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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 "enjoymen
by 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 agoThey 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.
- thirdtruck 12y agoTo take this away from political/ethical concerns for a moment, I just listened to an episode of the Writing Excuses podcast where the hosts (which include full-time writers) advocated having non-writers in their critique groups. They make the point that people who don't create a given work and still -- by virtue of their extensive engagement of the media -- can have suggest objective improvements to the writing (e.g. tweaking a scene to better relate the author's intended message). In short, you don't have to create a given media in order to be "worthy" of critiquing it, any more than any of us here on Hacker News have to create a country before we can be critical of politics.
- ivanca 12y agoIn no part I talked about being "worthy" or not, or any remotely similar; it is about how practical is to create the videogames she envisions, games about utopias are no fun. And their demands are blurry as well, do they want the main role in the most sold videogame? So they want to be the mass murder in the center of GTA? No, they also want to be related to positive traits.