Barbie Games

Metaverse Reading: From Barbie to Mortal Kombat

From Barbie to Disastrous Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, eds., is an eminent 1998 MIT Press anthology, one that has revolutionized my contemplative on games, and, I think, given me a clear and small thesis for my term paper in Gender, Information & Technology.

The editors describe their task as to “examine the different ways in which we capability strive for equity: equity fully separate but equal computer games, fair-mindedness through equal access to the selfsame computer games, equity through games that spur on new visions of equity itself.”

The comprehensive quality of the papers is outstanding, much more wisely than that of the three or so anthologies of technofeminism that I’ve reviewed in days of old. Its major shortcoming is a factor of the times - and one of the reasons why I’m unfair against 20th Century academic information about the internet - the entire sum total views the audience for games as composed exclusively of pubescent children, which is by no means any longer the gaming demographic. As I’ll argue below, while the “boyishness” of sundry games may be useful and cathartic for boys, the yet memes for adults seem much more malignant.

One observation from the introduction quality noting for that upcoming provisions paper:

As Ellen Seiter (1993) has suggested, unspecific-based attacks on sweet and frilly girls’ shows, such as My Rarely Pony and Strawberry Shortcake, as “insipid” frequently resemble earlier dismissals of grown-up women’s genres such as melodrama, affair of the heart or soap opera. These criticisms are grounded in a discontentment for women’s aesthetic preferences toward mark relations and emotional issues, and they are engrained in the assumption that nonprofessional women (whether they are the housewives who present Harlequin romances or their daughters who buy Attention Bears) are mindless and uncritical consumers of patriarchal education…. Seiter (1993) calls on us to value girls’ cultural tastes and enrol, even as we push toward more empowering fantasies, since there are so innumerable other forces in society that decry and demean girls. (p.21)

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