Stereotypical video gamer dudes mix homophobia with profanity and violence
1 2014-09-01T15:44:06-07:00 Steve Anderson 3e015d75989f7e2d586f4e456beb811c3220a805 3025 1 Videogame violence features prominently in this cinematic critique of games and gamers plain 2014-09-01T15:44:06-07:00 Critical Commons 1996 Video Swingers 2014-09-01T22:10:27Z Steve Anderson 3e015d75989f7e2d586f4e456beb811c3220a805This page has paths:
- 1 2014-09-05T14:17:07-07:00 Steve Anderson 3e015d75989f7e2d586f4e456beb811c3220a805 Media Chronology Steve Anderson 23 A chronological gallery of all media included in this project structured_gallery 2014-09-09T07:35:30-07:00 Steve Anderson 3e015d75989f7e2d586f4e456beb811c3220a805
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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 2014-09-03T09:46:59-07:00 Games of the 2000s 18 plain 2014-09-04T14:24:28-07:00 Social normativity What I have termed here "socially normative" depictions of games and gamers differ from the conventions of "negative stereotyping" seen in the preceding examples of addiction, violence and sexual repression in cinematic games. Social normativity refers to 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 existing gender relations and 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 this context, are rendered impotent and irrelevant as potential agents of social change or civic engagement. Released in 1996, Doug Liman's Swingers prefigures a genre of cinematic treatments of games that came to fruition in the 2000s when console games were fully integrated into the domestic lives of the twenty-something generation. Vacuousness, profanity and homophobia are characteristic of these twenty-something gamer dudes, for whom the trivial banality of game worlds is coextensive with the real world. Swingers also represents the introduction of the paradigmatic gamer-dude character coined by Vince Vaughn, which would reappear with only minor variations in subsequent romantic comedies The Breakup (2006) and Couples Retreat (2009). The Breakup (2006) Vince Vaughn chooses video games over his girlfriend in The Breakup. In a battle between the sexes among a couple in the process of breaking up, videogames exacerbate the divide between men and women. A generation earlier, this scene would have played out over the image of a loutish male watching TV rather than paying attention to his partner. Couples Retreat (2009) Vince Vaughn continues to typify the quintessential video game obsessed dude, whose homosocial bonding takes precedence over his heterosexual romantic relationship. 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. 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) This extended sequence 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. Basically, this film's politics are a mess and most of the reasons for it are evident in these scenes.
- 1 2014-08-25T11:59:38-07:00 Social Normativity 7 text 2014-09-01T15:49:52-07:00 Socially normative depictions of games and gamers differ from the conventions of "negative stereotyping" seen in this project's profiles of 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 this context, are rendered impotent and irrelevant as potential agents of social change or civic engagement. Swingers (1996) Vacuousness, profanity and homophobia are characteristic of these twenty-something gamer dudes, for whom the trivial banality of game worlds is coextensive with the real world. The Breakup (2006) Vince Vaughn chooses video games over his girlfriend in The Breakup. In a battle between the sexes among a couple in the process of breaking up, videogames exacerbate the divide between men and women. A generation earlier, this scene would have played out over the image of a loutish male watching TV rather than paying attention to his partner. Couples Retreat (2009) Vince Vaughn continues to typify the quintessential video game obsessed dude, whose homosocial bonding takes precedence over his heterosexual romantic relationship. 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. 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) This extended sequence 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. Basically, this film's politics are a mess and most of the reasons for it are evident in these scenes.