Today I showed Feminist Frequency's video Tropes Vs Women in Video Games Pt 1, starring Anita Sarkeesian, to a new group of students, and then I showed them examples of censored tweets from angry gamers. Here are my reflections from that lesson:
-It never fails - each time I show this video, boys are snickering at the ridiculous female caricatures, such as Princess Daphne from Dragon's Lair. Once the video ends, and after discussion I show them the threatening tweets, they are the most interested group of students in the room. They get out of their chairs and approach the screen, as if to indicate that they need to absorb all the horror of it.
-The archival clip from the TV spot for Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time says "Willst thou get the girl? Or play like one?" This insult lands really heavily on the class. No one tries to defend the ad. It serves as an entry point into the emotions of the haters, who champion this game, but don't know what it means to be critical of it while also appreciating its place in game history.
-I really want to introduce the bell curve tomorrow, with kindness in the middle and the pernicious outliers defined in both categories.
-This lesson is always the one that ends up impacting the students most. When I survey them afterwards, they almost always unanimously cite Anita's work as the most memorable part of the unit.
-Should I scroll down the gg hashtag in Twitter? I can't really do that because of the bad language, but I suppose that I can take screenshots.
-I just went into a gg black hole. It is a HUGE community.
