4 posts tagged “mass media”
Note: This post was written in context to a current discussion being held within the community blogs at Destructoid.com, initiated by Reverend Anthony's recent podcast rant about the phenomenon of 'grrl gamers'. To get the full story, listen to Anthony's argument here a little before midway into the show and read VirtualGirl's response post here.
After listening to the good Reverend's rant and reading
Virtualgirl's response I felt the need to just skim the surface on my
personal thoughts in regards to the grrl gamers out there. I'm going to
try to keep it simple and short so as to potentially develop my
argument later, so here goes nothing:
Media scholar and philosopher Marshall McLuhan coined the quintessential expression "the medium is the message". Taking this into consideration with grrl gamers, the particular ailment of these female gaming communities is the dependency on the image as their first and foremost means of communicating their apparent plight for 'respect'. As Rev. explained, when these girls slather prolific amounts of photos of themselves the message they are projecting is very particularly and exclusively oriented towards distinguishing themselves as 'female' or 'not male', thereby immediately debasing whatever idea of equality they were supposedly demanding.
Why is this message so inherently black and white? Because these photos are circulated within and are part of the mass media in which personal intentions, general goodwill, and individual personalities behind the image are altogether ignored, erased, and replaced with the surface level meaning. Period.
I want to reiterate that the key phrase of this statement is 'mass media'. Personal stories such as VirtualGirl's reveal to us that there is a large level of devotion and meaning within such cultural acts as dressing up as Lara Croft at a convention which I can respect to a certain degree on an individual basis. Her passion and confidence for something that she loves are to be envied. But the mass media cares only what the masses want, and within this largely masculine gaming demographic the masses want to consume stereotypical, sexualized fantasy women, so thats what they will see.
My advice? If you want to discuss how you want to be treated
equally as a gamer because you think that you are somehow alienated by
your sex then write about it instead of posting photos of
yourself. What you look like has absolutely nothing to do with how
passionate you are about gaming or games.
In this day and age, video games have become the scape goat of societal violence in our youth. Replacing comic books, pulp fiction, and metal music, the mass media has taken to pointing the finger at video games to explain the backwards perversion of violence in media (while simultaneously leaving violent news broadcasts, movies, and television shows conveniently out of the picture).
While I certainly think that video games mark an interesting shift in mediated influence when it comes to violence, there are clearly larger societal issues at stake and it's comes off as pure ignorance to blame games exclusively. This being said, the parental responses to the pristine and stylish looking Wii zapper make it inherently clear that a lot of folks just don't know what they're talking about. Besides, with my experience with the Wii zapper, I doubt folks have much to worry about since the peripheral can't aim accurately for beans.
I attended my very first course of the semester this morning which has already launched my semester into an interesting twist. The course is 'Mass Media and Society', a cross-over class under both the Media Studies department (which is one of my majors) and the Sociology department. Our very first assigment (along with the reading of Mcluhan and Zengotita) is to have a week long 'Mass Media fast' in which we are encouraged to strictly avoid all forms of Mass Media for an entire week, recording our successes, faults, and responses in a week long journal. The only acceptable condition in which we can engage with 'mass mediated' vehicles is if we need them for academic or job-related purposes. If we are under the condition where we 'cheat', then we need to be honset about it and record it.
I could start this assignment by making a smart-ass argument that as a
Media Studies major I am under academic necessity to expose myself to
all aspects of Media on a daily basis and that the same effect of the
assignment could be achieved by recording every single mass mediated
action. Then again, I am in need to develop that argument further
before I decide to entirely blow off the assignment (which could come
off as unfavorable in the eyes of my professor). Regardless, this
post is my first cheat of the 'fast' so there may be a temporary lull
in my vox activity for the next week or so. My second cheat will
come later when I will play We Love Katamari and watch a documentary
with the boyfriend (who is only visiting for another few days) later on
this evening. Furthermore, tomorrow I am attending an orientation
for my internship this semester that, under the line of business it is
associated, woudl qualify my very standing in the building as exposing
myself to mass media. That action I can at least relate to job
and/or academic necessity.
I am, however, more interested in determining the limits and bounds of
what can be defined as 'mass media' for this assignmett at this point
as opposed to the actual fast of media. We will see what happens
later on in the week.
A friend showed this news blurb to me on the IMDB news page (its towards the bottom if you'd like to check for yourself, but I've pasted it all here):
London Airport Closure -- A Media Event?
Anti-war blogs on Monday said that an NBC report suggested that the arrest of the suspected plane bombers in England and the subsequent shutting down of British airports may have been contrived for maximum political show in the news media. The network, citing unnamed U.K. officials knowledgeable about the case, said that contrary to statements made by officials over the weekend, the attacks were not imminent; no plane tickets had been purchased by the suspects; some hadn't even applied for passports. (British police confirmed Monday that there was no truth to earlier reports that airline tickets had been found at the residences of the suspects.) The sources also said that British authorities had wanted to continue to run surveillance on the suspects but that Washington pressured them to move in quickly. The blog Truthdig asked why, "if the attacks weren't imminent, were so many flights canceled -- as though the suspects were actually at the airport, waiting at the gates? And why, if the attacks weren't imminent, did it all of a sudden become too dangerous to allow people to bring water bottles on planes?"
...just some food for thought.
