SparkleBliss

International Video Game Hall of Fame and Museum kick-off in Ottumwa, IA. [source]

I’ve been rather absent from the web because I was preparing for and then executing a research trip — the first of what I suspect will be a fair number related to my dissertation work. This particular bunch of travels took me to Chicago and to Ottumwa, IA.

In Chicago, I was dredging through a few volumes of RePlay at the public library (the only place outside the Library of Congress that has any back issues), and in Ottumwa, I was conducting the first round of oral history interviews I plan to complete. Folks in Ottumwa were incredibly helpful, and I wound up being able to cram seven interviews into two days — all scheduled in about a week. So, in addition to feeling incredibly grateful to everyone in Ottumwa who took the time to talk to me or otherwise help me out, I’m really excited about the work I’m doing.

The reason I went to Ottumwa is that it was the home of the infamous Twin Galaxies Arcade and scoreboard and a number of people who were involved in Twin Galaxies are still in the area. I interviewed Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day, former Twin Galaxies players, current chamber of commerce executive director Terry McNitt, and former Ottumwa mayor Jerry Parker, who was the mayor who declared Twin Galaxies the video game capital of the world back when. I owe the whole community a debt of gratitude.

Ottumwa has been in the news as of late because of the efforts of folks in Ottumwa to build an International Video Game Hall of Fame and Museum. [story] It was definitely worthwhile to be in Ottumwa in the midst of renewed interest in the city’s claim as a key point in the development of video gaming, and I will be following the hall of fame efforts with great interest. If you’re interested in the hall of fame campaign, I recommend joining the Facebook group. And, if you’re interested in a short video of me talking about my research, there’s one right here from KTVO 3.

Queen bees go head-to-head in Bring It On: All or Nothing. [source]

As is often the case when I find myself any place where cable is readily available. I stayed up entirely too late last night watching television, sucked into a movie I would have never deliberately viewed. Last night, the film in question was Bring It On: All or Nothing, the third installation in the Bring It On franchise. As is the case with most teen films, the plot here is fairly straightforward. In All or Nothing, preppy, perky, pink-clad Britney Allen (Hayden Panettiere) moves to a less than affluent neighborhood and high school when her father is faced with a paycut and office relocation. Forced to give up her position as the cheerleading captain at Pacific Vista, she finds herself an outcast in the meaner hallways of Crenshaw Heights. She tries out for the cheerleading squad and enters into a battle of the queen bees with Crenshaw cheerleading captain Camille (Solange Knowles).

Now, there is little exceptional here plot wise, but the racial politics of the film are interesting. In some instances, stereotypes play out without commentary, but at other points the characterizations slip easily into satire. The wealthier students at Pacific Vista are nearly uniformly white and blonde with one Asian-American cheerleader. The campus is filled with lovely seating areas and sushi carts. An hour away at Crenshaw, the student body is almost entirely African-American and Latino/Latina, and the cafeteria food looks markedly unappealing. However, when Britney finds the sole table of white students in the cafeteria and sits down, relieved, the white students, too, reject her, leaving the table immediately. In another scene, Britney’s Pacific Vista quarterback boyfriend hassles her new classmate and cheerleading squadmate Jesse (Gus Carr), who is delivering pizza to Britney’s house, saying, among other things, “Your job sucks.” These scenes and others make clear that the more salient cultural clash is one not of race, but of socioeconomic class.

While race remains a key topic throughout the film, it comes up most frequently in reference to Britney’s whiteness, and when Winnie (Marcy Rylan), who has replaced Britney as captain at Pacific Vista, launches into a racist tirade, the other wealthy teens uniformly reject her. One of the most interesting moments in the film is a confrontation between Britney and Winnie in front of the competition that has mobilized the entire plot. When Britney defends her new squadmates, all of whom are African-American or Latina/Latino, Winnie calls her “white trash.” The insult galvanizes Britney and leads Camille to re-accept Britney onto the squad (she had previously been kicked off). The interpellation of Britney as “white trash” fully aligns her with her non-white peers, and the insult in the context of the film is read doubly as both racist and classist, with the class insult carrying more weight, as Britney’s whiteness has been discussed throughout the film by her Crenshaw classmates.

The deployment of the term “white trash” in All or Nothing is interesting to me because it requires audience members to have a relatively sophisticated understanding of the intertwining of race and class. “White trash” as insult hinges on the racist assumption that whites exhibiting specific behaviors assumed to be characteristic of non-whites deserve to be called out — the implication being, of course, that all non-whites are inherently “trash.” This address of race and class politics in a film about cheerleading, an athletic pursuit that persists in the American imagination as a bastion of small-town wholesomeness (read: whiteness) is compelling, and suggests the complex negotiations and discussions that so often happen in seemingly facile genre films.

Marilyn Monroe and her world-renowned mole. [source]

I made it through my visit to the junior high more or less unscathed. The principal did begin to ask me to remove my facial piercing (I have had a monroe for the past 3 years) lest I violate the dress code, but I said I would have to go back to the piercing studio to have it re-set. He then let it slide on grounds that I would only be there for the first hour of classes. I almost offered to put a Band-Aid on it, only because a Band-Aid on my face would be so much more distracting than a diamond stud.

I have never been a big fan of junior high and high school dress codes. When I was younger, this was because the dress code prevented me from dying my hair pink, but now that I am older it is largely because of the way that they work to reinforce standards of beauty and gender and various other things that make me squirm. I have yet to read through one of these codes that isn’t based on deeply entrenched idea of gender-appropriate dressing, and I think that often the codes help train students to be judgmental weasels about things ranging from facial piercings to short skirts. Dress codes enforce a limited level of sameness while simultaneously working to stigmatize rejections of sameness. The most commonly enforced aspect of dress codes seems to be the rules governing the lengths of shorts and skirts, and those particular rules further police girls’ sexuality and provide ammo for teenagers eager to label female classmates as sluts.

Maybe girls shouldn’t be wearing short shorts to class, but, maybe boys should learn how to not freak out any time they can see an extra inch of thigh. Frankly, I think the latter issue is more troubling, as it’s anchored in a set of cultural beliefs about boys and men not being able to control themselves, and women having to serve as the foundation for the sexual morality of an entire society.

The titular characters of Heathers. [source]

As I tend to do a few times a year, I am driving northbound to my hometown this evening to visit my family. On this particular sojourn, I am also speaking to the junior high smartypants English class about Being A Writer.

To say I hated junior high would be a gross understatement. The mean girls of my grade weren’t named Heather — I’m a hair too young for that. No, the mean girls in my grade came in flurries of Melissas and Jennifers and Amandas and Tiffanies. The comedy Mean Girls was based on the book Queen Bees and Wannabees — it might as well be a documentary. The intense loathing with which I reflect on that part of my life has such raw power as to blot out entire years. I probably remember more about what it felt like to be 7 than what it felt like to be 12. I consider this a profound blessing. I disliked high school less, but only degrees so. When I graduated, I hightailed it to college hardly daring to look back, lest I be transformed into a pillar of salt, a high school English teacher,* or some other form that might slow my escape.

I carried a fear of teenagers with me into college. Hiking across campus as an undergraduate, late to class or work or both, I was sidelined by a cluster of teenaged girls yelling after me. I was, momentarily, petrified, but when I turned to look at them, they said only that they liked my hair — of course they did, it was dyed a bright otherworldly pink. While I have spent the past two years volunteering at OutYouth, an Austin-based organization that provides services to GLBTQ youth ages 12 to 19, it took years for me to realize that, now that I am an adult, junior high and high school students are likely not going to be mean to me for no good reason out in public.

And, so, now that I am old enough not to feel skittish around anyone too young to drink, I am going back to junior high to talk about writing. I have wanted to be a writer since I was a child, and while I certainly have pursued other interests here and there, I’ve written continuously in some professional capacity since I was 18. I haven’t loved all the writing work I have done, and some of my own pieces make me wish I could scrape my name off of them like a price tag, but all of the work has helped me figure out what work suits me best and what it takes to cobble together the kind of clip file I can feel good about. That is probably some portion of what I will tell the class tomorrow. I will also tell them that being a decent interviewer requires being a decent person, and that no one is going to discover you, you have to hustle work for yourself.

The decent person thing, though, I think is the real rub. Or, at least it is for me.

*High school education is a great career for people with the correct constitution. I am not one of these people. I am disorganized, impatient, and curse like a sailor.

Flow Conference 2008 sticker I designed.

For the past four years, I have been affiliated with Flow first as a student editor for two years, and more recently as a senior editor. In that time, I’ve served on the editorial board of the journal and also helped coordinate the first and second Flow Conferences, in addition to penning two columns on issues related to video gaming — “The Right to Play: Youth, Video Gaming, and the Law” and “Gaming for the Gal on the Go: Advertising the Nintendo DS” — and helping curate the list of the Top 10 Video Games of 2008.

Working with Flow has meant an opportunity not only to develop as a scholar, editor, and writer, but also to continue to produce scholarship that has in it some of the same impulses that sustain me as a freelance writer producing work for more popular press outlets. Flow manages to do something very few academic publications can — it publishes timely scholarship, which allows the journal to respond efficiently to media issues and events in a way that few print journals can.

For those of you who already know Flow, I can only hope you share my affection for the project, and for those of you who don’t, whether you are scholars or civilian media hounds, I hope you will take some time to check in on it here and there. The issues that Flow takes on including television, transmedia events, social media, and video gaming should hit home for a lot of you.