Midterm Media Project
Midterm Media Project Part II: Topic Write-Up
From a young age, the Street Fighter franchise was something that truly entranced me, I lost many hours playing the iconic franchise for hours, beginning on an arcade booth at a laundromat near my hour and later upgrading to a PlayStation, which made my hobby all the more accessible. When I was made aware that a topic of the class was going to be Street Fighter and the affect and power that the franchise held, excited would be a complete understatement when it came to describing my initial emotions. Video games have had a significant impact in my life, my friend groups, and my free time, and so it was only natural for me to focus on said medium to present my ideas. In my project, I hope to portray to my audience not only what soft power is, but to explain the soft power that the Street Fighter holds and just show how that soft power has been used, discreetly, to spread images of stereotyped characters since Street Fighter was first released, whether that was Capcom’s intention or not.
As a kid, I never once recognized the characters’ image and how they were built off of stereotypes created about their country of origin, and as I grew up, my nostalgia and love for the game somewhat distracted me to just how stereotyped many of the game’s characters really were/are today. This project and learning about soft power as well as the influence the franchise can and has had around the world really made me look at the game through an entirely different lens. While what I have learned doesn’t take away from my love for the game, it was certainly a rude awakening, and it has me looking at many different franchises and organizations differently, especially knowing the influence that those companies can have, consider Nike, Facebook, and many other soft power-wielding organizations. While creating this media piece, I didn’t encounter too many complications, due to the blatancy of the stereotypes present in the franchise’s characters, my biggest complication was probably narrowing my scope of focus to the specific characters I picked out for this project, mainly because the three characters I chose have all been around and very popular since their inductions in Street Fighter II up until now. Through my making of the media, and analyzation of the media of you, I definitely gained a new understanding for soft power and how it may lie in places that you may never connect with international influence, such as video games. The topic of soft power changed from being exclusively connected with films, politics and social justice to being able to be owned and exhibited by any franchise and organization that has the ability to influence a large state or multitudes of regions/states.
In conclusion, my media project is meant to share what I learned and realized about the Street Fighter franchise and how present their usage of their soft power through their stereotyped, more iconic fighters. With this information, I hope to have the audience draw their own conclusions about the franchise and realize the power of the franchise and the effect that their message, whether it was their intention or not, has serious, problematic implications.
This page has paths:
- Midterm Media Project John Nimmers-Minor
- Midterm Media Project John Nimmers-Minor
- John Nimmers-Minor: ASPA Final Portfolio John Nimmers-Minor
