Idle Thumbs 173: Ridonkulous Rift

[tegan]

I think they mean the context of the video game.

 

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're not trying to be patronizing, but the context of a video game is incredibly myopic compared to the context of the entire human experience. Being able to come up with bullshit story justification for why the checkpoints in your Assassin's Creed tutorial have to be prostitutes getting their throats slit is absolutely no excuse for perpetuating the notion that women are expendable pawns in the lives of men that's been going on since humanity first started telling stories.

[Urthman]

Is this the first time Chris has mixed in the new theme song without the introductory harpsichord?  I found it really weird.  Usually when the organ kicks in after that little nod to the earlier theme songs, I find it sounds unexpectedly cheerful and bouncy.  The feeling I get is, "Okay, we're gonna have a good time now."

 

But this time, fading the organ in directly underneath Sean's "Let's do this!" it sounded determined, serious, almost sinister.  I almost didn't believe it was quite the same music. 

 

Did anyone else think it sounded really different without that harpsichord contrast?  Chris, was that effect intentional, given the tone and subject matter of the podcast?

[Gormongous]

Is this the first time Chris has mixed in the new theme song without the introductory harpsichord?  I found it really weird.  Usually when the organ kicks in after that little nod to the earlier theme songs, I find it sounds unexpectedly cheerful and bouncy.  The feeling I get is, "Okay, we're gonna have a good time now."

 

But this time, fading the organ in directly underneath Sean's "Let's do this!" it sounded determined, serious, almost sinister.  I almost didn't believe it was quite the same music. 

 

Did anyone else think it sounded really different without that harpsichord contrast?  Chris, was that effect intentional, given the tone and subject matter of the podcast?

 

I actually wanted to post that I really enjoyed the theme and elevator music being more intrusive into the podcast content proper. It reminded me of the "Salacious Thumb" glory days of Chris' crazy Python-esque editing, which I know is too much work nowadays but was always really fascinating for me.

[Ride Rise Roar]

Does anybody gain anything from engaging with these conspiracy theorists re: the actual 'conspiracies' themselves (as they are construed by these nuts)? Obviously the misogyny towards women and violence other genders (& minorities) is disgusting and important and should be adressed. However, that there is some conspiracy to 'take my hobby from me', or that it is even possible, is so beyond the pale that it seems to discount the other stuff going on.

 

I don't know if this makes any sense, & please tell me to shut up or educate me if I'm wrong.

[Blambo]

Yeah I mean there is some reasonable argument to keep games journalism subjective but expand the range of sources you look at so as to not get caught in a zeitgeist in bad faith (ie everyone likes it so I must like it). But it manifests itself in really weird ways, like people who just don't like a certain kind of game making an objective value system based on their own. If you can say "these games are objectively bad, how can they succeed?", your next conclusion is "cronyism!"

[heinlager]

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're not trying to be patronizing, but the context of a video game is incredibly myopic compared to the context of the entire human experience. Being able to come up with bullshit story justification for why the checkpoints in your Assassin's Creed tutorial have to be prostitutes getting their throats slit is absolutely no excuse for perpetuating the notion that women are expendable pawns in the lives of men that's been going on since humanity first started telling stories.

- Do you view all entertainment in this context? Or just video games?

- Do you really think people hold this notion you speak of? I don't, and I'm a man.

[Henroid]

Does anybody gain anything from engaging with these conspiracy theorists re: the actual 'conspiracies' themselves (as they are construed by these nuts)? Obviously the misogyny towards women and violence other genders (& minorities) is disgusting and important and should be adressed. However, that there is some conspiracy to 'take my hobby from me', or that it is even possible, is so beyond the pale that it seems to discount the other stuff going on.

 

I don't know if this makes any sense, & please tell me to shut up or educate me if I'm wrong.

Earlier today I ended up engaging some of these people on Twitter (big mistake), and one of them said he would explain things out for me. But then he just linked me to a conspiracy theory post that explained nothing, it just ran with assumptions about things being true and wrecking things. Without qualifying how things have been ruined.

 

If there are "sides" to everything that's happened on the net, 'our' side has had powerful voices writing and speaking about things concisely in easy-to-understand fashion, with examples used as necessary. The 'other side' doesn't have anyone going for them in this manner. It's a bunch of people eager to be a mouth piece and they get trapped in the 24/7 news network thing of just spouting talking points.

 

Which is another weird allusion to the political landscape in America, with this whole thing.

[Gormongous]

- Do you view all entertainment in this context? Or just video games?

- Do you really think people hold this notion you speak of? I don't, and I'm a man.

• I think one of the most powerful critical lenses through which people can view any and all entertainment is that of human experience as a whole. The fact that video games often enjoy their own little critical bubble that isn't as beholden to mainstream cultural awareness is one of the reasons for the echo chamber among some of their more "hardcore" fans.
• Do you think tegan is really arguing that anyone plays Assassin's Creed II and goes, "Fuck yeah, expendable pawns," when this dude runs through the city infinitely holding women hostage? The issue with sexism, privilege, the patriarchy, and so on is that no one needs to believe it in any active sense for it to be perpetuated. It just needs not to be challenged, which I know I didn't when I played that specific sequence, but probably would have if it had been men being repeatedly accosted and executed for tutorialization purposes.

[lizzyinthesky]

Yeah I mean there is some reasonable argument to keep games journalism subjective but expand the range of sources you look at so as to not get caught in a zeitgeist in bad faith (ie everyone likes it so I must like it). But it manifests itself in really weird ways, like people who just don't like a certain kind of game making an objective value system based on their own. If you can say "these games are objectively bad, how can they succeed?", your next conclusion is "cronyism!"

For the longest time I insisted LOMA games were all terrible because they were all evolved from Warcraft 3 which was a huge disappointment to me, a WC2 fan.  I was pretty rancorous about it for ages.

And then I downloaded DOTA 2 to spectate and maybe get some idtems sometime before The International this year and got hooked. People are really good at establishing boundaries they ABSOLUTELY HATE.

[Problem Machine]

- Do you view all entertainment in this context? Or just video games?

- Do you really think people hold this notion you speak of? I don't, and I'm a man.

On the first point: Viewing a piece in the broader context of the culture of its creation as just as important as viewing a component of a piece within the context of the whole. These are the standards of criticism. This is what critics write about. This isn't some special standard that tegan just invented.

 

On the second point: Though you'll find relatively few people out there who will freely admit to viewing black people as less human than they are, that doesn't mean racism is dead. By the same token, though very few men will say that women exist solely for the pleasure of men, you will find that sexism still exists. The belief doesn't have to be made explicit, if people act in such a way that women are treated disposable, if hundreds of works of art disproportionately portray them that way, then I think it's safe to infer that the belief exists.

 

I'm having a very hard time regarding these last couple of posts of yours as being made in good faith. These are questions which have been addressed in numerous places. If the topics interest you, I would suggest you spend some time researching cultural criticism and feminist theory, respectively, rather than asking tegan to educate you.

[heinlager]

I'm having a very hard time regarding these last couple of posts of yours as being made in good faith. These are questions which have been addressed in numerous places. If the topics interest you, I would suggest you spend some time researching cultural criticism and feminist theory, respectively, rather than asking tegan to educate you.

 

I'm asking the opinion/stance of someone. I'm sure these questions have been addressed in numerous places by other people. There is so much rhetoric flying around in these discussions I like to know what I'm talking about. I see you have also answered, but perhaps I should clarify my questions as they seemed to have been misunderstood.

 

- Do you feel the notion of "women are expendable pawns in the lives of men" is perpetuated in media/entertainment other then games? (Perhaps the interactivity is what is problematic).

- How prevalent to you feel this notion is?

[Bjorn]

I'm asking the opinion/stance of someone. I'm sure these questions have been addressed in numerous places by other people. There is so much rhetoric flying around in these discussions I like to know what I'm talking about. I see you have also answered, but perhaps I should clarify my questions as they seemed to have been misunderstood.

 

- Do you feel the notion of "women are expendable pawns in the lives of men" is perpetuated in media/entertainment other then games? (Perhaps the interactivity is what is problematic).

- How prevalent to you feel this notion is?

 

Why don't you answer those questions yourself first.  Because by asking questions, without volunteering any information yourself, you're tasking other people with work that you yourself aren't putting in.  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are asking in good faith, but asking others what are complex questions that take time to answer properly without yourself spending any time to explore the issue is a strategy that people use in arguments just to screw with people, cause them to expose themselves emotionally (potentially) and waste their time. 

[Problem Machine]

I'm not sure if you're asking me or tegan at the moment, but:

- Yes, it is extremely common in all forms of media. It may be especially problematic in games in some cases, since the objectification is systemic as well as narrative, but that's a critique to be applied on a game-by-game basis.

- As mentioned above, extremely so. Using female characters solely to motivate male characters has been an ongoing feminist critique of the vast majority of popular entertainment. 'Expendable pawns' may seem an extreme example, but is really what it boils down to when these characters exist solely to serve the needs of another character.

 

Sorry if my interpretation of your posts seemed unkind, but posts that brusquely question what other people are saying with no indication of greater context are at first glance very derail-ey. Especially considering that, frankly, your questions seemed rather naive within the context of the debates that have been ongoing on this forum.

[Merus]

I also have suspicions that this is a 'checkmate atheists' approach; a whole bunch of questions that allow the asker to frame the debate however they want, especially when the problem with the debate is that one side is coming in with a frame that denies the validity of that debate.

 

Of course, it could be just a guy, who knows. But you're welcome to actually start a dialogue at any time instead of the quiz show format.

[twmac]

Okay - this was the breakdown of the first 26 minutes of me listening to this podcast:

 

- Oh no, please don't go into this there can't be anything to add to this discourse

- Shit, nice point

- Fuck yeah!

- Damint I need to leave work but I really want to see where this is going

 

Really liking it so far and it has been one of the best discussions on this whole nightmare.

 

As for women as background, it reminded me of a discussion I had about 8 years ago.

 

I introduced this girl to Audition with the premise that it was pretty messed up and partly traumatised me. We watched it and I asked her what she thought. She said she liked it but didn't understand what freaked me out so much. I explained the idea [spoilerS for Audition] of a woman flipping on a man, keeping him prisoner then torturing him physically and emotionally was pretty grim [End Spoilers]

 

She replied that I if flipped the genders I have just described about a dozen run-of-the-mill thrillers released in the US.

 

It made me pause and then *mind blown*

 

For all others who rolling their eyes - yes, it should have been a bit more obvious to me.

[twmac]

This also reminded me of a separate 'watching a film with a woman friend' I wrote about in relation to Anita Sarkeesian's first video:

 

http://www.arcadianrhythms.com/2013/03/damsels-in-distress-my-own-regressive-crap/

[BusbyBerkeley]

- Do you feel the notion of "women are expendable pawns in the lives of men" is perpetuated in media/entertainment other then games? (Perhaps the interactivity is what is problematic).

 Yes of course representation of women is a problem in pretty much all forms of media. It's problematic everywhere, people criticize it in other media all the time. Games do seem to be worse because at least with say, film, you have all sorts of broad genres and types of markets and stuff. With games you historically have mostly ONLY had the AAA developers putting out games that are roughly equal to blockbusters and genre films. There is great work done in that kind of space, but it tends to skew towards a nerdy, male audience. And then this problem with women becomes much more pronounced.

 

You are just leaving these super short posts asking leading questions, and I really don't think you're participating in good faith so I'm not really sure why I'm even responding to this. 

[Henroid]

So all the things have culminated into the #GamerGate hashtag. It's voiced to be about the integrity in journalism and its ethics and also about protecting the video game playing passtime (hobby isn't really proper word usage here is it?), but the reinforcement of that intent doesn't really back it up. I spent this morning challenging people in favor of the hashtag to talk about other issues of ethics problems in journalism, even throwing softball suggestions like paid-for content on journalism sites or review embargos being a reinforcement of something negative. I didn't get any straight forward responses, instead run-around to bring up what seem to be nonsense talking points.

 

There's a huge irony that there are ethics issues to talk about, but all they're interested in is gossip.

 

Also naming controversies with the ____gate format is really stupid. Watergate was named Watergate because that was the name of the place, not because there was a controversy regarding water. /pet-peeve

[Bjorn]

Also naming controversies with the ____gate format is really stupid. Watergate was named Watergate because that was the name of the place, not because there was a controversy regarding water. /pet-peeve

 

It bugs the crap out of me when it is applied to anything that's not a major political scandal that involves a president potentially having broken the law.  It is arguably the single biggest example of corruption and abuse of power in our country's history, and should be remembered as such, not watered down by slapping -gate on every little controversial thing.  If applied to other presidential scandals, I think it's actually okay because it reinforces the memory that presidents can in fact be ousted due to their actions. 

[Brannigan]

Take it easy guys, don't want a full blown -gategate here.

[Henroid]

Don't water down Watergate. Gate.

 

Edit -Gamergatefold foldgate.

[shammack]

[tegan]

Jeffgate Blumgold

[James]

Also naming controversies with the ____gate format is really stupid. Watergate was named Watergate because that was the name of the place, not because there was a controversy regarding water. /pet-peeve

It's no worse than cheeseburgers. They come from Cheeseburg, you know.

[Brannigan]

Cheeseburgate