Lesson 13 Essays Example

Reader’s Log:

Of the types of emerging media that we have discussed in this lesson, I think that the increasing blend of gaming and literature is something that intrigues me most. In the early days of video gaming (the 1970s through the 1990s), gaming was mostly a means to an end, with very little in terms of story; now, with the advent of greater gaming technology and RPG elements into the story, there is much more of a coherent, novelistic narrative being found in a variety of works.
One example I particularly like is the Mass Effect series of video games, which combines fast-paced shooter environments with a layered, compelling roleplaying story rich with thematic content and deeply drawn, complex characters. Works like Mass Effect take great care to invest an incredibly amount of back-story and personality to the numerous characters who populate the world, and has even created a detailed universe of different species with their own conflicts and quirks. In Mass Effect, the character is not just invited to shoot aliens, but to solve the character conflicts and psychological issues of your teammates, with rich storytelling becoming the major focus over gameplay. All the same, I would argue that gaming is specifically becoming more cinematic than literary, with this focus on extended cutscenes, professional camerawork and the like indicating a desire for games to become more like movies than books. Still, storytelling is storytelling, and this indicates a greater trend towards making games more immersive and involved, getting the audience and player invested in characters and situations that they care about. No longer are gamers looking to get a high score, but simply want to protect their friends or see what happens at the end of the story.
For my final project, I would like to take Option 2 (Reading Popular Culture) and critically discuss the representation of gender and race in the Disney princess films. These films were (and still are) the defining pieces of culture for generations of boys and girls, and so it is important to explore the messages that are being given to these children. Disney princess films, and the nature of the ‘princess’ herself, strikes me as a primarily white, submissive and stereotypical portrayal of women, though some efforts have been made to fix this in recent years with films like Frozen. I would like to take a detailed look at these princess films, both past and present, to track whether or not Disney creates problematic expectations for young girls in its films, and whether or not this is being corrected sufficiently in their more recent efforts.
I plan on using academic journal databases, Google Scholar, and several reputable books and blogs to find academic works that support and explore the concepts underlying this work. To date, there is already a substantial body of work on this subject, and I will also pick 2-3 films to perform a close textual reading of. Through the use of this existing body of cultural criticism, I should be able to formulate a fairly decent and well-rounded knowledge base for the textual analysis I will also be performing. My plan for completion is to provide a rough draft within 4-5 days of the Lesson 14 due date latest, with final revisions and fixes turned in by the final due date for Lesson 14 Final Project.

Works Cited

Bioware. Mass Effect Trilogy. Electronic Arts, 2013. Xbox 360.