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• 1 2014-08-26T10:13:15-07:00 Counter-currents 27 Exceptions and reconfigurations plain 2014-09-08T12:14:19-07:00 Although games have continued to play the role of Hollywood's bad object well into the 21st century, rays of hope within this otherwise bleak landscape have also appeared. In addition to gradually coming to represent a range of games that is not strictly limited to hyperviolent and sexualized first person shooters, on screen video games have evolved to suggest a productive role in the reconstitution of alternative modes of family life and domesticity. In The Sopranos, "Meadowlands" (1999), a session playing Mario Kart helps Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) unwind and reconnect with his son (Robert Iler) after a day of gangster violence, psychological torment and marital infidelity. In a deliberate inversion of Hollywood's usual depiction of console games as damaging family tranquility, this isolated sequence of lighthearted game play, allows Tony to playfully interact with his son via the Nintendo 64 controller (which he implausibly operates with one hand). For a moment during their gameplay, the father/son roles are reversed, when Anthony Jr. admonishes his father to "concentrate" before starting a new game. Having failed to initiate a meaningful conversation by asking about school, Tony resorts to playful physical interactions, covering his son's eyes and jostling him until he wins the race. Before going to bed, Tony and his son exchange affectionate glances, a gesture that will recur later in the episode at the funeral of a mafia boss. The narrative tension between Tony as a gangster and as a family man continues throughout The Sopranos. Although video games play a crucial role in facilitating this moment of affection between father and son, additional plot lines in the "Meadowlands" episode find Anthony Jr. getting in fights at school and discovering (with the help of the internet) that his father is involved in organized crime. In John Murlowski's low-budget cyberthriller Terminal Error (2002), a computer programmer and self-described "cyber-ethicist" played by Marina Sirtis writes a "counter-virus" on a Nintendo Game Boy Color handheld gaming system that is used to defeat a homicidal AI supercomputer before it has a chance to cause a nuclear meltdown. In this climactic scene, Sirtis works with her son and estranged husband to defeat the computer, which in turn leads to the reconstitution of her own nuclear family. If one can look past the absurd premise of using a Game Boy to write and upload a virus to the supercomputer that controls a nuclear reactor, we see in Terminal Error a rare inversion of the role of games in Hollywood narratives, with the game console functioning more like a handheld computer than a gaming console. In fact, a unique feature of Nintendo's Game Boy Color was the use of a translucent purple housing through which one could see some of the electronics driving the game, including a printed circuit board just beneath the primary game controls. Unlike the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance units that preceded and followed it, the exposed electronics of the Game Boy Color suggested a more technically sophisticated range of possible uses than the average game system. Actual video games play only a minor role in Shawn Levy's Real Steel (2011) but the logic of games - focusing on remote controlled avatar-robot boxers - is infused throughout the story. Troubled former boxer Hugh Jackman has difficulty relating to his estranged son after the boy's mother dies, but the two find a connection through the shared love of robot boxing. In this scene, they are joined by the daughter of Jackman's former boxing trainer (Evangeline Lilly), as they discover a robot that will bring them all together as a family. The ability to play video games is taken for granted as a valuable skill as Lilly shows the boy how to operate the robot using a game controller. Technology, which is often figured as the destroyer of domestic harmony, is here positioned in an entirely positive role, literally becoming a catalyst for reconstituting a new family unit. In Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010), a dizzying array of cinematic and transmedial styles converge into an audio-visual cacophony inspired by comic books, video games, DIY 'zines, Hong Kong action films and Bollywood musicals. The style and aesthetics of video games feature prominently throughout the film, which was based on a graphic novel series and released in conjunction with a video game of the same name by Ubisoft. Unlike virtually all of the other examples included in this project, the film version of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World does not include any conventional scenes of game play, which have historically been presented as separate from the primary narrative flow. Instead, the visual attributes of games (as well as comic books, et al) are fully integrated into several action sequences that are part of the diegetic narrative of the film. Games (and/or game graphics) do not function as novelty items or showcase sequences, but are rather representative of the productive convergence of media styles. In the fully convergent world imagined by Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Hollywood's traditionally antagonistic relationship between film and games makes little sense, making it possible to understand this film as a useful point of transition in the evolution of the two media. Conventional lines between media are further erased in Spike Jonze's Her (2013) when gameplay is interrupted by an incoming e-mail message. The room-sized holographic display space of the game, a sci-fi exploration adventure, seamlessly transitions to display the results of an internet search. In this scene, video games, like the personified operating system, are fully integrated into the life of the player, who is also experiencing eroding boundaries between organic and artificial life. The small, white game character introduced in this scene retains the playful irreverence of 2010s video game culture - spouting profanity, insulting the player and making crude sexual gestures - without being trivialized as a mere domestic diversion for a social outcast.