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Moogs
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 10:25 pm |
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I know the portrayal of Lara is a major issue, but the other is that this game is just fucking stupid.
Guys, I just found a lighter. I already have a torch that I can light at any time. The hell? |
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 10:28 pm |
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| Moogs wrote: |
I know the portrayal of Lara is a major issue, but the other is that this game is just fucking stupid.
Guys, I just found a lighter. I already have a torch that I can light at any time. The hell? |
Another reason that Metal Gear is superior: Big Boss lights a cigar by putting it in his mouth. Fire on demand.
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klj5j6li
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 10:47 pm |
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| nicknamed hot lips |
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 10:51 pm |
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| Interstellar Dinghy wrote: |
| nicknamed hot lips |
something something joke about ellipsis
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klj5j6li
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 10:58 pm |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
| something something joke about ellipsis |
YOU HAVE SURPASSED EVEN THE DOTS |
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This Machine Kills Fascis
Unfinite Indiscovery
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Inside Thomas the Tank Engine, screaming
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| Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 11:56 pm |
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| end of the world wrote: |
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| are there any good examples of violence against men being sexualized? |
you're asking this because you're not attracted to men. |
_________________
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| MrSkeleton wrote: |
| i dont know how to give a thing made of blood but id do it |
| evnvnv wrote: |
| If you die in the axe, you die in real life |
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end of the world
Joined: 01 Jan 2011
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 1:35 am |
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Last edited by end of the world on Mon Mar 11, 2013 5:19 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 2:20 am |
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| end of the world wrote: |
| i don't know what you think i meant or what you're trying to show. |
I'm confused on this as well.
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Winona Ghost Ryder
lives in a monochromatic world
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 2:31 am |
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| Oh, I know. |
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Dark Age Iron Savior
king of finders
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Spacecraft, Juanelia Country
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 2:52 am |
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I don't begrudge Sarkeesian turning off the comments, but people talking about safe spaces and such in reference to this causes me to reflect on how most of the previous times I've seen the comments disabled were on videos along the lines of "truth of 666 illuminati satan 9/11", "libtard fatty pwned by ron paul follower on FOX", "good morning my friends and here is why those sodomites are going to burn forever and ever", and "what is with all these {novel string of racial slurs}".
| end of the world wrote: |
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| are there any good examples of violence against men being sexualized? |
you're asking this because you're not attracted to men. |
is this a joke, or do you have some actual useful insight that you neglected to offer in this post?
| Adilegian wrote: |
| My wife, who's a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls games, is often put off by the lack of women in those games. |
like, the proportion of them to men? the number who are actually important NPCs? |
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end of the world
Joined: 01 Jan 2011
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 3:00 am |
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Dark Age Iron Savior
king of finders
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Spacecraft, Juanelia Country
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 3:10 am |
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uh, I was asking if anyone had any examples of violence against men being sexualized (in media, implicitly).
I wasn't saying "violence against men is absolutely never sexualized".
If you think only people who are sexually attracted to men can judge this, well, okay, but I'm not really sure why you're directly confronting me before I even spoke out against any given examples? |
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end of the world
Joined: 01 Jan 2011
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 3:19 am |
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SuperWes
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 3:26 am |
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| end of the world wrote: |
i have insight i offered in the post.
are you sexually attracted to men?
if not, why would you expect to judge portrayals of violence against men as sexual? |
This is interesting because it implies that straight women aren't capable of judging violence against women as sexual.
-Wes
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end of the world
Joined: 01 Jan 2011
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 3:29 am |
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 3:40 am |
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| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| Adilegian wrote: |
| My wife, who's a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls games, is often put off by the lack of women in those games. |
like, the proportion of them to men? the number who are actually important NPCs? |
Daggerfall has tons. Morgiah, Berenziah, Brisienna are big movers and shakers off the top of my head.
Morrowind has a lot less. Almalexia is all I can conjure up. But it's been a while since I played it.
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 3:42 am |
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| evnvnv wrote: |
Ok, this is probably going to come out sounding kind of idiotic, but bear with me:
I've been following this thread for awhile, and a number of things have kind of made me wonder: Is it always inappropriate and crass to make or consume media that presents violence as a sexual metaphor, or vice versa? I mean, I know Alien is typically very popular around these parts, but of course that whole movie is about violent sex. Of course, it's not too hard to make an argument that this is presented in a way that seems like a more thoughtful approach to the subject, i.e. one of the things that is good about it is the fact that it makes the viewer consider the association between sex and violence that is present in other ways in other media. It's like a commentary on the subject, rather than just pure exploitation, or something? But I also remember reading that Ridley Scott made Ripley a woman just to add some sex appeal to the story, or something. We've talked around the issue that the creator's intent doesn't necessarily have a bearing on whether or not something is offensive--but can that door go both ways?
What I'm getting at is I feel like Tomb Raider has taken at least part of its inspiration from revenge/woman in peril exploitation movies that were popular in the 70's/80's and are becoming popular again now. Of course it's a problematic genre for a bunch of reasons, but I don't think it's at all impossible to interpret most examples of that type of story on some kind of rumination about the very issues that keep coming up around here, rather than just a purely pornographic exercise. I mean, movies like I Spit on Your Grave or on the other hand Straw Dogs are definitely pretty reprehensible if you're just looking at the 'images' that they put on screen, but there are alsp deeper layers of interpretation that kind of put the imagery in a new light.
I don't think it's at all likely that Tomb Raider is capable of sustaining that kind of reading, but it's definitely not the sort of thing that you could evaluate based only on a few videos of its worst moments or some ham-handed PR conversations. Either way, it's hard to deny that the game doesn't draw from this particular spring of influence (for me it's revealed most clearly just in the graphic design of the game's logo--it looks a lot like a '70s exploitation movie poster, or rather a poster for a'10s remake of a '70s exploitation movie--a weird genre that I think is just as difficult for me to have an opinion on as this game).
I think the final word on the game is just going to be that it is pretty mediocre and lazy. But, speaking theoretically, would it be possible to do in a video game the sort of thing that Quentin Tarantino has done in his recent movies? What I mean is a game that basically pairs very serious, stressful scenes of suspense and violence towards the protagonist with cartoonish, cathartic violence from the protagonist to her enemies. This is basically what Tomb Raider is, right? I mean, you go through all of these crazy rape scenarios from both the people and the environment, but on the other hand the game itself is basically a murder fest. It's not really about protecting Lara--it's a story of her transformation into a walking death machine? I don't know. |
Yes, I think it is entirely possible to take the fact that women are frequent victims of institutionalized sexual violence and make a game that says something intelligent about it. I just know in my heart of hearts (assume!) that Ubisoft Gritty Reboot Allgame #47 has a 0% chance of being that game.
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 4:22 am |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| Adilegian wrote: |
| My wife, who's a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls games, is often put off by the lack of women in those games. |
like, the proportion of them to men? the number who are actually important NPCs? |
Daggerfall has tons. Morgiah, Berenziah, Brisienna are big movers and shakers off the top of my head.
Morrowind has a lot less. Almalexia is all I can conjure up. But it's been a while since I played it. |
I think that Morrowind is where she picked up. She's tried getting into Daggerfall but I think something came up that drew her away from it. I'm not familiar with the series beyond Oblivion, which is probably going to cost me Cubapoints, so I pretty much have to take her at her word.
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thestage
banned
Joined: 27 Sep 2011
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 4:33 am |
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| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| uh, I was asking if anyone had any examples of violence against men being sexualized (in media, implicitly). |
I brought up evangelion in a slightly different context. I think it pretty much holds here, too. but not in a dumb tomb raider way, obviously |
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Dark Age Iron Savior
king of finders
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Spacecraft, Juanelia Country
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 5:08 am |
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I don't want to get off-topic, but the NPC situations in Daggerfall and the later games aren't really comparable, as you can see by comparing the list of static Daggerfall NPCs to the debatable but ultimately rather different list of essential Morrowind NPCs. Also keeping in mind that a number of those Daggerfall NPCs don't, for any practical purposes, appear in the game. I suppose we could start evaluating the gender makeup of the generic NPC types you can encounter...
Based on the individual page and redirect count, Morrowind has a male:female ratio of 1465:1037 (although at least half of Morrowind NPCs are basically named signposts with nothing unique to say, some of whom exist primarily as 'unique' enemies), Oblivion is about 656:347, and Skyrim seems to be around 868:437. Those numbers do seem to indicate a rather frustrating discrepancy, although they can't really be weighed at face value due to the way Oblivion and especially Skyrim seem to handle generic NPCs. |
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tacotaskforce
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Logical, Practical
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 5:18 am |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
| CubaLibre wrote: |
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| Adilegian wrote: |
| My wife, who's a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls games, is often put off by the lack of women in those games. |
like, the proportion of them to men? the number who are actually important NPCs? |
Daggerfall has tons. Morgiah, Berenziah, Brisienna are big movers and shakers off the top of my head.
Morrowind has a lot less. Almalexia is all I can conjure up. But it's been a while since I played it. |
I think that Morrowind is where she picked up. She's tried getting into Daggerfall but I think something came up that drew her away from it. I'm not familiar with the series beyond Oblivion, which is probably going to cost me Cubapoints, so I pretty much have to take her at her word. |
From memory about 1 in 4 meaningful charactersi n Morrowind are female. The fighter, mage, and thief guilds all have four questmasters, and one of the four is female (during the mage quest you can put the female questmaster in charge of the guild by killing the current, corrupt leader. In the thief quest you must kill or bribe the female fighter's guild questmaster who is owned by the Camina Tong). The captain of the guard of Vivec City is female. One of the four leaders of the Redoran is female, and the leader of the cult of Vivec is female. Two of the four leaders of the Telvanni are female, but one of them is senile with the mind of a child. The Ashlanders are matriarchal, and all their political leaders are female.
Other gender oddities in Morrowind: The one fobbish head of the Hllalu who will require male characters to strip in front of him to gain his approval, and that one banished wizard who has been making female clones of himself that he keeps as daughters and wives.
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v84j3gs2uc7ns4
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 5:27 am |
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Dark Age Iron Savior
king of finders
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Spacecraft, Juanelia Country
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 6:03 am |
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http://tcrf.net/The_Elder_Scrolls_II:_Daggerfall/Unused_Text#Ability_to_have_sex
The development by which the TES games became more mature in some areas and less mature in others is pretty unique, I think. But the number of people that work on them doing different aspects make them hard to bring into conversations about social/cultural matters, except when painting with broad strokes. At least that's my view.
I was kind of disappointed to learn that the nude women in various inns and houses and whatnot were intended as prostitutes. I originally engaged the game with youthful eagerness, and was tantalized by the various degrees of nudity one could discover, but at the time I simply came to the conclusion that several temples were a bit less prudish about what devotees should wear, and also a number of people simply liked to sit around naked without caring much who saw.
Contrast that with how NPCs in Skyrim will react to your lack of clothing, even though you can never strip past underwear... |
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This Machine Kills Fascis
Unfinite Indiscovery
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Inside Thomas the Tank Engine, screaming
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 5:54 pm |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
| end of the world wrote: |
| i don't know what you think i meant or what you're trying to show. |
I'm confused on this as well. |
I was actually just responding to Daisy, but I wanted to keep your comment as part of the conversation.
I was sitting in a room with three lady friends (roommates + girlfriend) while I was reading this thread, so I asked the room Daisy's question.
A roommate mentioned porn, but I specified mainstream media and then explained the context of the thread.
Nobody could really think of anything. Then my girlfriend conducted the Google search you see above, and everyone felt :C
The fact that "violence against men being sexualized" autocorrects to "violence against women being sexualized" seems to demonstrate something about the extent to which women are sexualized in general in our society.
Probabably not that interesting a point, but it felt more profound, handed down by Google.
It could also demonstrate that our society is more comfortable talking about women being sexualized than men being sexualized. But--y'know--I don't think men are sexualized thoroughly enough to be a social issue*, especially given the social advantages that men already have.
I dunno. Women definitely sexualize men in everyday life, but I don't think that gaze reaches media often if at all, since all media is overwhelmingly controlled by men (even if you have a female screenwriter, you're likely to have a male director; and even if you have a female director, you're likely to have a male producer, etc.). So I don't think a woman's vision of sexualizing a man ever has a chance to reach an audience.
Actually, maybe in a novel? Anne Rice definitely confabulates sex/penetration/bloodplay/homoeroticism. But I don't think it has the same brutality as Tomb Raider.
Sorry, this post is mostly a braindump.
*Well, other than inspiring body dismorphia in some guys :/
_________________
"Godzilla could be anyone."
| MrSkeleton wrote: |
| i dont know how to give a thing made of blood but id do it |
| evnvnv wrote: |
| If you die in the axe, you die in real life |
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Iacus
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Stockholm
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 6:33 pm |
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While I see valid points being raised on both sides of the "Tomb Raider line", however I have a few doubts about the discussion here:
1) Honestly curious about how do the "I don't care about authorial intent" people justify to what extent their own interpretation of the work would matter to anybody that's not them, let alone bringing it up in the discussion, by taking that stance.
2) What are examples of origin stories or "becoming a hero" tales where the protagonist is a woman and she doesn't engage in "purely masculine" tasks to become a badass?
I think it would help illustrate the cunterpoint if someone brought some examples for comparison.
I don't really get the idea that just because game X does thing Y in way Z, it's inherently stating that the only way to do thing Y is Z.
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Grant Dempsey
zangrantsu
Joined: 04 May 2009
Location: London, Ontario
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 6:34 pm |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| evnvnv wrote: |
Ok, this is probably going to come out sounding kind of idiotic, but bear with me:
I've been following this thread for awhile, and a number of things have kind of made me wonder: Is it always inappropriate and crass to make or consume media that presents violence as a sexual metaphor, or vice versa? I mean, I know Alien is typically very popular around these parts, but of course that whole movie is about violent sex. Of course, it's not too hard to make an argument that this is presented in a way that seems like a more thoughtful approach to the subject, i.e. one of the things that is good about it is the fact that it makes the viewer consider the association between sex and violence that is present in other ways in other media. It's like a commentary on the subject, rather than just pure exploitation, or something? But I also remember reading that Ridley Scott made Ripley a woman just to add some sex appeal to the story, or something. We've talked around the issue that the creator's intent doesn't necessarily have a bearing on whether or not something is offensive--but can that door go both ways?
What I'm getting at is I feel like Tomb Raider has taken at least part of its inspiration from revenge/woman in peril exploitation movies that were popular in the 70's/80's and are becoming popular again now. Of course it's a problematic genre for a bunch of reasons, but I don't think it's at all impossible to interpret most examples of that type of story on some kind of rumination about the very issues that keep coming up around here, rather than just a purely pornographic exercise. I mean, movies like I Spit on Your Grave or on the other hand Straw Dogs are definitely pretty reprehensible if you're just looking at the 'images' that they put on screen, but there are alsp deeper layers of interpretation that kind of put the imagery in a new light.
I don't think it's at all likely that Tomb Raider is capable of sustaining that kind of reading, but it's definitely not the sort of thing that you could evaluate based only on a few videos of its worst moments or some ham-handed PR conversations. Either way, it's hard to deny that the game doesn't draw from this particular spring of influence (for me it's revealed most clearly just in the graphic design of the game's logo--it looks a lot like a '70s exploitation movie poster, or rather a poster for a'10s remake of a '70s exploitation movie--a weird genre that I think is just as difficult for me to have an opinion on as this game).
I think the final word on the game is just going to be that it is pretty mediocre and lazy. But, speaking theoretically, would it be possible to do in a video game the sort of thing that Quentin Tarantino has done in his recent movies? What I mean is a game that basically pairs very serious, stressful scenes of suspense and violence towards the protagonist with cartoonish, cathartic violence from the protagonist to her enemies. This is basically what Tomb Raider is, right? I mean, you go through all of these crazy rape scenarios from both the people and the environment, but on the other hand the game itself is basically a murder fest. It's not really about protecting Lara--it's a story of her transformation into a walking death machine? I don't know. |
Yes, I think it is entirely possible to take the fact that women are frequent victims of institutionalized sexual violence and make a game that says something intelligent about it. I just know in my heart of hearts (assume!) that Ubisoft Gritty Reboot Allgame #47 has a 0% chance of being that game. |
But isn't that a bit lazy? I mean, if we're contextualizing relationships with games as cultural artifacts with theorizations of authorial intent vs. audiences' freedom anyway: one of the impetuses for resisting authorial intent (and assumptions about authorial intent) as a make-or-break directive in interpretation in some hermeneutics circles is precisely to open up the possibilities of texts to speak to what readers think/feel/wish it speaks to, even if that means ripping the text beyond the scope of its producer's will (or even outside of its originating historical and/or geographical context, if we're dealing with older or foreign texts). This is, I assume, partly what Adi meant when he said that whatever's useful to one's own purposes in reading is what is, should be, a directive in and of that instance of engagement with a text.
So far I think this idea that a work can have legitimately felt and recognizable effects beyond its creator's intent has been used as a defense of the position that the Tomb Raider remake is problematic: it's legitimately problematic as long as an audience believes it is, because there's sure to be something in the work itself that makes that response to it a legitimately possible one.
But that's what I mean by "a bit lazy." The turn to theory here has been performed partly to the effect just of justifying a response to the game that people are already content to enact regardless ("it sucks/Lara Croft is just another Has-To-Suffer-To-Be-Strong Heroine"). I agree with Adi also that the situation's complex. On one hand, it's important to establish the legitimacy of that response so that it, and the broader concerns from which it stems, can be engaged. On the other hand, it's a response which itself sometimes threatens simply to end discussion, because it's so rote and so resistant to moving past itself. I think that "I just know in my heart of hearts (assume!) that Ubisoft Gritty Reboot Allgame #47 has a 0% chance of being that game" is another symptom of that problem. It's another way of shifting the responsibility to respond actively elsewhere, projecting it onto some other party, while justifying maintaining a knee-jerk "objective" stance towards the game, rather than growing one's own capacity to advance the general situation by developing a creative interpretive stance towards one of the situation's instances.
In other words, even if there's nothing about the creators or originating context of the Tomb Raider remake that inspires you to trust the game enough to think there's useful commentary already intentionally embedded in it, can't you just put that trust in yourself and approach it as a platform for useful commentary? If we're already putting authorial intent aside, then "bleh, it's just Ubisoft anyway" doesn't make much sense anymore as a reason not to dig further into it. Can't we be Tarantino figures but in the form of an audience? It's what Tarantino himself had to be anyway. Jackie Brown, for instance, didn't just partly pop out of some outrage at blaxploitation films for being morally inadequate and, well, exploitative trash; it instead partly popped out of a sense that there were things already latent in the material of blaxploitation films that could be activated in interpretation and eventually exploded into a source for a new work. I mean, a lot of us are content to pat ourselves on the back for recognizing the merits of Tarantino's work, but what a lot fewer of us appreciate is that Tarantino's work springs out of his years spent recognizing the merits, the potentialities, of "trashy" work.
Anyway, I dunno. All this just to say I'm sympathetic to (what I take as) evnvnv's suggestion that discussion of Tomb Raider could be taken in this direction. If nothing else, it'd be one way of keeping this kind of discussion from simply stagnating. |
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meauxdal
militant atheist
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Location: georgia, usa
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 8:50 pm |
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| Iacus wrote: |
While I see valid points being raised on both sides of the "Tomb Raider line", however I have a few doubts about the discussion here:
1) Honestly curious about how do the "I don't care about authorial intent" people justify to what extent their own interpretation of the work would matter to anybody that's not them, let alone bringing it up in the discussion, by taking that stance.
2) What are examples of origin stories or "becoming a hero" tales where the protagonist is a woman and she doesn't engage in "purely masculine" tasks to become a badass?
I think it would help illustrate the cunterpoint if someone brought some examples for comparison.
I don't really get the idea that just because game X does thing Y in way Z, it's inherently stating that the only way to do thing Y is Z. |
quoting thing because I mostly agree with it and also because emphasis mine
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 10:46 pm |
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| Iacus wrote: |
| 1) Honestly curious about how do the "I don't care about authorial intent" people justify to what extent their own interpretation of the work would matter to anybody that's not them, let alone bringing it up in the discussion, by taking that stance. |
It relies upon discussion and curiosity, mainly. In literary criticism, the idea is that you have a response to a work and then use inherited critical tools to articulate that response. Sometimes you're brilliant and well-connected and you generate new critical models that help to discover meaning in a given work, but that's pretty rare.
The basic idea is that discovering meaning takes work and effort. Relying upon authorial intent (which, again, can't be substantiated in a way that would prove final in other contexts) gets you out of that work. We hash out meaning by thinking and interpreting privately and by discussing both the work and our interpretive processes in community. In all but a few cases, the author is an absentee to both contexts.
It's possible to read your question as "how do you expect your opinions to matter to someone who has a statement of authorial intent?" This question is equal to "how do you expect to have a conversation with someone who isn't interested in having the conversation?"
And the answer to both, of course, "I don't have that conversation." Why not? Because most people I've encountered who venerate authorial intent aren't interested in thinking outside of the reading model that they've inherited. And we wind up with this conversation instead of a conversation about meaning within a given game, book, movie, whatever.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the second question is what you're asking. It's another flavor of the same line of inquiry that I've encountered before. the above two paragraphs are more responding from what you wrote rather than responding to what you've written. So -- if it misrepresents your question, that's not intended.
I also anticipate this question: "Why should I care about your meaning in a post or other communication when authorial intent doesn't matter?" You should care because personal accountability matters more when communication becomes more direct and personal. Creative work is extremely indirect. It's made in response to a life of experience, or it's made as a repetition of inherited ideas. Creative work is broadband; communication is narrowband. They require different approaches for understanding.
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This is something that I wrote in the course of this post that I don't think relates anymore, but I'm going to stick it on the end here anyway.
Lit crit usually gets judged by its worst examples, in part due to a happy-go-lucky everyman-based public smearing of the Modern Language Association's annual convention by the New York Times. It's an idiot's fare to reaffirming that things we don't understand can't be understood because we don't already understand them, and that we can, in fact, judge a book by its cover. A key phrase in this summary is "rejected now by academics," who are probably people the everyman reader already thinks are asshole fops. Also notable is a lack of reading space to the original argument.
These are rhetorical tricks designed to foster animosity and generate sensationalism. The unfortunate consequence is that they pre-approve biases in favor of canon (whatever they think that is), tradition (whatever they think that is), and textual authority (whatever they think that is). Writers lie for a variety of reasons, some of them incentivized and some of them out of convenience.
As a writer myself who knows a lot of other writers and talks about writing with them, there's an implicit distrust of the question "what does this mean?" Two initial problems are: one, if I could tell you what it means, it doesn't need to exist; and, two, I need to have a compelling reason to go on record about what this stuff I've made "means."
On the first point: the created thing exists for a reason beyond a reducible meaning, and that's your job as an audience to figure out. If I've done a good job and if you're keen on the medium, you'll have a good time figuring that out.
On the second point: With respect to videogames, the established money circle of PR, games press, developer accountability to studio image, and legal consequences. Victor quipped that the writer should be given more credit than a mouthpiece as a corporate shill, and that's a hyper-reactive avoidance of the main problem.
These authorial statements come in a context.
That context is filled with career pitfalls and financial consequences.
Speakers and press alike have incentive to prioritize authorial intent over audience response.
The mere existence of these boundaries should call into question the completeness of anything a developer says in an official/formal interview context. Understanding these boundaries is the work required of a critical, self-respecting reader. It's also the kind of work that resting on "authorial intent" lets you avoid.
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Last edited by Adilegian on Sun Mar 10, 2013 10:51 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Moogs
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 10:48 pm |
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| Video games are clearly art. |
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meauxdal
militant atheist
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Location: georgia, usa
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 11:28 pm |
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Art is a useless term in this discussion (in most discussions) - more importantly authorial intent is only irrelevant because something does not need to be "authored" to affect you - random number generators interfacing with sound generation tools can produce beautiful music. Trees aren't "authored" in the traditional sense but I feel a great deal of emotion staring out my window at them.
The point is, if you care about something someone has actually created, it's actually pretty fucking relevant context if the author themselves decides to speak on it. if nothing else, it can be seen as an extension of the creation, since most "art" is bound by somewhat arbitrary boundaries (is the canvas part of the Mona Lisa? the back of the canvas? the room it is stored in? just two-dimensional image?) In videogames, it's basically a giant pitfall for ignorance about how games are made, since the final product will in most cases (especially now, less so in the days of the Commodore 64) be the result of many artists working in tight collaboration. That doesn't mean author commentary is not some of the most interesting and relevant context that exists for a given "work", if you will.
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The Troops
Joined: 20 Feb 2007
Location: Providence
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| Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 11:55 pm |
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| I'm curious as to what counts as "author commentary" on a "creative work" that exists as a product of a corporation of circa 400 people, of which only 6 are making any meaningful decisions, and all those decisions are just reincorporating the features associated with other products which contain the highest metacritic scores. We might as well be critiquing toothpaste. (Ignoring the "authorial intent" telegraphed in its commercials, of course.) |
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Iacus
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Stockholm
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 12:09 am |
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| Quote: |
It relies upon discussion and curiosity, mainly. In literary criticism, the idea is that you have a response to a work and then use inherited critical tools to articulate that response. Sometimes you're brilliant and well-connected and you generate new critical models that help to discover meaning in a given work, but that's pretty rare.
The basic idea is that discovering meaning takes work and effort. Relying upon authorial intent (which, again, can't be substantiated in a way that would prove final in other contexts) gets you out of that work. We hash out meaning by thinking and interpreting privately and by discussing both the work and our interpretive processes in community. In all but a few cases, the author is an absentee to both contexts. |
Ok, that's fair.
However some posters here, booji and cubalibre among them, have expressed a viewpoint that to me seems to disregard authorial intent completely. They are in effect putting their personal interpretation of the object above that of the person or group that made it, and that doesn't seem particularly correct.
I mean, if the author tries to say 'A', surely the recipient can percieve at least an 'a' in the message, right? So that has to count for something.
Despite this comment, I think I'm getting where you are coming from, though.
| Quote: |
It's possible to read your question as "how do you expect your opinions to matter to someone who has a statement of authorial intent?" This question is equal to "how do you expect to have a conversation with someone who isn't interested in having the conversation?"
And the answer to both, of course, "I don't have that conversation." Why not? Because most people I've encountered who venerate authorial intent aren't interested in thinking outside of the reading model that they've inherited. And we wind up with this conversation instead of a conversation about meaning within a given game, book, movie, whatever.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the second question is what you're asking. It's another flavor of the same line of inquiry that I've encountered before. the above two paragraphs are more responding from what you wrote rather than responding to what you've written. So -- if it misrepresents your question, that's not intended. |
I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, in the sense that while it may be applicable to literary criticism, in videogames there's a crucial difference. They are created to be interacted with by a player or set of players. The creator anticipates audience(player) interaction because it's the very raison d'etre of the work. Videogames on a fundamental level rely on a conversation between authored content and the interaction required to run that content.
And yes, it's totally possible to play a game "missing the point" (read: performing an interpretation that doesn't align with the author's* expectations) either accidentally or on purpose but that in turn generates a narrative that to another observer, may be clearly and obviously "wrong" with regards to player intent matching author's intent. Such interpretation is, to me, typically less useful than engaging the game on its own terms.
To be clear, I'm not saying that the author's is the Voice of God and that his view cannot be challenged. However I can't help but think that disregarding it completely can lead to totally wacky and silly interpretations of a work that shouldn't be valid at the same level as a more conscious interpretation.
| Quote: |
| I also anticipate this question: "Why should I care about your meaning in a post or other communication when authorial intent doesn't matter?" You should care because personal accountability matters more when communication becomes more direct and personal. Creative work is extremely indirect. It's made in response to a life of experience, or it's made as a repetition of inherited ideas. Creative work is broadband; communication is narrowband. They require different approaches for understanding. |
I'll have to think about this one a bit more.
| Quote: |
| quoting thing because I mostly agree with it and also because emphasis mine |
That's an embarrassing typo. Thanks for immortalizing it!
*The "author" I'm referring to here also takes into account the computer system that's running the videogame, not just the people behind its creation.
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Iacus
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Stockholm
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 12:15 am |
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| The Troops wrote: |
| I'm curious as to what counts as "author commentary" on a "creative work" that exists as a product of a corporation of circa 400 people, of which only 6 are making any meaningful decisions, and all those decisions are just reincorporating the features associated with other products which contain the highest metacritic scores. We might as well be critiquing toothpaste. (Ignoring the "authorial intent" telegraphed in its commercials, of course.) |
That it is commercial, poorly made or derivative doesn't mean it doesn't exist nor does it make action adventure videogames in general nor Tomb Raider in particular not a creative work.
Being a collaborative effort doesn't change that. It has a directorial voice behind it, even if in this case that voice is "let's make Uncharted with torture because it will sell lots"
| Moogs wrote: |
| Video games are clearly art. |
I always say the same thing but videogames are no more and no less art than writing is.
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The Troops
Joined: 20 Feb 2007
Location: Providence
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 12:18 am |
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I mean, of course I can derive meaning from Medal of Honor Warfighter: the sense that the human race is doomed. Though that is increasingly the only meaning I can derive from videogames, or anything that is produced by capitalism.
(Even the stinger at the end of MOTHER 3, the videogame that makes me least want to kill myself, is the final bit of text in the credits which says, DON'T FORGET ALL OF THIS IS COPYRIGHT 2006 NINTENDO CORPORATION LIMITED. The most horrifying ending of a videogame ever.) |
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thestage
banned
Joined: 27 Sep 2011
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 12:22 am |
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| god ya'll are gonna make me go through this thread and waste a couple hours writing a couple thousand words tonight why select button why |
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Iacus
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Stockholm
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 12:27 am |
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| The Troops wrote: |
| I mean, of course I can derive meaning from Medal of Honor Warfighter: the sense that the human race is doomed. Though that is increasingly the only meaning I can derive from videogames, or anything that is produced by capitalism. |
On that line of thought I have the theory that if this game were the equivalent of The Descent, Cannibal Holocaust or similar, people would have no problem ignoring it and moving on to other things. One of the problems is that Tomb Raider isn't the videogame equivalent of a shitty horror B-movie. It's the videogame equivalent of a multimillion dollar summer blockbuster.
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thestage
banned
Joined: 27 Sep 2011
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:00 am |
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| people cared about rapelay |
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:10 am |
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| Iacus wrote: |
However some posters here, booji and cubalibre among them, have expressed a viewpoint that to me seems to disregard authorial intent completely. They are in effect putting their personal interpretation of the object above that of the person or group that made it, and that doesn't seem particularly correct.
I mean, if the author tries to say 'A', surely the recipient can percieve at least an 'a' in the message, right? So that has to count for something. |
The problem with relying on authorial intent is that it's reductive. After all, whichever way the author is choosing to disclose his intent "outside" the work is itself a work of some kind, also subject to interpretation. It is not at all inconceivable (and probably quite common) that an author may lie one way or the other: to deny obvious interpretations that are now out of vogue or that the author now regrets incubating (like "what do you mean Tomb Raider has rape scenes in it it totally doesn't??!!"), to puff up the work and lend it grandiosity that was utterly absent during its rote creation (art student "my painting means this" paragraphs that get hung next to their works), to just plain fuck with people for his own amusement or to create a grander work of context that includes managing audience reactions that can itself be interpreted and appreciated by an intelligent viewer (Andy Kaufman), etc. It's just interpretation all the way down, man.
Instead of wallowing in the inevitable, radical subjectivity of epistemology (oh god how do I know this isn't all like a dream right now, man), we have to establish some basic guidelines, derived from nothing much more than "usefulness," for what actually constitutes a work. These guidelines will always themselves be subject to deconstruction but we have to use them because without them there's no way to think about anything. There will always be borderline cases and logical extremes that disprove the universality of the guidelines, but that doesn't make them pointless.
One easy guideline is that the work ought to be evaluated on its own merits. I don't know the author, he isn't my friend, his opinion means nothing to me. I'm not obligated to sift through the weeds of his own psyche just to see if whatever statement his PR agent has released seems to be an accurate reflection of the work. That doesn't mean it can't be useful, sometimes, at the margins, to refer to an artist's statement about the meaning of his own work. But it's almost always one of the least important data available. It's extra credit, something you go looking for at the very end of an extremely long and detailed analysis of a work.
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boojiboy7
narcissistic irony-laden twat
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: take me on a blatant doom trip.
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:43 am |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| One easy guideline is that the work ought to be evaluated on its own merits. I don't know the author, he isn't my friend, his opinion means nothing to me. I'm not obligated to sift through the weeds of his own psyche just to see if whatever statement his PR agent has released seems to be an accurate reflection of the work. That doesn't mean it can't be useful, sometimes, at the margins, to refer to an artist's statement about the meaning of his own work. But it's almost always one of the least important data available. It's extra credit, something you go looking for at the very end of an extremely long and detailed analysis of a work. |
Yes basically this, combined with what Adi wrote.
One of the reasons I will always love Thomas Pynchon is his flat out refusal to talk about his own books at all. It drives people nuts, because they want and easy answer as "what is this all about" by simply never providing one to being with. Similarly, authors like Joyce understood the silliness of authorial intent completely, which led to Joyce saying things like his goal in writing Ulysses was to give college professors something to talk about for years.
Authors can say they want their work to be anything at all (and they might not even be lying!). For an overly simplified example, DW Griffith might not have intended Birth of a Nation to be racist as hell, but heck if the movie doesn't come off that way to a lot of people, even at the time. |
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Moogs
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 2:07 am |
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| Iacus wrote: |
| Moogs wrote: |
| Video games are clearly art. |
I always say the same thing but videogames are no more and no less art than writing is. |
I only say this because they cause arguments. |
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meauxdal
militant atheist
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Location: georgia, usa
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| Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 4:22 am |
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| The Troops wrote: |
| I'm curious as to what counts as "author commentary" on a "creative work" that exists as a product of a corporation of circa 400 people, of which only 6 are making any meaningful decisions, and all those decisions are just reincorporating the features associated with other products which contain the highest metacritic scores. We might as well be critiquing toothpaste. (Ignoring the "authorial intent" telegraphed in its commercials, of course.) |
you must be more than capable of determining what might reasonably constitute author commentary if you are also capable of determining who are the 6 making "any meaningful decisions".
this seems to be a discussion about lazy scholarship, especially in videogames, as opposed to the relevance of the statements produced by people whose decisions shape the outcome of the media we consume. it seems to be a simple value judgment that, given all possible opinions on a given "work" or cluster of media, ones given by those involved in its existence would, by nature of proximity and, yes, intent (Cuba said, "I'm not obligated to sift through the weeds of his own psyche just to see if whatever statement his PR agent has released seems to be an accurate reflection of the work.", camouflaging the fact that "art" is essentially always the act of sifting through the weeds of the (combined, juxtaposed) psyche of whomever made it), be among the most relevant and interesting. this is even acknowledging the increased likelihood of dishonesty (viewing this as an impassible obstacle implies we are incapable of interpreting the commentary alongside the "work", or that the "work" is pure of the commentary); when are humans not dishonest? and furthermore, how is their dishonesty any less interesting than honesty? is the "work" "honest"?
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