Oppositional reading and videogames

[Pogilrup]

The recent thread about the creator Feminist Frequency has me wondering about context and oppositional reading. Note this thread is not about her, this thread is intended to be about preferred, negotiated and oppositional reading.

For a quick start on what I am talking about here is a Wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encoding/Decoding_model_of_communication

If that is still too much, basically when it comes to a narrative you can either accept the story at face value, entirely reject the face value of the story, or come to some middle ground between the two extremes.

Those who accept the story at face value might see the criticisms of those who reject the face value as "taking things out of context".

So tell me how willing are you to tolerate someone rejecting the face value of the story and setting of a game that you like? How willing are you if that someone is able to broadcast that rejection to other people and possibly influencing them?

 

[Rylot]

It really depends on what game it is and what the oppositional theory being proposed. It can go from interesting to silly depending. Sometimes it's interesting to explore how Modern Warfare portrays war crimes, other times I just want to unwind and shoot other people with guns.

 

[MysticSlayer]

How do you take something at face value?

You can't just assume that there is no meaning because it ignores the ways media has been used by both creator and audience to an absurd degree.

You can't just rely on comments by the creator. Not only is their purpose often not given, but it also ignores the fact that people are shaped by their life and views in ways they don't fully understand, and plenty of writers have even admitted to having those affect their writings in ways they didn't originally intend.

Ultimately, we are left with the fact that meaning is at least partially left up to personal interpretation, and once we recognize that, then there is no true face value. As a result, we can't just simply say that someone is ignoring the context offered by "face value" if they can adequately argue and defend their interpretation.

With that said, no, I do not mind if someone interprets something in a way I did not see before. I may not agree with it and I may argue against it, but I don't see a point in being angry at them. Of course, I would at least hope that they are willing to have a discussion. Even if I can't convince them that their interpretation has some problems, at least I can understand how they account for various problems that I think are there.

 

[Pogilrup]

I once rented the book: America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies, for a sex and genders class.

That book contains a short example of preferred/dominant reading, oppositional reading, and negotiated reading.

I don't remember the exact details but it used The Lion King as part of the example. A dominant reading of the Lion King would be that it is a story about talking animals particular that of a lion cub who was betrayed by a treacherous family member and would later grow up to bring justice on upon those who brought suffering to his kingdom and family.

The oppositional reading on the other hand states that, due to the way the story and setting is established, the film contains possible subtle expressions of sexism, racism, and homophobia.

Clearly, in order to arrive at the oppositional reading one must throw out a lot of the film's "context".

And in videogames we really don't like it when someone "takes things out of context".

 

[gargantual]

I once rented the book: America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies, for a sex and genders class.

That book contains a short example of preferred/dominant reading, oppositional reading, and negotiated reading.

I don't remember the exact details but it used The Lion King as part of the example. A dominant reading of the Lion King would be that it is a story about talking animals particular that of a lion cub who was betrayed by a treacherous family member and would later grow up to bring justice on upon those who brought suffering to his kingdom and family.

The oppositional reading on the other hand states that, due to the way the story and setting is established, the film contains possible subtle expressions of sexism, racism, and homophobia.

Clearly, in order to arrive at the oppositional reading one must throw out a lot of the film's "context".

And in videogames we really don't like it when someone "takes things out of context".

See thats where negotiated comes in. All writers have worldviews, might just be a byproduct of how they grew up to view the world and their own curiosities than their belief systems. but one has to wonder if the writer is writing out of their psychological comfort zone, and making plot decisions that happen to tread into sensitive territory saying (oh well. can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs) or if it's intentional propaganda for or against a certain idea or group of people.

And its not hard to tell when its the latter.

There was an episode of South Park bout a few years ago, not the funniest of them, still gross but kinda made some interesting points on how the masses receive media.

[link]http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s14e02-the-tale-of-scrotie-mcboogerballs[/link]

 

[briankoontz]

One thing to be very careful of is to not attribute the viewpoints of a story's *characters* to it's writer. Serious writers don't write from their own viewpoint but from the viewpoints of their characters - the best writers build individual worldviews for their characters and then let the characters live and express themselves within that worldview, even changing their worldview over the course of the story. It can be very tricky even for good critics to determine the details of a writer's identity from his fictional works - it's more accurate to examine the writer's personal life, which is made much easier in the internet age.

So "oppositional reading" can only be reasonably defined as opposing the standard interpretation of a work - one's opposition is to *other critics*, not to the work's author.