Music from a few weeks ago, when I missed a few bloggin'days . . .
Q*Ball, Fortune Favors the Bald.
Heard of this guy because Bumblefoot is not only an awesome singer/songwriter/guitar-player/producer, but also part of the Bald Freak family, as run by Ron Scalzo, who sometimes goes by the name Q*Ball.
Yep, he's bald, & he has created 1 of the great album titles of all time by simply changing 1 letter from the old adage "fortune favors the bold."
Dancy, funky, sometimes hilariously funny & breathtakingly poignant, this album rocks.
Key tracks: the title track, "Showcase," & probably my favorite, "John Hughes."
If you never saw any of the '80s John Hughes movies, well, you should check 'em out.
Soon.
(& if you're not sure, think Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science . . .& many, many more.)
Also, here's a link to the super-cool video (PG-rated for a bikini scene)--w/ the feel of all those high-school-set films & featuring Bumblefoot (the janitor w/ the cool red hat & totally sweet fretless Vigier):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcdyHM7ylrI
Wow, what a great song.
Ok, since you saw that & understand my love for Q*Ball & B-foot, let's move on to . . .
. . . a chance for THE LAST POSSIBLE SEMESTER 1 BONUS POINTS.
I liked Chuck Klosterman much, much more before I read David Foster Wallace, because having read DFW I realized that CK was just a poor man's imitation, a dude trying to be al little smarter than he truly is, mimicking a style (the voice, the seeming obsession on excruciating minutiae, the endnotes).
But I still like him a little, in no small part due to the fact that he thinks about things that I, too, think about.
He began as a rock critic, has published several books, & has emerged as a "young" (not young like you all, but young in terms of writerly dudes) voice of the culture.
So, I have chosen an article for you to read . . . if you want to earn some of THE LAST POSSIBLE SEMESTER 1 BONUS POINTS.
Here, in a piece from Esquire, he talks about criticism of video games (not "criticism" in terms of "quit wasting your time in front of your computer/TV/dslite XL/psp/whatever," but "criticism" in terms of "this game is good/not good because."
By the way, Lester Bangs was a hugely important writer for Rolling Stone at the nascence of rock music's mass appeal, & Pauline Kael was one of the most important film critics ever.
This one is from June 30, 2006, so some may seem outdated to you, but . . .
Read it:
The Lester Bangs of Video Games
By Chuck Klosterman
Okay!
So we all agree that video games are this consequential force, right? And we all assume that these games have meaning, and that they reflect the worldviews and sensibilities of their audience, right? And anyone who has played modern video games (or has even just been in the same room with someone who was playing) has undoubtedly noticed that games like Grand Theft Auto andBad Day LA are visually transfixing, because the images are often beautiful and the movements of the characters are weird and hyperreal. Everyone seems to agree that all of these notions are true. Which prompts me to ask the following question: Why are there no video-game critics?
I realize that many people write video-game reviews and that there are entire magazines and myriad Web sites devoted to this subject. But what these people are writing is not really criticism. Almost without exception, it's consumer advice; it tells you what old game a new game resembles, and what the playing experience entails, and whether the game will be commercially successful. It's expository information. As far as I can tell, there is no major critic who specializes in explaining what playing a given game feels like, nor is anyone analyzing what specific games mean in any context outside the game itself. There is no Pauline Kael of video-game writing. There is no Lester Bangs of video-game writing. And I'm starting to suspect there will never be that kind of authoritative critical voice within the world of video games, which is interesting for a lot of reasons.
This is not a simple mystery to solve. It's hard enough to figure out why something does exist, but it's even harder to figure out why something doesn't exist. As an entry point, I contacted Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad Is Good for You, one of the only mainstream books that comes remotely close to the kind of gaming criticism I just described. Johnson mostly attributes the void to mechanics. "Games can't be analyzed using the aesthetic tools we've developed to evaluate narrative art forms like books or films," he explained via e-mail. "Video games generally have narratives and some kind of character development, but--almost without exception--these are the least interesting things about them. Gamers don't play because they're drawn into the story line; they play because there's something intoxicating about the mix of exploring an environment and solving problems. The stories are an afterthought."
This is all completely true. However, I don't think it explains why video-game criticism doesn't exist. When someone reviews Moby Dick or Kramer vs. Kramer, they don't spend most of their time explaining the details of the plot (or at least they don't if they're interesting). The meaning of most art is usually found within abstractions. So the problem is not that video games don't have interesting narratives; the problem is that it's hard to decide what it is about video games that is interesting. "[We] need to talk about games in a way that is appropriate to the medium," says Johnson. "In some cases, they're closer to architecture."
Here again, Johnson is right. But there's one (rather obvious) difference between architecture and video games: Architecture is static. I live in a building that has fourteen floors, and that's always true. I can't manipulate the floor plan of my apartment or the number of bricks in the wall. What makes video-game criticism complex is that the action is almost never static. Unlike a film director or a recording artist, the game designer forfeits all autonomy over his creation--he can't dictate the emotions or motives of the characters. Every player invents the future.
Look at it this way: Near the end of Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara asks Rhett Butler what she's supposed to do with the rest of her life, and he says that (frankly) he doesn't give a damn. Now, the meaning of those lines can be interpreted in many ways. However, what if that dialogue happened only sometimes? What if this scene played out differently for every person who watched Gone with the Wind? What if Rhett occasionally changed his mind, walked back into the house, and said, "Just kidding, baby"? What if Scarlett suddenly murdered Rhett for acting too cavalier? What if the conversation were sometimes interrupted by a bear attack? And what if all these alternative realities were dictated by the audience itself? If Gone with the Wind ended differently every time it was experienced, it would change the way critics viewed its message. The question would not be "What does this mean?" The question would be "What could this mean?"
That, I think, is where video-game criticism should be going: toward the significance of potentiality. Video games provide an opportunity to write about the cultural consequence of free will, a concept that has as much to do with the audience as it does with the art form. However, I can't see how such an evolution could happen, mostly because there's no one to develop into these "potentiality critics." Video-game criticism can't evolve because video-game criticism can't get started.
"It's weird that Entertainment Weekly doesn't have a video-game column, and that TheNew York Times only writes about gaming sporadically," says Henry Jenkins, a professor of comparative media at MIT and the author of From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. "Aesthetic criticism exists in this industry, but only as arguments among gaming scholars and game creators. And the gaming industry suffers because of that. There is a very conservative element to gaming because absolutely everything is built around consumerism. Game designers are asking themselves questions about how a game should look and what it should do, but not about what the game is supposed to mean."
And that, ultimately, is why the absence of video-game criticism is a problem. If nobody ever thinks about these games in a manner that's human and metaphorical and contextual, they'll all become strictly commodities, and then they'll all become boring. They'll only be games. And since we've already agreed that video games are the new rock music, we'd be facing a rather depressing scenario: This generation's single most meaningful artistic idiom will be--ultimately--meaningless.
There is a void, but there is still time to fill it. Somebody needs to become the first significant Xbox critic, stat. If nothing else, I'm sure he'll get rich.
END KLOSTERMAN; McB NOW:
This pop-culture philosophy-type writing rules.
As many of you know, I love the whole . . . & Philosophy series (I own the versions dedicated to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Seinfeld, House, The Simpsons, & Watchmen.)
Another writer, Malcolm Gladwell, covers topics like the Dog Whisperer, ketchup, Ron Popeil & the informercial subgenre of TV, the importance of birthdates to young Canadian hockey players, & our "gut reaction."
Bill Simmons writes for ESPN, & in covering sports always references the '80s movies your parents & I watched back then (like those John Hughes films) & some you may have seen recently remade, like The Karate Kid, Halloween, & others.
You are now going to be the pop-philosopher.
Sooo . . . your LAST POSSIBLE SEMESTER 1 BONUS-POINT OPPORTUNITY is this:
1st, write a quick (50-plus-word) summation of Klosterman, to prove you read it . . . &
2nd, Write a critical "article" of at least 200 words (much shorter than the one above) in which you examine a pop-culture or otherwise "non-school-based" entity.
Ask a question about why something is popular, what it represents, how it says something about the people who care about it.
Think about muscle-cars, Brazilian grind-death-core metal music, Silly Bandz, ear-stretching, or anything else about which you care.
Last year, students wrote about basketball, the Yankees, Lady Gaga, Snuggies, & other fun stuff.
Ask yourself a question (such as, "why are there no great video-game critics?") & then . . .
Make an argument (such as "there needs to be a 1st great video-game critic--the way there was a Lester Bangs for rock music--to make the games meaningful") & enjoy your time.
Publish 'em in the comments below so we can all read 'em here.
DEADLINE: 11:59 PM, MONDAY 13 DECEMBER 2010.
[as of 17:45 Monday] ADDENDUM: NOTE TO BONUS-SEEKERS . . .
your comment will not appear until I moderate it, so don't freak if you do not see it tonight--it will be time-stamped & you will get your credit (up to 25 pts)
ADDENDUM: DONE w/ 1st SEMESTER BONUS
