Leveling up article –

“Most games feature white protagonists”

“Asain people are heavily portrayed in fighting games”

Why diversity matters –

“As a girl growing up playing games I was always like, why do I have to play games as a boy?”

“We’re bringing that ‘it looks like me’ moment to more people”

Laura Mulvey

“In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness”.

“In herself the woman has not the slightest importance”

Feminist frequency –

“The Damsel in Distress predates the invention of video games by several thousand years”

“The gruesome death of women for shock value is especially prevalent in modern gaming”

My video game is going to be about animals in the wildlife. It is will be based off the stereotypical and reactionary idea that animal video games are about hunting, so I turned this idea around to be about saving animals in the wildlife from poaching which is counterstereotype and radical. As my game is counterstereopical and radical I will have an image of the animal rescuer as the dominant signifier and an sanctuary and the poachers nearby to show that the objective of the game is to rescue the animals. I will also use lots of muted colours such as light yellows and greens to show that this is a positive game and not one that has lots of violence in it. I intend for the game to be age 15 and up as there will still be weapons involved, so the PEGI age rating will display this on the bottom left corner of each side of the game cover. The animal sanctuary and the carers will be icons and a sign for rescue and care. The Index sign will be console companies such as Xbox and Playstation to show that this is a video game. The audience that would consume it would be people who do not like violent video games and like animals and wildlife.

The male gaze is a term used to suggest a sexualised way of looking at women that is empowering for heterosexual men but is objectifying toward women, meaning the woman’s feelings, thoughts and sexual drive are of less value than her being desirable for men to look at.

Laura Mulvey is a British film theorist made the term ‘the male gaze’ in the 1973 paper Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.

John Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. He broadcasted a television series called Ways of Seeing as well as publishing a book for it too which spoke about the image of women being portrayed as a sexual object in Western culture.

Climate Change Champion!

An environmentalist’s ideas on how we can fight climate change.

A picture that illustrates the effects climate change has had on our environment.

By Kimberly Guzdar

A CLIMATE CRISIS – Caitlin Klein is a young environmentalist who wants to make a difference, she was given a fantastic opportunity to work with 500 students across the UK to collaborate on their ideas about climate change and how they can make a difference as youths. In addition, they had the opportunity to go to the screening of A Life On Our Planet which was David Attenborough’s biography and call to action for people to help combat the climate crisis. Unfortunately, this event was cancelled due to the coronavirus, but I have invited Caitlin to be interviewed about her passion for the environment and how we can make a change.

Who do you believe can make a change in our rapidly declining environment? Do they have to be someone who has a lot of power and money or can it be anyone?

I believe that through collaboration we can combat climate change, through small community action. It may seem very insurmountable but I think communities can work together to overcome local and global issues.

Why are you so passionate about the environment, do you believe that there should be a lot more awareness even now about the devastating effects of climate change?

I believe that we are stewards of the environment and it is our duty as intelligent beings. Nature is so beautiful and intricate but so fragile when exposed to humans that only we have the power and intelligence to save it. It can so easily recover when we are gone and it is our actions that have caused this destruction so it should be us who solve it.

A life on our planet cover.

What were the most important things that you took away from watching David Attenborough’s film A Life On Our Planet? What parts of his film did you find most inspiring? Also David Attenborough is a huge inspiration to you and you want to go down a similar line of work to him, how would you go about that?

His film highlighted how much of our planet and climate has changed just over a single lifetime. I found it very poignant and also quite alarming at just how fast and dramatic we are having an impact on our world. But I found it reassuring as it demonstrates that through collaboration we can reverse this catastrophe. I am following a stem degree and then hope to get experience working in broadcasting as an intern.

What can we do to make a difference in Jersey?

 In Jersey I believe just because we are a small island we can still make a powerful difference. We can help clean our beaches, put pressure on our politicians and also raise awareness.

Semiotics

Sign – Something which stand for something else

Code – Technical, written and symbolic tools used to suggest or create meaning in media forms

Convention – Accepted ways of doing something

Dominant signifier – The main representative

Anchorage – Words with an image to give context

Ferdinand de Saussure

Signifier – Stands in for something else

Signified – Idea being evoked by signifier

C S Pierce

Iconic – An icon is something that looks like an object e.g. camera work, sets, props

Index – A sign that has a link to its object e.g. sounds or props

Symbol – A sign that has an arbitrary or random link to its object (colours, shapes, textures)

Roland Barthes

Signification – Structural levels of signification, meaning or representation

Denotation – First level analysis (what a reader can see on the page)

Connotation – Meaning or associations we have with an image

Myth – Naturalises events turning history into nature

Ideology – A world view about how society should function

Radical – Something you would not expect/out of the ordinary

Reactionary – What you would expect/follows stereotypes

Paradigm – A typical example or pattern of something

Syntagym – An orderly combination of interacting signifiers which forms a meaningful whole

Iconic sign: – Camera, newspapers

Indexical sign: Newspaper headliner, camera lens, newspaper article

Symbolic sign: Blue gradient, white newspaper associated with what we know of newspapers, media studies a level text