Kid-Owe

The Word - Kid-Owe

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I think this video beautifully illustrates a number of themes from Ellen Seiter’s work on Neopets, as well as a number of tropes that have cropped up in relation to consumerism in video games (particularly those online). First off, I think Colbert’s video demonstrates just how effective online games can be in not only “training” children to be model consumers, but in engaging them, perhaps unknowingly, in real acts of consumption. Although using real money to buy virtual products may seem like an absurd proposition to the majority of the population, such practices already exist in a number of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). For instance, in the MMO environment of Linden Lab’s Second Life (2003), player Anshe Chung was able to make a net profit of over one million dollars selling virtual real estate.

I guess my problem is not so much that virtual consumption exists in general. I just feel that developers have crossed a line when the game mechanic rewards real life consumption over devoted or skilled game play, as in Seiter’s example concerning the massive amount of points culled from completing consumer surveys over completing tasks within the Neopets game. I also think it is particularly insidious when real money must be used to buy virtual products like food or medicine that are specifically able to be “used up.” It’s particularly interesting to think about these sort of transactions from a business perspective, because these items cost nothing to (re)produce and must be bought again and again by the player in order to facilitate sustained game play.

I’m also curious as to whether the advertisement that Seiter talks about in Neopets is a phenomenon particular to online games rather than those made for domestic consoles. As Cynthia Meyers wrote about in her essay “From Sponsorship to Spots: Advertising and the Development of Electronic Media” in relation to television, contemporary services such as DVR and user viewing habits online have made it increasingly easy for consumers to skip watching 30 second spots, forcing product placement within the entertainment text to re-emerge as viable marketing strategies. If we extrapolate Meyer's observation to the online gaming market and debates surrounding banner advertisement vs. "immersive advertising," such a trajectory may have made it more necessary for online game companies to insert advertising into actual game play, but as Seiter points out, this practice makes it increasingly difficult for children to discern content from advertisement. Within console games, I know that players have responded rather unfavorably to games which blatantly try to insert advertisement into the game play mechanic, particularly when the advertisement disrupts the fidelity of the diegetic world (as in fantasy games). The only type of advertising that doesn’t seem to bother players that much is that in racing or sports games, which feature advertisement along the lines of the walls of stadiums (simulating the practice that exists in physical reality).

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

For not having heard of this movie before, I see it everywhere now. Consider the freshly published article I've just posted on Blackboard. (I don't know how to attach pdfs here.) Grateful to Jason for bringing the film to my attention!

A few after thoughts

A lot of things about this week's readings interested me, especially in the context of my paper that is fairly well related to citizenship and consumption, and here are a few thoughts I had after class.

First of all, to give a sense of what I mean about the actual acts of war becoming similar themselves to games (such that rather than killing a person, it's more like playing a game where you kill dots on a screen), I would refer to The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. But in terms of an creative text dealing with it, I would refer in print to Ender's Game and on film to Oshii Mamoru's Patlabor 2, which deals really explicitly with the idea of mediated experience supplanting real interaction in a fairly fascinating way (largely because it's an anime film, and as a result, the portions that present the sections that in the film world are false actually look more realistic than the world itself). You can get an idea of the film from the opening (which presents multiple takes on this sensory enhancing/replacing technology) here:

First part of the opening


Second part of the opening


More directly related on the idea of citizenship, belief systems, and the like as part of consumerism - a couple of notes.

First, I think the centrality of consumerism to many people's lives makes it clearly an important portion of what it is to be a citizen - particularly in certain places (Goodbye Lenin makes it seem like what is being consumed is a pretty key part of identifying with a particular political faction). The film I kept thinking of was Czech Dream, a documentary piece by two film students about their creation of a faux hyper mart - from the marketing campaign up until the false storefront opened to a giant crowd of people.



Second, the idea of lifestyle activism. This is a really fairly poorly written article (largely in that it makes a lot of assumptions about the way people relate to the products they consume), but I think a lot of the points it brings up are interesting because they deal dirrectly with the notion that what you buy is how you contribute to political discussions.
http://www.openleft.com/diary/13032/selfdelusion-and-the-lie-of-lifestyle-politics-core-dilemmas-of-community-organizing

...

I think Idiocracy and this week’s readings made it pretty clear that America and what it is to be American is defined by the ways we consume. The “American lifestyle” has been a draw for many people to come here and I feel like the way that people consume in America signifies their level of “American-ness” as well as their place in the hierarchy of race and class. “Neoliberal Citizenship” definitely touches on this, but I am curious about the exact ways we are expected to consume in order to be American.
I may be reading too much into it, but Idiocracy seemed to suggest that the modes of consumption that became the standard for America after a couple hundred years of devolution in the film encouraged the subordination of women (it seemed like every woman was only a sexual object.) The film closely/explicitly links the “idiot” Americans to inner city ethnic groups (everyone speaks in ebonics) as well as white trash. The film definitely offers a critique of the upper class but it is still suggested that if the upper class were to procreate the way the lower class did, America would be in a much better place. I see this association of the idiots with the lower class and certain groups in America as really problematic. Everything went to hell in the film when only the “lower class” reproduced, but I felt like the film points the finger at the lower class as if it were in their nature to behave the way they do, not the product of any sort of hierarchy or system in America that benefits from the lower classes lack of access to certain things that the middle or upper class has the means to consume. Although the film does criticize corporations and the media in the stupefying of America, it also points at the idea that these people are poor and in a crappy situation because they are lazy and stupid, which has been the justification for why certain people are in power and others are not (ie: for colonialism.) The future in the film is depicted like the third world and the humor relies on the idea of looking at these people as backwards people who don’t know what is good for them. They need someone who knows what is best to take over and fix all their problems. Granted, as it is depicted in the film, this is true, however the images and the tropes that the film relies on ignores many of the realities of issues of colonialism in th third world and issues of class and race hierarchy in the US. I don’t know if anyone else had a similar reading…

The Last Airbender and Race Politics

Asia Pacific Arts, a webmagazine I write for, recently covered the backlash in the Asian American community to the casting of white actors to play Asian roles in M. Night Shyamalan's upcoming adaptation of Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender. The three main characters, ambiguously Asian in the original animated series, were recast with white actors by Shyamalan and Paramount, which has a recent history of such decisions. This is a perfect example of the war in Hollywood between the liberal multicultural impulse (that often seems in name only) and the much more dominant profit-based desire to present more "palatable" (white) images to the white American majority. In American cultural politics, especially in the film industry, it often feels like we are stuck in the 1950s. I liked Pixar's inclusion of an ambiguously Asian main character in Up, particularly how it was a non-issue in cinematic-cultural discourse (except among my Asian friends distressed at how overweight poor Russell was).

On the subject of the casting, Roger Ebert wrote "The original series Avatar: The Last Airbender was highly regarded and popular for three seasons on Nickelodeon. Its fans take it for granted that its heroes are Asian. Why would Paramount and Shyamalan go out of their way to offend these fans? There are many young Asian actors capable of playing the parts." It is interesting (though not surprising) that Shyamalan, who identifies as an Indian-American director, would go so far to defend his/Paramount's actions, arguing in the LA Times that "The great thing about anime is that it's ambiguous. The features of the characters are an intentional mix of all features. It's intended to be ambiguous." This is the same logic that led to the controversial casting of a white actor as Japanese anime icon Goku in the execrable Dragonball: Evolution movie. One of the only major "Asians" of any background in the cast is British-Indian Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire, whose presence in that film and in British soaps will no doubt make him more palatable to western audiences.

For more information on the building protest check out racebending.com. They held a screening of a documentary called "Yellowface" about this and other related controversies tonight but if you're interested you can probably track it down.

On a relatively unrelated note, here's a link to a piece of video art by a student in Jason and my Video Game Theories class. It's a thoughtful/hilarious criticism of the way American Apparel objectifies women in their ads.

http://scf.usc.edu/~sennache

Museum of Sex

Huyssens essay deals with our obsession with the past and preserving the past. This brought to mind the many strange museums in existence, most memorializing obscure objects that are really just a waste of someones (the taxpayers'? money). Yet maybe the Hobo Museum in Iowa and the Ventriloquist Museum in Kentucky are educational experiences, after all isn't all knowledge good knowledge? Nevertheless, Huyssen spends ample time discussing the controversies that arise over the preservation of Holocaust history which some believe to be a commodification and exploitation of a horrific event, thus perhaps lessening the strength of its terribleness. But what effects do museums have on the objects they collect? When memorializing less serious objects, they definitely celebrate and give undeserved significance to things that are at best questionable in their importance in society.

SEX

Is that not everyone's favorite topic? Now I don't think anybody really questions the history of sex. But if there is a museum dedicated to Spam why not a Museum of Sex? The museum opened in 2002 and continues to exist. I had the pleasure of visiting the museum (located in NYC coincidentally almost down the street from my home) in 2006. So if the museum isn't teaching the history of sex, what is its purpose and what does it aim to teach? According to the museum's website: "From fine art to historical ephemera to film, the Museum of Sex preserves an ever-growing collection of sexually related objects that would otherwise be destroyed and discarded due to their sexual content."

Despite the site's proclaims of critical adulation, when it first opened, most reviews professed the attitude of "so what?"

From looking at the website it is clear the museum remains the same as it was when I went there except for the temporary addition of a history of condoms. In reference to this exhibition the website read, "Simultaneously lauded for its ability to combat the transmission of deadly diseases while also condemned by some for its contraceptive qualities, the condom has become the fore runner in moral debates regarding contraception and protection." I'm fairly certain in the year 2010 this statement hardly rings true for most of America.

I'm not here to offer my review of the museum, but I will say it was extremely boring. I found its boringness extremely ironic for obvious reasons. It basically consisted of a room of pornographic videos and a display case of sex toys. This is neither controversial, groundbreaking, nor revolutionary.

The curators of the museum have attempted to add historical and political weight to the most popular act in the history of the world purely for economic gains. But with the internet, it is virtually impossible for the museum to offer anything new or innovative. Though sex sells, they forgot that (most) don't have to pay for sex. I think one of the reasons they failed (even though it still exists I can guarantee you that it is not as profitable as they would) is because they tried to sell something that is free. Additionally, sex is not going anywhere and to my knowledge it has been practiced the same way for centuries. Although the concept in it of itself is interesting, I struggle to think of something less deserving of a museum.

I'm curious if anyone else is able to find the cultural significance of this museum.

Website: http://www.museumofsex.com/

Immigrant Identity and Citizenship of Chinese American

Both Transnational America by Grewal and Kaplan, and Toby Miller's What is Cultural Citizenship? talk about how identity can be shaped not only by geography, but also by culture. While geopolitics is certainly an important factor in determining what a person is, culture more often is the causal factor of who we are. Say for example, as a Hong Kong-er, I can very easily distinguish a Korean from a Japanese, not because of the way they look or the citizenship they hold, but from the way they act - the cultural upbringings and our backgrounds almost always tell more than the place we live in.

While reading these two chapters, I can't help but relate to the movie Joy Luck Club. Perhaps because I am a Hong Kong-er, I have a great degree of emotional attachment to this movie and I felt that this movie speaks to a lot of the issues mentioned in the readings. Joy Luck Club is told from the narrative of Jing Mei, the daughter of a Chinese woman who immigrated to America in the 50s. As her mother died, Jing Mei, through talking with her mother's friend (who are also Chinese immigrants), explored her identity as a Chinese American. Born and raised in the United States, Jing Mei does not know how to speak Chinese, nor has she ever considered herself a Chinese, until she finds out more about her mother from old letters and her mother's old friends. Ultimately, Jing Mei goes on a journey to China and look for her heritage and identity. Throughout the movie, the four characters express a sense of anxiety over their cultural identities, most deny their Chinese heritage with their American surroundings. The mothers of the four daughters also show a sense of fear, as to how America has changed them throughout the year.

More interestingly, Joy Luck Club is narrated solely from a feminist perspective. The four daughters, in parallel to their mothers, provide a framework for us to study governmentality and citizenship beyond ethnic terms. As Grewal and Kaplan conclude in the chapter, it is hard to remain objective to the issue of citizenship. Therefore, I found the ending of Joy Luck Club particularly thought-provoking:

There is no such thing as a pure state of being Chinese, a pure state of being American; all individuals are amalgams of their unique tastes, habits, hopes, and memories. For immigrants and their families, the contrasts within this amalgam can bring particular pain as well as particular richness.