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Tropes vs Woman in Video Games
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8I0Wy58adM&list=UU7Edgk9RxP7Fm7vjQ1d-cDA&index=1&feature=plcp
Yeah, you've probably heard about this already.
Personally, while this may be a good idea on paper, I don't think Anita Sarkeesian is the right gal for the job. A look at her previous video's can tell you why.
Comments
Yeah, this was mentioned in another thread recently. I'm with you: good idea, but she's not very good at it.
What, the LEGO video? Like I said in the Video Games thread, that was good because it gave us insight into how gender segregation came to be by delving into advertising history and such.
Why do people act like Anita is some YouTube personality that just apparated out of nowhere? She's been around since 2009 and she does in fact play video games. Do you have to be a prominent guild member in World of Warcraft to be credible to speak on video games or something?
I don't see how playing video games makes a difference. If she's bad at what she does (which she is) then she's bad at what she does. Her videos are at about the shallowness of... well TV Tropes. I think this is a dialogue that needs to happen but she's not good for it. If I said stupid things about literature would it make a difference because I read?
Also why does she need a kickstarter for it? Presumably she already has half-decent editing software and an okay camera.
That said, the anti-semitic and sexist things said against her are not cool. If you disagree with her, tackle her ideas and not her.
Except it seems a lot of people only watched the Manic Pixie Dream Girl video linked here and called it a day. She has done more in-depth stuff than that.
Yeah, the sexist, misoginistic comments are beyond stupid, but that's to be expected. That being said, there are quite a few people who've spoken out against her ideas.
^^You used the Lego video as an example, which if that's your example of 'more in-depth' I remain unimpressed.
Honestly, I think someone like Kathleen Devere or even The Nostalgia Chick could paint better pictures of such things.
Don't forget about her Christmas songs video too.
Also seriously why does she need a kickstarter for this? I'm genuinely curious.
So...I'm watching the first LEGO video. Hopefully it'll get better, but...well, so far, she's said "LEGO never marketed to girls until now. Here's their commercial." And then she showed the commercial, which had a bunch of really obvious stuff horribly wrong with it, and now she's taking an agonizingly long time listing off all the really obvious horribly wrong stuff. I mean, yeah, I guess this isn't quite as bad as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl vid, but only by a very small margin.
And...now she's listing the stuff again, only now after each thing she's saying "and this is an example of them conforming to gender stereotypes," because apparently I couldn't figure that out for herself.
I take my statement back. This video is significantly worse than the MPDG one.
Yeah, the thing is if you really need it to be pointed out that this shit is sexist.... well, you probably aren't watching her video in the first place.
Okay, now she's actually quoting things the Lego CEO said and critiquing it, which is still kinda pointing out the obvious, but at least she stopped repeating herself is repeatedly saying something other than what she spent the first three minutes repeatedly saying.
GAH. She used "infer" to mean "imply."
Look, I'm all in favor of her cause, but this is entirely the wrong person to be representing it.
And now she's listing off things like this LEGO has done before and giving them the same "point out the obvious" treatment.
I'm eight minutes into this video, and I don't think there's been a minute of actual content yet.
Now she's making lists of normal LEGO sets, and saying that they aren't all that different except for not being sexist. Urge...to...headdesk...rising...
I just noticed that she's wearing all pink with large earrings and really heavy makeup. Not sure if intentional irony.
It's over...finally...it's over.
Oh wait, that was just part one. I guess it was too padded to fit everything she had to say into one video.
Sorry for turning this thread into a liveblog; it was a small sacrifice to preserve my sanity.
No, no, no. By all means. This is the woman who we must pay to illuminate us on what we already know!
I'll watch the second video tomorrow. If I watch this girl talk for more than one video a day, she's going to turn me into a misogynist.
^^^If it's any consolation, I'm planning on doing a commentary on her Tropes vs Women in Video Games video's once they get uploaded.
Two days ago, I'd have said it was quite an assumption to think they weren't going to be any good, but...gah.
You're overreacting a bit. She's not great, but she's really not that terrible either.
Also seriously why does she need a kickstarter for this? I'm genuinely curious.
She originally was aiming for a few thousand for a better setup and equipment. Now that she's got so much extra money (upwards of $150,000), she's hiring a small crew and then donating the leftover stuff to charity.
I think she occasionally hits on some interesting points and sometimes provides some good information, but there's not a whole lot of depth of discussion in here videos and they're unlikely to appeal to anyone who doesn't already agree with her. When being informative like this, sometimes you have to market towards an audience that doesn't agree with you, and she doesn't do that very well. While she obviously has time constraints and wants to cover a broad spectrum of material within a certain topic, I also feel she generalises. Sure, the Mystical Pregnancy trope can be very trivialising, but she missed out on the best and most powerful use of the trope -- Alien. She implies that the trope shouldn't be used at all because of the trivialising factor without looking at the film that made it a part of sci-fi consciousness in the first place.
I suppose my essential issue is that there's not enough discussion because of how broadly she flings her net. They're not bad videos, but there's also some significant flaws that make them much less effective. As it stands, like most political conversation, she's advertising and speaking to those who already agree with her.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2012/06/20/watch-this-jay-smooth-calls-out-online-sexists-and-its-kind-of-terrific/
I think this might be worth posting here.
>She originally was aiming for a few thousand for a better setup and equipment
She's going to be talking into the fucking camera. She doesn't need a 'better' set-up. From what I've seen her set-up's already really good and it's obvious she's better off financially than say... I am and I wouldn't even consider my economic situation poor. Fuck, a lot of people do better jobs than her with shitty webcams. It's like fucking Moviebob starting a kickstarter so he can do the same thing with a better camera. To need to be paid to do this when some many others willingly do it for free is fleecing, plain and simple.
>donating the leftover stuff to charity.
Okay fine, but it's still money she didn't need.
And I think Alex helps to hit on my problems. It's not actually about getting a message out or helping to solve gender equality. It's typical masturbation to how right you are. And while I get that it's fun to masturbate I don't ask people for $6000 in tissues.
I agree that she generalizes but her videos also feel horrifically padded as well (her lego video as INUH mentioned is good at this)
I note that the 'this bad thing should never be used ever' is pretty common in social justice tomfoolery. As someone with delusions of creativity it's pretty off-putting.
She's also planning on making video series about misogyny for classroom use.
Are you really that opposed to her wanting better equipment? And are you really, really saying that at least trying to teach people about sexism in media is just masturbating for her own self worth? I mean really, now.
She can get better equipment out of her own damn pocket. Her initial set-up was just fine and didn't require fleecing others. People have done more with less.
And yes, she is masturbating and demanding a kickstarter so that we mere mortals may have be deigned with her wisdom is proof of what a vanity project it is. As much of an obvious scam as The Arkh Project is, at least there's the justification that for the scope they have in mind they actually need that kind of cash.
But she's not really doing that. Or if she is, she's failing miserably. Like in that LEGO video. She showed me a video clearly showcasing the set, then immediately after, she pointed out that the set was all pink and purple, I guess in case I was colorblind. Then she continued listing out things that she'd clearly just showed to me for a few minutes, then she started the list over, but after mentioning the pink and purple, she went "girls liking pink and purple is a gender stereotype." This isn't deep analysis. It's pointing out the obvious.
Aside from the showings of LEGO ads, the only information she provided that she hadn't already provided by showing the ads was "pink used to be for boys and blue used to be for girls." So in that entire video, the actual content of things she had to say was two seconds.
Maybe I am being harsh, and if she was just some nobody youtube person nobody cared about, I wouldn't be. But she's not. She just raised a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to do something she's terrible at with a slightly better camera. That's fucking ridiculous.
And I failed to mention this last night, but she talks like a middle schooler reading her essay to the class.
She's very obviously reading off of a prompter of some kind. It makes her videos a chore to watch actually. I mean, compare almost anyone on TGWTG. They usually tend to at least put inflection and emotion in it, to you know, assure that they're not robots or something.
I mean Linkara may be a terrible actor but I'll give him the he tries.
I can't see her being used in the classroom, honestly, because she doesn't work from the ground up -- she works from an informed position. There was one moviebob video that I thought worked really cleverly because it used about a minute's time to discuss colonial racism very effectively. He talked about how white colonials found old ruins in Africa and assumed that some non-African society that made them and left, which in turn implies that Africans would be incapable of building such sophisticated structures. That was effective because it spoke about how implication and assumption are parts of racism as well as overt hatred, and moviebob was effective at the task because he chose an example that everyone can contextualise (European colonialism) and be explained in a very short period of time.
Moviebob doesn't make videos I'd be putting in classrooms all the time, either, but the efficiency and grace with which he explained a matter of racial significance was impressive all the same. I haven't seen anything on Feminist Frequency that matches that level of control over the topic at hand.
As for trying to teach people about sexism in media? I think it's within her capacity to teach, no doubt. What she misses is perspective. She can't assume going in that people are going to be sympathetic to her cause, or she'll just meet brick walls -- sometimes nasty, spikey ones like the reaction to her series on video games. For instance, I don't think anyone here needs it explained to them why trivialising pregnancy is a bad thing. Others might, though. Other people might not understand all the hardships and long-term implications of pregnancy, nor the psychological fallout that can occur. She mentions those things in her video on Mystical Pregnancy, but she doesn't discuss or explain them. This is the kind of thing she really needs to do. I don't want to imply that she's intentionally leaving out information, because she probably isn't. But she's making these videos with the assumption that she appeals to a much broader audience than actually exists.
Obviously, feminism is still a big deal and there's still ground to tread despite its successes, past and present. But because previous waves of feminism have been successful, it's easier and easier to believe in the illusion of gender equality. Where, in the past, broader discussion and explanation may have been more appropriate, now it's time to engage in more of the nitty-gritty and discuss issues on a finer scale. She's nowhere near as bad as, say, Tumblr activism, but she suffers from the same essential issue -- the presumption of a homogeneous, allied viewership, which is only going to be true when it comes to members of the audience that agree with her.
This is an extremely fundamental element of documentary and entertainment media, and if she can't grasp it, then she probably shouldn't be making video series for the classroom and shouldn't be asking for money to expand her projects in general. Don't get me wrong, because I'm sympathetic to her cause. But I also expect more, because so many people campaigning for social justice don't have the technical skill to reach the wider audience that absolutely needs to be reached.
I don't think she's in the capacity to teach or if she is, she's the capacity to be the teacher with the voice that puts you to sleep and scatters the material across haphazardly.
That sounds like some of my proffessors here at college.