Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • Major Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
Video Games & American Culture » April 14th: Phallocentrism

April 14th: Phallocentrism

Plan for the Evening

  • This rest of April…the semester
    • 4/21: Last Official Class Next week
    • 4/28: Workshop in Fretwell 219 (not required but encouraged)
    • 4/28-5/09
      Final Exam (online)
      Multimodal Project (online)
      Final Presentation (Combined with above–see Major Assignments for more details)
  • Define Feminism (didn’t we do this?)
  • Psychoanalysis
  • The Male Gaze in Film from Laura Mulvey
  • Ch. 5 “The Male Gaze in Gaming”
  • More Psychoanalysis Fun (time permitting)

Define Feminism

Based on some of your posts, I think we need to define feminism. What is the definition of feminism?

If you enjoyed the video for this week’s prompt, you might also enjoy How Feminism Ruins Video Games on YouTube. Hey, we’re all for balance in this class.

How to Approach Psychoanalytic Theory

Psychoanalysis is a vast, complicated subject (like postmodernism) with contradictions, passé ideas, new ideas, more contradictions, a few reclamations, and often argued from the perspectives of important theorists (Freud, Jung, and Lacan). In no way should you consider our discussions as the end of the road or final say in the study of psychoanalysis. In fact, it’s but one of several possible beginnings.

I will have us mainly focus on the study of the unconscious and how it relates to cultural studies. Ever heard of the collective unconscious? How about the collective conscious?

Three Important Terms to Consider

  • Id: the unconscious, unorganized part of one’s personality; often accessible through dreams.*
  • Ego: (overly simplified definition) the conscious part of one’s personality. From Freud: “The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions” (p. 25).
  • Super-ego: the mainly conscious conscience of one’s personality that embodies ideals, goals, and confidence; it also prohibits drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions; is an internalization of culture and cultural norms.

The above three Freudian terms have a rather complex relationship to one another and their supposed development is also quite difficult to describe. However, for our purposes, what do the three suggest about a person’s relationship to others? What is the cultural significance of these personality components? What do they have to offer an analysis on video games or new media in general?

Other Terms for Discussion

  • Compensation: taking up one behavior [might be embodied in an object] because one cannot accomplish another behavior [often a behavior considered normal].
  • Confabulation: in psychology it means to replace fact with fantasy unconsciously in memory.
  • Displacement: An unconscious defense mechanism, whereby the mind redirects emotion from a ‘dangerous’ object to a ‘safe’ object. In psychoanalytic theory, displacement is a defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion (or, perhaps, action) to a safer outlet.
  • Identification: the act of seeing oneself as similar to or (rarely) identical to another person or object. Often the process of identification completes a subject as when one sees himself or herself represented in another figure (a parent, friend, celebrity, avatar, etc.).
  • Manque à être: (via Lacanian psychoanalytic theory) literally, “the want to be”; we’re born into the experience of lack, and our history consists of a series of attempts to figure and overcome this lack, a project doomed to failure” (Lapsley and Westlake 67).
  • Scopophilia: “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey, 1975, II. A. para. 1; p. 8). Similar to voyeurism.
  • Transference: unconscious redirection of feelings for one person to another.

Mulvey’s Article on Scopophilic Fetishization (she uses an ‘s’ instead of a ‘z’)

Mulvey uses Lacanian psychoanalysis to describe what goes on for a spectator, an audience. She focuses on film, but the theory can easily be applied to other media (or can/should it?). Mulvey offers a feminist critique of how women are portrayed in film and what those portrayals mean for the male spectators. A few basic things to come away with from Mulvey are the following:

  • Mulvey is “demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film” (I. A. para 1; p. 6).
  • Hollywood narratives, films and the myths that “inspire” those films, predominantly reflect the male gaze–what men desire to see (scopophilia).
  • The scopophilic aspect of viewing cinema “arises from pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight” (Mulvey, II. C. para 1; p. 10).
  • The identification aspect of viewing cinema “develop[s] through narcissism and the constitution of the ego” it “comes from identification with the image seen” (Mulvey, II. C. para 1; p. 10).
  • “A male movie star’s glamorous characteristics are thus not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived in the original moment of recognition in front of the mirror” (Mulvey, III. B. para 1; p. 12).
  • Men viewing the female icon or celebrity–possibly in so-called “chick flicks”–poses a different psychoanalytic solution. The male unconscious, when confronted with a female icon, does not (in heterosexist circles) identify with her; she doesn’t complete him. Instead,
    • Voyeurism with associations of sadism and controlling the figure–woman as the object (Mulvey, III. C.1 para 2; p. 13).
      -or-
    • “Fetishitic scopophilia builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself” (Mulvey, III. C.1 para 2; p. 14).
  • Mulvey argues that film is another cultural product that controls images of women “to circumvent her threat” (III. “Summary” para 1; p. 17).
  • “…cinematic codes create a gaze, a world, and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire” (Mulvey, III. “Summary” para 1; p. 17).

Extending Mulvey

I think Mulvey’s argument is completely sound, but it needs to be updated for contemporary media. Also, I think it’s wrong to assume that Mulvey would claim ALL viewers–male, female, trans, non-binary–view films the same way. It’s more productive to consider how one could identify with a character. Also, some viewers are going to identify with some characters and not with others. That’s just taste, right?

When it comes to video games, Mulvey’s theory of identification is actually bolstered because the gamers immerse themselves more fully into a game–controlling the avatar’s actions–than into a film or TV show. The gamer becomes the avatar. But we can complicate this:

  • What about when women play with male avatars and vice versa?
  • Why is expressed gender–even if you think there are only two–a key to theorizing how an audience member identifies with the avatar?

But what can we say about women in the audience? With whom do they identify? What about women like Angelina Jolie or Milla Jovovich?

Hollywood is often called the Dream Factory. Why?

How can we relate this back to our favorite subject…consumption?

Ch. 5 “The Male Gaze in Gaming”

In this chapter, I try to adapt Mulvey’s lens (pun intended) to video games. One thing that continually came up when presenting early versions of these chapters at conferences and when discussing the project more generally and informally* was the refrain that “not all video games reproduce, specifically, misogyny,” so you’ll read quite a few statements like although not all video games are violent, not all video games have violent themes, there are themes other than misogyny in video game, etc. I needed to show potential reviewers that I’m focusing specifically on a small yet popular segment of AAA video games. There appears to be a reaction from (mostly) male gamers, including gaming theorists, who don’t like their entertainment being exposed as sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. A similar issue happened when I submitted my Sopranos manuscript for review: Tony Soprano is a misogynist, a complicated character overall, but still a misogynist. Ignoring misogyny in one’s entertainment is promoting misogyny; furthermore, backlash against someone pointing out the misogyny of one’s entertainment choices is a more aggressive promotion of misogyny (c.f. Gamergate). Intellectual beings–which we are–should be mature enough to recognize the myriad cultural influences of a text. We’re products of systemic racism and sexism; therefore, our culture and its artifacts will likely have those (negative) values. I’m not sorry if your ego is bruised because I point this out. We can enjoy and critique mass culture. In fact, examining and not just consuming media is vital for having a better understanding of one’s self, culture, and ideology (worldview).

  • p. 93: “…sexism is systemic in American culture.”
  • p. 94: “Video games allow gamers to immerse themselves into a virtual world where they have much control, and the mainstream video game industry creates these worlds, reproducing male-oriented, male-dominated entertainment for consumption.”
  • p. 95: “gaming allows the gamer to possess the avatar or use an NPC by subjecting her to his controlling gaze.”
  • p. 99: hyperrealism in media
  • p. 100: “…the fact that gamers can control the avatars of professional sports players and not nameless pixel representations highly suggests that playing such sports video games allows a gamer to indulge in the illusion of becoming the player.”
    • For instance, in Madden NFL, you can be Aaron Rodgers and run, throw, get sacked, etc. You can make him do anything…except get vaccinated.”
  • p. 100: More perfect versions and playing situations.
    • Consider American culture’s love of leisure.
  • p. 101: “the video game environment allows an avatar to remain (usually) at the same level of fighting force at 100 percent or 1 percent of the avatar’s health.”
  • p. 103: Virtual sex and male empowerment in GTA: Vice City (2002).
    • CJ out and about…
    • Hitman Absolution (2012) sniper mission
  • p. 107: Are celebrities in the media real?

*I once told a pretty major figure in digital composition studies I was doing a book on video games as representative of the culture from which they come–American culture as the specific focus. He said, “that’s not interesting.” Additionally, a somewhat major feminist scholar, specializing in the history of rhetoric, dismissed my book project (in 2017) as not worthy and not making sense. She used the condescending incredulity veil (“I just don’t see it”) to dismiss my work as opposed to providing any real criticism or, more appropriately, direction to consider to improve/expand my early-ish research. I’m still waiting on her first monograph…she’s been a professor for more than a decade longer than I have.

Don’t let gatekeepers dissuade you from pursuing the research you’re interested in. Many of them surround themselves by likeminded (closed-minded) pseudo-intellectuals that would rather reproduce current research than take risks and branch out. These, often well-placed, academics continue to maintain academic silos.


More Fun With Psychoanalysis

  • Fight Night 2004 (EA Sports) commercial
  • “the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived in the original moment of recognition in front of the mirror” (Mulvey, III. B. para 1; p. 12)
    • Mari the cat sees this image in the mirror
    • I might see this image…
    • or this one…
    • Velvet Kitty probably sees this image…

Fun with Musicals

  • In an aside, Mulvey asks the reader to “Note, however, how in the musical song-and-dance numbers break the flow of the diegesis” (p. 11)
  • I’m not sure breaking the plot lessens the scopophilic pleasure if films still have “women[‘s]…appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact…” (Mulvey, p. 11)
    • Bye Bye Birdie (1963)
    • Warning: Extremely provacative example of to-be-looked-at-ness in a musical
      “Out Tonight” from Rent (2005, the film)

Could Dr. Seuss Really have Meant That???

Some might say LeBeau is being a bit facetious in his psychoanalytic reading of The Cat in the Hat. But psychoanalysis is all about the unconscious: artists and such create texts based on their experiences in life. Regardless of how much one may protest, we are all part of society and the influence can be read through our creations–books, films, technologies, etc.

Although there may be some disagreement, psychoanalysis can help us approach texts to uncover ideologies that influence both creators (artists, authors, architects, etc.) and audiences.

There’s even a video!

If we have time, how about ruining another children’s text–Lady and the Tramp or The Little Mermaid…

Next Week

Next week is our last official class meeting. Read Ch. 6 and the Conclusion from Video Games and American Culture (on Canvas). Then, on Thursday, April 28th, we’ll meet in the computer lab up the hall (Fretwell 219–not the 215 Macintrash Lab) for assistance on your Multimodal Projects. Remember, I’m combing your Multimodal Project grade and Final Presentation, so it’s one assignment worth 200 points.


Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. Freud, The Ego and the Id. 1923.
Lapsley, Robert and Westlake, Michael. Film Theory: An Introduction. 2nd Ed. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2006 (1st edition published in 1998).
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, 16.3 (1975): 6-18.

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