Jacob's Font of Perspicacity

Looking back on this blog and Critical Thinking as a whole, I can see that I have gained a lot from this assignment, though perhaps not in the expected areas. My understanding of media has not changed too greatly, as much of what I learned about it I already knew to some degree. This may come in part from attending a Waldorf inspired school and having parents who are quite aware of the problems media can pose. I do have a more complete picture of how advertising works than I did before the semester, but I don't think this class has or will cause me to significantly change the way I interact with media. However, I believe this blog was quite important in approving my writing ability. It gave me a chance to practice a style of writing (namely casual persuasive writing) which I have greatly enjoyed reading in the past and frequently employ verbally but have not really tried writing in. Not only that, but it provided an excellent example of how a school assignment can actually be enjoy...

Recently, to go along with its annual awards, Steam (a platform for buying computer games) released  this list of their most played games of 2017. While perusing said list, I came to a somewhat depressing realization: all nine of the games with more than 100,000 peak simultaneous players consisted, at their core, of walking around a 3-dimensional environment and shooting people to death. To some this may fit completely with their view of video games as mindless entertainment which promotes violence. But to me it was jarring, possibly because not one of the twenty games in my Steam library adheres to this formula. In my experience video games can be a fascinating artistic medium, but it is difficult to find the gems in the teeming horde of first-person shooters. The overwhelming popularity of this specific genre has distorted the general public's perception of video games, obscuring the fact that, just like other media such as books or movies, they can be used both to offer an easy...

MissRepresentation was an excellent documentary. Before watching it, I was already aware of many of the problems with the representation of women in media which it illuminates, but I was still impressed at how comprehensive and powerful its argument was. However, I disagree with the film on one major point: I do not think that media content should be further regulated by the government or any other organization, even with the purpose of reducing the objectification of women. To see why this kind of regulation could be so problematic, it is helpful to look at the history of media censorship in the United States. From 1930 to 1968, almost all American movies were produced under the  Motion Picture Production Code , a set of rules governing what could be shown onscreen. The rules were intended to safeguard public virtue by eliminating immoral content from the media and were created by the film industry itself to preempt government regulation. While the idea of such a code may seem l...

Anyone who analyzes enough entertainment media quickly begins to notice a few patterns. Every story has a (usually white and male) protagonist who, along with his band of supporting characters, faces some kind of conflict, defeats the villain, and lives happily ever after. This is (an oversimplified summary of) the Hero's Journey, that pervasive force which consigns so many stories to the dustbin of sameness. This common theme makes all media somewhat similar, but within specific genres there are many more of these similarities, so much so that one quickly realizes that the vast majority of stories are just a bunch of prefabricated parts assembled in a predictable order with a new coat of paint slapped on to trick people into thinking its something different. For evidence of this, I direct you to go to  TV Tropes , an incredible database of fictional tropes (common elements found in many different pieces of media). Once you're there, find the page of a movie you like and scroll...

I generally found Merchants of Cool  to be quite insightful, but on one point I found it rather hyperbolic. One of the experts interviewed as part of the documentary compared American teens to Africa and the corporations marketing to them to European imperialists. The essential problem with this analogy is that modern teens can choose not to be exploited. The inhabitants of Africa could not simply decide to not be affected by Western conquest, but to a degree we can choose to do exactly that. The mook will always exist as a stereotype in media marketed to teenagers, but I can (and do) choose not to watch that media. (In my case this really isn't even that difficult, as I find the kind of media inhabited by mooks to be quite boring). Likewise, the fact that what is fashionable is chosen by a few large corporations doesn't really matter to someone (like me) whose clothing decisions don't factor in what's "cool" on any given day. It's certainly possible to be...