Knowledge is power, and today, the apex of knowledge production and dispersal is through the Internet. However, not all data is equally accessible. In the information age, accessibility of knowledge is deeply dependent on algorithmic methods of organization. There are too many articles, think pieces, videos, and databases for any one person to manually sort. […]
When it comes to issues of intersectionality in gaming, often the response is to only address the bare minimum in order to survive as a game, developer, or platform, then continue on. Unfortunately, when marginalized voices do speak, they often go unheard, or ignored. Given that the dominant faction of gaming communities in places like Twitch, […]
Race and Intersectionality in South Park By Hannah Bruder and Jake Leflein Overview South Park is an animated American television show that first aired in 1997. Trey Parker and Matt Stone created the show, and over the years, produced 20 seasons and 277 episodes in total. Taking place in South Park, Colorado, the show follows […]
In team games where support play is essential, the stigmatism towards actually playing support raises issues of socialized anti-feminine thought in our society, as a major psychological link exists between the expectation of physical and emotional support and nurturing as a fundamental aspect of socialized femininity and the feminization of the support role in multiplayer online […]
“My Car is My Lover”, part of the BBC documentary series Strange Love (the same series responsible for the objectum sexuality documentary, “Married to the Eiffel Tower”), takes a look at “mechaphilia.” The film describes mechaphiles as people who are sexually and romantically attracted to vehicles, not exclusive to cars (references to trucks, planes, and helicopters). The […]
While I do not aim to discourage, or diminish, the possibilities of Bell Hook’s proposition of “Living By a Love Ethic,” the distance and removal from reality that a theoretical perspective affords. The only issue I take with the argument is the relative impossibility of its success in actual society. Rhetorically, the “love ethic” resembles […]
The 2014 TVC Thai Life Insurance commercial, “Unsung Hero,” which the top YouTube comment summarizes in the sentence, “Who’s cutting onions?! :”)” follows a nameless, everyman (in that the ad wants the viewer to see themselves in him) as he spends his days helping elderly women, a homeless mother and daughter, a dog, and a […]
Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies (at the University of Maryland, College Park), Alexis Lothian’s recent talk at the University of Michigan, “Queer Geek Methodologies: Social Justice Fandom as a Transformative Digital Humanities,” highlights several aspects of the non-normative modes of discourse found in internet fandom, such as the mixture of creative, artistic expression with legitimate television theory, that […]
In “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Spivak considers the issues of navigating the representation of marginalized identities within mainstream media when the marginalized individuals lack a platform to voice their own opinions. Although these representations in film and media often come from a desire to help, or understand, they ultimately act to speak over the voices of the actual […]
In Sandoval’s chapter on Semiotics, they aim to focus on a deconstruction of language and how things are presented in order to see and understand all elements of some form of conveying a message. In Semiotics, a sign is broken down often in to two main parts. The signifier and the signified. The signifier represents […]
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