8 ms·

And you've gotten to the point with most art. It's not a human right to access art and entertainment. Therefore, art and entertainment really don't owe us anyth

by Loughla 12y ago

And you've gotten to the point with most art. It's not a human right to access art and entertainment. Therefore, art and entertainment really don't owe us anything in terms of considering our feelings or opinions. All they owe us is to be interesting and entertaining enough to make us want to spend money or time on them. BUT, because we live in a very privileged society (any first world country at least), we have nothing better to worry about than whether or not the new Half Life has a strong woman character in it, or whether or not it portrays minorities in a positive light. Somewhere along the way people got it in their heads that they can dictate what is art and what is entertainment to other people. This has been a struggle since the dawn of time, I believe. The only problem is that now we have a medium for communication that allows these shallow, backward censors to find each other and be much, much louder than they should be. I love Leisure Suit Larry simply because it is hilariously sexist. I also treat the women in my life and women I meet as equals in all aspects of my personal and professional life. It's as if, in some cases, there can be a disconnect between what I do as entertainment and who I am as a person. It's also as if there exist certain items for certain audiences. I'll not let my 10 year old play leisure suit larry; then again, I'm not going to bother with candy crush nonsense, he can have it. People need to learn that not everything can make them happy, and that the world isn't sunshine and puppies. Sorry for the lengthy (vaguely off-topic) response, but this really strikes a nerve. Fun fact - my graduate studies are in Critical Pedagogy in Educational Leadership, emphasis in Social Justice. The current incarnation of "Social Justice" is so far from what individuals like bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Maxine Greene and Henry Giroux had in mind that it's fucking ridiculous and absolutely infuriating.

mrcharles 12y ago
Good news! No one is ever going to stop a game from being made.
- dripton 12y ago
  I'm not so sure. Several of the most popular game platforms (Xbox, PlayStation, iOS) are effectively closed, with gatekeepers who decide which games are allowed. And those gatekeepers don't allow certain types of games on those platforms. Of course it's still possible to create whatever games you want on the remaining free platforms, but removing some of the most popular and lucrative options could make it economically challenging.
  - mrcharles 12y ago
    Platforms have denied games and game content for well over a decade now and games seem to be doing just fine thanks. I'm unsure which popular and lucrative options are being removed though. Could you provide examples of what you think will magically disappear?
    - judk 12y ago
      Decade? Nintendo is over 30 years old.
      - mrcharles 12y ago
        Truly, games are doomed.
thirdtruck 12y ago
You say we have nothing better to worry about than certain portrayals, but try and imagine being constantly portrayed as: (a) a likely gang member, (b) someone who can be called a slut and spanked because of the length of their skirt, (c) someone who can shot dead because someone of a different skin color felt slightly threatened. or (d) someone who can be killed for using the wrong bathroom. Where does "nothing better to do" fit into those prevalent portrayals?
- Loughla 12y ago
  Imagine being constantly portrayed as someone who can be beaten or killed for any perceived injustice or poorly chosen word in public just because of his/her perceived sexuality. That's a real example from my life, but still doesn't give me the right to dictate what someone else should enjoy in art or entertainment. Your argument doesn't really rebut my original statement that arts and entertainment aren't a human right and you don't get to tell me what I can enjoy or even have access to; nor can I tell someone else what they can and can't enjoy as art and entertainment. Your 'social justice' is misguided. You can't impact art and entertainment until you impact culture. One drives the other; history proves that statement correct. You want to have an impact on these video games? Get into education or youth development of some kind and start with them.
  - thirdtruck 12y ago
    I was addressing how we are made to feel about each other, and the very real, material consequences of those feelings. To limit the discussion to just "enjoyment" of media ignores all the other ramifications. Art and entertainment are intrinsic parts of culture, and the medium by which it is perpetuated. To say that changing them won't change culture is to say that neither propaganda or advertising have any effect.
    - ivanca 12y ago
      They change culture but not the way you think it does; killing people in videogames don't make real people violent, Japan has some of the most gruesome films/games ever created, and despite that the murder rate in Japan is one of the lowest. You can't have your cake and eat it too, meaning: Are games part of capitalist entertainment or is interactive social teaching? Pretending to be both just ruins it for everyone, and that's easy to see and foresee, that's why people like Anita Sarkeesian badmouths games but makes no effort to create one herself.
RodericDay 12y ago
>> The current incarnation of "Social Justice" is so far from what individuals like bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Maxine Greene and Henry Giroux had in mind that it's fucking ridiculous and absolutely infuriating. http://books.google.ca/books/about/Reel_to_Real.html?id=hRtGzesft_AC http://books.google.ca/books/about/Reel_to_Real.html?id=hRtG... >> "Although it may not be the goal of filmmaker, most of us learn something when we watch movies. They make us think. They make us feel. Occasionally they have the power to transform lives. In Reel to Real, Bell Hooks talks back to films she has watched as a way to engage the pedagogy of cinema - how film teaches its audience. Bell Hooks comes to film not as a film critic but as a cultural critic, fascinated by the issues movies raise - the way cinema depicts race, sex, and class. Reel to Real brings together Hooks's classic essays (on Paris is Burning or Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have it) with her newer work on such films as Girl 6, Pulp Fiction, Crooklyn, and Waiting to Exhale, and her thoughts on the world of independent cinema. Her conversations with filmmakers Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, and Arthur Jaffa are linked with critical essays to show how cinema can function " - preface to bell hooks' "Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies" You're full of it. Real Social Justice philosophers have always paid heavy attention to media, because in capitalism, our media basically assimilates, swallows up, and instrumentalizes (in the service of consumption) anything else we may want to describe as our "culture" and "tradition".
- Loughla 12y ago
  "subversively, even as it maintains the status quo." You left that off for some reason. Have you read that book? Good essays, from there you should read Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Pedagogy of Hope (spoiler, I would tell you to read those regardless of what you quoted. . . ) No, I'm not full of it, you just misread my statement; apparently I didn't make it clear enough and I do genuinely apologize for that. These individuals did, in fact, study what culture means and what it teaches those around us; I never said they didn't. It's called Critical Pedagogy for a reason. Said simply, you are critically thinking about lessons - formal, informal, wherever, whenever. As I said, read Freire - he's easily the best of the group and the most accessible. What these individuals didn't do was attempt to directly point individual art and entertainment pieces in one direction - that was my original claim. There is a difference between informing others about culture's lessons and the hidden (for lack of a better word) meaning behind art while asking people to be aware of the lessons they are learning and the lessons they are teaching and the rabid, hateful nonsense that 'social justice warriors' are spouting about specific changes that need to be made to specific games/websites/books, etc. Do you not see the difference?
Crito 12y ago
The standard AA/AAA mass market cross platform videogame is "art" to approximately the same extent as "airport novels". Interchangeable cover art, interchangeable characters, interchangeable plots. All good ways to pass a few hours, but rarely deserving of in-depth study. Sorry John Grisham, but you know it's true.

by Loughla 12y ago

mrcharles 12y ago

Good news! No one is ever going to stop a game from being made.

dripton 12y ago
I'm not so sure. Several of the most popular game platforms (Xbox, PlayStation, iOS) are effectively closed, with gatekeepers who decide which games are allowed. And those gatekeepers don't allow certain types of games on those platforms. Of course it's still possible to create whatever games you want on the remaining free platforms, but removing some of the most popular and lucrative options could make it economically challenging.
- mrcharles 12y ago
  Platforms have denied games and game content for well over a decade now and games seem to be doing just fine thanks. I'm unsure which popular and lucrative options are being removed though. Could you provide examples of what you think will magically disappear?
  - judk 12y ago
    Decade? Nintendo is over 30 years old.
    - mrcharles 12y ago
      Truly, games are doomed.

thirdtruck 12y ago

You say we have nothing better to worry about than certain portrayals, but try and imagine being constantly portrayed as: (a) a likely gang member, (b) someone who can be called a slut and spanked because of the length of their skirt, (c) someone who can shot dead because someone of a different skin color felt slightly threatened. or (d) someone who can be killed for using the wrong bathroom. Where does "nothing better to do" fit into those prevalent portrayals?

Loughla 12y ago
Imagine being constantly portrayed as someone who can be beaten or killed for any perceived injustice or poorly chosen word in public just because of his/her perceived sexuality. That's a real example from my life, but still doesn't give me the right to dictate what someone else should enjoy in art or entertainment. Your argument doesn't really rebut my original statement that arts and entertainment aren't a human right and you don't get to tell me what I can enjoy or even have access to; nor can I tell someone else what they can and can't enjoy as art and entertainment. Your 'social justice' is misguided. You can't impact art and entertainment until you impact culture. One drives the other; history proves that statement correct. You want to have an impact on these video games? Get into education or youth development of some kind and start with them.
- thirdtruck 12y ago
  I was addressing how we are made to feel about each other, and the very real, material consequences of those feelings. To limit the discussion to just "enjoyment" of media ignores all the other ramifications. Art and entertainment are intrinsic parts of culture, and the medium by which it is perpetuated. To say that changing them won't change culture is to say that neither propaganda or advertising have any effect.
  - ivanca 12y ago
    They change culture but not the way you think it does; killing people in videogames don't make real people violent, Japan has some of the most gruesome films/games ever created, and despite that the murder rate in Japan is one of the lowest. You can't have your cake and eat it too, meaning: Are games part of capitalist entertainment or is interactive social teaching? Pretending to be both just ruins it for everyone, and that's easy to see and foresee, that's why people like Anita Sarkeesian badmouths games but makes no effort to create one herself.

RodericDay 12y ago

>> The current incarnation of "Social Justice" is so far from what individuals like bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Maxine Greene and Henry Giroux had in mind that it's fucking ridiculous and absolutely infuriating. http://books.google.ca/books/about/Reel_to_Real.html?id=hRtGzesft_AC http://books.google.ca/books/about/Reel_to_Real.html?id=hRtG... >> "Although it may not be the goal of filmmaker, most of us learn something when we watch movies. They make us think. They make us feel. Occasionally they have the power to transform lives. In Reel to Real, Bell Hooks talks back to films she has watched as a way to engage the pedagogy of cinema - how film teaches its audience. Bell Hooks comes to film not as a film critic but as a cultural critic, fascinated by the issues movies raise - the way cinema depicts race, sex, and class. Reel to Real brings together Hooks's classic essays (on Paris is Burning or Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have it) with her newer work on such films as Girl 6, Pulp Fiction, Crooklyn, and Waiting to Exhale, and her thoughts on the world of independent cinema. Her conversations with filmmakers Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, and Arthur Jaffa are linked with critical essays to show how cinema can function " - preface to bell hooks' "Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies" You're full of it. Real Social Justice philosophers have always paid heavy attention to media, because in capitalism, our media basically assimilates, swallows up, and instrumentalizes (in the service of consumption) anything else we may want to describe as our "culture" and "tradition".

Loughla 12y ago
"subversively, even as it maintains the status quo." You left that off for some reason. Have you read that book? Good essays, from there you should read Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Pedagogy of Hope (spoiler, I would tell you to read those regardless of what you quoted. . . ) No, I'm not full of it, you just misread my statement; apparently I didn't make it clear enough and I do genuinely apologize for that. These individuals did, in fact, study what culture means and what it teaches those around us; I never said they didn't. It's called Critical Pedagogy for a reason. Said simply, you are critically thinking about lessons - formal, informal, wherever, whenever. As I said, read Freire - he's easily the best of the group and the most accessible. What these individuals didn't do was attempt to directly point individual art and entertainment pieces in one direction - that was my original claim. There is a difference between informing others about culture's lessons and the hidden (for lack of a better word) meaning behind art while asking people to be aware of the lessons they are learning and the lessons they are teaching and the rabid, hateful nonsense that 'social justice warriors' are spouting about specific changes that need to be made to specific games/websites/books, etc. Do you not see the difference?

Crito 12y ago

The standard AA/AAA mass market cross platform videogame is "art" to approximately the same extent as "airport novels". Interchangeable cover art, interchangeable characters, interchangeable plots. All good ways to pass a few hours, but rarely deserving of in-depth study. Sorry John Grisham, but you know it's true.