso. The Community for Those Who Have Nothing in Common.

Going along with the Latour book comes this book about death. It is a collection of essays from this philosopher and it actually blew my mind. It sets everything up through this passage:

"From the beginning, philosophical thought, unlike the wisdom of the sages of pre-Socratic Greece, India, Persia, and China, was linked to the cause of building community. The rational form of knowledge produces a common discourse that is intergrally one and a new kind of community, in principle, unlimited.

Rational science is not distinguishable from the empirical knowledge of the great sedentary civilizations of India, China, the Mayas, the Incas, or from that of the nomads who have surived for centuries in their often harsh environments by its content of observations...

...What the West calls science is not accumulations of observations but explanatory systems." (p.1-2).

This particular introduction has been on my mind since I read it. I have tried to strive to understand what it means for society, what it means to two unlike groups meeting at a negotiating table. At its essence, I have tried to think about what it would be like to not be surrounded by a culture that exists through and because of science.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics.

I began to get into comic books so that I could present a paper on Spider-Man. I wanted to get into comic books because, like video games, they are the new place for mythology as well as a cultural object that bridges cultures together.

It has taken me a long time to be able to really start down a path to understanding comics. In addition to being cultural objects, fan studies also has a healthy amount of data to use here. This particular book serves both of these purposes by providing a blue-print for how fans judge a comic as well as how authors write them.

In the copy I have (ISBN 9780060976255), page 74 is probably the most useful thing to me. It discusses 6 aspects of comic books.

1. Moment to Moment
2. Action to Action
3. Subject to Subject
4. Scene to Scene
5. Aspect to Aspect
6. Non-Sequitur

The author then goes through a variety of comic books and displays how each of them uses these 6 aspects. Cultural differences are especially noticeable here. The implications for things outside of comic books are stupendous. As such, this book should be read by all manner of people.

Nakamura, Lisa. Digitizing Race.

For this book, for all of Nakamura's work, I can't really put into words how useful it is. Instead, i'll simply post the back of the book:

In the ninties, neoliberalism simultaneously provided the context for the Internet's rapid uptake in the United States and discouraged public conversations about racial politics. At the same time many scholars lauded the widespread use of text-driven interfaces as a solution to the problem of racial intolerance. Today's online world is witnessing text-driven interfaces giving way to far more visually intensive and commercially driven media forms that not only reeal but showcase people's racial, ethnic, and gender identity. Lisa Nakamura refers to case studies of popular yet rarely evaluated uses of the Internet such as pregnancy Websites, intant messaging, and online petitions and quizzes to look at the emergence of race-, ethnic-, and gender-identified visual cultures.

What this book ends up doing is providing a context through which the emergence of particular racial stereotypes evolved online. Her later work focuses more on the nationality and stereotypes of gold farmers in Massively Multiplayer Games.

In the end

In the end, I realized while writing this, that I am currently obsessed with the impact of neoliberal policies and ideas on the perception of just about anything. 2010 has been sort of a depressing year academically, but I can also say that I feel great about what i've read.

A Year in Review

So, it's 2011 now and everyone I know or occasionally read is making posts about their favorite games that came out in 2010. I used to write (when the subject was new to me) about modernization theory; that theory of progress, how we are always moving forward and how, while we aren't there yet, science will save us.

In the spirit of protest (in the loosest sense of the term), I decided to write about some games that I found this year, or found interesting, and not about the latest and greatest. Each game represents a unique point in time for me. Since it is 2010, I will mention 10 games.

Trauma from Krystian Majewski

So, as I have slowly made my way through mapping out the indie scene in video games, I came upon Trauma. Later, I somehow ended up doing a Podcast with Krystian about Monster Hunter but that is a story for later.

Honestly, I was sort of amazed at what the game was trying to accomplish and I was shocked that I felt like I did the first time I played Myst when looking at preview videos for it. Who was this woman, why was she there, what is up with all these dreams, are they dreams? All these puzzles. Unlike Myst, this game really reminds me of the thing I do like about new games based on older models, they have a chance to make them better. Sadly, not many do, but this game has really impressed me. I am generally uneasy while playing it. This is a really great feeling!

Monster Hunter Tri

Along with Krystian, who is making the above game, and SocialDissonance who makes videos for this game, Monster Hunter Tri has made a really stupendous impact on how I view video games and what they mean to me. I initially started playing this game as a way to distract myself from a very personal situation my fiance and I were going through at the time. Her father was dying. At the time, a friend and I had started playing this game. We later found SocialDissonance and a couple other players through Internet-Relay Chat and formed a really solid group that didn't fall apart until the situation I was avoiding actually occurred.

It changed my perception about games in a few subtle ways. I view games as a construction of culture. Mechanics and Narrative construction occur using the same building blocks. In this game, the 3rd (5th) Monster Hunter game, Capcom actually removed a lot of content, a lot of complex mechanics, and tried to reboot the series for world consumption instead of Japanese / Korean consumption. While it didn't necessarily accomplish its task, it did manage to make a few things clear for me about the imbalance of success of games internationally.

1. In general, Japanese and American gamers have very different tastes that are very complicated and intertwined. These tastes are based on lifestyle, age appropriateness, commute traditions, and historical developments.
2. While those tastes coincide, the culture of origin present in a game's mechanics (bundles of rules) does not matter as much as the culture of origin of the game's presentation (which is a type of mechanic).
3. American gamers will take some games that come from Japan and place them on a pedestal insomuch that it actually restricts a game's proliferation inside American culture.
4. Attempts to by-pass this typically end in frustration on all sides.

Monster Hunter Tri is, by and large, a great game. However, it is only a great game if you have friends to play it with. Monster Hunter, like other Capcom Games, reflect a general sense of "the climb," but do so brutally. While Monster Hunter Tri is a reboot and much easier than the others, it is still impossibly hard for someone who hasn't played these games before. The success of these games in Asian markets combined with the elitism of the type of gamer who traditionally likes Japanese Games because they aren't popular in America, present an impossible intersection of gaming and culture.

I should probably develop this further in a different post.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (not my video but it's the best I could find)

I suppose this would be considered cheating but I ended up getting myself a PSP Go for Christmas. This was one of the first games I purchased for it (the others being Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker and Tetris). I have probably played about 100 hours of this game (it boasts over 500). Unlike Monster Hunter Tri, this game is brutally hard. On the first mission, I died. On the second mission, I died. I kept dying until I managed to hobble together a suit of armor and a really defensive weapon in order to deal with the harsh world I was just in. The sense of empowerment a person feels when they finally down a really difficult wyvern in this game is powerful. I really feel like the world is just a little easier than it was each time the end music plays and the phrase, "Objective Complete!" appears on screen. The uphill climb is a general reset to 0 over the course of 3 different phases of the game (low rank, high rank, and g-rank).

The first mission of each rank reminds you that the world your character lives in is much more brutal than you thought. This is a game more about your will versus a computer's will (in the form of wyverns). I feel compelled to keep trying until I can outsmart the computer or simply outlast it.

Wii Punch Out

I played through this game in a weekend and had tons of fun doing so. I then bought the original Mike Tyson's Punchout (without Mike Tyson) and was reminded why my childhood frustration with the game existed. I still can't beat Mike Tyson.

Nostalgia in this game is like some sort of crazy thrill ride. Each of these characters has grown up in a way that Nintendo kids can identify with and that most people who play the game will be able to understand. I really wish that more game reboots and remakes would manage to capture the feel of this game.

Irisu Syndrome (The Alice Syndrome)

At one point, I was reading somewhere on the Internet about a bunch of games that physically did things to a person's computer or game system. The most obvious are games like Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube or Metal Gear Solid 2. Nier also ends up being like this. So, this game creates a series of txt files in a folder on your computer. It doesn't tell you it is doing this. I recommend this game for a lot of what happens in those text files. It is pretty unique.

Metroid

I think most people probably know what Metroid is at this point. NES Games like Metroid are, by now, legendary. When I was researching something on the history of women in video games, I came across the instruction book to this game: here. That Samus wasn't revealed as a woman until the end of the game is something of a wonder to me. Reprints of the game, and those instruction manuals, took a gender neutral tone. The implications for this, and all arguments for and against the reasoning for it, are vast.

Policenauts

This game is one of the first fan-translations I had come across while it was in its infancy. How it managed to get finished is sort of a blend of SomethingAwful's Let's Play community and the people who had started doing it. The amount of crowd-sourcing and effort that went into this is nothing short of amazing. The game itself is most definitely worth a play. Hideo Kojima can, even if you don't like his games, make games that are unique.

Half-Minute Hero

This game is really intense. You have 30 seconds to stop a person from casting a spell to destroy the world. There is also the Princess 30. A princess with a 30-second curfew that has to do various tasks to save her Dad. I think the game really shines as an example of something that has bothered me about games.

Games do not have to be based on reality. A man could, if programmers wanted, subscribe to female stereotypes. Or, this princess could have a 30-second curfew set by her parents but still manages to go out and beat down a whole slew of enemies with her army, accomplish a task, and run back to the castle. The ramp-up of this mode really has me enjoying this game.

Saints Row II

Earlier this year, I started work on a co-authored book chapter about overt and 'color-blind' racism in games. I met a lot of interesting folks doing interesting projects along the way. So, for this project, I had to play through a significant portion of Saints Row II, a game I wouldn't normally play because, by and large, I am not a fan of open-world games. However, this game had some pretty unique things to it:

1. I could create a male or female character with a male or female voice. Transgender characters were possible.
2. While making a character, increasing chest size ultimately results in the model being censored while a shirt or bra is rendered.
3. The messages in this game were extremely poignant in terms of race relations.

This game really left me wondering about how the gender and ethnicity issues of gaming today will be addressed: Will same sex relations, fairness, and equality ultimately be overcome because it is cheaper to do so programmatically? I expect i'll write about this more this year.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

I think most of the issues with gender equality are present in this scene. The game makers spend a lot of time establishing the generally good quality of character of Sgt. Paul Jackson. He then decides to go against an evacuation order "rescue" the only female character seen in this game. The only reward for this action is that all involved die. This scene is sadly squashed by the events in Modern Warfare 2 and all notice of it is probably out of the public eye.

The end of the year new year resolutions

I spent a lot of December trying to get into hardcore gaming and I am trying to resolve this in the new year as an end goal. I have learned more this December than I had the previous 11 months. Until now, I have only managed to get through a few games in this manner (100% complete, mastery, etc). My problem has long been that I tend to go all over the place with games. As I finish the research on my thesis, I have managed to hit a stride in games unlike anything that i've really been able to do. This excites me and I think that my comprehension of games now is more clearly formed. I will probably not post very much about my thesis until it gets closer to being finished.

Images of Women 12: The Final Bout

I am nearing the end of this semester. In the beginning, I said this:

Part of this course is keeping a journal of reactions to the articles we are supposed to read. The resulting entries related to this course will be slightly more personal than I typically write about but will most likely still relate to videogames in some way shape or form.

In looking at my entries from the past, they look something like this:

1. Covering - The act of hiding one's sexuality when that sexuality doesn't agree with the norm
2. Cult of True Womanhood - Entry for women in games as a historical analysis
3. The Virgin Mary and faulting pop culture for "missing" some things while getting others (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
4. Powerful women, Eve, Lilith, and purity in games
5. STS, STEM, Females and Technology
6. More on the cult of true womanhood
7. Diversity in technology creation, games
8. Annotated discourse on race in technology
9. A blog entry detailing my presentation on the interaction of Moe and War (american and japanese games)
10. A statement on comic books loosely tying in gender as an example
11. More detail about comic books and race, Aunt May as a stereotype

The thing that bothers me about the previous two entries is that gender took a bit of a back seat and I ended up talking about Intersectionality. I think I tend to write about this as I am obsessed with networks through Bruno Latour. However, I don't know that i've ever defined it. Intersectionality is:

a sociological theory suggesting that—and seeking to examine how—various socially and culturally constructed categories of discrimination interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to systematic social inequality. Intersectionality holds that the classical models of oppression within society, such as those based on race/ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, class, or disability do not act independently of one another; instead, these forms of oppression interrelate creating a system of oppression that reflects the "intersection" of multiple forms of discrimination.

I think this concept can bridge the gap between traditional social science and the social science Latour discusses in most of his work. The primary and most basic difference is that instead of attaching value or assigning the cause for behaviors (in the Howard Becker sense of the word), we sociologists let our research subjects act of their own accord. In a sense, Sociology is less about identifying problems and more about displaying how people think.

In this sense, we Sociologists need to learn how to write. We're really bad at it.

So Intersectionality is a unique and bridging topic. While Sociologists assign actions and beliefs based on precedents in research, Sociology is very good at identifying how people are different.

Where we come from, our gender, our social class, our ethnicity, our religious beliefs, our governmental beliefs, our sexuality, our peer groups, our subcultures, and so many other things create a person who then uses those things to make sense of the world around them. This is not to say that society exists outside of us, but that each moment, each minute, everyday, we have an interaction with something, somewhere in which we are influenced or are doing the influencing.

Insomuch that Sociology tends to get ahead of itself in declaring minority/majority power relationships and Actor-Network Theory almost totally ignores that power, Intersectionality is a mode of thought that takes into account difference before making judgements about it.

As an example, let's deconstruct a video game character. I have been playing the game Nier lately. In this game is probably the most interesting character I have seen in a video game: Kaine. Kaine is possessed by a male spirit and has been since she was a little girl. In many ways, Kaine is both intersexed and transgendered. Intersexed in that she has the soul of a male in her body but transgendered in that her behavior is that of a male and her appearance is sexualized female. This is such a controversial topic in the United States that the character (who has received quite a bit of press coverage as the game was released) was not featured on the US Website

I think the easiest way to display how different these two traits (masculine and feminine) are. Here is the intro (watch the first 15 seconds or so) which displays some "stereotypically" masculine behavior:

And here is what she looks like:

Perhaps the most interesting thing in the game happens at the very, very end:

Nier, Kainé and Weiss defeat the Shadowlord and his Grimoire Noir, and discover that the Shadowlord is actually the original "Nier" that was seen in the game's prologue. Driven by an identical desire to protect his daughter, he sacrificed himself and became a Gestalt in order that he could fend off the monsters attacking them, and became the first ever sentient Gestalt in the process. Now, having taken Yonah from Nier, he has given the original human Yonah - who originally became a Gestalt accidentally at the end of the prologue, and soon after relapsed - her Replicant body, but this Yonah realises that she cannot keep it, as she hears the Replicant Yonah calling for her father. She vacates the body, and Nier and Yonah are reunited.

Subsequent playthroughs reveal additional information from the perspective of the Shades, while a book accompanying the game, "Grimoire Nier", released in Japan, adds further information to events after the game's conclusion. The book indicates that the Shadowlord, as the first sentient Gestalt, was connected to all other Shades, and that Nier's slaying of the Shadowlord will cause the decline of all Gestalt forms (Shades) in the near future. As Replicants are unable to reproduce and must draw their energy from their Gestalt forms, it is also suggested that the Replicant population will begin its decline as well, and thus Nier has inadvertently set into motion the end of humanity. However, it should be noted that in the final ending, Nier sacrifices his very existence (game-wise, the player's save file is literally deleted) to save Kaine. The contractor for this revival, Tyrann, claims that the sacrifice will transform her into a regular human being. Since Kaine is a dual-gendered human, it is possible that she could attain the ability to reproduce and become the mother of humanity.

First and most obviously, this game comes from Japan. There is a lot of info on why their fiction has developed like it has but very little of it makes it into english. In any case, this story is about the trouble with cloning and the problems that come within the intersection of science and faith. In the context of Nier, one could say (from the aspect above) that Kaine is Eve but more than that, represents a combination of masculine and feminine traits. This intersection represents a needed realization that can only come through playing the game 3 or 4 times.

This realization is needed and necessary for everyone to live after the consequences of a choice.

In a lot of ways, this realization only comes after we move past the idea of love. Nier is a sad and lonely game.

So, Intersectionality.

Japanese video games often present unique outfits to depict a variety of ideas and present an even more diverse possibility for collectors of action figures and to allow fans to experience the idea of Moe. Moe (萌え) is as such that the embodiment of an idea through a character is the norm. The story, the narrative is deemphasized and traits are often emphasized. Other outfits (clothing) allow for a designer to represent how a group is (see Simmel: Fashion). I think that maybe this quote from this article might be worth mentioning:

The moe character is a product of the breakdown of the grand narrative and rise of simulacra, and its form is one of unbounded virtual possibility. Concretely, a moe character is what Deleuze and Guattari describe as a 'body without organs,' or the 'virtual dimension of the body that is a collection of potential traits, connections and affets. These potentials are accessed overcoming binary oppositions that order and control the body. It is not without significance that moe characters regularly exhibit ambiguity and contradictions (NOTE: installation of Hegelian dialectics is an obsession with the theorists this author mentions) - child-adult, male-female, animal-human - and that these bodies that are (both literally and figuratively) denied organs have increased virtual potential.

So, the character of Kaine in this story is the embodiment of the past (anger and fury / male) in the house of innocence and birth (life, eve, etc). That she eventually represents a combination of male-female is of particular interest because it is resolving the potential that comes through combination of these things, a trait that is of special interest in the development of Otaku culture (to whom this game is targeted). This author goes on to say:

Critics point out that characters described as moe have always tended to be physically immature 'little girls,' but Deleuze and Guattari suggest that these moe characters endlessly sprout new forms and fantasies. The pursuit of moe is thus exposing and reacting to the body without organs, to virtual potentiality...That the moe form...is outside personal and social frames is precisely why it triggers this affect.

In looking at this character through western eyes, a note of intersectionality (I hope), there is an interesting aspect of this world. The world of Nier is a world that is having problems because a machine that was created has grown to a point of sentience. Essentially, this is a story of the ghost in the shell, a theme that grows in importance each and every year due to the overwhelming increase in technological ubiquity. In the world that has moved on, class (an important distinction in the real world) is all but removed as the need for money has been replaced with the need to survive. Creation of new beings is also not present simply because (as with most ghost in the shell related ideas) robots cannot recreate.

In this world, we have moved on past the idea of the body as a vessel. In this story, books can talk and form opinions. Science is omni-present but like other science fiction apocalyptic tales, science has taken on a unique magic like tone. Everything in this game is desperate and it is this desperation that is probably a reason why the game has not done well for, if as research suggests, the normal player of a video game lives above the middle class line, that player cannot understand the desperation that comes with wanting to survive.

I had hoped to write a lot more but this is getting to be a mammoth piece. Perhaps this is why we talk about the intersection of social nodes so rarely.

And so, Images of Women comes to a close. This semester has been one of growth. I created too much work for myself and had to learn to deal with that. Perhaps the most valuable lesson from this particular class was the discussion of Hair (that I haven't written about here but really want to), Eve (who has made it into a large amount of my posts here), La Llorona or La Malinche (really this is a larger discussion of Aztec culture being forcefed Europe), and transgender ideas like the Bois. I have always wanted to begin the study of transgender groups but I find that because of Becker's article "Who's Side Are We On?" that my want to study majority group trends, to study normative behavior (which isn't ever normal to begin with) has overridden this want. I am thankful to read about it and hope to make it into a project soon.

Next semester I get to read the literature of Margaret Atwood all semester. I am beyond excited about this as I really enjoyed The Blind Assassin and haven't read real fiction in almost the entirety of my Graduate Studies.

Images of Women: Blog Entry 11: Comics is Comics

So I suppose I have paid for my lazy and meandering post from yesterday in a really nice series of posts on Google Buzz from Jonathan Mills. I admit, or I have tried to make known, that I know a lot about various comic characters because of an old friend but very little about the rules the comic books have as a communication media.

So, it's time for another long and meandering post. Again, these posts are the first time i've tried to branch out into this realm. It will take me a good while to get up to speed (or I think it will). I attach these to the Images of Women Posts that I need to be making because of how much it has made me think outside of sociology. These posts are me trying to take what we've talked about and relate it back to what I have been trained to know.

In reference to Donald Glover as Peter Parker. It was never an argument as to whether or not Peter Parker could be black because, an actor portraying a character is not as important as the character itself is in these cases. The argument is about what the rest of Peter Parker's circle would look like, not so much about the character himself. Case in point: Obama. Throughout his campaign he deftly avoided being labeled African American. Instead, he discussed his father, an immigrant from Africa.

For sources, I need a few different things to make the argument I want to make.

To sum up, I believe, in thinking about Jonathan's argument, this is my argument:

Comic book figures who make the transition from a comic book to a new media like movies or television are imbued with two things: public image as comic icons and through that iconography, symbolic meaning of whatever characteristic they represent. Those two things interact with the forced blinding of American racial interaction and create hyper-localized discussions that point out differences between racial groups while also showing how heated the discussion of race has become. The makeup of these discussions, while they take continuity as a main point of argument, are pulling from the color-blind rhetoric established in the era that began after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Spider-man, because of when he appeared (Developed in 1962, own comic 1964), presents a unique point of conversation in that he represents white culture directly before this historic event. In this way, changing Peter Parker's race would represent a powerful move in American Equality.

It needs to be a bit refined, I should say. To make this argument, I need to do the following things

1. Answer the question, what are Comics?

2. What are pop culture icons?

3. Data-Flow with reference to comic continuity vs public understanding of comics

4. Race and Ethnicity Discussions with reference to 1 and 2

The most basic definition of comics I have seen in the past couple months has been:

Comics are Juxtaposed pictoral and other images in deliberate sequence intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.

This is from what most people say is required reading for anyone: Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. I think the most poignant thing I take from this book is:

When we abstract an image through cartooning, we're not so much elminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential "meaning," an artist can amplify that meaning in icona way that realistic art can't...Cartooning isn't just a way of drawing, it's a way of seeing. The ability of our cartoons to focus our attention on an idea is, I think, an important part of their special power, both in comics and in drawing generally.

In thinking about this book, I realize I should put what is one of the most difficult ideas i've come across that shouldn't be difficult.

I rarely talk about art. I wanted to get into comics because I mostly don't get art. In preparing for this paper on Spider-man, I have learned that almost all of sociology is done because we don't get something. I find this to be true. I am interested in video games because I don't get them. I am interested in Race, Class, and Gender because I was raised as a Middle Class WASP-type male. I have tried to separate myself from my upbringing because I think it would be useful and because above all things I wonder why.

Comics, if you take this definition to be true, communicate information much more quickly than words because of how much it takes to learn to read.

But I wonder what it means to be able to recognize cultural symbols present within a picture. Do you not need to know or be socialized to a culture to understand a picture?

Then I realized it isn't so much socialization into a particular culture as it is socialization into any culture. The act of localizing any object ultimately takes that object's origin and changes it. Thus, intent still matters but only insomuch that the person viewing it knows.

Getting back into comics. The Spider-man example from last time is important because people understand that Spider-man is a certain way and the way Spider-man is is the way we expect them to be. As McCloud says, the mind fills in the space between panels. So, anyone who has read a comic has had to think, whether they like it or not, about who spider-man or peter parker is and that reference comes from other media. Comics are interesting in a similar way to literature (a point McCloud makes) in that the connection with the reader is intimate. We read and translate to our own subjectivities without anyone else around to talk to us or judge us for it.

2. What is a pop culture icon

I'll use the pop culture icon description from Wikipedia because it mirrors other things i've read about it:

"A pop icon is a celebrity, character, or object whose fame in pop culture constitutes a defining characteristic of a given society or era. Although there is no single definitive test for establishing "pop icon" status, such status is usually associated with elements such as longevity, ubiquity, and distinction. Moreover, "pop icon" status is distinguishable from other kinds of notoriety outside of popular culture, such as with historic figures."

Spider-man has been mascot for Marvel for quite a long time. He's also been in the public eye since 1964. The public has seen Spider-man on cereal boxes, coffee mugs, television shows, movies, comics in newspapers, bed sheets, shower curtains, and more. Peter Parker is associated with Spider-man. Moreover, he is associated with coming of age and with learning, "with great power, comes great responsibility" and this is Spider-man's defining characteristic. It is referenced again and again and again.

But it's more than that. Aunt May has been in each and every comic, Mary Jane has ben Spider-man's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy and Eddie Brock, J. Jonah Jameson, and more are all part and parcel of the package. The only african-american (getting back to Donald Glover) is the editor of the Daily Bugle Robbie Roberts - who interestingly enough is credited with being the first non-comic relief african american but was changed to comic relief in the movie(s).

So what would the change of Spider-man really entail?

To me, my initial reaction is that the white perception of African American culture (not African American culture itself) would be installed over top of the stereotypical white one. This is where the problems start (I am not mentioning comic continuity here).

Consider this:

The median income for a household in the borough was $27,611, and the median income for a family was $30,682. Males had a median income of $31,178 versus $29,429 for females. The per capita income for the borough was $13,959. About 28.0% of families and 30.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.5% of those under age 18 and 21.3% of those age 65 or over. In 2005 the Bronx was named the poorest urban county with a population over 1 million. This does not factor in the Bronx's high cost of living.

When Spider-man was first created, the Bronx was a difficult place with Italian and Irish gangs vying for supremacy of the area. These days, the population statistics look like this:

Whites of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represent over one-fifth (22.9%) of The Bronx's population. However, non-Hispanic whites form under one-eighth (12.1%) of the population. Out of all five boroughs, The Bronx has the lowest number and percentage of white residents.

This idea changed as the Harlem African Americans who could afford it, moved out of Harlem and into the Bronx.

So, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country with one of the higher crime rates in the country gives birth to a crime fighter who believes and is taught the responsibility that comes with power. All of this within a partial hood where the need to live outweighs the need to learn and be responsible.

I imagine at this point it seems as though I am being unfair. And, I probably am. But this is a reason that Spider-man was chosen to live where he lives at the time he was developed. It was a difficult place for a white boy to be but it was a symbolic place for him to live. The chronicles of white teens dealing with dangers and high school gangs is as such that it has been so over-stylized in popular culture (Grease, the Outsiders, Lost Boys, etc), that it just isn't believable.

On the other hand, drug dealing black high school students are believable. The Wire, True Blood, any time crime is mentioned on the evening news, and just about every movie about black youth features a play on the ghetto. The themes involved with this, with white culture's obsession with the ghetto, hip hop, or black music in general is a feature of the development of popular culture studies in America.

I mentioned women in the last post because women are part and parcel of the greater movements within popular culture. Take Aunt May up top. She has changed very little. The worried old lady is something of a fixture in popular culture. But this is a white old lady. A black old lady would be something else entirely, could Aunt May become the stereotypical black woman or would Peter Parker be "black" as the argument about this idea suggests.

In the end, I am just scratching the surface. The information Jonathan gave me about the comic Truth: Red, White, and Black which is based on the Tuskegee experiments in the early 1940s that have been in the news again recently really points at the beginnings of a whole new range for comic books that I hope people will either capitalize on or at least explore.

I think this is a good place to stop as I know i've embarrassed myself. Stream of consciousness was never my forté. As i've heard too often recently,

"Nick, the way you think is weird."

It's so true.

Images of Women 10 - Spider-man and Spider-girl are both White

I need some help remembering some ideas so I am going to try and reason my way through something and head back to names.

So I recently decided to expand a little in what I usually write about. A while back I was a bit amazed at the hashtag #donald4spiderman. The hashtag was created by one Donald Glover who declared that he would like to be considered for the part of Spider-man in the upcoming Disney Reboot. The initial post is here:

http://www.iamdonald.com/post/647884473/donald4spiderman

The reaction sort of startled me. It has an effect on other people too. I think my favorite reaction was from a mentor who just sort of looked off in the distance and said, “imagine if James Bond was cast as a black man.”

I will be presenting this at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association in San Antonio next April. The abstract I submitted is below:

I’m Not Racist But Peter Parker Was White, People. Spiderman, Race, and Donald Glover

Initially created for teens in 1962, Peter Parker, aka Spider-man, was one of many ways white middle-class ideas were communicated and promoted after World War II. Peter Parker has traditionally been portrayed as a white teen male. He symbolizes the up and coming teen everyman as they learn to cope with the “great responsibility” that comes with “great power.” Since the mid-1960s because of the culture surrounding the Equal Rights Movement, the concept of the everyman has been transitioning to more than white males. This transition comes in spurts through challenges to the stereotype – typically through popular culture. This presentation is an analysis of one such challenge. On May 5th, 2010, an African American actor named Donald Glover declared that he was, “putting [himself] in the running for the Spiderman reboot.” Through the twitter hashtag #donald4spiderman as well as numerous blogs and message boards around the Internet, the public reaction was one of two opposites. On one side, people said, “It is a downright sin to cast a black man as Spider-man.” while others said, “This is about giving a talented guy a chance…” Spiderman creator Stan Lee responded to Glover’s announcement saying that a change in Peter Parker could risk confusing audiences but that he deserved a chance like anyone else. I examine reactions to this announcement and place it in the literature about color-blind racism as well as research that examines the shift from cowboy to superhero. In this way, I will show how comics challenge society as superheroes transition to new media and new audiences.

I wanted to relate this to my images of women class. In particular, I want to try and make a Marxian dataflow.

The logic I think I want to use here goes a little like this (I am embarrassed by how juvenile this will be):

1. Within culture at large we communicate ideas that represent things
2. Those ideas become embodied in figures
3. What ideas are communicated are controlled by purchasing power
4. This is a symptom of American culture that the Japanese have called Moe
5. As purchasing power occurs, the idea of what that idea is is solidified
6. When that idea begins to stale, new ways to repackage that idea are tried
7. The success of the idea depends more on consumer culture than it does on quality
8. The majority culture in consumer society represents the shape and flow of that idea
9. Challenges from non-majority consumer groups will be met with extreme prejudice

So, if I were to put it in words, I would say that the popularity of an idea, represented by an object or figure made into an object results in the gradual loss of that ideal through over-marketing thus forcing a re-establishment of that idea. If that idea goes too far into the realm of minority culture, the reaction from majority typically results in a re-establishment of that idea without minority input.

Juvenile though it may be, I think finding a methodology for the project above is important. I keep going through the Frankfurt school stuff I have and thinking that maybe it is what I should use. No doubt, the things I would pull from there would be useful as I have stayed away from media studies thinking more about the culture surrounding media than the media themselves.

Things seem to break down quickly when you think about products meant for minority groups. But it is a difficult thing. All products, whether they like to admit it or not, need to be in alignment with the core. What I mean is that, for example, different versions of the dominant group's stuff is reproduced to be slightly more targeted toward a different group. Take the super but mostly "girls"

Spider-woman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xao_sF3aAo0

Wonder Woman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZCbF_eOTw4

Super-Girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCCI6RP_f0k&feature=related

She-Hulk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIWD9t4xs5s

The Invisible Woman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hluSn7Rzd4s&feature=related

Bat Girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMzjJ5Fdn34&feature=related

This factors in to video games as well. Harvest Moon for Girls comes to mind.

I haven't named a single theorist yet but I think I remember what it was I was thinking about.

I'll sleep on this and write more tomorrow.

Otaku and the History of Gender in Video Games

So, for this course Images of Women, I have to construct a presentation on a subject of my choosing. I initially chose to do a presentation on the female body in the digital form. However, I have realized that the thing that makes the topic of gender in a digital environment interesting is that the reason our digital selves have changed is so much that the games themselves have changed, but because cultures behave differently but in capitalism, compete for dominance and that dominance typically means market saturation and control. The control then means that certain aspects of culture are displayed and that the people playing video games might not be from where the games are from. This is unique. Video Games are unique.

What I mean to say is the basis of my talk:

Video Games are unique in that they come from a place, a culture, but most often represent a different place / culture. Video games are unique because where they come from shapes how that new place looks, feels, and more specifically acts and responds. Video games are unique because while they show a variety of voices in what is constructed, they are created by a very slim portion of society.

This presentation traces the origin of video games in war, through wargaming, through the emergence of Japanese console markets, and finally into the newest generation through which American interests have once again become competitive.*

* This presentation presents a generalization and condensed history that is not as Weberian as I normally like to be. I am ignoring certain parts of political development that results in the issues present in some of the LGBT debate. Apologies.

Here is the presentation - Sorry to the prezi haters out there.

It is broken down into three parts: War, the Rise of Moe, and the shallow but silent emergence of LGBT in games. That emergence is marred by age restriction but it is significant enough to mention.

WAR

In Fallout 3, the very beginning of the game says, "War, War Never Changes." This, for the most part, has shown to be true here in America. We fight wars and our wars give us jobs, reasons to live, reasons to complain, protest, and feel empathy / apathy. War does not change. However, cultural beliefs about war do change. Popular opinion changes. This is a primary function of Sociology in America, to measure public opinion.

A question I want to ask is what does it mean when a different culture's products are used as the basis of popular culture.

Video games got their start through display technologies developed after the end of World War 2. War was on everyone's mind and while some games demonstrated a general sense of family entertainment, video games quickly became a realm of boys and men.

Because this is a presentation on women, I wanted to focus on the appearance of women in video games. The first instance of a woman I could find was that of Lois Lane in Superman for the Atari 2600. This particular game was also one of the first in which a man has to rescue a woman. This is a common theme in almost every type of media: books, movies, television shows, magazines, and most especially video games.

The interesting this about women and men in video games, especially at this early stage is that it was difficult to represent people but when they were represented, it was almost always a man who did and a female who caused the man to do in some way shape or form. Earliest games I can find are:

Superman (2600)

Smurfs (Colecovision)

Oregon Trail (various)

Beat em & Eatem / Lady in Waiting (2600)

Swedish Erotica: Beat Em & Eat Em )(2600)

Ms Pac Man (Various)

Custer's Revenge (2600)

On the Commodore 64 there were various other games that had a female in them but they were associated with what would eventually become girl games: Cabbage Patch Kids, Barbie, Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland. These games sold reasonably well but not as well as what would become the new console market. The next big push in females in popular games came from japan.

The Rise of Moe (萌え)

Moe means a lot of things but basically here I will use it to display two specific ideas in Japan. One of these meanings stands out for stereotypes of Japan in the United States. This is from Otaku: Database Animals:

Independently and without relation to an original narrative, consumers in the 1990s consumed only such fragmentary illustrations or settings; and this different type of consumption appeared when the individual consumer empathy toward these fragments strengthened. The otaku themselves called this new consumer behavior "chara-moe" - the feeling of moe toward characters and their alluring characteristics. (37).

The second meaning is that of budding or brimming. In many ways, this second meaning is often misinterpreted as a Japanese obsession with young, cute things. With some sort of perverted social issue within the Japanese as a whole. What is meant by this is typically associated with the:

"sense of being strongly attracted to one's ideals has often been expressed as moe. This term, which literally means "sprouting," is derived from another Japanese word moyasu or moeru which means "burning (passion/heart)." Moe was originally used for female idols and animation characters, but it is currently also used to applaud the stylishness of hardware and has become popular among entusiastic consumers. It has recently become recognized among overseas fans who enjoy Japanese otaku culture and pop culture such as animation and games." (5)

This definition comes from a report called "The Otaku Group from a Business Perspective: Revaluation of Enthusiastic Consumers." It labels moe also as a basis in consumer culture but identifies it as a factor of otaku that has moved outside of that culture. How does this relate to gender? Well, as of 5 years ago, however, unmarried males aged 30 or higher make up a majority of moe related sales. Video games are a significant portion of this market, games being a secondary way in which movie, manga, or television characters are sold to fans.

The interesting thing here is that video games, particularly those of Japan in the late 80s and early 90s, began to exhibit this in the way they were presented. Mario was created as a figurehead of the Nintendo franchise. Additionally, we saw the creation of a variety of stereotypes that would become established in video games as a whole.

The Info Girl

One of the earliest examples of the info girl I can find is from a manga named Macross. This particular television show has been around for well over 20 years. In this show, there is a clearly demarcated line of responsibility. Women run the instruments that analyze a war, males make decisions and do the fighting. The interesting comparison to American interests which had men as well as other men controlling every aspect of war. It wasn't until the 1990s with the birth of the info girl in multimillion dollar franchises that made their way into American pop culture.

The Warrior Woman

In 1986, a woman entered into video games as a playable character. Her name was Samus Aran but no one actually knew that she was a woman. The instruction book for the game had this text:

The space hunter chosen for this mission is Samus Aran. He is the greatest of all the space hunters and has successfully completed numerous missions that everybody thought were absolutely impossible. He is a cyborg: his entire body has been surgically strengthened with robotics, giving him superpowers. Even the space pirates fear his space suit, which can absorb any enemy's power. But his true form is shrouded in mystery.

The reveal of Samus Aran as a woman is one of the greatest surprises in video game history but that reveal has mostly been forgotten in the status of her being lauded as the proudest moment of womanhood's entry as actors in video games instead of observers and analysts. Later versions of the game still did not mention Samus' sex (not gender, there isn't enough interaction to portray cultural norms of gender) insomuch that they used gender neutral language symbolizing a general shift that players identify as the bounty hunter, not the character she was.

With the establishment of the NES as a dominant player in the video game market shortly after the fall of American video gaming the previous year, Japanese interests gained a foothold in the market. This foothold, symbolized by the growing Otaku obsession with Moe, soon allowed for an overwhelming stranglehold on the type of games would appear on their systems. Concurrently, video games made by Americans fell into disarray with a majority of them going on to the Personal Computer (PC) market.

While in the background, American video games began to tote violence as a feature of their gameplay. Early violent games like Mortal Kombat, Doom, Phantasmagoria, 7th Guest, Castle Wolfenstein, Quake, and many others. The shock of violence in games created a flurry of attention and the introduction of CDs in console games gave the American game makers easier access to much larger audiences. American game makers began to reappear in popular culture. As "more adult" gaming came in to popularity, so too did characters who were "adult."

Lara Croft, the Lesbians in Fear Effect 2, and other characters made a unique appearance.

LGBT Characters and the Changing of Gender Patterns

I found this entry on wikipedia. It is by far the most interesting thing I have ever seen there. As I noted earlier, the sex of Samus Aran was removed from Metroid for American audiences until the end. I wanted to focus on a couple different things.

First, LGBT characters are not unique in games not made in America. While earlier games fell under the Nintendo code (and were thus mostly removed), video games because of the nature of "becoming adult" began to explore sexuality more often. However, this exploration of sexuality is still under the purview of "not for kids."

I wanted to focus on two examples that display the difference in gender representation between America and Japan.

Flea: Chrono Trigger

The picture at the beginning of this article is from the video game Chrono Trigger. The character flea appeared in 1995 during the tail end of Nintendo's dominance and Nintendo's "Code of Ethics" they had used throughout their growth as a leader in the industry.

This character shows up as a henchman for what is thought to be the main antagonist for about half of the game. He is a henchman who wants to look beautiful. Gender portrayals in Japan are a lot different than those of America.

Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix

Gender in American games entered through a variety of ways. This game, featuring two lipstick lesbians. As was common at the time, these women looked and acted like stereotypical hetero-women but were sexually attracted to one another. The developer stated that these women were not homosexual, just attracted to each other at the time. This was not the game's central theme but it was featured on advertisements for the game, the game's cover, and critical reception. Homosexuality serves, in American developed games, male fantasy as well as a tool through which audiences may be disgusted (evil as homosexual, antagonists as homosexual and therefore off center).