Video Games & American Culture » March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making

March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making

Video Game Essay Due in two weeks on Canvas–April 7th
Next Week, we’ll be back to Weekly Canvas Posts

Plan for the Day

  • Definitions for the next few weeks
  • Lara Croft
  • Playing War and Realism
  • Video Game Immersion and Perception of Realism
  • Video Game Essay Discussion (New Deadline)
    • Don’t pad your essays with long quotations and/or images
    • You don’t need to double space your heading or triple space between paragraphs
    • The 7- or 9-page requirement is for your analysis
    • Works Cited and References don’t count towards the page requirement

Definitions for Gender Studies

Maybe some vocabulary first:

  • Compulsory Heterosexuality: (Adrienne Rich) “women may not have a preference toward heterosexuality, but may find it imposed, managed, organized, propagandized, and maintained by society.”
  • Heterosexism: the belief that heterosexuality is the only valid relationship type–man and woman.
  • Heteronormativity: a term that is used to describe situations wherein variations from heterosexual orientation are marginalized, ignored or persecuted by social practices, beliefs or policies.
  • homophobia: fear or hatred of homosexuals; fear of one’s own homosexual desires or the idea that one may be homosexual.
  • Myth: Lillian Feder’s definition–“Myth is a narrative structure of two basic areas of unconscious experience which, of course, are related….In other words, myth is a form of racial [national, social, regional, etc.] history–a narrative distillation of the wishes and fears both of ourselves and the human race” (Dick, p. 188).
    [myths] tap into our collective memory,” our unconscious.
    “Myths are ultimate truths about life death, fate and nature, gods and humans” (Dick, p. 189).
  • phallocentrism: male-dominated society holding power over the others (usually women) through the phallus, the symbol of male potency. Also, assuming all power is legitimized through the phallus.
  • phallus: any object that represents the figure of a penis.

The World of Lara Croft

The article for tonight is online here: Kennedy, Helen W. “Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo?” Kennedy uses psychoanalysis in parts of her article to discuss player embodiment and, of course, pleasure when playing as Lara Croft. While a serious in-depth discussion of psychoanalysis is beyond the scope(ophilia) of this course, I will try to provide some useful terms in order to help us think through Kennedy’s arguments. We will be reading Mulvey’s article on April 14th…perhaps I should have planned the readings differently.

  • fetish: “a need or desire for an object, body part, or activity for sexual excitement”; often an unusual* object (Britannica)
    *I agree that “unusual” is problematic because of our social norming around sexuality.
  • scopophilia: (via Freud) “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze (Mulvey, p. 8)
  • fetishistic scopophilia: the (often male) viewer “builds up the physical beauty of the object [often a woman], transforming it [her] into something satisfying in itself [herself]” (Mulvey, p. 14)
  • sublimation: “socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior.”
  • displacement: unconsciously substituting one goal with a new practice; commonly, we refer to this as “taking it out on someone else,” where the “it” refers to an unpleasant experience that is released when one attacks someone not involved.

So what about video games? I hope this DVD works!

  • para 3: Tomb Raider (Eidos 1996) offered “a level of cinematic realism previously unattainable.”
  • para 4: One fan comments, “At the center of Tomb Raider was a fantasy female figure. Each of her provocative curves was as much part of the game as the tombs she raided. She had a secret weapon in the world of gaming, well… actually two of them” (quoted from Lethal & Loaded, 8.7.01)
  • para 4: “In the late 80s and early 90s both Nintendo and Sega made it very clear that to attempt to market games for girls would threaten their real market – boys and young men.”
    • Consider how many women will use their initials rather than reveal their first names for YA fiction (at least this was the practice over 20 years ago…not sure if it still holds).
  • para 4: Lara Croft was everywhere, so think back to Pac-Man and merchandising…“That is where the real money is made.”
  • “Lara Croft as Action Heroine,” para. 1: “Lara totes a gun as she navigates a hostile landscape fraught with danger….she is resolutely immortal – with each death there is the possibility to replay the level over and over until it comes out right.”
  • “Lara Croft as Action Heroine,” para. 2: “stunting bodies”
  • “Lara Croft as Action Heroine,” para. 2: the transgressive nature of female characters “within these masculine spaces….By being there she disturbs the natural symbolism of masculine culture.”
  • Really? What do you think?
  • “Lara Croft as Action Heroine,” para. 3: “The absence of any romantic or sexual intrigue within the game narrative potentially leaves her sexuality open to conjectural appropriation on the part of the players.”
  • Notice that statement has an implied assumption that sexuality is missing…
  • Perhaps a Queer Theory lens would help open the discussion up.
  • “Lara as Fatal Femme,” para. 1: “‘active’ or ‘strong’ female characters signify a potential threat to the masculine order.”
  • “…fetishistic signifiers such as her glasses, her guns, the holster/garter belts, her long swinging hair.”
  • “Lara as Fatal Femme,” para. 2: “…voyeuristic pleasure depends upon being empowered to look without being seen.”
    • This is a theory of voyeurism and shouldn’t be consider an absolute fact. Pleasure doesn’t universally end when the object of the gaze is aware of that fact.
  • “But Playing as Lara… What Then?” para. 1: “In the game it is the player who determines the actions, so the involvement is potentially that much greater than with other media forms.”
  • Anyone read Neuromancer (1984) or Gibson’s earlier short story “Burning Chrome” (1982)?
  • “But Playing as Lara… What Then?” para. 2: “through having to play Tomb Raider as Lara, a male player is transgendered: the distinctions between the player and the game character are blurred.”
    • Let’s critique this assertion. Consider the commitment to a gender binary the author seems to have.
  • “But Playing as Lara… What Then?” para. 3: “you have a proliferation of sexualized imagery dominating the official and unofficial websites.”
  • “But Playing as Lara… What Then?” para. 4: “Playing as Lara, enables engagement with an active female fantasy figure, providing opportunities for exploration of alternative versions of themselves.
  • “Virtual Lara: Cyborg Embodiment,” para. 1: “Lara the game character is no more virtual than the images of real movie or pop stars: they too are representations which are carefully managed.”
  • “Virtual Lara: Cyborg Embodiment,” para. 2: “….male sexual desire and fantasy are always bound up in an image of femininity which is virtual (in the sense that it is not real). Femininity is thus finally exposed as an empty signifier, a sign without a referent.”
  • “Virtual Lara: Cyborg Embodiment,” para. 4: “These hypersexualized versions of virtual femininity are strategies of containment which need to be understood as such.”
  • “Virtual Lara: Cyborg Embodiment,” para. 6: “In the end it is impossible to securely locate Lara within existing feminist frameworks, nor is it entirely possible to just dismiss her significance entirely.”
    • Have we discussed feminism as a non-monolithic concept yet?

He-Man and She-Ra…etc.

Compare the two introductions to He-Man and She-Ra. Are they the same–meaning no difference in the portrayal of the masculine character vs. the feminine character?

Are the representations congruent with your understanding of masculine and feminine roles? Don’t forget your psychoanalytic hat either: What’s going on with the ways the two hold their swords?

Other Videos We Watched–All trigger warnings in effect

Cowlishaw’s “Playing War”

The article is online here: Brian Cowlishaw, “Playing War: The Emerging Trend of Real Virtual Combat in Video Games.” Magazine Americana, January 2005.

Besides immediately pointing out that the video game industry makes more money than the motion picture industry, Cowlishaw critiques the idea of “realism” in video games. Many people point out (gamers, designers, critics) that certain games are “realistic,” but, when it comes to war games, that simply isn’t true:

  • Respawning: “Death tends to be final–but not in war video games” (para. 8).
  • “Like wartime press reports, war video games carefully elide this most basic fact of wartime: bodily damage” (para. 11).
  • Gamers are in “no actual danger of being killed, or physically harmed beyond getting stiff and fat from playing video games too long” (para. 12).
  • Newer video games only seem realistic or real because “the genealogical relationship makes newer war games seem more realistic than they are” (para. 15).

Excerpt from “Enacting Culture in Gaming”

As I mentioned, you don’t have to read the entire article (but, of course, you certainly may). Here’s the excerpt we’ll discuss:

Brent on his experience as a helicopter gunner while playing Battlefield Vietnam (Electronic Arts 2004).

Brent’s penchant for first-person shooters suggests that he enjoys embodying the avatar’s persona: As the helicopter “gunner” in Battlefield Vietnam (Electronic Arts), Brent is in an Army attack chopper firing on the Vietcong listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” and the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”—two popular songs from the Vietnam Era. Brent was never in Vietnam, but the music and his sense of attacking the VC from a software-engineered helicopter helps him better incorporate the soldier’s persona from representations he has seen in films such as Platoon (1986) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), popular war movies he watches. The video game is a synecdoche of experience and a simulacrum at best. Unlike real war, Brent’s only risk is temporary eye strain and not serious injury or death—he is engaged in a fictional world. Juul (2005) points out that “games project fictional worlds through a variety of different means, but the fictional worlds are imagined by the player, and the player fills in any gaps in the fictional world” (p. 121). What makes the video game a figured world is that the world of the helicopter gunner is simulated via the video game’s programming and accepted by gamers who enter the “text” for this virtual experience. Like Brent’s situation above regarding what it feels like to be in Vietnam, a gamer’s interpretations come from other sources—culture. Video games (and gamers) are products of the culture(s) from which they come, and we can read the culture—its values, fears, and “history”—in video games.

Toscano, Aaron. “Enacting Culture in Gaming: A Video Gamer’s Literacy Experiences and Practices.” Current Issues in Education, vol. 14, no. 1, 2011.

Hyperreality

Are we obsessed with the fake? If we can hold contradictory ideas simultaneously, it seems that we can also ignore that we’re consuming the fake.

  • What is the point about telling us we like fake stuff?
  • Why does knowing people prefer the fake or assume the fake is “real” important?
  • Consider these places/ideas:
    • Concord Mills
    • Olive Garden
    • Hooters
    • Busch Gardens (“It’s like being back in the old country”–exact words of someone I used to know)
    • Democracy
    • Education
  • What else?

We will most likely discuss Las Vegas if we haven’t already, but Disney World is another example of the fake.

  • simulacrum: the replication (upon replication) of a subject without being able to find the concrete beginning; similarity, likeness. In postmodern theory it refers to a copy or simulation of an item, event, or idea for which the original referent (the reality or real thing) does not exist.
  • hyperreality: More real than real!?! Or, as White Zombie would say, “More Human than Human.” The idea of “hyperreality” is often associated with a viewer (an audience in general) believing the media-generated simulation is real or more real than an actual event, personality, condition, or, ultimately, an experience.

Acting

In February 2013, Bradley Cooper was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He discusses his role in the indie movie Silver Linings Playbook. Interestingly, and this isn’t odd to hear from an actor, he talks about how he and David O. Russell (the director) wanted him to “play as real and authentic as [h]e could.”

What does it mean for an actor to be real, authentic, raw, etc.? What’s behind the idea of believability in acting?

  • Check out the transcript and scroll down to the line “Jacki Weaver, yeah.”
  • How is he maintaining “authenticity” of his character crying when the film is edited?

If there’s a serious lull in the conversation, we’ll jump on over to a longer discussion on hyperreality from another class.

Poor Unfortunate Soul…

Time permitting, I’ll ruin a Disney film for you…

I have a couple clips for you from The Little Mermaid. As you might remember, Ariel loses her voice and grows legs, so she can be with her man. What’s going on in terms of gender, compulsory heterosexuality, and a girl’s/woman’s conditioning to be acceptable in patriarchal society. Before you answer that, watch the final scene where she’s “given away.”

While we’re on the subject of princesses, who was the audience for the last RoyalWedding? Why are so many American girls/women obsessed with princesses?

Next Class

We’re going to dive into further discussions of feminism, so read Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth” and Gloria Steinem’s “Why Young Women are More Conservative”–both on Canvas. Also, we will discuss the non-monolithic nature of feminism (why we don’t use a capital-F Feminism), but consider the date of these essays. You may want to read up on first-wave, second-wave, third-wave, and fourth-wave feminism for some historical context.

Weekly Canvas Posts will start back up next week, so set those reminders!!!

Works Cited

Dick, Bernard F. Anatomy of Film. (5th ed.). Boston: Bedford, 2005.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3 (1975): 6-18. {On Canvas and here}

Rich, Adrienne. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_Heterosexuality_and_Lesbian_Existence.