Epistemic Closure and Me

In his article, "Revenge of the Reality-Based Community", conservative Bruce Bartlett describes his fall from favour with America's Republican Party.  In it, he uses the term "epistemic closure".  In his context, he uses the term to describe a state of affairs where forms of cognitive dissonance can be comfortably ignored within a bubble of like-minded friends and Fox News.  Basically, he argues that conservatives have created a system where they can ignore not just contradictory viewpoints, but evidence, science and yea, reality itself.  This is not just an issue for Bruce Bartlett and conservatives.  It's everywhere. 

One of the things I try not to take for granted is the stunning rise, during the youth of my generation, of the internet.  As a shy high school student, I called the internet for the first time in a computer lab in my high school.  The computer went shhhhh boing eeeboing-boing.  It was all text-based.  Now the internet is an essential service.  It's the flagship invention of our Information Age.  As a writer I can research any topic without leaving my home.  As a consumer, I could watch movies on Netflix all day and never see them all.  And as a Man I can... do other stuff.

The Truth, as based on evidence and scientific findings, has never been more available.  Yet people seem more confused than ever.  For my lifetime has also seen the rise of something sinister: extremist politics.  Since that day in the early 90's when the school's computer went boing-boing, the world seems to have filled with evangelical Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, radical free-marketeers, paranoid left-wingers and conspiracy theorists.  These groups were around when I was a kid.  However, what makes them more powerful today is that they can pick up a keyboard and find hundreds of people to agree with them.  They can live their lives avoiding cognitive dissonance and differing viewpoints, digging themselves deeper in layer-upon-layer of justifications, gradually believing stranger and more incorrect things.  I know how easy it is to get caught in this world, because ten years ago I was One Of Them.

It all starts with not wanting to be wrong.  In 2001, the world's political landscape changed suddenly when The World Trade Center in New York was destroyed.  Sitting American President George W. Bush experienced a huge upswing in popularity.  I hated that.  His presidency was already infamous for its stupidity and dishonesty, so when he said that a cell of fanatic Muslims was responsible for the attacks, I doubted him.  I wondered if, because he benefited from the attacks, he might be responsible.  I turned to the internet to satisfy my doubt and found thousands of viewpoints that reinforced what I already wanted to believe: "I am not wrong in doubting".

This was my gateway into the world of epistemic closure that is far-left conspiracy theory.  Every conspiracy theory needs three things: an antagonist, followers who feel victimized, and a will to believe.  For small-c right-wingers, the antagonist is a vast organization that includes corrupt politicians, communists, media outlets and hordes of deluded thralls.  Small-c left-wingers blame different organizations.  Fanatic Christians and Muslims believe the Devil is at the centre of the conspiracy.  Others think it's freemasons, extra-terrestrial intelligences, or a race of reptile men.

I was in the small-c left wing camp.   I felt I was the victim of a group of shadowy rich men who continuously tread on my rights as a human, elect and bribe politicians, control dishonest media outlets and make a mockery of democracy.  As I write this, this theory doesn't sound so crazy.  That's how a conspiracy gets you: it starts somewhere real.  William Randolph Hearst was a rich man who influenced politics with money, owned yellow media outlets and drove America to war.  Rupert Murdoch, with his ownership of Fox News, is Hearst's modern counterpart.  The world is full of rich men who love to wield their power.  

I lived in this world for several years.  Every day I would log on to whatreallyhappened.com and check out the array of news sources which spanned mainstream outlets, to hazy sites like infowars.com and prisonplanet.com, to sketchy publications like Pravda and the official media outlet of Saddam Hussein's government, to the lowest level of left-wing newsmaking: angry bloggers sitting in their basements making stuff up.  I was angry, too.  Who wouldn't be angry in a world where 9-11 was an inside-job by the American government?  Or Al-qaeda is an invention of Israel's Mossad?  Or hundreds of American soldiers die daily in Iraq and are not reported? 

I wanted this world to be true.  It wasn't just about being right or not being wrong.  Believing in a story like this added meaning to my life: I felt like I was doing something important in opposing the conspiracy.  And believing in the conspiracy made me feel smarter than everybody else. 

Then, suddenly, I stopped.  I was tired of being angry and powerless.  I was reading something claiming that yet another group was responsible for 9-11.  At this point, I had heard that 9-11 had been engineered by Al-qaeda, the CIA, the NSA, NORAD, the Bush White House, the Mossad, the Israeli Army, Cubans or the Rothschilds.  "So which group is it?!" I exclaimed.  And I had no answer.  For you see, I didn't know.  I wasn't there and I didn't see.  I would never really know, it was beyond my power to know, and it was not my responsibility to know.

That was step one of my recovery and it felt great.  My anger dropped away so suddenly that I sighed.  I stepped out of my house into the sunlight, breathed warm autumn air and felt great. 

Step two of my recovery was a little more difficult.  At this stage I looked at my past beliefs and realized that not only did I not know what happened, but my past claims were most likely wrong.  It hurt to admit.  In trying to add significance and importance to my life, I engaged in insignificant and unimportant activity.  In trying to be smarter than everybody else, I became ignorant.  In trying so hard to be right, I was wrong.  

Step three was a little easier.  I realized that there are people in the world who knew what happened.  These are people who are trained to know.  There are intelligence experts all over the world who agreed Al-qaeda is responsible.  There was also Al-qaeda itself, that claimed responsibility for orchestrating the attacks and training the pilots.  The simplest explanation was that these people were right. 

It's easy to fall into the trap of epistemic closure.  I feel embarrassed about the things I thought and said, but I have to remind myself how easy it is to believe incorrect information in the age of the internet.  It's even easier now.  On Facebook, an article with a crazy title goes viral quickly and people will share it without checking sources. 

Let's take a look at this shitty internet situation.  I just Googled the word "reptoid".  Here are the first ten results.

Result 1: Wikipedia.  Anybody can edit Wikipedia.  Because of this, it has a reputation for inaccuracy.  Unfortunately, it's the only search result that is critical of the idea that reptoids control the world.

Results 2, 3, 5 and 6: Conspiracy websites Reptoid Research Center, the Reptoid Wiki and the Alien Research Wiki.  These sites will tell you that a conspiracy of anthropomorphic, maneating reptiles are masquerading as humans and ruling the world.

Results 7 and 8: YouTube videos of reptoids Johnny Depp and Alex Jones supposedly shapeshifting.  (The Alex Jones shapeshifting video is especially silly: yet another example of conspiracy theorists claiming other conspiracy theorists are part of the conspiracy)

Results 4 and 9: results unrelated to the reptoid conspiracy.  A guy nicknamed reptoid has weird photos and a Swedish magazine is named "Reptoid". 

Result 10: Urban Dictionary.  Absolutely useless for anything.  It's uninformative, not funny and fuck fuck fuck I hate Urban Dictionary. 

Here is the point I'm trying to illustrate.  If somebody tells you that Queen Elizabeth II is a shapeshifting flesh-eating reptile, it's difficult to find proof on Google that she's not.  The only sane site on the first page is the perpetually-scorned Wikipedia.  To search further, you will have to wade through scores of unsourced frightmongering conspiracy sites, irrelevant links, broken links, advertisements, mirror sites and porn to find something useful.

It's the Information Age, people.  Why is it so hard to find sourced evidence that reptoids don't exist?  It should be front-row, centre.  Instead, Google has provided me with a series of results that will support an unhealthy belief-system, hedged by random crap.  The Information Age was supposed to disseminate knowledge.  Instead we have a multimedia minefield where banner ads decorate the desperate squeals of mentally-ill persons trying to be correct. 

There has to be a better way.  How about this, Google?  How about letting media outlets, universities and research companies register as "scientific" or "sourced", and if you search with a specific Google setting, these results will come up first?  If Google can SafeSearch porn, it can help the world filter its bullshit, ads and inane yammering.  

In honour of this occasion, I am going back over my posts on this blog and deleting one that was poorly-sourced and spreading misinformation.  I won't tell you which one, though.  It's still hard to admit that I've been wrong.

http://pharaohphobia.blogspot.com

Book Review of "Sacred Origins of Profound Things" by Charles Panati

Charles Panati is a renaissance man.  He's published books on history, the supernatural, science, word origins, and my favourite: his tome about endings, which covers sundry topics ranging from death to disease to extinction.  This book, Sacred Origins of Profound Things: The Stories Behind the Rites and Rituals of the World's Religions, is about the divine. 

Though this book is about world religions, Panati's interest seems to be attracted by the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism.  By comparison, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu and the Protestant and Orthodox Christians are given only passing mention.  Even so, the scope of this book is massive, covering how humans understood the gods, The God, Satan, the afterlife, religious garments and dogma for thousands of years. 

Panati's tone attempts to be impartial, but it's difficult.  Some of the rationalizations, bizarre interpretations, circular thinking, and blunders made by religions in the past are simply difficult for a modern reader to take seriously.  Also, Panati cannot resist a good digression and will often interrupt his narrative to tell a funny story.

I started reading this book in January of 2012.  Eleven months later, I'm finally finished.  At 500+ big pages, this book is a massive commitment.  It wasn't always an interesting journey, particularly the chapter about Catholic vestments, but I have returned much wiser.  I was unaware, for instance, of the amount of non-biblical story that generations of Catholic thinkers have heaped upon the Biblical Mary, mother of God.

The Bible says a teenager named Mary was betrothed to a man named Joseph, though she did not "know him".  An angel named Michael appears and tells her she is/will be with God's child.  She then gives birth to Jesus.  Jesus is raised by his mother, amongst brothers and sisters, until he gets killed by Romans.  Mary sees him briefly after he returns to life, and then she vanishes from the pages of the Bible.  Let's assume that "not knowing" Joseph is a correct linguistic interpretation.  She is the Virgin Mary, after all, and it would be cruel to dissect her greatest miracle, carrying the Son of God without having sex. 

At some point in the early Christian church's history, it started to get more prudish than its Jewish fathers.  Then it got a little more prudish, then ridiculously prudish.  Sex, female anatomy, burst hymen, and birth became abhorrent to Christian thinkers.  They blamed femalekind for original sin, which bore as its wicked fruit, sex.  From this viewpoint, 2000 years-worth of story was interpreted or invented onto the Bible's original text.  Some of this tale is dogma, some of it merely widely believed by those in the know:

Mary's parents didn't enjoy having sex, so therefore Mary was born into the world without original sin.  Jesus didn't have a vaginal birth, rather, he was magically C-sectioned in a ray of light out of her womb, keeping her hymen intact.  Her maidenhead remained intact after Jesus' birth as well, as it turns out all those brothers and sisters were Joseph's from a previous marriage.  When she died, her body laid in the ground for a couple days without decomposing, because bacteria and graveworms don't eat virtuous people.  Then she crawled out of her tomb and ascended.  These days, she ventures out of heaven to tell children to build shrines and convert Russia to Catholicism.

That's interesting.  I did not know that.  If this sort of thing appeals to you, you'll love this book.  Without a doubt, many readers may experience cognitive dissonance, particularly Catholics who may be surprised at the things they are REQUIRED to believe.  As I mentioned before, the book is very long and has boring bits.  Luckily, it's written to easily choose which chapters to read, and you can put it down for long periods if you so wish.  Therefore I rate this book, speaking Infallibly of course:
4 self-inflicted stigmata out of 5
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In other news, I put the finishing touches on my fourth screenplay, "The Rising".  Also, Rosie's Knife was finally published in the final issue of Dark Recesses Magazine.  Read it here: http://www.cuttingblock.net/darkrecesses.html.  It's been a good month!

http://pharaohphobia.blogspot.com/

Knocking the Windowpane

If pride cometh before the fall, you can expect my next drop to shatter my skull (again).  The Residuals will soon celebrate our album, Knocking the Windowpane, at our CD release party.  The event is at the Woods Ale House, October 6th, (2012), at 9:00 PM.  There will be a concert, CD signing, and a free Paddockwood beverage for your $5 entrance free. 

So how am I feeling?  A year ago this album was just a frightening concept for my ego and pocketbook.  Now I don't care if we ever sell another copy.  Listening to the culmination of all that effort in my car, seeing Kara tap her feet in the back seat is reward enough. 

And what an experience!  When we entered PulsWorks studio in December of last year, we were worried.  Some of us were terrified.  We were rehearsed and prepared, but as we sat before the microphones in the centre of the room, we were tense.  Were we making the right decision in our choice of studio?  The standard amount one can expect to pay to record an album is $10,000, but we were budgeted for half that amount.  Would our miserliness ruin our work?  Would we mess up and cause a fiasco?  Were we good enough to record an album?   

Indeed, nothing seemed to go right those first hours.  As we struggled through Patsy Geary's Jig and Miss McLeod's Reel, fingers fumbled, trembling hands strummed uncertain chords and tempers rose.  Ted's pipes squawked in the dropping humidity.  (We preserved a relic of our frustration at the beginning of the Patsy Geary Set track: Ted's drones fail to deploy and he growls, "Oh, you son of a gun.")
 

At the end of that day, we decided to try one last track.  It was Rick's song, The Blue Diamond Mines, a Jean Ritchie ballad about working coal mines.  For four brief minutes, everything went right.  We had a near-perfect one-take wonder instrumental track.  "It's a good thing we did that," said Rob, "Because if we hadn't, there wouldn't be a second day of recording." 

Over the next months, we got better at recording.  We relaxed.  We started to have fun.  And we also ripped through tracks with confidence and the good musicianship I've come to expect from my band. 

Soon, our instrumental tracks were recorded.  We left the big room we chose for its acoustics and entered a tiny padded room.  That was a fun day!  It's cliche, but we all experienced shock at hearing our voices in high fidelity (do I really sound like that?)  We recovered quickly and completed all of our songs in record time!  (notice the hilarious double-meaning there?) 

Next came editing.  Rob and I joined our engineer, Brady, in the studio to turn our work from kinda good into perfect.  It's amazing what a good sound engineer can do.  It's not just adding echoes.  The three of us surfed all of our music for not just the best takes, but the best sections of each take.  Seemlessly, Brady cut the rotten bits out, substituted good bits, and subtly blended the result so it didn't sound dumb.  His wonderful gadgets and gizmos were also able to easily change the duration of sung lyrics so that we sounded way tighter than we actually are. 

Perhaps some ultra-traditionalists are pumping their shillelaghs in the air in fury exclaiming, "Editing?  Why would ye want ta do dat terrible t'ing?"  It's worth noting that all the editing we did used pure "us", just the best of us.  No pitch correction tools were used.  Each track was recorded with all instruments in the same room, playing at the same time.  Also, no animals were harmed.  Also, go to hell you stereotypical conservative Irish straw-men! 

Rob recorded his tracks from prison

Then, one summer day, the recording and editing was finished.  I remember it because it was the day before my birthday.  Also, I fell down my front steps at home from exhaustion as the tension left my body.  As I was lying on cement at the bottom of my deck unable to move from fatigue, relief, and also pain from my twisted ankle, it became apparent that I was carrying a burden of stress from this project. 

At the time, I thought the stress was over, but there was more fun in my future.  There was the manufacture to arrange and make sure it would be in Saskatoon by FolkFest.  There was the booklet to design.  And also licensing.  Ohhh, the licensing.  Take it from me, if you're going to record an album, make sure you either write your own songs or borrow from the public domain.  8 cents per song per album may not seem like a lot of money to pay in licensing fees, but you pay tenfold in time-wasting as you fill out forms and hunt for composers on the internet.
 

Regardless of troubles, our baby is here.  I can be critical and severe, particularly regarding music, PARTICULARLY my own music, but I actually like our album!  My peeps tried their damndest and they succeeded in producing one hour of pleasing music.  What's it like?  Think Great Big Sea minus the drum kit and minus the cheesy songs designed to get them laid.  Or maybe imagine what the Dubliners could have done if they drank less. 

Knocking the Windowpane truly redefines Irish traditional music.  Nay!  Music itself!  Junk your other CDs, dismantle the recording industry, disband the Metropolitan Opera, send Bob Dylan to the gibbet, throw the Black Eyed Peas to the wall, dig up the corpses of the great composers and burn them.  You won't need 'em after you buy Knocking the Windowpane.  Am I over-selling this? Perhaps.  But I still think the Black Eyed Peas should be executed.
 

As the result of our hard rehearsing, our act is better.  We've doubled and trebled the number of gigs we've been playing.  However, for the Residuals, our big project is over and now we have time for some rest.  Rest, in this instance, means learning new material, enjoying alcoholic beverages in moderation and generally not worrying about stuff.  It feels good. 

http://pharaohphobia.blogspot.ca/

Book Review of 'Tis by Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt is a writer and teacher.  In Ireland, he spent his childhood in poverty.  In the dark lanes of Limerick, he and his family suffered through starvation and disease.  He watched several siblings die.  Then, as a teenager, the woman he was working for died and he stole money from her purse.  The money paid his fare across the Atlantic to New York on a freighter.

This was the subject of McCourt's earlier memoir, Angela's Ashes.  The next chapter of his life, 'Tis, picks up where Angela's Ashes left off: the freighter crossing the Atlantic, and spans the next forty years of his life.  It follows his life as he cleans ashtrays at the Biltmore hotel, joins the army, unloads ships and struggles to become a teacher despite his poor education.  His amusing descriptions of his trials and the odd characters he meets form the basis of his memoir. 

The book truly allows you to live inside Frank McCourt's insecure skin and experience the life of an Irish immigrant in New York.  It has laughs and groans of embarrassment.  That he has bettered himself and lived a remarkable life I cannot deny.  My life is undeniably better for having read his story.  Yet I have to say that when I think of this book, I feel a little cold. 

Maybe it's just the ordering of events that bothers me.  I'm not sure what 'Tis is about.  Is it about the triumph of an immigrant in America?  Is it about a son who cannot remove himself from the shadow of his alcoholic father?  Is it about learning how to teach?  Is it about all of them and I'm an idiot for trying to force a moral or theme on this remarkable life?

Also, the book suffers from a lack of quotation marks.  I hate that.  I like knowing for sure when somebody is talking. 

If you've read Angela's Ashes or watched the movie, this book will have appeal as you get to explore Frank McCourt's life further.  Teachers and historians will also get a kick out of it.  For me, it had great parts.  Many great parts.  The sum of its parts is multiplied by a figure I don't understand.
3 1/2 cringing face-palms out of 5

Movie Review of Nashville

The 59th movie on AFI's list is the Robert Altman film Nashville.  It's a typical Altman film with a giant ensemble cast, realistic dialogue and a rambling plot.  It follows a few days in Nashville's country and gospel music industry in the 1970's. 

I wasn't a huge Robert Altman fan before I saw this film, and I'm still not.  You would think that with realistic characters and authentic-sounding dialogue, a film would be interesting.  But Nashville is not.  I would even say that it is unspeakably dull.  Because the camera's attention wanders in and out of characters' conversations and doesn't cut during the boring parts, my attention span did the editing for Robert Altman by drifting in and out of the movie.  Things my wife was doing, the antics of household cats, the weather, and lint between my toes at various times were more interesting to me than the action on-screen. 

The movie's music is meant to be a snapshot of the real Nashville's music in the 1970's.  And boy-howdy, country music was in a bad place back then.  On the scaffolding of cowboy ballads, folk music and songs about unfaithful wives was built a teetering Babylon of maddening pretention where untrained singers screeched above full orchestras, when early synthesizers beeped and booped next to the howl of slide guitar, when nauseating, nasal male voices told you in no uncertain lyrics exactly what to think.  The lumbering adult-contemporary beast opened wide its maw, gobbled Hank Williams Jr. and took a shit on 70's culture.  That rhinestone-encrusted piece-a'-shit was country music from this era. 

Nashville is many things bad.  It's a black comedy that isn't very funny.  It's a snapshot of a musical genre that deserves infamy and scorn.  It's another reason I have to curse Robert Altman's name and progeny, and yet another selection from the supposed 70's golden age of cinema that just bores not just the hell, snot and shit out of me, but the lymph, earwax and spinal fluid. 

In conclusion: Fuck.  Nashville. 
1/2 a repetative refrain of "It Don't Worry Me" out of 100

Stripper, Censor, Gamer, Guy

I'm a man.  I intend to remain so.  Therefore, when it comes to women's issues, I can sympathize, but not empathize.  I do know what it is like to be prejudged.  It is with great care that I approach this next subject.  I really don't want to embarrass myself.  Here goes. 

Awhile ago I read "Video Games and The Male Gaze" on Gamesutra.  It echoes a growing theme: today's video game industry is misogynistic.  Video game creators are 90% male and games are targeted to a huge male audience.  Furthermore, fanatic sexists inside and outside the industry are making life difficult for female gamers and creators.  I suggest you read the article before you proceed with this post.

I agree that male chauvinism ought not to be tolerated as a witness or victim.  I agree that sexist themes are common in video games.  I also become enraged when I read some of things that men have written on message boards and forums that humiliate both their female targets and themselves.  Yet something about this article really bothers me. 

What bothers me is that it seems to broaden the definition of sexism to a level at which I become uncomfortable.  It is a level that promotes shame in men.  It is a level that seems to suggest censorship and self-censorship in art and expression.  It is a definition of sexism that does not come from prejudging, degrading or hating women, but rather is the result of societal hangups about sex.  It applies not just to "The Male Gaze" and video games, but other media and indeed real-life. 

When a story is told, whether fiction or non-fiction, the good ones tend to involve remarkable things.  We love to see, hear and read about a remarkable personality, a remarkably courageous act, weird happenings, an unspeakable evil, a huge explosion.  We enjoy escaping our everyday lives to vicariously live an interesting life different from our own.  Most people, for instance, would be very interested to vicariously experience the events of the picture embedded in this text block, even if they would intensely dislike actually experiencing it. 

Many people enjoy seeing uncommonly gorgeous women in their media for this reason.  Another thing that doesn't happen very often in real life is seeing gorgeous women taking their clothes off, completely naked, or wearing sexy outfits.  For instance, my life has a distinct lack of chainmail bikinis and I enjoy seeing women wear them as a result. 

Visual media allow also the viewer to stare.  Our society has a huge stigma associated with staring at women's bodies.  Enlightened types (like me) allow ourselves a glance at an appealing bit of exposed flesh but try not to be conspicuous and are mortified if caught.  Women on the television, however, can be ogled until the frame changes and are never offended by a male gaze. 

Basically, our society has a huge pool of people who like to freely ogle scantily clad, beautiful women.  (Have you noticed how I've been writing "people" instead of men?  Am I not sexual-orientation-conscious?)  Not just see them, but be them.  I assume some female gamers enjoy the experience of roleplaying extremely sexy woman, but more importantly, many men seem to like pretending to be a sexy woman even if acknowledging it makes them uncomfortable.  Millions of male Tomb Raider players can't be wrong.  With so many people wanting to see and be sexy, of course game developers and film producers want to cash in.  So, is it a bad thing?  Brandon Sheffield, the author of "Video Games and the Male Gaze" and many like him say "yes".  They say such images are sexist. 

Is that true?  Not necessarily.  Wikipedia suggests that sexism is prejudging a person based on their gender, believing in gender supremacy, or holding people to gender stereotypes.  Going by this definition, seeing a picture of Red Sonja and assuming she's a stupid whore is sexism.  Showing her body, seeing her body and admiring her body are not sexist actions because doing so makes no judgment on her competencies or the content of her character. 

What I believe these people are actually objecting to is the fact that she IS sexy.  They worry about how much skin is showing.  They focus on how long cameras linger on certain shots.  This is a deep-seated hangup that society has about sex.  Our culture has taught us that sex is dirty, naughty and wrong.  It has taught us to be ashamed of our bodies.  It has taught us that female nudity equals sex.  It teaches people that they are bad for looking.  The solutions of the prudes  inevitably force people to cover up and self-censor, stunt creativity and hide emotions rather than dealing with them. 

It is not sexism that is driving the demand for lovely naked women, nor the shame at seeing them.  It is Victorianism.  If our society was cool with casual nudity, as in naturist communities and some tribal settings, seeing a naked woman wouldn't be a huge deal, nor would filming a naked woman be an issue, nor rendering one from pixels.  Remove the social stigma on nudity and you remove all the bullshit that comes with it.  Yeah, it's not going to happen in my lifetime, but one can hope for the future.  For now, we're stuck with the stigma. 
 
Seeking to titillate is not wrong, nor misogynist.  It fulfills a societal desire, even if the taboo on nudity exaggerates it.  However, returning to the example of Red Sonja, one can still criticize the thought process that went into the creation of her image on a non-sexist level.  Most obviously, you might point out that her armour is going to get her killed.  If she doesn't freeze to death immanently, that scale mail is going to guide a sword blow directly toward her heart.  The urge to titillate has overridden logic.  However, comic readers are willing to suspend their disbelief because they like looking at her.  Once again, that is not wrong or misogynist.  It's worth pointing out that Red Sonja is an accomplished swordswoman, is powerful, forces her will upon the world and has a rich and developed backstory.  As tempting as it is to target her as a symbol of sexism, on her own, she is a fully-developed character with a preference for sexy, non-functional armour. 

The problem is that there are just too many characters who look like her.  Just about every female video game character is designed to be sexy.  This is where the misogyny comes in, as many of these characters are poorly-defined, with bust-lines deeper than their backstories.  It falls neatly into the definition of sexism by pandering to established gender stereotypes.  It seems odd that busty warrior-women in sexy costumes are a gender stereotype considering that I have never met one in person, but there it is. 

There are hundreds of butt-ugly, scarred, old, mud-spattered, hulking, weedy, or unappealing male characters to choose from.  Women video game characters are confined to a single young, athletic figure with varying boob/ass size and hair colour.  There's a world of different, real female body shapes and faces out there.  That's why this article excites me.  The author/creator has carefully made female avatars/protagonists who blow the traditional only-sexy character out of the water.  I would love to see more of what this mindset has to offer. 

I like seeing sexy women in my video games.  I never want to see them go, and I suspect they never will.  What I would like to do, as a consumer, is reward game developers, by giving them my money, who create awesome female characters.  Sure, let them include many realistically-bouncy boobs.  But I would like them to expand the definition of "sexy" to include several other body-types.  I would like some female characters not to be sexy, or at least not have "sexy" be their chief descriptor.  But most of all, I yearn for real characters that I can identify with, care for or hate, and maybe fall in love with as the story unfolds.

The best defense against chauvinism is understanding, and the best way to understand somebody is to identify with them.  If women in video games have true character with backstory, hopes, fears, and difficult decisions, people will identify with them.  When understanding is achieved, distinctions of lingering camera frames and sexy armour vanish.  

----
Here's an aside. 

A few years ago, when video game nudity was less common, Electronic Arts released a video game called "The Godfather II".  It's basically a Grand Theft Auto clone about walking around frightening people, murdering them and taking their money.  The combat system includes many bare-handed fighting and wrestling elements.  It has rudimentary strategy elements as well.  All-in-all, it was a real piece-a-shit, continuing the tradition started with the first Godfather game of horrifying Francis Ford Coppola.

Included in the game are strip clubs in which the protagonist can view and interact with topless strippers.  You can sweet-talk them and slap their asses.  You can also shoot them.  But if you try to grab them, something interesting happens: they slap you and you are forced to let go.  See it here:  Oh yeah, it's not safe for work. 

No other characters in the game cause this automatic grab-rejection.  Is it because the designers took to heart the phrase, "You should never hit a woman?"  No, because you can grab fully-clothed women.  Is it following the time-honoured tradition of "Never touch a stripper?"  No, because you can still punch them to death.

So why did they do it?  Probably, and this is a guess here, the creators knew that if you could grab strippers, social media would be flooded with embarrassing videos of topless women being manhandled.  They knew some concerned parent would see junior's video of himself pretending to hump a topless stripper and then murdering her, then come the outraged religious groups and censors and blah blah blah.  They didn't want to deal with that.  

So... that's sexist, right?  I mean, their paper-thin personalities and acceptance of ass-slaps makes the strippers a sexist presence to begin with.  But the game singles out a group of women to protect for societal reasons, so it's more sexist?  Or is it not sexist because it empowers the strippers with martial arts?  Should EA be applauded for not allowing strippers to be grabbed or are they a bunch of cowardly hypocrites for making a murder-fantasy game and backing out because of nudity?  Shouldn't the random murdering be the issue EA backs away from, not the presence of strippers?  

I dunno.  I'm just a boy.  
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Movie Review of Duck Soup

Number 60 on AFI's list is Duck Soup, a 1933 Marx Brothers political satire.  The action takes place in the fictional country Freedonia, where wealthy plutocrat Ms. Teasdale orders that Rufus T. Firefly, become leader of the country.  Firefly, played by Groucho, proceeds to act like an asshole.  Meanwhile, the leader of neighboring Sylvania hires a couple other Marx Brothers to spy on Firefly.  They too proceed to act like assholes. 

Frankly, I have difficulty seeing how this movie is a political satire.  To me, it seems more of a series of set pieces engineered to feature the brothers Marx acting like assholes.  This isn't to say the movie is bad, I just think it's a little weak in the satire department.  That's also not to say the assholic antics of the Marx Brothers aren't funny, either.  When they act like assholes, they do so not because they're mean or angry.  Their characters have no motivation other than to cause chaos for its own sake. 

What this film has going for it is a series of quick-firing gags and physical comedy.  Amongst these is the oft-imitated mirror gag in which Harpo seemlessly pretends to be Groucho's reflection in a mirror.  What it lacks is a strong plot and, well, political satire.  All in all, I've seen way funnier comedies and many more political satires that are funny because they're true. 
2 1/2 leg-lifts out of 5