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Roderick

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Re: Anita not contextualizing properly, that isn't at all her job or intent with these videos.

As for No More Heroes subverting the tropes or whatever, it still seemed grossly sexist to me however ironic it may have been. Ironic sexism is still sexism.

I'm not sure how to broach the American values vs Japanese values thing, but the fact is that the game was released and marketed in America for American audiences.

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Edited: Basically what Busby just said in about a tenth of the space as I used.

I think actually having critical discussions about any commentary is important, it's just been next to impossible to do it with FemFreq in a large part because showing vocal support of those under siege is more important than a reasoned analysis of her criticisms. As for your specific points:

 

I'm not one of those people, because I'm not big on social-media type arguments. But the criticisms that I would level include:

 

- There are individual examples that are knowingly indulging in the tropes she cites for the purpose of subverting or ridiculing them. The use of No More Heroes in the latest video stuck out to me in this regard. (I am aware that objections to individual examples does nothing to undermine the greater point which is about a general environment of hostility).

 

While there can be truth to this, the problem arises in that sometimes ridiculing something (or even a middling attempt at subversion) just means that you are repeating the trope and engaging in the same kind of sexist content creation as those you are mocking. Like if your game doesn't have any good female characters, but you mock the sexist content of other games, you've still just made sexist content. Satire, ridicule, and mockery don't automatically excuse a game, and from what I know of NMH, there's still a strong argument that its inclusion in something like this is valid.

 

Edited to add: As an additional exterior reference point, I think this kind of content falls under the same umbrella as hipster racism.

 

- It is very problematic to use American standards and cultural analysis to critique Japanese cultural products. Not impossible, especially because the core of the critique is about consumption rather than creation, but nonetheless very problematic.

 

I'd actually like to see you expand on your thoughts on this, as I kind of, but not entirely, follow your reasoning here.

 

- She doesn't try to contextualize any of the things she cites into the greater cultural landscape. It turns out games are sexist in large part because our entire society is really very sexist. By failing to contextualize these things, she 1) implies by omission that these are unique to gaming, which can help inflame her critics and 2) open herself up to specious objections like the AEI Oprah / Daytime TV comparison. (Although I do understand also that this is outside the scope of her arguments).

 

This is, to be honest, the kind of thing that strikes me as trying to distract from the work she is creating. The kind of thing you're talking about is a Sexism 101 course, and can be applied as a criticism to any feminist critique of anything. Part of the reason I say that is that when someone writes about the sexist content of a television show, no one says, "Well what about the greater social context like the role that games play in sexism in our culture." I think it's perfectly valid to focus on specific areas for criticism or analysis without having to include a significant amount of greater context, because that's a rabbit hole of infinite depth. Like you give two examples, and in the first case, I dont' think that is ever implied in any way and in the second case, haters are going to make specious objections no matter how much context is given.

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To add: she does provide a larger cultural context. This most recent video had ads that used dead or assaulted women's bodies to sell products. The first video she did went into the history of the damsel. She always makes a point to cite statistics on the larger issue (ie violence against women).

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- There are individual examples that are knowingly indulging in the tropes she cites for the purpose of subverting or ridiculing them. The use of No More Heroes in the latest video stuck out to me in this regard. (I am aware that objections to individual examples does nothing to undermine the greater point which is about a general environment of hostility).

 

Watching some of her earlier videos I had this same thought.  There are a few instances where I believe she overstates her argument (as in the case of using satire as evidence) or presents what appears to be an opinion as fact.  However as she has made more videos this has completely disappeared, and for me at least, I think these complaints can be boiled down to growing pains.  Over time the economy of information in Sarkeesian's videos have increased, and I think my initial complaints were most likely the result of her not having found her voice yet or some kind of misunderstanding on my part.

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Maybe this is just me, but I really don't think that most games are nuanced enough to properly satirize gender stuff. Also, I don't find the American/Western vs Japanese thing compelling because honestly the Japanese market is puny nowadays and most games that are targeted specifically to Japanese don't get localized.

 

Basically, don't do big boob and/or panty jokes and expect to not get some criticism.

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This is, to be honest, the kind of thing that strikes me as trying to distract from the work she is creating. The kind of thing you're talking about is a Sexism 101 course, and can be applied as a criticism to any feminist critique of anything. Part of the reason I say that is that when someone writes about the sexist content of a television show, no one says, "Well what about the greater social context like the role that games play in sexism in our culture." I think it's perfectly valid to focus on specific areas for criticism or analysis without having to include a significant amount of greater context, because that's a rabbit hole of infinite depth. Like you give two examples, and in the first case, I dont' think that is ever implied in any way and in the second case, haters are going to make specious objections no matter how much context is given.

To be clear, I much prefer your response to Busby's. The whole point of this exercise is to actually enter a dialogue about this.

 

My response here is: whatever her initial intent, it's become clear that for a lot of her audience, this _IS_ a Sexism 101 course. That being the case, I personally feel that, were this a project I were doing, I would make some attempts to tailor the content to that audience. This is pop-cultural commentary, being presented to a general audience via youtube video. If Sarkeesian wanted to speak to an experienced audience, she could have presented it to an academic journal. If your intent is to engage a general audience, I think the onus is partially upon you to communicate in a way that that audience can understand. 

 

To be clear, this isn't a direct criticism. I understand, and even stated in my initial post that I understand that her videos have a specific, limited scope. But these are ways that I personally feel the content could be more effective for the audience that is consuming it. I think there are still some marginal (in an econmics sense) consumers that could be reached with additional content.

 

The japanese culture stuff would take some time and effort to flesh out...I just dashed those off from the top of my head. But basically, it boils down to: Japanese culture seems very familiar in a lot of ways because it has a fairly ubiquitous presence in modern American pop culture. But it still draws from a distinct tradition that can have it's own distinct set of tropes and assumptions.

 

Again, the impact of this critique is mitigated because the core criticism is about consumption rather than authorial intent. But I presented it merely as a potential critique of the Tropes v. Women series.

 

To add: she does provide a larger cultural context. This most recent video had ads that used dead or assaulted women's bodies to sell products. The first video she did went into the history of the damsel. She always makes a point to cite statistics on the larger issue (ie violence against women).

That's context within the gaming industry (the ads were for games and gaming products). I'm talking about context with the larger cultural landscape, where I can't buy bath salts at The Body Shop without seeing a wall of models making "Fuck Me" eyes.

 

I'm not expecting a lecture about the monomyth, or whatever. But given that these videos are targeted at the gaming industry, some comparative content would be nice. When TV attempts to make things serious and gritty, do they go to the same well of misogyny? Did Deadwood feature as much prostitute-stabbing as Red Dead Revolver? Does Dragon Age feature as much rape as Game of Thrones? Why was Batman: Arkham City a literal "bitch"-fest, but The Dark Knight Rises wasn't? (These are specific examples provided for dramatic effect, the intent being to look at how general attitudes in one industry are more or less pronounced than in another). What does it say about the game industry vs the TV / Film industries that they take different, or similar, approached to this kind of content?

 

Again, I recognize that this is outside the scope that Sarkeesian has defined for her project. But these are the kinds of questions that I think her videos raise without providing answers, which may be a source of criticism.

 

I also recognize that we're like 7% of the way through the planned series. But I'm speaking in the context of what's currently available.

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I recall that some of the ads were for clothing as well. And I don't really see the point of comparing TV to games. Does it matter if TV is better or worse? Not really given what Anita's series is about.

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I recall that some of the ads were for clothing as well. And I don't really see the point of comparing TV to games. Does it matter if TV is better or worse? Not really given what Anita's series is about.

Ah, yes, you're right, in regards to what she calls the "Drop dead gorgeous" trope. Looks like fashion editorial shoots. Fair enough.

 

The point of contextualizing in other industries is twofold:

1) it helps defuse criticisms that she's "coming to destroy gaming"

2) If the goal is awareness, it helps to underscore the ubiquity of the problem. If the goal is to affect the content creation,it provides contrasting examples to reconsider how similar effects could be done in a more gender-sensitive manner.

 

Fashion photography doesn't really hit home in that regard because it isn't likely to be familiar to the target audience for the videos. Also, I recognize that there are pitfalls in the approach implied by my first point in regards to catering to the worst of your audience, which can, when drawn to extremes, shut down any useful conversation whatsoever. But I think there are marginal consumers that have a knee-jerk defense mechanism that can be defused in order to get them to really engage with the content of what is being presented.

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That's context within the gaming industry (the ads were for games and gaming products). I'm talking about context with the larger cultural landscape, where I can't buy bath salts at The Body Shop without seeing a wall of models making "Fuck Me" eyes.

 

I'm not expecting a lecture about the monomyth, or whatever. But given that these videos are targeted at the gaming industry, some comparative content would be nice. When TV attempts to make things serious and gritty, do they go to the same well of misogyny? Did Deadwood feature as much prostitute-stabbing as Red Dead Revolver? Does Dragon Age feature as much rape as Game of Thrones? Why was Batman: Arkham City a literal "bitch"-fest, but The Dark Knight Rises wasn't? (These are specific examples provided for dramatic effect, the intent being to look at how general attitudes in one industry are more or less pronounced than in another). What does it say about the game industry vs the TV / Film industries that they take different, or similar, approached to this kind of content?

 

Again, I recognize that this is outside the scope that Sarkeesian has defined for her project. But these are the kinds of questions that I think her videos raise without providing answers, which may be a source of criticism.

 

The thing for me is, very little academic criticism bothers with that extreme level of trans-media historicism. It's just not a priority, because context is not typically the most germane or useful part of criticism. In all my years writing research papers on Shakespeare in undergrad, never did I come across a article that engaged in contextualization of Shakespeare's works alongside contemporary works in a historical and cultural context as its central argument, even when new historicism was the article's mode. I'm not even going to go into the death of the author, either. The fact that someone can be criticized for choosing not to engage in a massive secondary project of dubious worth (because what does comparing video game sexism with sexism in other media really tell us about anything besides the ubiquity of sexism) makes me feel that those fans of video games who desire it just aren't ready for their chosen medium to be taken seriously.

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The thing for me is, very little academic criticism bothers with that extreme level of trans-media historicism. It's just not a priority, because context is not typically the most germane or useful part of criticism. In all my years writing research papers on Shakespeare in undergrad, never did I come across a article that engaged in contextualization of Shakespeare's works alongside contemporary works in a historical and cultural context as its central argument, even when new historicism was the article's mode. I'm not even going to go into the death of the author, either. The fact that someone can be criticized for choosing not to engage in a massive secondary project of dubious worth (because what does comparing video game sexism with sexism in other media really tell us about anything besides the ubiquity of sexism) makes me feel that those fans of video games who desire it just aren't ready for their chosen medium to be taken seriously.

 

Is this academic criticism though? It seems to me that Anita is trying to reach a larger audience than that. Personally, the most interesting Shakespeare class I ever took was one where we went through the entire text of the plays and talked about the cultural and literary influences of the time. Does that make for the best academic paper, not really, but it did make a great 100 level literature class that I actually remember long after I've dismissed the other GURs I took during that time.

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Is this academic criticism though? It seems to me that Anita is trying to reach a larger audience than that. Personally, the most interesting Shakespeare class I ever took was one where we went through the entire text of the plays and talked about the cultural and literary influences of the time. Does that make for the best academic paper, not really, but it did make a great 100 level literature class that I actually remember long after I've dismissed the other GURs I took during that time.

 

Maybe it's not academic criticism, in terms of its depth and presentation, but it's academic-style criticism, much closer to it than the usual YouTube video about games.

 

I am also against Sarkeesian turning Tropes vs. Women into a Sexism 101 course, because it dramatically widens the scope of her argument when most other criticisms of her work are already about a lack of specifics on any given point. There is an enormous amount of material out there on sexism in modern media. If someone is left unsatisfied by Sarkeesian's already-ample synopses of various cultural processes, it takes them literally ten seconds to find out more somewhere else. But that's not why this criticism is being made by most people, is it? It's the argument that context is what makes problematic shit acceptable, which misses the point of these videos in a big way.

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How is it that the world has a man named Wolf Blitzer in it and he's a journalist instead of a space marine?

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How is it that the world has a man named Wolf Blitzer in it and he's a journalist instead of a space marine?

Or a private detective.

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How is it that the world has a man named Wolf Blitzer in it and he's a journalist instead of a space marine?

 

I understand he has a Situation Room.

 

Maybe he's done his service, and he decided he wanted another, more comfortable job, where he could display the same level of awareness and sensitivity required for space marining.

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I understand he has a Situation Room.

 

Maybe he's done his service, and he decided he wanted another, more comfortable job, where he could display the same level of awareness and sensitivity required for space marining.

Why are we talking about Wolf Blitzer? I looked over the last page and didn't see a link to a video.

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That was actually a really good speech. She fucking nailed it. I can't think of anything she said that could be refuted or counter argued (I'd like to see Sommers try, just for schadenfreud's sake).

 

Just watched. Mostly pretty good but there was some kind of bioessentialist stuff in there (being discriminated against for the ability to bear children). Slightly tone deaf if you're aware of trans issues, but a lot of stuff that needed to be said got said there.

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It's so weird that they hired someone who almost exclusively produces erotic art and never once thought "maybe this is that that over-sexualization thing that people complain about."

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The point of contextualizing in other industries is twofold:

1) it helps defuse criticisms that she's "coming to destroy gaming"

That's not a criticism. There is nothing in the videos that would suggest it to begin with. It's merely an attack and changing the videos to counter attacks when new ones can be simply invented would stop her from doing any real work.

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Why is it that self-proclaimed Social Media Experts never fucking understand social media?

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