Blog #7: Virtual Gender

Hopefully, I don't find myself alone in the class in saying I remember playing Super Mario Bros. 2 when I grew up. I'll admit that I never had enough opportunity (or maybe skill) to master this game as I had it's previous version. This release was novel in that it allowed you to select the avatar that you wished to represent you on screen.

The choices available are

(from left to right)

1. Mario - Male

2. Luigi - Male

3. Toad - Umm...

4. Princess - Female

Let's dispense with the obvious.

Suspenders + mustache + hat = male

Dress + crown + pink = female

But what about Toad? Honestly, it's really hard to tell. However, let's ignore Toad for a moment. Clearly we are dealing with a situation where the player is forced to pick an avatar that fits their gender identity. Obviously, this game was geared towards male players since there are two male avatars and only one female avatar. I suppose men had the option of trying on the female configuration, but in the age this game was released, that was not going to happen. This game is so sexist!

Okay, is it really sexist? Upon closer examination, while most of the characters are clearly identifiable as male or female the gender typing is really weak. Game play between the different characters is identical. They have the same skills and can be controlled in the same ways. If it weren't for the mustache (which is hard to make out) Mario and Luigi could just as easily be women. The biggest clue that Princess is female is the color of her dress (is that really a dress?) While we can quickly associate gender to these three characters, the association is not very strong. And then there is Toad, practically genderless. Is that a dress? Is Toad topless? The hat is reminiscent of something feminine, but it's hard to place and there's no mustache to give it away. With Toad we are lacking the stereotypical clues that define the character as masculine or feminine. With all this in mind, the question is, "Does it matter what character you pick?" It wouldn't be a stretch to conclude that this game was designed to appeal to any gender.

I remember when this game was played, the most often selected characters were Toad and Princess. Not because we were trying on a new identity, but because the images were new and novel. We didn't imagine ourselves as being feminine, selecting them had more to do with breaking the status quo. The characters identities weren't strong enough for us to attach ours to theirs. Because we didn't identify with the avatar, even though gender is identifiable between the avatars, there were few if any gender-subject-configurations.

Schliener argues that the development of self perception is influenced by the connection of the player to the avatar.

"the construction of the player's feminine identity emerges from the reflective connectivity of the player's identification with the avatar's movements in the game space." (Schliener, 223)

Meaning that as you control the avatar, it's like looking in a mirror and so you begin to view the avatar as yourself. However, from my own personal experience and my observation of others, this connection to the avatar was not present in Super Mario Bros. 2. Without that connection, no "wearing" [of] a feminine identity (Schliener, 223) is possible. This is not to say that Schliener is wrong. In more advanced video games where there is higher fidelity, a stronger identity, and flexibility in controlling the character the connection may be strong enough to wear a new role. But I don't think the attachment is as automatic as she portrays it to be. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, attaching your identity to that of the avatar is literally in the hands of the person with the controller.

Bibliography

Schleiner, Anne-Marie. "Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games." Leonardo 34.3 (2001): 221-26. Print.

Super Mario Bros. 2, Mario Madness. Redmond, WA: Nintendo of America Inc., 1989. Computer software.

Blog #6: Avatar

Avatar (1) is full of stereo types that dichotomize male and female gender roles. The first obvious one is the tribal leadership positions. The leader of the clan is always the male and the spiritual leader is his wife. This implies that men are leaders or doers while women are advisers or thinkers. There are other less obvious dichotomies in the same theme. If you look within the different groups of characters in the movie we can see them. Within the military personal we have Trudy and the Colonel. The colonel blindly seeks the destruction of the "savages" for the profit of the company. Whereas Trudy thinks about her orders and only does what she feels is right. While Home Tree is being destroyed she says "Screw this, I didn't sign up for this shit" and leaves the action. The other male military characters simply follow orders. In the group of Avatar drivers there is a clear difference between Dr. Augustine and Jake Sulley. The doctor has been trying to help the natives for quite some time, her role however is limited to a diplomatic one. This is underlined during the scene where the dozers are closing in on home tree. Jake smashes the cameras delaying the progress. Shortly after, Grace tries to explain why the company shouldn't continue. While both approaches fail, Grace is given the role of advisor while Jake is given the role of doer. Even norm seems to follow what he is asked to do.

As the movie progresses Jake takes on several roles. In the beginning his identity as one of the Na'vi is like that of a child. He even says himself "My cup is empty, trust me." At this point he is simply following orders as his male stereo type dicatates. His purpose is to gain information on how the people can be coerced into moving either through bribes or force. Later on he defines himself as a hunter. He becomes, in fact, one of the greatest hunters "Toruk Makto" (Rider of last shadow) which rallies the Na'vi to defend their home.

This is an ideal parallel of how I believe Cheung would view personal homepages. In the begining, Jake's "homepage" is empty. His motivation for creating one may even be disingenuous. However, through the process of adding content (via the Na'vi instruction) Jake tries on different identities. At first he tries on that of a spy. He finds as he interacts through is that this identity doesn't suit him. Later he tries on that of a lover. He finds that this identity suits him best and he continues to expand on it taking on the identity of hero. However, at this point his avatar's identity and his identity are separate. He must make a final jump in order to resolve his non-virtual with his virtual identities. One of them must die. This is done through the help of the Na'vi global network and he leaves his non-virtual self behind leaving only his virtual self.

It is possible that this is going on today. Though the movie makes the process of losing your non-virtual self as glamourous I wonder if that would be true in real life. Certainly, today, the virtual identity by itself would be very limited in what it can experience. With current technology you can escape the non-virtual completely. You eventually have to deal with the demands of our physical bodies. But in the future, could it be possible to dump our consciousness into a virtual identity and completely discard our non-virtual self? What would be the outcome of such a possibility? It sounds great, our virtual selves can become whatever we want them to be (Is this the new fountain of youth?). But real problems would need to be addressed. Such a change would destroy our current system of values and what we think about right and wrong. Even the definition of existence and life would need to be modified. Hopefully, if (and I'm not sure I'd be happy to see it happen) this technology comes into being we will have evolved to meet these new philosophical dilemmas.

Bibliography

(1) Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang. Lightstorm Entertainment, 2009. DVD.

Blog #1: What is Rhetoric

Quite simply rhetoric is the process of communication. More specifically in Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric(1) it is defined in the following quote.

"How we perceive, what we know, what we experience, and how we act are the results of our own symbol use and that of those around us; rhetoric is the term that captures all of these processes. For us, rhetoric is the human use of symbols to communicate."

The article goes on to state that this is a sufficiently broad definition to cover how most people understand the term. It is indeed broad. What we know, experience and do covers the entire human condition. To say all that is due to symbol use, and that symbol use is rhetoric is the equivalent of saying that everything can be viewed as rhetoric. I don't think that rhetoric is quite so broad, but I'll admit that there is plenty of room to make that argument. I believe the intent of the definition is more narrow. Rhetoric is more then just observing a scene or an event. Rhetoric is when you experience something and interpret it as symbolic of something else. For example, experiencing a tragedy and then thinking that God is telling you to change your life is rhetoric. Weather or not God is actually speaking in this case is irrelevant to this discussion. The fact that one thing was taken to represent something else is what matters. Foss et al. do not seem to care weather the meaning was purposeful or not, but simply that it was taken symbolically.

I have a Facebook account as do many others. I use it to keep family and friends up to date with what is going on in my life. Most of that provides rather boring examples of rhetoric. Any time we use the written word, we are necessarily using rhetoric. However, what I think is more interesting is the underlying messages we are sending. These messages are derived from symbols that include more then words. They include things such as voice, timing, and sincerity. In many ways this rhetoric is more important to us then the apparent meaning.

Part of the reason I use Facebook is because I am lazy about communicating with people. I prefer to spend my time doing something other then repeating stories about events in my life. Unfortunately, if I don't spend the time telling others about what is going on in my life, my friends and family might think that I don't care (An example of rhetoric I don't intend to send). By posting information about what is happening with my life, the underlying message I'm trying to send is "Hey everyone, I care about you and I haven't forgotten you." I suppose this is the message that a lot of people are trying to send on Facebook. But people send other messages. One of my "friends" in Facebook is running for Benton County Auditor. He's not really my friend. In fact I can't even remember his name to type it in this post. But he sent me a friend request, and I accepted it. He posts comments on a variety of topics, many of which are obviously politically oriented. However his actions of friending me, and posting this information is probably symbolic of something else. The interpretation he is hoping we'll get from these symbols is "I am connected to you, I have your interests at heart and this is why you should vote for me."

These underlying messages are great, but there is a problem. Because it is based on symbols, you can never know if it is representative of the truth. This is where the rub comes in whenever people talk about rhetoric. When something is rhetorical, you are not experiencing it first hand. In the example above, my friends and family don't feel the emotion that I care about them. Nor do I know if the candidate really has my interests at heart. What happens if he isn't concerned about my interests? To use a more concrete example, if I give you a $1000 (a symbol of a quantity of value, is money rhetoric?) you trust that it is authentic. But, if I give you counterfeit money you might act as though it were real, and that could cause you problems. For example when you deposit it in the bank they probably won't accept it, or worse you'll be arrested.

Throughout history, people have argued about the wisdom of emerging communication technologies. Certain philosophers from antiquity condemned rhetoric when it was just an emerging field of study. The catholic church rebuked the printing press for many of the same reasons. And in recent times, many people have criticized the internet. Why do these arguments persist? I contend that it is because they were never resolved. Each new technology has the problem that if its symbols are not used to represent the truth (if they are counterfeit), the technology will have a negative effect on the receivers. But, if they do represent the truth (I'll leave the definition of "the truth" for another day) the person receiving the symbols will be benefited.

Bibliography

(1) Foss, Sonja K., Karen A. Foss, and Robert Trapp. Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric.

3rd ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 2002. Print.

Beginning the journey

I don't normally do things like "blog." Why do we have to call it a blog? Why not just use something like, oh I don't know, journal. That's what it really is anyway. Okay, so why did I pick this particular title for my blog. First of all the primary reason for making this blog is for DTC 475. Actually, I don't expect anyone who is not in that class to read this, so I won't even explain what it is. In the process of searching for a tool to do my blogging, I entered "Blog" into my trusty google search bar. Then, on the results page, I saw a category on the left hand side for blogs. Sounds like just what I'm looking for. What I didn't know was that would lead me to a list of blogs about blogs. I thought it was funny that I was taking a course that was, at least in part, going to study blogs and that I was now looking at a list of blogs about blogs. Hence the title. So for anyone who is lost, don't be surprised if you can't make the logical leap to connect what I just described to the title. This particular post is really about me warming up, so feel free to ignore it.