Am I the only one who has found the last four sets of lectures a bit confusing and contradicting?
On one hand, games re-iterate racist and sexist ideologies in society. On the other they DON'T promote and persuade players into violence. However, they DO imitate, or promote a certain ideology through their system of rules. Agency means these games are critically interacted with, hence not 'brainwashing', but if players aren't aware of the inherent systems in the game and what they could signify in a wider context, then isn't the game, in fact, brainwashing them? And if they're subconsciously learning skills without being aware, isn't that also the same thing? This also doesn't account for people who play games without actually realizing the biases, ideologies and critiques, perhaps because they're too subtle or perhaps because the players just aren't playing attention. After all, who wants to think about politics and global issues where they're sitting down in front of a computer to relax, and play?
The biggest problem I had was with Tadhg Kelly's reading, which just seemed full of contradictions. He mentions 'Fate of the World' as an example of a game that doesn't persuade, bu allows the player full agency to ponder the consequences of their actions. But ultimately, isn't a game that bases its premise on the fact that climate change is a real and current threat, pushing an agenda and persuading the player to believe it (ignoring the issue about whether or not it's fact)? Much in the same way that a war game that portrays war in the style of WWII (as described in readings 8C), promotes a particular ideology relating to war.
Moreover,what if people misunderstand unintended consequences? What if what people consider to be 'unintended claims' aren't unintentional at all? For example, Kevin stated 'Vampire: Bloodlines' in class as a classist game because it placed more value on people of 'greater status'. However, what if the game presumed that players would give less value to the lower class, due to inherent societal ideologies and put the system in place so that gamers would think twice about sparing a homeless person's life? Ok, that migh be a bit of a far-fetched interpretation, but as far as the concept of polysemic texts goes, it's not an entirely aberrant reading.
Maybe I'm just not understanding the concepts properly. I can absolutely concede to that, and would love for somebody to explain it further, in a way that would answer the above questions. But I'd just like to think that all of these concepts aren't quite so black and white, and that there might be a few more grey areas than we may have given due credit for.
I think the key difference between racist/sexist representations and violence in games is that portrayals of minorities are reinforcing cultural stereotypes and negative behaviour, while violence is supposedly creating it.
ReplyDeleteIn our societies, we're generally taught that it's wrong to shoot people or to gouge them with sharp objects; so critics say videogames break that societal conditioning and cause innocent children and the 'vulnerable' lower classes to become violent. They 'make us' break rules we've been taught since birth and become amoral criminals.
However, sexist and racist behaviour is often already present in civilised society, and games use representations to reinforce that. People are unlikely to go out and stab someone after playing Grand Theft Auto-- they've been told not to for years and years, so generally people that act on this urge have other imbalances in their lives making them follow the violent impulse.
However, after playing Grand Theft Auto, players might have sexist or racist ideals-- that were already there-- reinforced: for example, the idea that women in the sex trade are less than human.
Society treats sex workers as second or third class citizens, by making prostitution illegal across countries like the US: if you sell your body as your occupation, you're considered a criminal. Grand Theft Auto, through depicting violence against prostitutes in certain contexts, can perpetuate that idea-- for example, in GTA3 you can have sex with prostitutes and then kill them afterwards to get your money back. This treats them almost like a vending machine; you get your snacks, then bash the machine until it gives you back your coinage.
This helps to dehumanize prostitutes further in reality; it doesn't create any new feelings or ideas in players, it just reinforces the ones that are there. Prostitutes are vending machines for sex, that is their sole purpose. Why should we care about them as people? We rarely have that encouraged in daily life, and this game just supports that. They're less than us.
And then the reality comes in to match that. Female prostitutes are at a much higher risk of violent crime or murder than any other female occupation-- and the media does next to nothing to point this out, and say it's wrong to hurt or kill sex workers. The continued dehumanization of them can't be doing them any favours, but it doesn't show any sign of stopping. And maybe if we start depicting prostitutes as being worth as much as any other human, rather than dismissing them as trash, there'll be less of them getting hurt.
Depictions in media that reinforce already-present notions are harmful, whether they be racist (see 'savage' stereotypes reinforced by ResiEvil 5), sexist (see the Hitman: Absolution (Saints) trailer) or classist (the aforementioned prostitution example). They tell people, 'hey, keep thinking this way, even if you're hurting others'.
Depictions that are countered by society's moral code and teachings, such as the depiction of gratuitous violence, don't have the same ramifications. Games (or any other media) would have to counter years of teaching to do real harm as far as these go.
To cap this off with a metaphor, think of these as two big bonfires. One is already lit, the other isn't. If you pour gasoline on the lit bonfire, it's just going to grow. If you pour gasoline on the unlit pile of wood, then it won't do anything, but people might say 'look, you've put gasoline on that, don't you see you're going to send this fire out of control?'.
Games are like gasoline; if there's a fire already going, they'll contribute, if not, they'll just sit there and people will say they're stoking the hypothetical fire too much. The same with all media. Society's got to start an issue burning before the gas makes a difference.
I love your bonfire metaphor! That does make alto more sense, though. Thank you :)
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