Violence as Entertainment

Violence in video games and other forms of entertainment is everywhere in our culture.  It’s interesting to note that in prehistoric times in video game history this was practically non-existent.  Any violence or attack tended to be against aliens (Space Invaders), ghosts (Pac-Man), robots (Robotron).  Not that there weren’t exceptions of course.  The mid-70’s arcade game Death Race comes to mind where you as the driver of a car had the goal of running over people although the technology of the 70’s didn’t allow the people to actually look anything like people.

Admittedly I have played some of these games myself.  Games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Alien vs. Predator although these are tame compared to the video of Grand Theft Auto we saw in class.  Part of the problem with violence in video games is that the technology continually gets better and more realistic while the other part is the tendency of programmers to continually push the boundaries.   How much more violence can we program into games and get away with it.

There’s also the question of desensitizing.  Does playing or viewing violent content desensitize us to violence we may encounter in real life?  Does it make us not care? Not feel?  Some would argue that these are just games, just harmless fun and nothing more.  However few would argue that it is beneficial.  Where are those wondering if playing and viewing violence in our media actually sensitizes us to violence and makes us care more about the people around us?  No one is asking that because it doesn’t happen.  So should we limit the amount of violence children are exposed to?  Should we limit what we ourselves are exposed to?  Wouldn’t we as a society be healthier if we did?

Food as Lifestyle

“What is there to eat?” is a question that we’re all familiar with.  A question related to that is what should I cook?  Cooking shows have been around for almost as long as there has been TV with Julia Child on PBS as an example.  However, until recently there hasn’t been the celebrity chef complete with catchphrases such as Emeril’s “Bam!” and “Let’s kick it up a notch!” or the wholesale packaging as food as lifestyle.  It’s no longer just a small cooking segment showcasing an interesting dish to make. It is now a lifestyle.  Of course you have a fully stocked kitchen with all of these wonderful utensils and other tools (if not you could always buy it from us).  Don’t get me wrong you need the right tools for the right job.  It’s the assumption that your typical normal American household is similarly stocked.

In this Rachel Ray clip describing how to make a vegetable penne pasta dish she goes through her kitchen which just so happens to have pine nuts (what you mean you don’t have pine nuts in your kitchen?), haricots verts (green beans), along with a variety of herbs (fresh of course, no bottle of McCormick here).

Now maybe food is a lifestyle to many people.  I just think it’s good to keep in mind that it’s ok if you’re kitchen isn’t as fully stocked as what you see on TV.  Go with what you like and don’t worry about keeping up with the Jonses (or Rachel Ray’s, Emeril’s, etc.)

Seeing is believing except when it isn't

Last week in class we discussed the power of photographs and the ease they are manipulated.  It's a natural instinct of ours to trust what we see and because photographs can so closely capture reality we tend to believe them.  In fact we tend to believe a picture over an eyewitness.  Memories can fade and people are fallible, but a picture is a picture, right?  That would be true except for one thing, it's people who take and can change photographs.

The picture above is one I took for my Photography 100 class here at Penn State Greater Allegheny in Spring 2009.  It's a picture of an abandoned Burger King in Olympia Shopping Center.  I was standing in the KFC parking lot at the time I took the picture.  The assignment was a type of treasure hunt where we took different pictures to fulfill different categories.  This picture was to fulfill the category of a picture that symbolized current life.  Because of the recession, especially at the time, I decided to take a picture of a closed business.  The above picture has had nothing done to it whatsoever, but did I manipulate it?  Yes, I did because I framed the shot.

This part of the assignment called for me to manipulate the above picture using Photoshop or something to make it completely different.  But instead I'll talk about the manipulation I did and let you decide whether the above photo is still truthful.  The story I wanted to tell was of a closed business.  On the day I took the picture there were two construction vehicles in the Burger King parking lot.  They were just out of frame to the right.  Why do that?  Well then you would see a closed business with two construction vehicles which would change the story.  The story then becomes one of hope.  Yeah, the business had closed but it was being rebuilt.  That wasn't the story I wanted to tell.

Did I lie or deceive?  You would think so at least until I pointed out that the KFC parking lot by the drive thru was fenced off in orange construction fencing.  The construction vehicles were therefore just parked in the BK lot to keep them out of the way.  They were really there to work on KFC, not BK.  KFC was (and still is) an operating business and they probably wanted to keep the disruption of construction to a minimum.  So the story I told with my picture was true and it would've been a deception to shift the frame right to show the construction vehicles even though they were there.  Just as an update 2 years later, the orange construction fencing at KFC is gone and so are the construction vehicles.  The BK building is still there and still empty.

Pictures even if it's straight from the camera are still manipulated because a person framed the picture.  Pictures represent reality but they are only a snapshot of reality because you never see what isn't in the frame.  How a photographer frames a picture is how they frame the story they want to tell and it's something we should always be aware of.