October 22
In this interview, the interviewee was asked if they believe that misogyny is an issue in modern popular culture after watching a short program about misogyny in video games, and they gave a resounding affirmative to the question. They began by stating that in their own experience, they love video games, spending many hours playing them. And that, while their own view of reality and of women is not entirely distorted by the games they play, the target audience for these mediums is may become desensitized to the violence and misogyny that takes in the real world.
When asked how we could possibly stop or negate this potential for desensitizing people to misogyny, the interviewee stated that an excellent first step would be to create and empower female characters, that are not displayed as weak and requiring a savior. The subject of the interview revolved around a discussion of a video game called Dragon Age, which the interviewee has personally played, so they gave some personal insight into the plot details that the source discussion cited within the game. They said that within the game itself, there was a dialogue choice, where the player can choose to save a girl from being raped, or choose not to save her. Both myself and the interviewee agreed that was a rather poor choice for a dialogue decision tree within a game.
After this, the interviewee was asked what they thought of the relationship cultural violence, popular culture and global violence. They stated, that while they do not believe that virtual actions will translate to actions in the real world, they did believe that popular culture has a significant relationship to cultural violence. To accentuate their point, they gave an example of how after September 11th, 2001, video games started to focus more on "first person, military shooters always shooting brown people" and that in film, television, and many other forms of media, those individuals from the Middle East, North Africa, and that area of the world were now the villains of every story.
The interviewee then stated that placing this blame on video games and the players themselves was not so much an issue though, as there are many factors that may determine why a person plays these games. However, the perception of the world and culture for younger generations can be distorted by first-person shooter games, with a far more romanticized view of the military being given to them, rather than the dirty, bloody, horrible truth of what actually goes on in warfare.
Boris Rudolfs
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