ALC 201 Module 3

Superhero films usually follow the same formula: normal, unassuming person has their world turned upside down by a power that they use for good to help save the people from an evil villain.  Kick Ass is a superhero film that doesn’t strictly follow these rules, and this blog post is going to look at how the phenomenon of social media helped change the way the character Kick Ass himself was received by the public within the film in contrast to other superhero films, and how similar events and instances occur almost daily in our own lives.  In the universe that the film takes place the heroes do not have any superhuman abilities, just their weapon and martial arts skills.  The character Kick Ass wonders why no-one actually becomes a superhero, and in his personal quest uses digital media to become exposed.  Kick Ass was discovered via the internet, while conventional superheros are known for their large scale good deeds and news media exposure.  This inclusion of digital media places the film firmly in the 21^st century, the first superhero film to have links to our own digital media use.

There are two main parts of social media associated with the character Kick Ass.  The first is YouTube.  The character is first discovered to be a superhero via an amateur video taken by a witness during a violent fist fight outside a restaurant.  The video was taken via a mobile phone.  Already we can see a resemblance to real world scenarios.  The ability to create content with phones and other digital devices led to Time magazine naming its annual person of the year in 2006 to be ‘You’, signalling a shift from the few, the elite with access to the channels and networks of print publishing, radio and television broadcasting, or film distribution, to the many, the masses, anyone with Internet connectivity, at least, in the field of cultural production and mass media (Winget & Aspray 2011, p. 234).  This video was put onto YouTube and immediately went viral, clocking up thousands of views in a short period of time, instantly making Kick Ass a superhero digital celebrity.  No other superhero has found their fame this way, and it is because of this that Kick Ass is the most realistic hero film out there.  A real world comparison to Kick Ass is Canadian pop star Justin Bieber.  Bieber is a worldwide phenomenon these days, but he started out with a few simple YouTube videos singing pop song covers.  These videos exploded over the internet, and he was quickly signed to a recording label and then global stardom.  Are the videos between Kick Ass and Justin Bieber any different? Both use YouTube fame to get to where they are now, and in many fan’s eyes Bieber is a very much a hero as Kick Ass is.

The other social media platform used by Kick Ass is Myspace.  Granted, Myspace doesn’t exist in the level it did back in the mid 2000’s, but Twitter and Facebook are similar mediums used today.  Kick Ass had control over his own Myspace page, and was an integral part to him becoming known to the public.  The YouTube video was the catalyst, and the views from that video led the viewers to seek more information about Kick Ass, leading them to his Myspace account.  While the video showed the public what he could do, the Myspace page had the extra information available to them.  It showed what he was about, what he fights for, and had various pictures and other videos of him fighting crime in the city.  He was in control of his image, something other superheros did not always have.  However, Kick Ass did not use his page in the most intelligent manor.  The ‘real’ superheros of the town were easily able to track him down using his IP address from the Myspace page.  Other superhero films make it one of their top priorities to keep their true identity hidden, but because of the way teenagers use the internet (Kick Ass was only a high school student) he was ignorant of this important aspect of a superheros life.  In real life most teenagers are like Kick Ass in that they post many things onto social media pages without thinking of the consequences first, another link to real life activities on digital media. 

Another aspect of Kick Ass’s Myspace page was the fact he interacted with his fans and admirers.  When people would post messages on his page he would respond to them and talk back.  Other superheros would want to remain as incognito as possible, and would shy away from this sort of interaction to remain secret.  Real life examples of this are celebrities who correspond with their fans through similar mediums.  While many celebrity Facebook and Twitter accounts are managed by publicists, there are some stars that control the pages themselves.  It is those stars who are represented by Kick Ass’s actions online.  These celebrities respond to comments left on their respective pages and keep an open source of information with the fans. 

The way Kick Ass operates his social media accounts is the way Marshall’s ideas on the specular economy correspond to the character.  Marshall (2010) describes the specular economy to be how the self is reconstituted through the screens of engagement and interactivity that serve to organize and shape our lives.  Kick Ass created his Myspace account around the way he wants to be seen by his fans and the public.  This is the exact same way people create their social media pages in our real lives.  All these events in the film can be traced back to both celebrity and everyday people’s engagements with social media.  Kick Ass is not only a superhero, he’s also a normal guy who uses social media the exact same way we do. 

Reference List

Marshal, P.D (2010) ‘The Specular Economy’, Society, vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 498-502.

Winget, M & Aspray, W (2011) ‘Digital Media’, Scarecrow Press, USA

Prime Example of Female Representation in Games

Metroid Prime for the Nintendo Gamecube is one of my all-time favourite games.  It tells the story of interstellar bounty hunter Samus Aran, a human female, in her exploration of an unknown planet called Tallon IV.  During her time on Tallon IV Samus must discover what happened to the indigenous population, battle the antagonistic Space Pirates and solve the crisis that is literally destroying the planet.  It is a science fiction first person shooter game; although unlike most shooters it places a heavy emphasis on exploration and problem solving rather than simply blasting enemies.  The game was released in 2002 to critical acclaim, and has been remade in 2007 onto the Nintendo Wii for a new audience.  Metroid Prime is the 5^th game in the Metroid series, with each game following the same gameplay elements and themes.  What makes the Metroid series so ground-breaking at the time (the first game was released in 1986) was that it featured a female protagonist.  Apart from traditional femme fatale characters (eg. Princess Peach in Super Mario) Samus was the first tough action female main character in a game.  This blog post is going to examine if Samus is a female gaming stereotype, and will use Hall’s research on encoding and decoding messages and the construct of meaning to help determine these facts. 

Image courtesy IGN.com

This post is about the character of Samus, not about the game itself.  As Samus is exploring the unknown planet by herself, there is no dialogue in the game.  There is no other person apart from enemies she can interact with, and the player gets information about the storyline by scanning information scattered across the planet.  What the player can deduce about the character of Samus is from her actions.  She is brave, that much is clear from her willingness to jump headfirst into an unknown planet against unknown enemies and odds.  She is tough; she defeats hoards of Space Pirates, a race of alien raiders who are present in all Metroid games as the antagonists.  She is highly intelligent, solving many difficult puzzles across the planet.  And she is fiercely independent, doing all these tasks all by herself with almost an entire planet against her.  The character Samus gives pretty much nothing away during the game, it is designed for the player to see the world through Samus’ eyes, and the player becomes Samus.  From what images we do get of Samus during cut scenes in the game is her in her full suit of armour.  The only time we see her face is during the credits when the main enemy is defeated and she has a spare moment to witness the destruction.  Unlike other female characters in games, she is not immediately sexualised, which is an important point that will be addressed later on.  Samus’ sex appeal is something that is not uncommon in female shooting characters.  Samus is seen as a trailblazer for female’s in video games, and is considered one of the first tough female protagonists in a video game, followed by Princess Zelda, Lara Croft and others (Knight 2010, p. xxi)

Image courtesy IGN.com

There are two different categories characters from games fall into; playable and non-playable.  Playable are the characters the player of the game takes control of, non-playable characters, or NPCs are the characters in the game the playable character interacts with.  This distinction is important to note when examining female characters, as there is a huge difference between the two.  I’ll start with the playable characters, such as Samus Aran.  These are the characters that generally fall under the stereotype of intelligent, tough, independent and sexy.  Apart from Samus, the most famous other shooting game characters are Lara Croft and Joanna Dark.  All three of these characters are independent, dangerous with a gun and incredibly attractive.  But why are all these independent strong women sexy? Is it impossible for game creators to create that sort of female protagonist who isn’t attractive? 

Video courtesy youtube.com

The other categories of characters from games are the non-playable characters, the NPCs.  For females in games, the most well-known are the damsel in distress model.  These are the characters the player must free or rescue from an evil kidnapper.  Most famous of these types of characters are Princess Peach from Super Mario, and Princess Zelda from Legend of Zelda.  Princess Peach is small, frail, and is constantly being kidnapped by Bowser.  The plot of all Mario games involves Mario battling Bowser’s evil forces and rescuing the princess.  Zelda is not as ‘damsel-ly’ as Peach, as she has magical power but she too finds herself kidnapped by evil forces more times than not.  And both these characters, while not being as sexy as the shooting females, are still attractive enough to warrant rescue by the player of the game. 

So why are Samus and all these other women in video games so ‘sexy’?  The answer is actually pretty straight forward, it’s simply the fact that sex sells.  Lara Croft is the prime example.  Lara has been the sexy sales figure for a booming industry composed of many products, merchandise featuring her image include t-shirts, mouse pads and calendars (Herbst 2004, p. 23).  Lara even has a film made about her; such is the interest in her character.  However, games like Metroid Prime are also critically acclaimed by critics, who cite the gameplay and storyline elements as the main attraction for gamers, not the sexy protagonist.  It seems as though this is going in one large circle, but I feel that the characters are given such a ‘sexy’ appearance to simply make more sales, the developers concentrate mainly on gameplay which attracts the hardcore gamers, and the image attracts the casual gamers.  The sexy appearances are, in my view, a way to attract a type of gamer who may not have been interested in the game to begin with but who change their mind after having a look at the character models. 

 image courtesy IGN.com

Hall's concept of encoding and decoding delves into the ways in which the producers of content encode their stories with meaning, and then the ways in which the consumers then deduct and decode meaning from that encoded narrative (Hall, 1980, pp.55-58).  It is important to point out that the encoded meaning into a message is not necessarily the decoded message.   

The gender representation in Metroid Prime can be decoded in three ways:

Dominant - The audience agrees with the game, in this case the players would accept Samus to be a strong independent woman, and these players can relate to true real life examples of women like Samus.  

Negotiated - The audience agrees with some part of the game, in this case players would agree with some aspects of Samus' character but won't agree with others.  In this case it would be the idea of the male gaze does not follow the stereotype, as the player never see's Samus' complete body, only the full body armor.  

Oppositional - The audience disagrees with the game, the players would reject the stereotype of Samus as a female shooter.  

To me, having a sexy female protagonist does not really make much of a difference to the game.  I enjoy it because of its great gameplay style and wonderful visual effects.  I can understand why developers put sexy females in games because after all, they are a business that needs to make sales. 

image courtesy deviantart.com

Reference List

Hall, S 1980, ‘Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse’, Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, England, pp. 55-58, accessed 12 Sept 2013

Herbst, C 2004, ‘Lara’s Lethal and Loaded Mission: Transposing Reproduction and Destruction’, in Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, p. 21-46

Knight, G 2010, Female Action Heroes: A Guide to Women in Comics, Video Games, Film & Television, Greenwood Publishing, Santa Barbara, California 

Infernal Affairs? The Hollywoodisation of World Cinema

Martin Scorsese's 'The Departed' (2006) is an academy award winning crime film about the police and the Irish mob infiltrating each other with a mole.  What most people don't know is that The Departed is actually a remake of Hong Kong crime-thriller 'Infernal Affairs' (2002) directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak.  Both films are critically acclaimed, so why remake such a successful film so soon (only four years) after the original?  It's all part of the 'Hollywoodisation' (Klein, 2004) of taking foreign films and turning them into marketable American blockbusters.

The two movie posters here show that both films thrive on tension, but there are some elements in The Departed that are not part of Infernal Affairs, mainly the love triangle that develops as well as more emphasis on personal relationships.  







'The Departed' poster, courtesy of imdb.com                                   'Infernal Affairs' poster, courtesy of imdb.com


Klein says that eastern and western cinema are borrowing from each other (2004), and this is very much the case with these two films.  ‘These industries are becoming more closely integrated with on another, both materially and aesthetically’ (Klein 2004, p.360).  While the main plot is pretty much the same, the characters relationships and all the small details very much set each other apart.  The Departed focuses more on personal relationships, while Infernal Affairs is more into the action and the shootouts.  

Infernal Affairs trailer via youtube.com

The Departed trailer via youtube.com

Again the two trailers show that both cinema's are taking inspiration from each other, and this is showing just how important globalisation is for world cinema.  

References

Klein C. 2004, ‘Martial Arts and the Globalization of the US and Asian Film Industries’, comparative American studies, Sage publications, London, p360. 

Wiz Khalifa & Social Media

Wiz Khalifa is a hip hop artist who is highly active across a wide range of social media, mainly Twitter, Instagram and more recently, Vine.  Through these media formats, we get to see a much more personal and real account of Wiz and his life.  But before these networks existed, how did the public get to see the lives of the celebrities?  It was mainly through the stars being managed by publicists who had certain images they want their clients to be portrayed as.  But nowadays these publicists have much less control as the celebrities are embracing the rise of social media technologies.  

Wiz Khalifa on Instagram.  picture via instagram.com

Marshall (2010) describes the specular economy to be how the self is reconstituted through the screens of engagement and interactivity that serve to organize and shape our lives.  Instead of receiving celebrity information through the world of spin and public relations, these new media forms allow us to see the presentation of the celebrities as the way that they want to be seen, not the way their record label or management teams control.  And it seems that these celebrities want us to see them their own way, to see the real them, who they really are.  

An example of Wiz Khalifa's Vine profile.  Courtesy of youtube.com

As a user of social media myself, I find I follow mainly music artists whose music I really enjoy.  An example of this is fun loving, stoner rap hip hop artist Wiz Khalifa.  Wiz doesn't shy away from the fact that he loves smoking weed and drinking with friends.  This is clear in Wiz's twitter page and his almost daily Vine videos.  These new outlets let the people see who the artists really are, it gives them so much more freedom about their public persona.  

Wiz and his weed.  courtesy of instagram.com

Wiz and many other celbrities have been criticised for not being good role models and for not behaving the way a celebrity should.  The rise of the specular economy has allowed the celebrities the have the freedom to portray themselves however they want.  With instances like Wiz, this portrayal is the real Wiz Khalifa, the content comes straight from the source.  


References

Marshal, P.D (2010) ‘The Specular Economy’, Society, vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 498-502.

A Prime example of Females in Shooting Games

When asked to blog about a particular game, I couldn't go past one of my absolute favourites, Metroid Prime.  Released for the Nintendo Gamecube in 2002, the game tells the story of interstellar bounty hunter Samus Aran as she explores a distant planet known as Tallon IV to defeat the antagonistic Space Pirates and to discover what happened to the planet's indigenous population.  It is a science fiction first person shooter, but with a lot more emphasis on exploration and discovery rather than combat.  The only human character in the game is the protagonist controlled by the player.  Samus Aran is a female, and using Hall's research on encoding and decoding messages and the construct of meaning I'll analyse how Samus is represented, and if any gender stereotypes apply to her. 

Gameplay of Metroid Prime

Video courtesy of youtube.com

Metroid Prime isn't the first appearance of Samus Aran, but it is her first in a 3D game.  Samus is well known as being the first female main character in a video game, and the first to be in a shooter.  She set the trend for other female characters, the most well known are Lara Croft in the tomb raider series and Joanna Dark from the game Perfect Dark.  All these women follow a gender stereotype that has come to be for females in shooting games, they are all strong, independent and very attractive.

 


 Images from top going clockwise, 1. Joanna Dark, courtesy IGN.com, 2. Samus Aran courtesy deviantart.com and 3. Lara Croft, courtesy wikipedia.com


The representation of Samus as the strong, independant woman is a strong part of her character, but it also raises many questions about how the developers created this portrayal to display the stereotype.  Hall's concept of encoding and decoding delves into the ways in which the producers of content encode their stories with meaning, and then the ways in which the consumers then deduct and decode meaning from that encoded narrative (Hall, 1980, pp.55-58).  It is important to point out that the encoded meaning into a message is not necessarily the decoded message.   

The gender representation in Metroid Prime can be decoded in three ways:

Dominant - The audience agrees with the game, in this case the players would accept Samus to be a strong independent woman, and these players can relate to true real life examples of women like Samus.  

Negotiated - The audience agrees with some part of the game, in this case players would agree with some aspects of Samus' character but won't agree with others.  In this case it would be the idea of the male gaze does not follow the stereotype, as the player never see's Samus' complete body, only the full body armor.  

Oppositional - The audience disagrees with the game, the players would reject the stereotype of Samus as a female shooter.  

Samus Aran.  Courtesy giantbomb.com

To me personally, I play the game not because it contains an empowering female figure as its protagonist, but because of the exploration of the new planet and the gameplay itself.  But I can see why many find either empowerment in the character Samus, or the opposite feeling in that another video game female is simply another unrealistically attractive girl created by the male gaze.  

References

Hall, S 1980, ‘Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse’, Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, England, pp. 55-58, accessed 12 Sept 2013

Politics & Twitter

Twitter has changed the way Australian politics can be discussed by the general population.  As Bruns and Burgess point out  'while the 2007 Australian federal election was notable for the use of social media by the Australian Labor Party in campaigning, the 2010 election took place in a media landscape in which social media (especially Twitter) had become much more embedded in both political journalism and independent political commentary' (2011, p.1).  2007 had the first online campaign with the whole 'Kevin 07' tagline, but it wasn't until 2010 and 2013 that we really saw the rise of the tweet.  

Twitter. Via twitter.com

Twitter allows anyone with an account to enter the political debate and encourages online participation.  Nowadays news programs all contain twitter hashtags, and there are none more prominant than Q and A on the ABC.  Throughout the program, the small bar on the bottom of the screen is constantly displaying tweets on the topics being discussed by the panel.  The public and the politcians can see what the people are thinking by viewing these tweets.  

Tony Jones on Q and A.  Via abc.com.au

Twitter also allowed the people to see how the politicians themselves represented themselves online.  Everyone remembers when Kevin Rudd posted his shaving selfie on instagram via his twitter, and Tony Abbotts twitter is filled with pictures on him on the campaign trail with his daughters.  It seems wherever we look during an election campaign, twitter is everywhere and inescapable.  



References

Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Highfield, T., and Nicolai, T. 2011 ‘Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere’, Social Science Computer Review, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 277-287.  

Snowden: Hero or Villain?

Edward Snowden – is he a hero or a villain?  In my eye, he’s neither.  I see him as more of a victim for simply trying to do what he feels is right.  I don’t agree with his views on surveillance but I do feel somewhat sorry for the man.  Whether he should be viewed as a hero or a terrorist, a patriot or a criminal is not what this post is going to explore.  Rather, I’m going to talk about my views on surveillance and what I would have done if I were him. 

The main thing that I feel both Snowden and myself agree upon is the method he exposed the story.  Snowden used The Guardian Newspaper, a prominent news media outlet in England that is known to be one of the last true fourth estate newspapers.  By using The Guardian, Snowden ensured that the truth without political bias was released with the breaking story. 

But if I was in Snowden’s own shoes, I would have done nothing with the whole issue.  With the Wiki Leaks issue still ongoing, surely he would have realised the danger he would have gotten in if he went ahead with his plan.  Julian Assange of Wiki Leaks has been in a world of trouble and issues since they leaked government information.  I would not have leaked the information knowing that sort of drama would ensue. 

But also, I don’t believe there truly is a problem with the surveillance the NSA was undertaking.  The whole idea of the surveillance program was to be a security measure against large scale attacks on the United States.  If large operations such as PRISM and the other surveillance programs are truly working to prevent such attacks then why is everyone freaking out so much?  Do people honestly have that much to hide?  When viewed on a large scale, worldwide issue such as basic human security, why so much negative backlash against the government?  I see it as a necessary task to be able to keep the security of the citizens a top priority.  

Music Sampling Innovations

I am a big fan of hip hop and electronic music.  In my mind these artists are innovators, otherwise, these genres of music simply wouldn’t exist.  This blog post is going to examine these music producers and the way they sample others work in their own.  Many of the greatest hip hop records were created back in the 1980’s when sampling wasn’t as big an issue as today.  And current electronic producers and DJs use their skills as samplers as an innovative technique, rather than simply stealing other artists music and using it as their own.  

In hip hop’s ‘golden era’ (McLeod 2011, p. 19) in the 80s, rap groups and producers had creative freedom to make the music they wanted to make, with pioneering artists such as Public Enemy, De La Soul and Boogie Down Productions creating universally acclaimed records which sampled a range of artists from soul and blues to hard rock like AC/DC.  McLeod recalls in his book that ‘the golden age was an important moment during the development of hip hop as a musical art form, and it opened up a range of artistic possibilities that largely weren’t censored by legal and economic interests’ (2011, p. 20).  In today’s hip hop world, it is impossible to create the sort of tracks that were abundant in the 80s, with so many copyright laws protecting the songs owned by the big record labels.  It is important to note that many artists who are on these labels actually like their work sampled, but the greed of the big business prevents producers from accessing them legally.  If current hip hop producers were given the free reign that existed in the 80s, hip hop’s current landscape would be a very different place.  

Electronic artists are often criticised for not performing their own content in their live sets.  But in reality they are performing other artist’s songs in different methods and styles than the originals.  Most accomplished electronic artists have a style or flair that makes their music instantly recognisable, and when they sample other songs, you can really hear their own influence coming through the music.  It is this method of sampling that makes these artists’ true innovators. 

Reference

McLeod, K 2011, Creative Licence: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling, Duke University Press, Durham USA

Week Three - American University Culture

I recently went to the USA to spend a semester on exchange in an American university.  From August 2012 till January 2013 I was in a country with a slightly different culture to our own, and a very different university culture.  But this post is not going to explore the differences between Australian and American universities.  Rather, I’m going to explore the way American universities are represented in movies and pop culture and the real life experience I had.

College films usually follow the same formula: lots of partying and drinking, not much actual university coursework and plenty of girls everywhere.  And although this is an obvious exaggeration, it honestly wasn’t far off the truth.  I’ll start with the coursework.  It was on a whole another level of easy compared to Australia, and in line with the lack of work done in pop culture films.  

With the social side of university in the States, pop culture movies have it pretty much spot on.  I attended many of the frat parties over my time at the university, and some of the formats of these parties could be part of any college film.  The biggest difference that I saw was there was a lack of sheer outlandish shenanigans of the scale represented in film, but there was still plenty of ridiculous fun to be had.  

Here is an image from one of the parties I attended.  The blurriness really adds to what sort of party it was, and the sort of events that were frequently being run by student organisations. 

The popular culture of the west – movies, television, music, books, newspapers and magazines – have been increasingly flowing about the world (Hatchen & Scotton 2002, pg. 4), and it is this form of globalisation that created my awareness of how American university was represented.  Now, after having gone over to the USA and seen first-hand what it was like, I feel like I am a direct part of globalisation.  I had an initial thought that American college was just the same as it was here.  Then after viewing the movies through the globalisation of entertainment and media I changed my view to those that were represented in the films.  And finally after witnessing first-hand what it was actually like, I can see exactly how globalisation changed my view, and just how accurate the representation really was.