Digital Games & Pop Culture

The last section of our course has been dedicated to video gaming and how it relates to popular culture. I have been pleasantly surprised at every class meeting, and the video game meetings are shaping up to do the same.

I was shocked that the gaming industry rivaled film and television. It makes sense, but it's still pretty shocking considering how much money we're constantly told movies pull in at the box office in a single weekend. The gaming industry is also the fastest growing industry in the United States. The gaming industry is leading the way in new social environments, with online identities, new literary genres and new (somewhat adapted) languages. It was really surprising to find out that the average age of the gamer is 36. I can't really believe that, but perhaps that's because my younger brother has always been an avid gamer. He has a bunch of avid gamer friends and they're all around the ages of 16 to 17. I figured all or most of the gamers would be around his age. I didn't really think that the average age would round out at 36. I didn't think 67% of American households would play any sort of video game either.

The gaming industry has astounding power over it's consumers in the sense that it has the power to shape the narrative view of many young (and somewhat older) people.

Narrative Paradigm

Walter Fisher defined narration as a, "...theory of symbolic actions--words and/or deeds--that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create or interpret them. The narrative perspective, therefore, has relevance to real as well as fiction worlds, to stories of living and to stories of the imagination," and I wrote this whole quote down in class because it put the narrative paradigm idea into perspective for me.

Fisher claimed, among a few other things, that in the rational world:
Humans are essentially rational beings.

Rationality is a knowledgable skill.

The world is a set of logical puzzles.

These were the three most interesting claims that Fisher made. To understand storytelling and how we as people see our media, we have to understand the narrative paradigm. This is what Fisher was talking about, I think. How we tell the story impacts what the actual story is. We put our own narratives into everything we do. What we see and retell is then seen through our eyes.

Fisher said that the world is a set of stories being told and retold. I couldn't agree more.

Ad Busters

The ad buster powerpoint we looked at was probably one of my favorite power points from this class. It was hilarious to look through all of the ads we see, or have seen, and analyze them from a narrative standpoint.

So, I thought I'd share this ad buster I found online.

Enjoy!

Marshall McLuhan

McLuhan and his Media Ecology ideas are somewhat confusing to me, I must admit. I'm a little worried about wrapping my head around this media ecology paper and getting his ideas correct. He was a fascinating man and it was amazing how he was able to predict the internet: a system of connected ideas and mediums. It made me sad that no one in his day really believed him. He predicted the end of the print newspaper, and we're starting to see that in our current day. McLuhan stressed that the medium of the media really affected how we interpreted that said media. Examples of this would be watching TV versus reading an article, and storytelling through film versus the storytelling that happens in the youtube world.

Media and the mediums it employs can create a "global village" and McLuhan sort of coined this term. Hopefully after learning more about McLuhan, I can see his work in the media that affects me daily.

Entertainment vs. Reality

Where does entertainment end and reality begin? For some sick souls, they can't tell the difference.

As we saw in, "Dreamworlds 3", some of the men on the street couldn't see that the music videos were staged and the women were getting paid to act that way. They thought that it was okay to throw water on women in the street. Well, as we all know, it's not. It's definitely not okay. It's one thing to watch it in a music video and understand that that is the music entertainment industry and that is what they do in that element. It's another thing entirely to do it in public. While "Dreamworlds 3" may have exaggerated some of the scenes and loss of reality it a little too much, but there are some people who really can't tell the difference between the entertainment industry and reality.

When it transfers from violent video games to reality is the scary part for me. If you can't tell that in real life, you can't go around beating people up, you need some serious help. You can't carry a gun around and steal their car. War is not a joke. You can't die and start the level over again. It's not something to be taken lightly.

I don't think banning these entertainment outlets is the way to go about solving these problems. I don't have a solution at all, really. It's just a little concerning.

Identizine

I loved this project! This was a really fun thing to work on. It was slightly challenging to have to define my own gender, which is strange. Finding words, pictures and phrases that fit my own unique gender was challenging but I enjoyed doing so.

I went with the title, "Metropolitan" because I wanted to do a play on words. I have been an avid reader of, "Cosmopolitan" for several years now, and I think that magazine has shaped the way I view other women, men, exercise, food and shopping. It's a very fun but influential magazine. I think it carries a lot of weight, no pun intended, in how women see themselves. The articles that are published in that magazine are read by millions of teens, young and older women all across the United States. It has a large impact on how feminine gender is seen. That is why I wanted to showcase, "Cosmo" and do some of my front page article similar to the ones I've seen within their pages. I dug out some of my older subscriptions and literally clipped headlines from the pages. Looking at the headlines out of their magazine context was a bit eye-opening. Most of the stuff was about loosing weight, finding a guy, loosing a guy, and being independent. It was interesting to see what key words kept popping up within the several copies I had that I'd never noticed before.

I can see now that magazines are surely one way that popular culture can influence how people see the world, and how genders are shaped.

The Spectacle

When I was looking back through my notes to do these blog assignments, I saw my notes about The Spectacle. I remember being so fascinated by this idea. I was always aware that advertisements, movies, novels, politics, sports and television were sort of over the top, but I couldn't quite give it a word. Spectacle. It's perfect! These modes of production serve to replace life with image.

The Spectate does a few things to us, it:

1.) Exalts the image over the experience. Ads do this all the time, same can be said about movies.

2.) Defines social relations. Movies and television suggest to us what our relationships should look and function like.

3.) Engenders alienation. In most ads, television series and movies there is some sense of alienation if you don't buy into what is being sold to you.

4.) Offers an unattainable utopia. This is very true for those really silly fragrance ads. I never really understand those anyway. It's a scene with two half naked human on a boat for thirty seconds caressing each other, then in the last three seconds, there's a voice over that says, "Dolce and Gabonna, Light Blue,". Um, okay? What just happened? How does this pertain to perfume?! Or the perfect lives we're shown in television series and movies. Back to the advertisements though. The day we went through and talked about sexuality with perfumes/colognes in advertisements was really amusing to me. In real life, it will never work that way. Just because you're wearing a perfume called "Sexy" does not make you sexy, or because your cologned is called, "Stud" does not make you a stud. Those ads we looked at suggested that, though! If you were this cologne, you will get the girl in this picture! Even though it seems so silly when you analyze it, advertisers somehow make millions selling their products offering these unattainable utopias!

I loved learning about The Spectacle and everything there was that went with it. The power of advertisement was always interesting to me, and seeing how it tied into to popular culture was neat-o.

Googlezon

To start, McLuhan's Laws of Media are:

1. Enhance

2. Reverse

3. Retrieve

4. Obsolesce

The short video we watched in class was mostly about Google taking over the world, and how that affects our lives. Or that's what I got out of it.

We know from our application of McLuhan's Laws that Google enhances information, communication, and participation. Google obsolesces traditional research, the printed word, and communication. Google retrieves multi-dimensional thinking, and awareness to event around the world. Google reveres print, new video media, and privacy.

The video, "Googlezon" illustrates these examples in the following ways:

1. Enhance. Technology has enhanced our lives in many different ways. This video illustrated several different ways both Google and Amazon both enhanced our lives by showing us what we want to purchase from what we previously purchased. Google purchased Picassa so that we can share our pictures in better ways, and various social media sites become available for public access.

2. Reverse. The newspaper starts going out of business. Not only is it hard to get a hold of in print, the NY Times becomes a print only newsletter for the elite. It is really hard to get real news online; no journalists are working in the field anymore.

3. Retrieve. The Googlezon makes a good point to show the positive aspects of Google and Amazon at the start of the video. People are able to retrieve information that is specific to them, and them alone. Personal news feeds and personal shopping advice based on pages previously visited by the web browser.

4. Obsolesce. Googlezon obsolesces the print. Magazines, newspapers and maps become obsolete. The video did a good job at illustrating this too, which I mention with reversal. The NY Times becomes available only to the elite and the elderly.

I hope this isn't where our Google is headed.

I love you, Google.

Dreamworlds 3

Wow. Where to even begin with this post. For starters, this movie was really interesting for me. This topic we started with, finding the narrative in music videos, sparked my attention. When we reviewed music videos and discussed the gender roles assigned in each video, I could relate on some level. I once watched music videos on MTV as I got ready in the morning. I saw the scantily-clad girls shaking it on tables. I saw the beefed up men, beating up other men and still getting the girl. I thought this was normal, for a music video. For pop culture. I understood that what happened in music videos, television and movies didn't usually happen in real life. These scenarios were being over fantasied. Most of the time I think they were comical.

Seeing the men being portrayed as the masculine, save-the-day, get-the-girl, and be really strong type. Girls were shown as sex-crazed, domestic, always beautiful and thin, but with the perfect hourglass form. I feel as though while men and women are seen in that light, it is not as extreme as the film "Dreamworlds 3" illustrated it to be. After viewing the film, even I was convinced the female gender was completely doomed. Although I knew it was all overdramatized depictions of what I previously mentioned, the producer Sut Jhally pulls out all the big guns to make us believe what he is preaching. What strategies did this guy use to be so damn convincing?

Jhally creates incongruity by showing all the images in slow motion, and doing exactly what he claims the producers of the music videos are doing. I saw more female body parts in slow motion, with strings and piano music playing ominously in the background than I ever did in an actual music video. Jhally makes his argument about woman's incongruity by repeating the same words over and over again so they stick in our minds. They stay with us after the movie ends. He illustrates the men being powerful and verbally abusive, sometimes physically abusive. Jhally shows men being dominant over women, as they are shown in music videos. He is almost doing the same thing the music videos are doing. The repetition of the images of violence, the repetition of words to give impact to his cause and his juxtaposition of the idea of fantasy, pornographic women against the idea of real-world women create a strong argument that could sway many.

Jhally has an extremely strong argument and does a great job making his argument. He shows sides of the music industry many don't want to see. The backstage lunch-meat throwing scene was disgusting to me. That was objectifying women and I thought that was terrible. There are people out there who watch these music videos, these television shows and movies that portray women and men in these specific gender roles and believe that this is how our society is. The scene that Jhally played of the riot and the women getting water and other liquids thrown on them for no reason at all, that mimicked exactly a scene from a music video was pretty hard to watch, and I would never want to experience that first hand. The problem, I think is that people cannot distinguish what is fantasy and what is reality.

I'd like to hope that people can.

My Artifact: Facebook

Facebook. Everyone has one. And I mean everyone. My mother, my sister, my brother, my aunts and uncles. Grandparents. Former high school teachers. Pretty much everyone I have ever met has a Facebook.

What is the appeal here? Why do I even have one? Why do I constantly check my Facebook? Why do I care if someone 'likes' something I post? It was just a mindless status update, probably about how my day was. Or a favorite song lyric. Why do I have 382 'friends' when I really only care about what 25 of them are saying/doing with their lives?

Facebook has become so integrated in our society. I found out that Osama bin Laden was captured through Facebook. I hadn't checked out any news websites yet that day. I was on a break between classes and decided to check my Facebook. What happens? BAM! Facebook informs me that bin Laden was captured. How does this impact us as young adults? What does this say about how we find our breaking news? There was even a movie about the creation of Facebook.

The movie, "The Social Network" received eight Academy Award nominations and three Golden Globe awards. During the movie's opening weekend it made $22.4 million in the US alone, debuting at #1 in the box offices. What drew so many people to see this movie? Was it the story behind Facebook, the one about Mark Zuckerberg and his life? Or was it that people were truly interested in the phenomenon that is Facebook?

I created my Facebook in 2007 and since then I have added 138 albums of pictures. Pictures that have documented the last four years of my life. Why do I think anyone cares about the 3,776 odd pictures I have on my Facebook profile? Why do I feel the need to update my status and let my 382 friends know how my day was? If my 'friends' really wanted to know how my day was, wouldn't they call or text me and ask? But I still feel the need to update. And let them know. It's so crazy to think about!

As you can see, I think Facebook is fascinating in every aspect.

Even the idea that people around the world make 'friends' with other people and keep in touch this way is interesting to me. The way we interact with people on Facebook, the way it affects our everyday lives is quite crazy, I think. This is why I've chosen Facebook as my artifact. I want to learn more about how Facebook, and any social networking website/device, affects us and the way we react to things in our world.