Have you ever wondered why nowadays the videogames that dominate the market focus more on a fun multiplayer rather than long and interesting story? Why does the game based on Aliens, a movie that favors tension over action, try to mimic the formula of every generic shooter that has come out in the last decade? What ever happened to the RPGs of the era of the Playstation One and Two? What is the reason behind the huge popularity of phone games such as Angry Birds and Cut The Rope? This change is attributed to a change in mentality in the new generation of people. People nowadays don't have time to play a game that is several hours long, and, if they have time, they lose interest before reaching the end and switch to another game. The multiplayer games are better suited for this new mentality. An average match of FIFA lasts about ten minutes, and Call of Duty matches last no more than five. And if you were to play another game, it is much easier to come back and play a quick match than to try to catch back up in a story. However, despite the shallowness, there are still games sold at full retail price. It is the cheap app games that fully exploit this change in mentality. If you want some quick entertainment, you can just pay a couple of dollars and get still get your money's worth. It is like buying a bag of chips rather than a full meal when you are just a little hungry. Short boosts of entertainment is what is considered as ideal in the current market.
However, this mentality isn't limited to videogames only. In Reality Hunger's thirteenth chapter, "m in praise of brevity," Shields includes various phrases regarding this phenomenon. Brevity is now favored in literature as well. However, Shields includes an interesting reason behind this preference with phrase 383 that states "It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book -- what everyone else does not say in a book." What this is trying to say is that, if the text is too long, the message or purpose can be lost in all the words. It is better to be concise and clear than to be wordy and ambiguous. In Kate Salter's article "Brief Lives" regarding the writer, Michael Kimball, who writes short life stories in the back of postcards, a new perspective is shown regarding short texts. The writer writes that "the postcard doesn't sum up my life, but what got me to where I am now. It's a snapshot of a moment. There's a strong sense of hope and joy in it that, while I don't identify with it every day, makes me feel happy when I read it." There is just something very compelling about simplicity when everything around us is so complicated. Whether it is a phone game or a short text, brevity the relaxant that people need nowadays.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Persona: Shadow of the True Self
In school, one is taught that plagiarizing is bad and that one should never do it. It's basically stealing isn't it? That's why there are laws such as those of copyright and things such as patents. If you patent something, you put it in a safe where, if it is stolen, it can be traced back to the thief in order to put him behind bars. In my school there was a whole campaign regarding academic dishonesty. They used pamphlets and everything. According to my school's NHS, after graduation, these behaviors could lead to economic ruin.
Well, in Reality Hunger, David Shields decides to throw all this out the window. 0% of this manifesto is written by Shields himself. In Layman's terms, this text is a bunch of ctrl c and ctrl v. That isn't really in Layman's terms you say? Well, let me put it simply. Remember that poem you wrote in first grade where you misspelled flower? That required more writing that Shields' Reality Hunger. Don't get me wrong, I am not taking anything away from Shields. His manifesto is probably better than your childhood poem. In fact, this manifesto is regarded as brilliant by many. He might not have written anything, but he still had to think of where to put each statement and what would be accomplished by doing that. In the end, aren't we all writing with words that are not our own? We didn't invent them. They were fed to us by our parents during our first years and by teachers after that. What's the difference between a word and a phrase? This post right now is being written with a great amount of stolen property. Shields was just thinking bigger by using fragments instead of simple words.
Moving on, in his fourth chapter, "d trials by google," Shields mentions many writers with controversial stories. Among these are James Frey, JT LeRoy, and Misha Defonseca. The one that really caught my attention was JT LeRoy since statement 96 said that "'JT LeRoy' was nothing more or less than a highly developed pen name." This led me to conduct a research on who exactly is JT LeRoy. It turns out that she is a woman. It's like playing Metroid for the NES for the first time. The whole time you think that you're playing as the tough bounty hunter, Samus, but then at the end you find out: Samus is a girl?! A moment that changed gaming. Well, not really since the people that played it got over it soon enough. Nowadays, gamers are like, "Ok, Nintendo. Samus is a woman. We know!" Going back to JT LeRoy if that's even her real name (it isn't. It's Laura Albert), the reason this caused great controversy wasn't because sexist men couldn't stand having a female writer (she revealed herself in 2005, a time where I hope this is no longer an issue). The real reason behind the hate was that this JT LeRoy persona that she created was thought to be real by the readers. They believed that there was actually a JT LeRoy who had lived through all the events that he wrote about. Turns out that this person that you admired or were intrigued by is just an invented character. Some people are ought to be angry. It's like that whole fake Paul McCartney story where apparently Paul died in a car crash, and the MI6 replaced him with a Canadian cop in order to prevent various fan girl suicides. It's relatively similar if you take away the death, MI6, and the Canadian cop. Alright, it isn't similar at all. But the essence is still the same.
Well, in Reality Hunger, David Shields decides to throw all this out the window. 0% of this manifesto is written by Shields himself. In Layman's terms, this text is a bunch of ctrl c and ctrl v. That isn't really in Layman's terms you say? Well, let me put it simply. Remember that poem you wrote in first grade where you misspelled flower? That required more writing that Shields' Reality Hunger. Don't get me wrong, I am not taking anything away from Shields. His manifesto is probably better than your childhood poem. In fact, this manifesto is regarded as brilliant by many. He might not have written anything, but he still had to think of where to put each statement and what would be accomplished by doing that. In the end, aren't we all writing with words that are not our own? We didn't invent them. They were fed to us by our parents during our first years and by teachers after that. What's the difference between a word and a phrase? This post right now is being written with a great amount of stolen property. Shields was just thinking bigger by using fragments instead of simple words.
Moving on, in his fourth chapter, "d trials by google," Shields mentions many writers with controversial stories. Among these are James Frey, JT LeRoy, and Misha Defonseca. The one that really caught my attention was JT LeRoy since statement 96 said that "'JT LeRoy' was nothing more or less than a highly developed pen name." This led me to conduct a research on who exactly is JT LeRoy. It turns out that she is a woman. It's like playing Metroid for the NES for the first time. The whole time you think that you're playing as the tough bounty hunter, Samus, but then at the end you find out: Samus is a girl?! A moment that changed gaming. Well, not really since the people that played it got over it soon enough. Nowadays, gamers are like, "Ok, Nintendo. Samus is a woman. We know!" Going back to JT LeRoy if that's even her real name (it isn't. It's Laura Albert), the reason this caused great controversy wasn't because sexist men couldn't stand having a female writer (she revealed herself in 2005, a time where I hope this is no longer an issue). The real reason behind the hate was that this JT LeRoy persona that she created was thought to be real by the readers. They believed that there was actually a JT LeRoy who had lived through all the events that he wrote about. Turns out that this person that you admired or were intrigued by is just an invented character. Some people are ought to be angry. It's like that whole fake Paul McCartney story where apparently Paul died in a car crash, and the MI6 replaced him with a Canadian cop in order to prevent various fan girl suicides. It's relatively similar if you take away the death, MI6, and the Canadian cop. Alright, it isn't similar at all. But the essence is still the same.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Soup or Salad?
As I progress through Reality Hunger, I start to ponder about what truly is reality more and more. However, I am yet to experience any hunger while reading it. I guess I'll have to get further in the book in order to allow it to live up to the second part of its title, but who cares about my bodily functions anyways. You are here for the main dish: reality, a meal that in this post will be divided into three courses. Are you getting hungry already? Well, hungry for knowledge that it. If you are feeling the other type of hunger, go make yourself a sandwich and come back. I'm not going anywhere. That is unless your computer gets stolen.
Anyways, let's start this meal with a fragment 197 where it is stated that "Humans are hardwired to deceive... Deception is more the state of nature than not deceiving." An interesting point taking into consideration the fact that deception is one of the basic animal instincts. Whether it is the chameleon changing colors in order to blend into its surroundings or the venus flytraps sending of odors in order to attract their prey, deception is something found repeatedly in the animal kingdom. This is because it is an essential part of survival. In defense or attack, you need every advantage you can get even if it involves getting your hands, paws, whatever bugs have, or flippers dirty. Dodos couldn't fool anyone. Dodos are now extinct. Do you want to share their fate? No? Then go out there and lie to everyone. I'm glad to see that this message is starting to reach the masses via media. We must all learn from Gossip Girl or The Lying Game if I am to judge them by their title.
Moving on to the second dish, we have fragment 243 which states that "We're overwhelmed right now by calamitous information. The real overwhelms the fictional, is incomparably more compelling than an invented drama,"a statement that I agree with. I mean, I might tell you the story of Luke from Star Wars and you'll be like, "Yeah, he's Darth Vader's son (spoiler), whatever, " but if I tell you that a freaking meteorite fell in Russia, you'll be like, "Yeah! I know! It's so cool, right? Have you seen the videos?!" Ironically, there's just something mystical about the non-mystical. This is the reason behind the immediate change of tone we experience in our heads during a film when the words "based on true events" pop up. Then, we start questioning this claim, but that is a course from another meal.
For dessert, we have fragment 256: "Facts have gravitas." Now, this is a fine dessert. This means that it might be small, but it is quite dense. First of all, you might not know what the word "gravitas" means. Me neither, until I looked it up and found that it means dignity, seriousness, and gravity. We live in a world where we can't really take things seriously unless there are facts that prove its reality. This change is most evident in videos since anyone can record something for an audience which cannot settle for ambiguity and has to know whether a video is fake or real. It's like in that video where an eagle picks up a baby and people harassed the maker until he declared that the video was in fact fake. But it's not like the viewers had no reason to want to know the state of the video. Before the declaration the video was in a thin line between a funny video where an eagle is edited in in order to appear to pick up a fake baby and a horrifying video where an endangered species nearly hurt an innocent, defenseless baby. We have to know which one it is. Why? Well, we don't have anything better to do before the next hilarious cat video comes out.
Anyways, let's start this meal with a fragment 197 where it is stated that "Humans are hardwired to deceive... Deception is more the state of nature than not deceiving." An interesting point taking into consideration the fact that deception is one of the basic animal instincts. Whether it is the chameleon changing colors in order to blend into its surroundings or the venus flytraps sending of odors in order to attract their prey, deception is something found repeatedly in the animal kingdom. This is because it is an essential part of survival. In defense or attack, you need every advantage you can get even if it involves getting your hands, paws, whatever bugs have, or flippers dirty. Dodos couldn't fool anyone. Dodos are now extinct. Do you want to share their fate? No? Then go out there and lie to everyone. I'm glad to see that this message is starting to reach the masses via media. We must all learn from Gossip Girl or The Lying Game if I am to judge them by their title.
Moving on to the second dish, we have fragment 243 which states that "We're overwhelmed right now by calamitous information. The real overwhelms the fictional, is incomparably more compelling than an invented drama,"a statement that I agree with. I mean, I might tell you the story of Luke from Star Wars and you'll be like, "Yeah, he's Darth Vader's son (spoiler), whatever, " but if I tell you that a freaking meteorite fell in Russia, you'll be like, "Yeah! I know! It's so cool, right? Have you seen the videos?!" Ironically, there's just something mystical about the non-mystical. This is the reason behind the immediate change of tone we experience in our heads during a film when the words "based on true events" pop up. Then, we start questioning this claim, but that is a course from another meal.
For dessert, we have fragment 256: "Facts have gravitas." Now, this is a fine dessert. This means that it might be small, but it is quite dense. First of all, you might not know what the word "gravitas" means. Me neither, until I looked it up and found that it means dignity, seriousness, and gravity. We live in a world where we can't really take things seriously unless there are facts that prove its reality. This change is most evident in videos since anyone can record something for an audience which cannot settle for ambiguity and has to know whether a video is fake or real. It's like in that video where an eagle picks up a baby and people harassed the maker until he declared that the video was in fact fake. But it's not like the viewers had no reason to want to know the state of the video. Before the declaration the video was in a thin line between a funny video where an eagle is edited in in order to appear to pick up a fake baby and a horrifying video where an endangered species nearly hurt an innocent, defenseless baby. We have to know which one it is. Why? Well, we don't have anything better to do before the next hilarious cat video comes out.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)