I do really enjoy those old games. I also remember playing Wind Waker, where Zelda actually helps you fight the boss, and thinking it was about time she finally did something more than need rescuing. Appreciating something and being aware what it gets wrong are not actually in conflict.
That is you know how many people interact with literature and movies, enjoying the things they do well without closing our eyes to what they do wrong. Heck, I’d argue that’s part of what loving something is about, seeing both its virtues and flaws. Instead it seems many people are infatuated with video games, and treat any acknowledgment they too aren’t all perfect as an assault.
It’s not. Asking people to keep in mind the perspectives of others is not a bad thing; it doesn’t have the kind of harm you seem to be imagining.
The thing is, to run with this; Blue fish gets it the first time, but Red fish keeps saying it over and over and over again.
I’d rather completely untune than be forced to live in a stressful state of constant alert. I should be allowed to enjoy myself occasionally without worrying about the nebulous implications of playing a silly video game. I am an educated adult, I am aware of the context of the things I engage in. I can generally pick up on it without the internet screaming it repeatedly in my ear. I just want to scream back “enough already, I get it!”.
Further, another thing that annoys me, while I’m on a roll, is the fact that everyone so busy pointing out context and how corrosive some of it can be, no one stops and points out an actually solution. I get it, Zelda has some encoded cultural misogyny in it. But how does merely knowing this do a thing to actually end misogyny? You’re not going to “fix” me by telling me that it exists. Fixing the problem probably requires more actual work and intelligence than merely discussing video games on the internet.
Further, I can enjoy Zelda (for example), and NOT be a misogynist. Just like I can enjoy reading The Lord of the Rings and not be one; despite there being a bit (or more) of hardcoded misogyny in both. Enjoying these, despite the bits I don’t agree with, won’t destroy culture, or contribute to the plight of women, or turn me into some sort of petulant Men’s Rights man child.
So would this Arab guy playing Command & Conquer: Generals as the GLA. I don’t really get that luxury, sometimes.
The really sick part is, I like that old game. I still play it all the time, and I can do it with constantly analyzing everything wrong with it. If someone comes up to me with, “Wow, that game game is racist.” My response is, “Yeah, I know. Check out my base!”
I hate to say this, but you have no clue what cultural stress is. Your problem boils down to, “People are critiquing works I enjoy, when I’d rather they didn’t!” The background radiation of a lot of people’s lives is the reality of being constantly critiqued and judged for everything they say and do. Pardon us if we don’t sufficiently pity you.
You don’t want to be thought of as a bad person because you play games that are problematic? Guess what? I don’t think you’re a bad person. I do think you’re being incredibly whiny right now.
But those are at least armies at battle with each other. Hardline pits militarized civilians against militarized police. At least when you play the SWAT series there’s the idea that you don’t go in shooting, Hardline does nothing but look for an excuse to get the tank.
Dude, who’s calling you a misogynist here? Also, you keep mentioning folks screaming at you, but I haven’t seen a single all-caps post in this thread. If you’re referring to articles written about video games and posted on the internet, I highly doubt that the author is expecting everyone to read their words with a screaming voice in mind. It’s also not necessary for you to assume that folks think you’re automatically sexist for liking Zelda games. No one is doing that.
As for the gripe that no one suggests any solutions to misogyny in games, they absolutely do. Anytime someone suggests that it might be cool for the next Link to be a girl, that’s a possible representation fix. Every time someone asks developers to stop using lazy tropes to write their characters (on the internet or otherwise), they’re directly addressing the source. By asking AAA developers to consider making games with more diversity, and buying the games that do, folks are trying to make it clear that representation matters to them. It’s capitalism.
Of course, we can’t even begin to address the problems inherent in the game space if we never try to identify them. Spaces like this exist to highlight diversity in games and to call out problematic aspects of the same games. If you’re rallying against thoughtful discussion of games on a website dedicated to that pursuit, maybe ask yourself why the website exists in the first place.
Exactly. The red fish knows how important it is. The blue fish hears and understands the words, but fails to understand what that means about how he should live his life. Which is why he winds up dead.
Except, if you really got it, you’d understand that it isn’t actually something you can safely act as if it doesn’t affect you. Blue fish eats worms, too. We’re all in this pond together, even if only some of us know what it’s like to struggle to breathe.
Or less allegorically - when we uncritically consume media, we passively accept what it has to say, and abandon our responsibility to honesty, integrity, and thought. Honest, empathic people shouldn’t be OK with that, even if they’re not experiencing the problems themselves – the only reason they’re not is an accident of history.
Honestly, being aware and vocal is a large part of how we fix it. Media producers who are skilled pay attention to their audience (the audience pays their bills, ultimately), and if their audience is not going to accept casual cultural misogyny, they’ll learn to not accept it, either. It’s not an instant, easy, or unilateral fix, but cultural fixes aren’t any of those things - they require constant, sustained, and vocal effort over long periods of time.
Sure, but when you enjoy it you are enjoying a thing which is in some way misogynist, and it’s good to admit that to yourself and to others. That’s part of realizing that nothing is uncompromised and that doing bad things doesn’t make people bad people, all of which is part and parcel of affecting that cultural change. We’re all Archie Bunker in one way or another.
Well, even humanities people have to show they are doing something.
Some things are like ink stains. A Rorschach test that says more about the one who sees the “deeper meanings” than about the blot itself.
And many concepts are sufficiently elastic to be deformed to fit just about anything you throw them at. Then you can get several mutually exclusive explanations for the same thing.
Empathy and compassion eat energy and can drain one fast. Then compassion fatigue sets in. Then you just want to be left alone and not have to care anymore.
When playing a game, do you want to play a game or to solve problems?
Makes me regret my lack of playing games. I want a tank!
Dude!!! We are. Writing a dissertation is hard work. Contributing to our general understanding of humanity is real work, like it or not…
Right, and this is a serious problem for those who work in fields where empathy is important - social workers, therapists, and the like. But asking people to acknowledge the basic problem of sexism and racism shouldn’t cause empathy fatigue. Just acknowledging that it exists, that’s all. I would say that doesn’t even rise to the level of empathizing, really. It’s just saying “okay, I can see how that’s a problem for you” is all…
Invoking compassion fatigue to justify overlooking racism or misogyny is using something that happens in extreme cases to excuse being indifferent in ordinary ones. It would be like invoking physical fatigue to explain why you can grab a beer for yourself but not for the person next to you - anyone who has ever tried will know that’s not the real problem.
The ability to have “mindless enjoyment” of any given novel (or game, movie, etc.) depends heavily on who you are. If you can read (watch, play) the thing without being jolted back into harsh reality, it’s likely because the thing aligns so well with your existing worldview and assumptions that you don’t even realize it.
For many people of color, reading Tolkien jolts them right out of “mindless enjoyment” the minute the racist descriptions of orcs and Southrens and etc. crop up. They aren’t “injecting” politics - the author’s politics are clearly visible to them. Your (hypothetical) ability to stay in that “mindless enjoyment” flow while reading the same material doesn’t mean the politics aren’t there - it means you can’t see them. Yes, you can choose to put on more critical consciousness, or take it off again and just go with the entertaining flow, but that is pretty much the definition of the whole “privilege” thing, or as Barry says at “Alas, a Blog,” driving a smooth road and not even knowing it.
Edited to add: Can’t decide if I love or hate this place - show up to a thread just a few hours into it and I’m already pretty redundant.
Destruction is not a concept unique to study of the humanities. You can find it in quantum mechanics when two particles annihilate one another and produce a photon, and in the mathematics used to describe such phenomena. You might say that “humanities people” are the best at describing the concepts in an engaging way, but mathematicians, chemists, physicists, cosmologists, and even game developers have their own take on the subject.
You might say that a game like Tetris can be a Rorschach test, but that doesn’t mean the underlying concepts have no universal qualities. You can find the interplay between existence and its opposite everywhere in nature, so it’s kind of reductive to say that it’s an “elastic concept to be deformed to fit just about anything”. More likely, it’s a fundamental concept that colors much of our expressions in media, and most certainly in gaming.
It is a tightrope walk, but I agree that politics are generally better avoided. But only IRL, there isn’t anything wrong with discussing politics. I see it as a problem of people being mired in a fundamentally transactional outlook, which causes them to waste most of their brain power thinking about one of two things: 1. what they think of other people, and 2. what other people think of them. This is symptomatic of a society which is pathologically disinterested in the world at large, and tries to make everything about themselves. It only matters what people think of each other if this kind of insular, incestuous, recursive way of life is taken for granted (which it seems to be). Does this mean that I am ignorant of human problems? It could be, of course, but I think that the deeper problem is what people needlessly make human problems. If a given social problem applies only to humans and is not present in the world at large, then we made it up ourselves.
If/when most people can let go of ritual transactionality and do some real research, the problems of needing to have opinions of other people take care of themselves.
It might also be bias/ignorance to assert that human politics is a set so omnipervasive that there is nothing outside of it.
The verb was there “there are situations where 'political is used”; but I can’t really argue with you on any criticism of that post’s comprehensibility. It’s a dreadful habit of mine. Worse, for some reason, when I’m tired.
As my old history teacher said, after reading one of my papers, “You write like a German philosopher. And that was not a compliment.”
