Quickies
Quickies: Sarcastic Science, Having Kids is a Luxury, and Whitewashed Video Games
- The Ethics of Sarcastic Science – “Every year the British Medical Journal publishes an issue of joke science. But years later, those papers are cited as real.”
- The Year Having Kids Became a Frivolous Luxury – “Having children is now often framed as a frivolous lifestyle choice, as if it’s a decision that’s no different from moving to San Francisco or buying a motorcycle. If you choose to buy that Harley or have that baby, it’s on you, lady.” It is so sad that we don’t invest in the future.
- “It’s more common to see a blue hedgehog than a person of color as a protagonist”: Inside the whitewashed world of video games – “Arthur Chu talks to #INeedDiverseGames’ creator about why we need to see ourselves reflected in the games we play”
- A Vital Chapter Of American History On Film In ‘Selma’ – “It’s hard to believe but there has never been a major motion picture that centers around one of this country’s most iconic figures: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But that’s about to change, with Selma, which opens Christmas Day.” I definitely want to see this.
- North Carolina’s Outrageous Abortion Requirement Is Struck Down – “A panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals voted today to strike down a highly controversial North Carolina law requiring doctors and ultrasound technicians to perform an ultrasound, display the image of the sonogram, and specifically describe the fetus to any pregnant woman seeking an abortion, even if the woman actively ‘averts her eyes’ and ‘refuses to hear.’ ” Yay for reproductive rights!
Mary,
I’m kind of interested in that “Selma” film as well. I’m surprised through that there’s never been a major motion picture about Martin Luther King. I thought they already made at least one already.
I red Amanda’s piece with great interest (and I have Grounded Parents take on it percolating), but my initial Cliff Notes reaction is… Sorry about that, but we Gen X-ers are real assholes. The entire phenomenon smacks of the Ayn Rand/glibertarian plague that infected many of my high school classmates in our 20’s and 30’s. Now we are careening into middle age and the internet gives voice to the worst of our impulses.
Oh, the Ayn Rand plague started before that. Obviously, there were the John Birchers and other fascists at all times, but you started to see Ayn Rand being marketed as ‘spiritual’ in the 70s. Look at Ruth Beebe Hill. (Disclaimer: Everything she said about the Sioux is bullshit.)
Can I mention my support for guaranteed income without summoning the people fighting in that thread? We could simultaneously reduce social services and also help everyone, while reducing the penalty for having children, and evening out the labor markets, to the point where workers would be able to make rational choices, both because they wouldn’t have the stresses of poverty on them, and because having a job wouldn’t be life or death!
“It’s more common to see a blue hedgehog than a person of color as a protagonist”: Inside the whitewashed world of video games – “Arthur Chu talks to #INeedDiverseGames’ creator about why we need to see ourselves reflected in the games we play”
Strictly speaking there’s only one of those! But yeah, cartoon characters are more popular.
It’s worth noting that most of the ones we have today are holdovers from 30 years ago, when colorful cartoon characters were promulgated due to the difficulty of making a human figure, and the need to appeal to children rather than teens/adults.
Paul,
True, but they could always do human characters, ( especially if they were meant to be cartoonish ) even in the days of Atari. With the original Nintendo, there were a huge number of games with human characters. Sure they still weren’t very detailed, but you could still easily put them in games as the main character. I would expect that by now there would be a lot more playable minority characters in video games, especially with the progress that’s been made with other media.
Sure many games now let you create your own character to play with, and if you can make them human, you can usually make them something other than a white male now. Still that’s hardly good enough.
On videogames, part of it is, we start holding developers to a higher standard. Like, would anyone hold Ubisoft to the standard we do (y u no have female assassins?) if not for Assassin’s Creed 3? I’m not sure we would, because we’d just be used to it. As Sherman Alexie said, “Some days, it’s a good day to die. Other days, better than nothing.”
(And yes, I’m totally aware they didn’t lie. The latest Assassin’s Creed installment is a hot mess of bugs.)