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• 1 2014-09-04T14:48:57-07:00 Banality 25 plain 2014-10-07T09:45:16-07:00 By the mid-1990s, the technology of video games and virtual reality had fully penetrated popular culture, making non-disruptive appearances on prime time network television and non-technology oriented genre films alike. No longer a novelty, in these examples, games are woven into the everyday fabric of cinematic and televisual narratives. The "Virtual Reality" episode from NBC's prime time television comedy Mad About You (1994) crystallizes numerous stereotypes of the cultural imaginary surrounding virtual reality in the 1990s. Series protagonist Paul Buckman (Paul Reiser) has decided to invest in a virtual reality system developed by a preteen computer genius, which allows for an impossible array of VR experiences spanning the usual range of erotic, exotic or adventurous experience. Narrative tensions emerge over whether the system should be regarded as a "video game," a trivializing designation in the mid 90s, which would mark it as an illegitimate investment. After Paul tests the system via a virtual encounter with supermodel Christie Brinkley, he later attempts to assuage the resulting domestic turmoil with his wife (Helen Hunt), by dismissing the experience as being simply "a video game." In Irwin Winkler's The Net (1995), a computer hacker (Sandra Bullock) displays virtuosic computer skills as a software analyst, moving seamlessly between video game play, system debugging and internet chat rooms as part of her daily, isolated existence. In scenes like this one, where Bullock is debugging the code for Wolfenstein 3D, her interactions with both the game and the computer are presented as a routine part of her job, rather than a spectacle of computational virtuosity. A stark contrast may be made between similar scenes in The Net and Iain Softley's Hackers, which came out just a few months later. Throughout Hackers, scenes of computer programming are dominated by psychedelic computer graphics that take over the screen whenever code is written or data is accessed online. In The Net, the Wolfenstein 3D game play sequence is understated, showing just enough first person shooter violence for Bullock to euphemistically declare the game's hyperviolence to be "very dynamic" before hurrying back to her isolated life of online pizza deliveries and cyberchat rooms. In the end, the film's critique is aimed not at games or gamers but at the internet itself, with a potential for identity theft and criminal abuse that far exceeds the threat of everyday game violence. Kevin Smith's teenage slacker comedy Mallrats (1995) alternately celebrates and condemns the feckless existence of teenagers engaged in a series of inconsequential activities and relationships. In this scene, which is meant to pass for an internal critique of the main character's (Jason Lee) inability to take his life (or relationship with his girlfriend, Shannen Doherty) seriously, video hockey serves as a distraction from their semblance of a love life. At other points in the film avoidance of adult responsibility is achieved through an obsessive and equally trivial relationship to television, comic books and hanging out at the mall. The persistently ironic stance of the film makes it difficult to decode this scene (and numerous others) in terms of its gendered critique of games. For Doherty, videogames represent not only a disruption of her relationship, but the antithesis of the substance and consequentiality she desires from life. At the same time, her romantic idealization of "noble" careers and life goals is ridiculed by both the logic of the film and Lee's character, who is distracted from her breakup speech by his game controller. The following year, Doug Liman's Swingers (1996) highlighted vacuousness, profanity and homophobia as routine parts of videogame culture. This immature, solipsistic behavior is portrayed as symptomatic of - but not causally related to - the banality of existence for three twenty-something dudes (Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau and Patrick Van Horn). It would be difficult to "blame" video games for the empty narcissism of the Southern California social milieu constructed in Swingers. In fact, in this protracted scene featuring the EA game NHL Hockey 94 Van Horn directly addresses the removal of game-based fighting from the 1994 edition of the game in utterly trivializing terms: "I think kids were hittin' each other or somethin'." Moments later, the discussion of game violence transitions from the screen to the characters in the room after Vince Vaughn cheats to make Wayne Gretzky's head bleed, prompting Van Horn to attack him physically. Not unlike Gretzky's graphically but meaninglessly bleeding head in NHL, the "fight" between Vaughn and Van Horn degenerates into slaps and homophobic insults. In the world created by Swingers, video games are just one more element of an overall landscape of trivial inconsequentiality.
• 1 2014-08-25T11:59:38-07:00 Social Normativity 14 plain 2014-09-16T15:45:52-07:00 Socially normative depictions of games and gamers differ from the conventions of "negative stereotyping" seen in this project's discussions of the purported antisocial effects of video games, such as addiction, violence and sexual repression. What I have termed here "socially normative" are those depictions of games and gamers that serve to suppress the transformative potentials of interactive entertainment, framing them instead within a reassuring context of containment and continuity with the existing social order. Although they may indeed sometimes be understood as "negative," these depictions are most important to understand as being trivial, with a scope of consequence that is limited to a single relationship or insular social milieu. Games in the eyes of Hollywood, at the exact moment when real world games are most actively exploring "serious" topics and potentially beneficial social dynamics, are presented as impotent and irrelevant as agents of societal change and civic engagement. Among the most relentlessly trivializing visions of games ever produced in Hollywood is the romantic comedy The Break-Up (2006). Starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston, The Break-Up is the story of a couple in the process of ending their relationship in part because Vaughn plays video games obsessively on the couch, while neglecting his girlfriend (Aniston). Ultimately, the two decide to continue cohabitating in their jointly owned condominium and proceed to torment each other - Vaughn by coaxing Aniston's male suitors to play video games with him rather than go out on dates with her, and Aniston by exploiting the fact that she is no longer sexually available to her former partner. In Couples Retreat (2009), Vince Vaughn reprises his role as the quintessential video game obsessed dude, whose game-based homosocial bonding takes precedence over heterosexual romance (see also Mallrats, The Big Bang Theory). This scene also continues a long tradition of cinematic depictions of showcase game play sequences that directly incorporate game aesthetics but provide little narrative exposition. When Vaughn turns out to be an expert Guitar Hero player during a macho showdown, the two characters lapse into a different genre of videogame vernacular, receiving directions as if part of an RPG quest. Although they catalyze a competition and reconciliation, games are nonetheless positioned as a trivial distraction, in opposition to the concurrent seduction of the player's wife by a hypermasculine rival in the real world. This extended sequence from The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) crystallizes many of the social tensions that surround depictions of video games on film, when stereotypical gamer dude homophobia is intercut with attempted heterosexual romance. This scene brings together multiple tropes in the representation of video games on film and television: hyperviolence, homophobia, social awkwardness, introversion, antisocial behavior, linkages between sex and violence, etc. The implicit critique of video games and the derogatory use of "gay" in gamer vernacular speech is muddled by the film's ambiguous attitude toward games and other artifacts that question the main character's masculinity.