Reading Lisa Nakamura’s “Queer Female of Color: The Highest Difficulty Setting There Is? Gaming Rhetoric as Gender Capital”, I agreed with what she said but I wonder if she did not go far enough in her analysis (which could just be an issue of the context it was published). Most noticeably, though she connected video games and the sexist/racist community surrounding them, she did not delve into the root of both of the issues. I think that by focusing not only on the symptoms of the issues but on the sources of them, a better sense can be grasped of exactly why video games attract the people that it does, and why people attract the video games that they do.

What I mean by this is, why do so much more males self-identify as gamers than women, even though nearly equal amounts play games? Why do the most privileged group find themselves attracted to video games and the culture surrounding them (the two being inseparable)? I believe the answer lies in the historical construction and perpetuation of masculinity.

Western thought has divided the body and the mind into two separate entities, and the patriarchy stakes its claim in both, supposing superiority both physically and mentally. But technology rapidly diminishes the practicality and necessity of physical strength (which is where the supposed superiority originates), as technological advances equalize or eliminate the physical force necessary to survive. With the displacement then of masculine energy and fixation, I believe that it finds a perfect home in video games.

Video games serve as a triumph of technology, satisfying the supposed mental superiority of masculinity, and I believe it perfectly satisfies the feeling of physical superiority. Video games do this by translating physical power into power of a plethora of kinds and of a deluge of fantasies. Video games provide a playground for power structures centered around the player, and the dominant and most successful (financially) games have centered it around giving the player power and constructing a narrative of domination by the player. The most obvious example of this is FPS (first-person shooter) games, where players are prompted to kill oftentimes innumerable numbers of enemies, the player playing the role of a Rambo-fantasy, where players find reward in the ultimate end of life: death, and the inflicting of it upon others.

But other, less obvious, genres also prey on these kinds of narratives to achieve what effects they achieve, and such a pattern exists because video games as a medium require player interaction. Whereas other mediums show or tell their message, with video games, the player has a part in constructing it. Because of this, games fall into the lazy pattern of providing power trips to players, making the game and its objects things to be conquered, overcome, challenges to be completed. This preoccupation with domination of the Other by the Subject of the individual is a western preoccupation, and one endemic of the white patriarchy, so it is only fitting that video games are bent to the will of those in power, and are used to perpetuate the power structures that exist at a societal level.

Other mediums achieve and deliver their message by a diminishing of power of the observer, but video games cede varying levels of power over to the player. But video games as a form have been made by and for proponents of the systems of power and tend to perpetuate them in their video games. So while video by necessity cede over some power to the player, being usually products of white western systems they by popular vote cede over most of the power, and focus the rest on a struggle by the player to accumulate the rest. The Western patriarchy has dictated that video games be about an individual effort to subdue everything else, and even video games that focus on collective effort (strategy games, city-building games, etc) tend to place the player in the role of a ruler or some such position, thus making the actor of action in these games not a unified collective, but an individual, a pattern precious to the Western narrative.

Video games are a medium perfect to the population of the Western male narrative, because rather than simply containing the content of said systems of power (a movie about a male ruler or a male who dominates others), it itself can be a proponent of said system of power. I think commentators like Nakamura would benefit from viewing the culture of video games as not arising only from the social situation of video games, but also from the medium itself, in order to lend further strength to arguments concerning them.

For my group project, I watched the Amazon original show “Transparent”, which revolves around (unsurprisingly), a trans parents who comes out to their children, and it is on this family that the show focuses. Amazon.com describes the show: “When the Pfefferman family patriarch makes a dramatic admission, the entire family’s secrets start to spill out, and each of them spin in a different direction as they begin to figure out who they are going to become.”

Even before the show leaves the gate, it is problematic, because the person cast to be the transgender parent is not transgender, but rather the cisgender Jeffrey Tambor. While the practice of casting cis actors for transgender roles in considered unproblematic by mainstream society, it is equally deplorable as casting white actors for people of color (poc) roles. The difference between the two is that transness is viewed as something adoptable, an appropriatable identity, unlike a poc identity, which is stereotypically visible. But transface, as it has been deemed, is just as bad as blackface or yellowface. Casting a cis actor for a non-cis role deliberately maintains the cisnormative society in which these narratives are constructed, centering the work in question around a cisview of transness and the trans experience.

Defenders of this practice argue that acting is all about adopting roles, and trying to work within and portray them accurately. While I do not contest that that is the goal of acting, there are certain limits and boundaries. It is problematic to have a person who constitutes a part of an oppressor class portraying one whom they oppress. Thus it is problematic for a white person to portray a black poc, but not problematic for a black poc to portray a white person. Thus it is problematic for a cis person to portray a trans person, but not problematic for a trans person to portray a cis person. This is because it is not permissible for an oppressor to appropriate the identity of the oppressed. Nor is it appropriate for them to appropriate the narratives of the oppressed and make them their own.

This problem is not resolved as the show unfolds. The coming out of Maura (the titular transgender parents) serves not as the focal point of the show, but merely a mechanic for moving the plot forward, and it is instead her children’s reactions to her coming out and her children’s lives that are the focus of the show. Centering the narrative on the children’s reactions further solidifies the show as one from and for a cisview, for it is not Maura, a transgender person, who is focused on, but instead the cis people that occupy her life.

I was hopeful when a transgender actor was included in the cast (Ian Harvie) but his character (Dale) was fetishized and then tossed aside by the show, serving as a fantasy romp for one of Maura’s children. His story arc serves as a summary for the show. After Maura comes out, Ali decides to explore by singling out and targeting a transman for a partner. She targets him because of his masculinity, and then proceeds to go to his house to ‘do the deed’. An intricate and prolonged scene ensues, which the viewer later discovers to be a fanciful construction of Ali’s mind, where she transformed him, his words, his actions, and his house, to fit into her view of how a transman would act. This perfectly encapsulates the shows treatment of transpeople and transgenderism. Furthermore, the scene where she realizes what she went through was a fantasy (and where the viewer realizes the same) is precipitated by Dale’s sexual impotency in an awkward bathroom scene. He then disappears from Ali’s life, and the show, and we do not see him again.

The show, though hailed as groundbreaking and progressive, isn’t either. While it does deal with ‘progressive’ topics and subjects (transgenderism and transgender people), it does so in so poorly a manner that it would have been better off leaving them alone entirely. Transparent is very transparent in what it is: an attempt at progressivism by and for cis people.

Relating this to the class, though new media fosters progressivism, it doesn’t necessitate it. Though the popularization of digital media platforms has paved the way for progressive shows, this is not one of them. It can only be hoped that future attempts by Amazon and other companies will bear better fruit, and bring to popular attention the narratives of people whom society systematically silence.

Previous to this class, I had never given the idiom “The Medium is the Message” much thought, dismissing it as little more than an inconsequential cliche, a truism more trite than true. After giving it more thought and being involved in the discussions and study surrounding it in class, I think it a truism both true and consequential, and one whose veracity is made all the more clear when it comes to New Media, and more specifically, memes.

Memes are the saying “the medium is the message” made manifest, for while most signifiers of a medium specify form and only tangentially content, a meme is made a meme foremost by its content, and only tangentially by its form. Memes appropriate all other mediums to make themselves: videos, text, sculptures, paintings, and pictures can all be memes. Memes transcend medium-restrictions and are able to hijack any form and content. This adaptability exemplifies new media and the context and culture that surrounds it.

Before this class I took memes seriously, thinking them quite enjoyable, but I didn’t take them as seriously as this class has taught me to do. Memes are far more than funny subversions, they are very serious ones. They are subversions whose importance is telling both of the people who enjoy them, and the cultural context in which they are created. I think postmodernism finds a nearly perfect vessel in memes, and as meme-making continues and is refined, I think memes will be the postmodern end in all media and across all mediums.

I suppose that is a bit worrying though. The relativity of memes, though their primary appeal, can be viewed as their primary pitfall. Especially as some memes become more and more focused, containing the cultural contextually sufficient only for a small group of people, it can be asked whether memes are useful cultural units between individuals and groups. It would then have to be asked what is defined as a useful cultural unit, and whether any other mediums are better ones. Is individualized context and meaning less useful than meaning that requires far less context? I believe this is only the case when the individual is not the focus, but rather the society or any other more global consideration. Is something that five hundred thousand people like any more valuable than what five like? Again I believe this is a vestige of a view both archaic and asinine, where meaning is evaluated on the basis of popular appeal. That is a dangerous means of valuing anything, and I would not resort to it.

Memes are made by and in the context of increased relativity, but they foster relations (relative though they are). Memes can bring people together, not in any quixotic sense of the word, but in a way that is no less meaningful. I can send a meme to a friend and they’ll enjoy it both for themselves, and because I enjoyed it. The sharing not only adds meaning to the meme as a unit, it adds meaning for me and the person I send it to. The act of viewing a meme adds meaning to it, both implicitly (via the act of creation) and explicitly (cultural and individual context is added), making clear the postmodern underpinnings that support it.

Memes run parallel to fine art in the Dadaist sense, where anything can be a meme if deemed so. This democratization of meme-making is ever apparent, every meme being made and remade by the individual who shares and views it. Identity is erased and simultaneously recreated in the mind of the observer, for a meme has no meaning other than that assigned to it by them.

An interesting note about memes and their specific contexts is that even if you are outside the context of a specific meme, you can still enjoy the meme for that lack of understanding. A meme can be made meaningful in spite of your lack of knowledge about the specifics of the meme, instead created by your recognition of the context that you lack. Thus the spectacle of a meme itself, as opposed to its context, can be the source of enjoyment of one.

I’ll leave you with this quote about memes:

“According to all known laws

of aviation,

there is no way a bee

should be able to fly.

Its wings are too small to get

its fat little body off the ground.

The bee, of course, flies anyways

because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.”

– Jerry Seinfeld