Response Paper - Do You Want to Date My Avatar?

My response paper consists of this post and the proceeding two posts. I can’t figure out how to link more than one video into a post so I had to post them separately. And for the record, I don’t game… my fiancé is the gamer and I fully blame him for knowledge I do have for this absolutely confusing area of his life. The things I am discussing are from the perspective of the outsider looking in.

            Consider your childhood. Chances are you or someone you know was fixated on the anomaly called “gaming.” Although back then the fad was game consoles with simple graphics, now, since the rise of the Internet, the growing popularity is the MMO. An MMO is a mass multiplayer online game such as World of Warcraft. This game specifically has become a widely known entity with its unique storyline and the ability for each player to customize their avatar to whatever they want. The web series, The Guild, comedically represents six individuals that play this game in a group which is a guild and the trials each of them have in relations to this game. The main character Codex starts off each episode with a brief webcam video wrapping up her thoughts on the previous episode. Throughout the seasons the characters put forth a unique identity. Codex is trying to learn how to mend her gaming life and her real life together while Zaboo, who has no masculine appeal, is love struck by Codex. Vork, the guild leader, is constantly trying to find ways to money gouge. Tink is the one in the group who loves to game, but doesn’t advertise it to the real world. Clara is a mother who would rather play her games than to care for her children or her husband. Finally Bladezz is a cocky boy who thinks far too much of himself. In this paper, I am going to argue that gaming has become it’s own culture and is the essence of radical romance.

            By watching the first few episodes, it will become blatantly clear that gamers have created a culture all their own. According to Chris Barker, “[M]eanings are generated not by individuals alone but by collectives. Thus the idea of culture refers to shared meanings” (42). Everyone who plays the video game has a shared understanding of the games concepts. Even the language used in the gaming world is unique with its own syntax. Gamers use lingo to abbreviate their sentences so they can type faster while in-game. A gamer might type, "Dood, I got totally owned while AFK. Need REZ to pown those newbs" which simply means that individual died while away from the keyboard and needs to be resurrected to get back at the new players who killed him. Theorist Raymond Williams believed the “...meaning of lived culture are to be explored within the context of their conditions of production. In this sense culture is understood as ‘a whole way of life’” (Barker 46). Gaming for some individuals is more than just a game. It has become their life. When the majority of their time is spent in game, it becomes their “way of life.” Since gaming is its own culture, we can also see their interpretations of what is masculine and feminine.

Masculinity and femininity - The Guild

This clip represents the essence of masculine and feminine ideals of gaming. Codex had just ended the last episode by throwing up on a really cute neighbor and the other girls of the guild are encouraging her to pursue him.

            Traditionally, we view romance in the sense that the man is the strong and powerful type while the girl is the item to be won. In this web series, we see that the women of the gaming culture are strong and confident while the men are a little awkward and yearn for the women. As Tink said in this clip, “Women have all the power in sex” (Blow out). It doesn’t matter what happened in the past, all a women has to do is flash some skin and they can get almost anything they want. Barker explained his view on masculinity in this way, "[T]raditional masculinity has encompassed the values of strength, power, stoicism, action, control, independence, self-sufficiency, male camaraderie/mateship and work, amongst others” (302). It seems as if Barker's explanation of masculinity describes some of the female roles in the web series. As you can see in the conversation between Tink and Bladezz, Bladezz is so despirite to be with Tink that Bladezz has taken on her projects as well as buying her things (Blow out). Tink has the power over Bladezz, just as Codex has the power over Zaboo. Also gaming in general has become a radical place for romance.

Radical Romance - The Guild

This next clip is a music video that the members of the web series created to advertise the idea that people that play these games often times get involved in online relationships.

            Gaming is the essence of radical romance. Traditional romance according to McDonald in his book Romantic Comedy elaborates on the “boy meets girl” theme (McDonald 10). In this case, the boy meets girl scenario occurs in cyber space. The music video gave an understanding that if you wanted to date another person’s avatar its “better than reality” (Do you). You can see another’s avatar as long as you wanted to and when you're done you can just log off and the relationship could be over. It makes relationships and romance so simple and easy plus you don’t even have to see the real person who is playing that avatar. In the second episode of the first season of the web series, we understand that Zaboo left his mom’s house to live with Codex, who Zaboo thinks has a crush on him. It is clear that while in-game their behavior was comfortable, in real life Zaboo was an awkward person to be around and has no real understanding how to show affection appropriately. Also romance in its most radical form can be seen through in game weddings. There have been several individuals who would have an in game ceremony to wed two avatars. The last episode of season 4 ended with Zaboo’s mother and Vork about to be married in game. Since it is a brand new episode, they don’t have it on youtube yet so here is the link to The Guild website to watch that episode.

http://www.watchtheguild.com/the-guild/the-guild-season-4-episode-12-guild-hall/

All the members of the guild gathered at Clara’s house so they can all be on their computers for the wedding. This is the way the gaming culture views relationships.

            In conclusion, the gaming world is its own culture full of unique language speech patterns, common understanding, and way of life. This is the essence of radical romance, in the sense that gaming portrays the masculine and feminine roles as well as the relationships in-game. They are so unique than anything that could be seen in real life. If you or someone you know has been fixated on gaming then watch the rest of the seasons. You will LOL (another gaming term).

Works Cited

Barker, Chris.  Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice.  Los Angeles: Sage, 2008.

McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. London: Wallflower Press, 2007.

“Do you want to date my avatar?” The Guild. Music video. <www.watchtheguild.com>

“Season 1. Episode 2: Zaboo’d.” The Guild. Web Series. <www.watchtheguild.com>

“Season 2. Episode 6: Blow Out.” The Guild. Web series. <www.watchtheguild.com>

“Season 4. Episode 12: Guild Hall.” The Guild. Web series. <www.watchtheguild.com>

Radical Romance to the Extreme

After watching the movie “10” I had a profound enjoyment of it. I have never watched a movie and disliked it so much and then at some point had a paradigm shift and created a whole knew feeling for it. Well that is exactly what happened when I watched this movie. Throughout the whole first half of the movie George Webber disgusted me. I already don’t like nudity in movies, but having a main character like George who came off as a dirty old man didn’t make it any better. However after trudging through the movie and then reflecting on it with the theories developed in my pop culture class helped me develop a respect for the movie and its portrayal of “romance”. My focus on this blog post is by defining the three main characters and then relating it back to radical romance.

The main character, George Webber, represents the typical man going through a mid life crisis in that he is not satisfied with the women of his same age. He is, instead, focused on a younger woman that represents a number 10 on the 1 to 10 scale. He decides to separate from his long time girlfriend, Sam, to pursue Jenny who has just gotten married and is now on her honeymoon. George’s therapist said that his desire is for a younger girl… a virgin. George desires women in the radical sense of romance that he is an older man desiring a younger woman. However, as the movie progressed he realized what he wanted wasn’t what he truly wanted.

Sam Taylor represents the woman that George is with and is not satisfied with. She is comfortable with her self and what she wants in a relationship. Sam follows romance in the typical sense that she has gong through her trials to get her where she is and she is content and happy to settle down.

Jenny, on the other hand, as we find out later in the film represents romance and culture in a new way. She is the essence of radical. She married her husband with no thought of true “love”. She views relationships as being open, that she can be married and still sleep with whomever she wants and her husband can do the same. Not only does age not bother her with the individual she sleeps with, but she is somewhat radical in how she likes to have sex. For example, she likes to scratch his back, insists on doing it to certain music, or having a particular position she enjoys. By no means is she traditional in the area of romance.

So in summary, George wants Jenny, Sam wants George and when George realizes Jenny doesn’t want anything serious, he wants Sam back. It was a accumulation of a couple things. First, it is as if his pursuit of the younger girl who is married was not as exciting when he found out that she was okay with having an open relationship with other men while still being married. Second, when she reveals that she doesn’t anything serious and is particular to how she has sex, it is almost as if George changed from the typical masculine role to the feminine role because Jenny was being the masculine character. It was that point that I thought of the movie as not being as bad as I had thought. Each of the characters portrayed beautifully the characteristics of radical romance.

Femininity and Raunch Culture

My focus on feminism is not in the sense that its all about woman’s rights and their power over the male/masculine culture. Instead it’s about the search for the definition of what it means to be masculine and feminine. Pulling on the idea that race is more focused on gender and the role of that gender than the look at the individual from where their heritage is. In our culture, we categorize jobs, behaviors and eating habits at masculine or feminine. Even in the constitution of marriage, the women is supposed to take on the man’s last name as a way of dominance that his name is more important of a legacy to uphold. However, recently trends have been changing on the last name situation. Some women choose to keep their last name and ignore their husband’s last name. Others hyphenate their last name and some make their husbands take on the female’s last name. I was having a discussion about this topic with several women that have recently been married. One of the individuals I talked to said that she was proud to take on his last name. It was a way to show how much she loved him. Another lady I talked to didn’t know whether she wanted to give up her last name. She had told me that she really likes her last name and she has to force herself to getting used to the idea of writing everything with a new last name. On a more emotional stance, my sister-in-law has insisted on keeping her maiden name instead of taking on my brother’s name. She is going through a hard time in her life in which she had a baby and got married really early in her life and she wasn’t ready for the big changes. She hasn’t quite grasped her identity yet and isn’t ready to take on a new name. In time, I hope she will be ready to take on her new life and her new last name with my brother. This whole last name issue has been something that I myself have been thinking about. I just recently got engaged and I love my last name. I feel like my name sounds so much better as it is and would sound really funny with my new last name. I have been thinking about hyphenating it because I already have four names (my first name, two middle names and a last name) and I think it would be awesome to have five names (outside of being Hispanic). However, I know that my fiancé wants me to drop my maiden name and take on his so we are going to have a lot of discussion before anything is final.

Also within the idea of feminism comes the idea of raunch culture in that media has embraced the promiscuous women as being a stronger more self reliant woman. When we discussed this in my pop culture class and re-read the section in Barker’s “Cultural Studies” book, I immediately thought of the show Desperate Housewives. I really don’t watch it, but the few episodes I have come across is all about this wife having an affair with her neighbors husband and all the other wives seeking out other lovers. In essence, it’s a neighborhood of drama. Either way that is the essence of raunch culture, those women are not afraid to show off their sexuality and be naughty. In a way it shows that women can be confident and strong in whom they are and realize they are beautiful women. In other senses, it can be seen as a bit too promiscuous and that it is borderline soft-core pornography. What do you think about raunch culture?