Grand_Arcana said:
Therumancer said:
I don't think they're researching
Twilight because it's hip. I think (or at least hope) that they're looking into why it is so popular. I hope that the education system doesn't pervert it into something that it isn't: good. Between reading "Kubla Khan" and
The Life of Pi I've come to the conclusion that the only thing worse than literary elitists dismissing a masterpiece is when they worship a piece of dross.
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On the bit about analyzing video-games, I completely disagree. If we as gamers cannot think critically enough to analyze the video games we play then the whole "Games as Art" philosophy is rendered illegitimate by the very same people who created it. All forms of storytelling should be analyzed. That doesn't mean that they should all be worshiped without very good reason. This is why I reject abstract art until someone can reason its value to me.
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My understanding from what I read was that they are analyzing it so they can use the phenomena for education and conditioning to the messages they want the youth to absorb. It mentions specifically aiming to use such things to convey messages in a critical and ethical manner. I've heard it all before, which is why I can make an educated guess at what they mean. Basically it's the exact kind of thing that lead to some of these educational "gangsta rap" videos being shown alongside saturday morning cartoons in lieu of some of the commercial space.
There is no mystery to anyone WHY Twilight is popular, I mean it's pretty bloody obvious, and involves many of the same things that makes any other teen fad popular.
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As far as "Games as Art" goes, I'm not a big fan of the idea. Some games might wind up becoming art on their own, but as far as people trying to treat gaming in general as a field of artistic development, I think it gets ridiculous and pretentious. I also think it takes more than including some politically correct statement, or vague historical analogy to qualify something as real art, as opposed to simply using the media as a propaganda device.
In general, I have some respect for the efforts of some developers like Cleril, and the guys who did "The Dark Path" for trying to create art using games as a medium, but I don't feel such attempts reflect on gaming as a whole.
For the most part people trying to claim games as serious art, remind me of White Wolf fanboys trying to claim the same thing about their RPGs. I own this one book for the older version of their game, which is called "Montreal By Night". Without going into a deep rant about it, a basic synopsis is that it's a city run by the Sabbat (the more evil and monsterous Vampires) and full of descriptions of things like people beying buried up to their neck in grain inside a silo and having vampires drop an undead baby onto their faces like a Yo Yo, or Vampires dressing up like characters from a Mortal Kombat inspired fighting game and abducting random people to beat up and try and do the Fatalities for "real". It features drawings like a picture of some female vampire in a dominatrix outfit, holding a bloody abortion hook, with a female victim chained to a urinal bleeding from between her legs in
the backround. Pretty much low-brow shock horror for Vampire fans, which is cool because I like Shock Horror. However near the end of the book it includes this pretentious full page declaration "Is it Art?" basically trying to claim a book like this as a serious work of art, and what's more fanboys were eating this stuff up and trying to make that arguement about stuff like this.
In a strict interpetation I suppose you can all anything art if you try, however I personally don't go for that. If you decide to take a dump on an American flag on a stage in front of a crowd, your not a performance artist, your a bloody rabble rousing pig. As such I really don't take "video games as art" seriously. I tend not to make those arguements. While there are attempts to go in that direction, I do not think any of them have really succeeded. Mostly it seems "art" games wind up being pretentious more than anything.
