Category Archives: New Media

Katamari and Consumerism

Ryan Moeller has added further comments to this entry on consumerism and Katamari Damacy. In addition to his comments, he points to the Learning Games Initiative, in whose work, and other initiatives like it, I have lots of interest.

But I want limit my use of the term consumerism to its pejorative context: in this sense, generally speaking, consumerism points to a direct connection between purchase and happiness and other related issues. This is what I meant by the allure and want comment in modern magazines. Fads, looks, styles, and poses–all these generate in an audience a want of those things for their own sake. “I want that lipstick,” Marv says, without knowing why, and having no other alternatives. But what does Marv himself produce or create?

In this sense, consumerism also infects education, in that people will take course after course only if they think it will get them a job (the job for its own sake is the key). Yes, we all need jobs, but the point is made regardless because we don’t often think about the undertow.

I am a consumer myself. I wanted Gran Turismo 4 no matter what. I played GT3 and had to have the next version because it had to be bigger, better, and badder. So I purchased it and it gave me a sense of “electricty” just to hold it. I know now that I had been taken for a ride: yeah, the physics had been improved, but nothing about the overall stimulus changed. The world of Gran Turismo just isn’t that interesting.

It’s a different story with Syberia. I wanted the next version to finish the story begun in the first. Was I satisfied? Sure. I wanted the story not the game for many reasons. I find that Katamri delights at many complex levels, one being the experience and design possibilities of its spaces. Delight in Katamari may be triggered by the desire to get more, but I disagree that this is a specific consumerist desire or impulse. Then again, I am also open to counter claims. Very much open.

My personal view is that we live in age of viscious consumerism (Christmas anyone?). I got an earful of this from students the other day as they detailed their complicated woes with the financial aid process, text books, and the future.

Social Networks and Any Other Fad Term

The last post referenced a typical revelatory article about social networks. But I often wonder about the “reality” of such a term and what it’s supposed to point to. Social network. A network. Something social and networked. Connections. But what is the time frame for that network, if indeed such a thing exists? Can one actually trace the network and its social condensation?

I used a cell phone example. But the only difference I see here between a shout or a landline discussion is place, context, and science. What about Magna Carta? A shared poem? The networks of a growing religion?

News?

From BusinessWeek

Although networks are still in their infancy, experts think they’re already creating new forms of social behavior that blur the distinctions between online and real-world interactions. In fact, today’s young generation largely ignores the difference. Most adults see the Web as a supplement to their daily lives. They tap into information, buy books or send flowers, exchange apartments, or link up with others who share passions for dogs, say, or opera. But for the most part, their social lives remain rooted in the traditional phone call and face-to-face interaction.

The MySpace generation, by contrast, lives comfortably in both worlds at once. Increasingly, America’s middle- and upper-class youth use social networks as virtual community centers, a place to go and sit for a while (sometimes hours). While older folks come and go for a task, Adams and her social circle are just as likely to socialize online as off. This is partly a function of how much more comfortable young people are on the Web: Fully 87% of 12- to 17-year-olds use the Internet, vs. two-thirds of adults, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

This 87% issue is deceptive, but such revelations shouldn’t be news to anyone, especially those of use who practically live on college campuses where most people in the lanes stride about cell-to-ear.

Redundant aesthetics

Welcome easywriter.

But now to this comment by Mark A on my post on Sin City the film. Mark writes

This films’ ability to capture the look of Millers’ books makes it a valid cinematic effort. It is a series of comic panels set in motion. Perhaps it’s greatest reason for being a film is to build a larger audience for graphic novels. This film made people question thier notion of what a comic book is. The world needs to know it’s not all spandex and heroism in these pages. There’s bullets, decapitations and caniabism too.

Comic book pages are the last battlefields of true freedom of speech, it’s nice to see one of them presented to the masses uncensored, without being “adapted” to protect the innocent.

My response is why, if the “look” of the comic is expressed in the film , does this make Sin City a valid “cinematic effort”? Perhaps Mark is pushing a valid criteria for judging the film. The film should be judged for its ability to express a comic’s aesthetic climate and feel. This may indeed be my problem: I don’t think the film came at all close to expressing the panels in the graphic novels. I saw that the film expressed the mood, color, and texture of the world. But I got that from the comic.

Why do I need a filmic version of Kevin’s hacking?

Mark?

Sin City and Posture

I read Frank Miller’s Sin City recently and while I found the art and graphic quality of the works interesting, I was never really grabbed by the stories. I found the film adaptation just odd.

The writing and acting aspire to classic noir. The visuals aspire to Miller’s rhythmic, psychologically jagged and electric blackness. But Sin City the film is all posture and no drama, all look and bored actors. It captures the look but goes flat from first to last gun shot. It takes a special kind of writing and image-making to pull off The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep. There’s also a form problem here. While the filmic League of Extraordinary Gentlemen suffered from an authenticity crisis, Sin City never really finds a good reason for being a film.

Learning Opportunities

In this post I’d written: “Good teaching is about creating the opportunity for learning to happen.” Christopher responded with this in his comment:

Teaching is about telling the story. Yes, I agree that a teacher creates an opportunity for learning. A large part of that (especially for a history teacher) is telling the story in such a way that the students start to learn without even realizing they are.

If teaching is about providing opportunities then we can deapen the argument. If good teaching creates opportunities for learning, then:

1. All questions that relate to learning should be followed by questions.

In some instances, the lit teacher might provide the definition of metaphor then offer some examples. If a student is asked to demonstrate their understanding of metaphor and returns the same examples earlier provided then the submission doesn’t really demonstrate. The rule is to generate original or independent understanding of the concept.

2. Question number 1 above should not be restricted to the classroom square.

One of the frustrating parts of teaching has to do with the attitudes students bring to the classroom about how learning happens and their role in the process. The classroom is a luxury for most people. It can also be a privilege. Yet for others it’s a priority, because without it they won’t make the goal. Some don’t need it; they will make their way regardless. For me the classroom is a big circle and a continuum. I don’t care why a student is in a class. They will all be responded to with inquiry.

3. There are indeed dumb questions.

When’s paper 1 due? Should we study the poem before we discuss it? Do we have to read the syllabus? Will the journal be evaluated? I’ve seen too many people run with the opportunities they’ve been given to start answering questions now. Here’s to you. You know who you are, and you know who you will be.

This is why a game is a good teacher. Level 2 needs level 1. In a hypertext, 2 links mean 2 paths and the choice will lead to a consequence. Story and consequence. Good one Christopher.

Katamari Damacy and Consumption

Ben Vershbow at if:Book writes of Katamari Damacy:

I’ve played a bit of Katamari lately and have enjoyed it. It’s a world charged with static electricity, everything sticks. Each object has been lovingly rendered in its peculiarity and stubbornness. If your katamari picks up something long and narrow, say, a #2 pencil, and attaches to it in such a way that it sticks out far from the clump, it will impede your movement. Each time the pencil hits the ground, you have to kind of pole vault the entire ball. It’s not hard to see how the game trains visual puzzle-solving skills, sensitivity to shape, spatial relationships (at least virtual ones), etc.

That being said, I agree with Bob and Rylish (links in original) that there is an internal economy at work here that teaches children to be consumers. A deep acquisition anxiety runs through the game, bringing to mind another Japanese pop phenom: Pokémon. Pokémon (called “Pocket Monsters” in Japan) always struck me as particularly insidious, far more predatory than anything I grew up with, because its whole narrative universe is based on consumption.

I don’t think that Katamari teaches children to be consumers. It’s not “acquisition anxiety.” Everyone knows that Katamari is about turning children into space-craving nuke-monkeys.

Consumer here is just too vague. We need a stronger link here.

Options in the list: could be greed. Could be a dehumanizing dark for mistaking people as pencils.

Could be the player has something entirely different on their minds.

Sometimes I take a look at teen magazines, like Teen People. There is darkness in these texts, weaving allure with want. Allure cannot exist without want.

Rylish’s argument is more nuanced:

so, we cannot really discuss games and learning and literacy without spending some time grounding that conversation in the economic and cultural environments which drive game production. my worry is not that games are too complicated or too violent or too masculine or too racist but that they are these things in order to perpetuate consumerism.

For the sake of perspective, what concern isn’t mixed up with some consumerist motivation or market drive? Even moraity needs a market.