Category: Analysis
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Looking at: Meek’s Cutoff, the camera, and power
Somewhere downhill, a short distance away, the men are talking. Their voices tickle the edge of our comprehension. “What are they talking about?” someone asks, “Were you told?” “They’re talking about whether to hang Stephen Meek.” A slight pause, the women on the bluff go back to collecting their kindling. The camera lingers on this…
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Looking at: How fantastical identities help our culture approach real ones
Following up on a previous article on the works of the McElroy brothers I’m today writing about another of their podcasts, The Adventure Zone. If you are intrigued you can find the series here, I would strongly advise listening from the beginning; maybe then this whole piece might sound a little less like garbage. To…
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Looking At: 21st century horny
I’m sorry about this one, it took me far too long to write and I fear it’s totally incoherent. Â I guess my thoughts on the matter aren’t all there either, please let me know if this makes any sense; any sense at all. On January 17th this year Randy Pitchford made a mistake. The CEO…
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Looking at: The Handmaid’s Tale and Analogue: A Hate Story
There is a link between participatory media and consent. Unless you’re in a Clockwork Orange type situation the audience always has the option of disengaging with a work of art. We can put down the book, walk out of the theatre, turn off the television. By making the active choice to continue engaging with a…
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Looking at: System Fidelity and World Design in Ratchet 2 and Jak II
I had a PlayStation 2, Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy were two of the first games I played on it. Their sequels were made in very short periods of time. I believe Jak II was two years in development, Ratchet and Clank 2: Locked and Loaded for only one. You…
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Looking at: Monster Factory’s positive creativity
There’s a moment I love in the 31st episode of Monster Factory. Well, there’s moments I love in every episode of Monster Factory but this one is illustrative. Griffin and Justin McElroy are playing 2009 MMO Champions Online, staring at the create a character screen, they have to choose a superpower, each represented by a…
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Beyond Postmodernism: Post-truth
If modernism and postmodernism are defined primarily by their relationship to the metanarrative, where does that leave the contemporary world? Newscasters have been chatting a lot over the past year about post-truth politics, a mode of discourse in which the notion of the factual is deemphasised in favour of creating a new reality which supports…
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Can we talk about Ghost Recon: Wildlands’ weird racist and sexist trailer?
So, the clumsily titled Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands is out. Surprising, as I had heard just about nothing about it. I guess it was doomed once they figured out it would be going head to head against Zelda and the Switch. Nothing dominates the conversation like first party Nintendo software, even more so when…
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2016’s Best Film: Your Name
It was the Oscars last night as I’m writing this. It looked like a fun evening and, despite all the drama and controversy, everyone deserves congratulations no matter who we think should have won in any specific category, and whether we still think the same way in a few years’ time. In the morning i…