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Bad Object 2.0: Games and Gamers

Parallax View psychology lab test

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Games of the 1970s It took nearly a decade for Hollywood to begin representing video games as an everyday technology that was integrated into the entertainment landscape of American culture. Although the first home console game was released in 1972, arcade games continued to dominate the popular imagination of games well into the 1980s. Beginning in 1973, Hollywood's vision of video games was limited to arcade consoles presented outside of their real-world contexts. In Richard Fleischer's Soylent Green (1973), for example, a futuristic all white arcade console of Computer Space appears as part of the interior furnishings of an opulent apartment. Soylent Green is set in a dystopian science fiction future in which overpopulation and uneven distribution of wealth have reached a crisis point in American society. Only members of an extreme economic elite can afford to live alone in spacious high-rise apartments while the rest of the country is in total decay. In this scene, the Computer Space console features prominently as part of the narrative exposition that establishes the class disparity that frames the film. Cutting inside after a painfully squalid exterior scene, a slow pan highlights the ostentatiously open spaces of the apartment living room where the console has been installed; a young woman in a long dress (which closely resembles that worn by a model in a magazine advertisement for Computer Space) plays the game gleefully when her aging husband enters the room and expresses pleasure that she is amused by her new "toy." This environment is starkly contrasted with the previous scene on the streets outside which are littered with abandoned vehicles and homeless bodies. In this fleeting moment of Hollywood history, ownership of a home video game system signifies high class status and an extreme of wealth and privilege. It is also worth noting that Hollywood's first video game player is a woman who proudly declares her prowess in the game as having "demolished five saucers with one rocket" (an impossibility in the real world Computer Space game). This announcement, in turn, marks the generational separation between the woman and her wealthy benefactor as she transitions to a relationship with a younger man. The following year, Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View (1974) featured a brief scene with a Pong arcade console, which was likewise dislocated from its commercial context -- in this case as part of a behavioral science research lab. The novelty of using Pong for primate research in the early 1970s constitutes a prescient view of the potentials of games for psychological research, but was most likely included for high-tech ambience here. The university research lab presented in The Parallax View is devoted to studying extremes of violence and sociopathic behavior that turns out to be instrumental in a reporter's (Warren Beatty) investigation into political assassination. Like the female game player in Soylent Green, the chimpanzee in The Parallax View is meant to be perceived as a proficient game player (though the actual scenes of game play in both clips reveal the opposite). Both of these instances of game play suggest that the filmmakers confidently assumed a lack of literacy among audiences about the games being played. We may infer that the very presence of video games on screen in 1973-74 was sufficient to signify high-tech futurity, albeit in cinematic futures marked by paranoia and social decay, where women and chimpanzees are the primary players of video games.
Out of context It took nearly a decade for Hollywood to begin representing video games as an everyday technology that was integrated into the entertainment landscape of American culture. Although the first home console game was released in 1972, arcade games continued to dominate the popular imagination of games well into the 1980s. Beginning in 1973, Hollywood's vision of video games was limited to arcade consoles presented outside of their real-world contexts. In Richard Fleischer's Soylent Green (1973), for example, a futuristic all white arcade console of Computer Space appears as part of the interior furnishings of an opulent apartment. Soylent Green is set in a dystopian science fiction future in which overpopulation and uneven distribution of wealth have reached a crisis point in American society. Only members of an extreme economic elite can afford to live alone in spacious high-rise apartments while the rest of the country is in total decay. In this scene, the Computer Space console features prominently as part of the narrative exposition that establishes the class disparity that frames the film. Cutting inside after a painfully squalid exterior scene, a slow pan highlights the ostentatiously open spaces of the apartment living room where the console has been installed; a young woman in a long dress (which closely resembles that worn by a model in a magazine advertisement for Computer Space) plays the game gleefully when her aging husband enters the room and expresses pleasure that she is amused by her new "toy." This environment is starkly contrasted with the previous scene on the streets outside which are littered with abandoned vehicles and homeless bodies. In this fleeting moment of Hollywood history, ownership of a home video game system signifies high class status and an extreme of wealth and privilege. It is also worth noting that Hollywood's first video game player is a woman who proudly declares her prowess in the game as having "demolished five saucers with one rocket" (an impossibility in the real world Computer Space game). This announcement, in turn, marks the generational separation between the woman and her wealthy benefactor as she transitions to a relationship with a younger man. The following year, Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View (1974) featured a brief scene with a Pong arcade console, which was likewise dislocated from its commercial context -- in this case as part of a behavioral science research lab. The novelty of using Pong for primate research in the early 1970s constitutes a prescient view of the potentials of games for psychological research, but was most likely included for high-tech ambience here. The university research lab presented in The Parallax View is devoted to studying extremes of violence and sociopathic behavior that turns out to be instrumental in a reporter's (Warren Beatty) investigation into political assassination. Like the female game player in Soylent Green, the chimpanzee in The Parallax View is meant to be perceived as a proficient game player (though the actual scenes of game play in both clips reveal the opposite). Both of these instances of game play suggest that the filmmakers confidently assumed a lack of literacy among audiences about the games being played. We may infer that the very presence of video games on screen in 1973-74 was sufficient to signify high-tech futurity, albeit in cinematic futures marked by paranoia and social decay, where women and chimpanzees are the primary players of video games.
Media Works Cited Murder by Television (1935) A Face in the Crowd (1957) Death Race 2000 (1975) Soylent Green (1973 The Parallax View (1974) Network (1976) Being There (1979) Simon and Simon, "Trapdoors" (1981) Tron (1982) Poltergeist (1982) Videodrome (1983) Superman III (1983) Never Say Never Again (1983) WarGames (1983) Whiz Kids (1983-84) Knight Rider, "Soul Survivor" (1983) Night of the Comet (1984) Automan, "The Biggest Game in Town" (1984) The Last Starfighter (1984) D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) The Princess Bride (1987) Big (1988) The Wizard (1989) Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Game" (1991) Terminator 2 (1991) Lawnmower Man (1992) Jurassic Park (1993) Arcade (1993) The Net (1995) Hackers (1995) Swingers (1996) Star Trek: DS9 (1998) eXistenZ (1999) The Sopranos, "Meadowlands" (1999) The X-Files, "First Person Shooter" (2000) Series 7: The Contenders (2001) Center of the World (2001) Terminal Error (2002) Elephant (2003) The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) The Wire, "Soft Eyes" (2006) The Break-Up (2006) The Big Bang Theory, "The Dumpling Paradox" (2007) Die Hard 4 (2007) War Games 2: The Dead Code (2008) Couples Retreat (2009) Gamer (2009) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) Tron Legacy (2010) Breaking Bad, "Problem Dog" (2011) Real Steel (2011) The Dictator (2012) The Hunger Games (2012) Ender's Game (2013)