'Ugliness' around the world

On September 28, 2006 American audiences were introduced to Betty Suarez, the protagonist of Ugly Betty, which is one of the most popular adaptations of Fernando Gaitan’s Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea. This American dramedy was produced by Salma Hayek and aired for four seasons on ABC. Ugly Betty is just one of the 19 official adaptations of Gaitan’s dramedy narrative. This is why we have decided that for this week’s blogpost we would examine how Gaitan’s narrative of a young woman with prominent eyebrows, thick framed glasses and braces working in the fashion industry, has transgressed national borders and captured the heart of so many around the world - for example in China, where the show received the extra dimension of marketing tool in a beauty related campaign.

We find this case study to be interesting in relation to Thussu’s paper on ‘Cultural Practices and Media Production: The Case of Bollywood’ which discusses media globalization and how this phenomenon is a result of institutional as well as technological developments that have allowed global markets to open up to new knowledge, cultures and communication technologies (119). This media globalization results in what Thussu calls “contra flows.” Colombia’s Yo Soy Betty La Fea interestingly illustrates these contra flows, or reverse cultural export, in which peripheral cultures start to actively export their culture back to the center (visible in America’s Ugly Betty).

This case study will also illustrate how the cultural homogenization theory is no longer valid in today’s global media, by showing how both centers and margins are actively selecting, adapting, and consuming glocalized (a term coined by Roland Robertson, which refers to the coexistence of the global and the local) versions of western cultural symbols. The exportation and transnational adaptation of the Colombian soap opera Yo Soy Betty La Fea exemplifies these complex cross-cultural flows in global media. This is interesting especially in relation to the “cultural revolution” proposed by Hall, which is addressed in Berghahn and Sternber’s paper ‘Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe.’ This cultural revolution entails the embracement of hybridity and the act of the margins coming into representation. The prominent presence of Gaitan’s telenovela, which forms part of the non-core producing industries and television genres, illustrates that different cultures are actively coming into representation through their adaptations of Yo Soy Betty La Fea (Hesmondhalgh).

We could argue that the worldwide popularity of this super genre is attributed to the “potential for universality” that allows it to be “all things to all people” (Mattelart qtd in Hermosndhalg 282). In the case of Gaitan’s Yo Soy Betty La Fea, it presents the “ugly duckling turned swan” narrative in a melodramatic yet comical manner. Every adaptation is a representation, reaction and problematization of the proliferation of dominant Western beauty ideals that homogenize women all over the world. This is an interesting aspect that will be further explored in this blog.



Before we can assume TV's long years of stereotypical beauty representation and their prevalence in the media, we need to have a more precise understanding of what a stereotype - such as the stereotype of ugliness - is. For some cognitive psychologists, stereotyping describes a mechanism that creates categories and enables people to manage the swirl of data presented to them. This is a necessary process since the attempt to see all things freshly and in detail, rather than as generalities, is exhausting to our brain. (Berg, 2002) Therefore, there is a degree of psychic comfort in categorizing other people in this way.

In the media context, stereotypes are part of a narrative strategy that facilitates this psychological mechanism to identify roles and distinguish characters. The stereotype of Ugly Betty, for example, can be best defined as the ugly girl in the aesthetically-centered world of fashion. A representation of “the ugly duckling which has yet to become a swan” essentially based on her body image. The popularity of this storyline can be attributed to the highly recognizable pattern of aesthetic pressure experienced by women throughout different societies.

But beyond the existence of type construction in TV shows, the image of Ugly Betty exists as a part of a larger discourse on Otherness. In an attempt to define the boundaries of ugliness throughout the world, Kathryn Hughes (2015) argues that anyone in wrong contexts can become ugly, or, to borrow a term from anthropology, “out of place”. Lining up behind Umberto Eco, who has also written extensively on the subject, she suggests that beauty is dull because it is closed, finished and always the same. Ugliness, by contrast, can be infinite and everywhere.

Television dramas, like Ugly Betty, are characterized by the conjunction between identification and distancing. Huat notes that “foreignness” is a large part of the reason for and the viewing pleasure of watching foreign television dramas.

In sum, translated and dubbed dialogue domesticates the film/drama to facilitate identification, while the visual exotic foreign raises obstacles to identification. Taken together, watching imported tv dramas is a fragmentary process of intermittent moments of identification and distancing, rather than one of sustained and unwavering identification with what is on screen. (Huat 2011: 230)

The preferred identification with the on-screen character can be resisted by the audience. It is but one of the many viewing spaces that an active audience can take up. In resisting the preferred viewing position, one would be distancing oneself from the character and, therefore, from the message. This principle is not only applicable to television series: we see the same happening in the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (2004). Over a four year time period Dove used realistic attainable looking models instead of the typical models, as a part of the Dove movement for Self-Esteem. In America and Europe the advertisement was successful: women identified themselves with the models and believed in the message Dove wanted to distribute: natural beauty. However, the campaign completely flopped in China.



Advertisements with bigger models and no digital enhancements did not appeal to Chinese customers. According to Michael Czinkota, professor International Bussiness, Marketing and Strategy, Chinese women believe that the ‘perfect look’ is in fact attainable.  They thought that using this product is supposed to help them attain this particular look. This is the reason why Chinese women did not respond well to an advertisement with models that are not typically considered beautiful. The advertisement constituted of too much “foreignness” which became an obstacle for identification (Huat, 2011). Their awareness of the “foreigness” facilitated distancing instead of identification.

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty did not achieve the same success in China as in the United States and Europe. However, the campaign did prompt a multi-media reaction that included the adaptation of Betty, La Fea towards the Chinese (consumer) television market. Unilever, the company Dove is part of, realized that there was a perception gap between their advertisement and the local market. Their presence is critical in growing markets like China, so they approached the Hunan TV broadcast network with the idea of creating an ‘Ugly Betty’ television series in China. Unilever would get the right to exclusive ads and product placements during the show, as well as a script built around the company’s Chinese reformulation of the Campaign for Real Beauty. This resulted in a multilevel brand integration, and Ugly Wudi, or ‘The Invincible Ugly Woman’(丑女无敌) was created. In one episode in the first season, the ad agency Wudi works for is pitching for the Dove account and this turns into a whole debate about real beauty: the product placement could not be any more explicit... The success of the series relates to why Dove’s Campaign failed: it overplayed the stereotypical perception of beauty by dressing the main character with glasses, braces, frizzy hair and mismatched clothes. It decoded the conventional codes of beauty in order to get the ‘Real Beauty’ message across. Nevertheless, the adaption of Ugly Betty would not be readily comprehensible if it was left totally unmediated.

Broadcasted by the Chinese media, and portrayed by Chinese stars, Ugly Wudi became more local. The Dove Campaign lacked models that related to the local Chinese culture, but Ugly Wudi did. It merged both the exogenous culture inherent to the format and the local dynamics input by the local producers (Zhang and Fung, 2014). Not only the appearances of the actors changed, the series also downplayed the theme of homosexuality and eliminated the ethnic issues in order to fit within the Chinese ideological context. The format of Ugly Betty got a “cultural code translation” which made not only Ugly Wudi but also Dove’s Campaign this time a great success in China.

So, what were the results of Ugly Wudi for Dove? A survey by Dove at the end of the first season shows that their product placement worked: the awareness grew with 44% among the target consumers. The TV series increased the ‘cultural proximity’ of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. Through the adaptation of a worldwide successful glocal TV-series, Soy Betty La Fea, Dove translated the “foreignness” of their campaign into a more identifiable approach, making use of the stereotypes of beauty and ugliness. Ugly Wudi, thus, represents a form of cultural hybridization that modified some indicators of western modernity and presented a new form of local modernity (Fung and Zhang 2014). It can be considered as a de facto cultural bridge for bringing global lifestyles and western values of sexuality, ethnicity, new social norms and political culture to China (Fung and Zhang 2010).

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Thesis: Is there such a thing as a global concept of ugliness for women? And if so, can you think of any other examples in which ugliness is capitalized by the media?


Work Cited

Daniela Berghahn & Claudia Sternberg (2010), ‘Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe’, in: Daniela Berghahn & Claudia Sternberg (eds.), European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe. Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 12-49.

Daya Kishan Thussu (2012), ‘Cultural Practices and Media Production: The Case of Bollywood’, in: Isabelle Rigoni & Eugénie Saitta (eds.) Mediating Cultural Diversity in a Globalised Public Space. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 119-134.

Hesmondhalgh, David. The Cultural Industries, 3rd ed. London: Sage, 2013. Print.

Gaitán, Fernando. Yo Soy Betty La Fea. RCN TV. 1999-2001. Television.

Berg, Charles Ramírez. Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, Resistance. University of Texas Press: 2002.

Ryan, Erin L. Is Ugly the New Beautiful? An Investigation of Perceptions of Beauty by Young Female Viewers of Ugly Betty in the US. J. Mass Communicat Journalism: 2013.

Thakkar, Jonny. The Ugly Truth. Aeon: 2014

Fung, A. & X. Zhang (2010) ‘The Chinese Ugly Betty: TV cloning and local modernity’, in: International Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(3): 1-12.

Zhang, X. & A. Fung (2014) ‘Formatting of the Chinese Ugly Betty: An Ethnographic Observation of the Production Community’, in: Television & New Media, 15(6): 507-522.

Loverde, M. (2013) ‘The ‘Ugly Betty’ of China’. WM-China Initiative for Film and Media. http://chinese.blogs.wm.edu/2013/07/26/the-ugly-betty-of-china/ (accessed on December 4, 2015).

Bush, M. (2009) ‘Dove Finds Perfect Match in China’s ‘Ugly Betty’. AdvertisingAge. http://adage.com/article/media/festival-media-case-study-dove-china-s-ugly-betty/136902/ (accessed on December 4, 2015).

Levins, H. (2009) ‘China’s ‘Ugly Betty’ Is One Long Product Placement’. AdvertisingAge. http://adage.com/article/video/china-s-ugly-betty-long-product-placement/136874/ (accessed on December 4, 2015).

Fowler, G.A. (2008) ‘Unilever Gives ‘Ugly Betty’ a Product-Plug Makeover in China’. The Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123051038411338387 (accessed on December 4, 2015)

Week 12: K3 zoekt K3

Superficiality for the win

An analysis of the tv show K3 zoekt K3

A few weeks ago, on the 6th of November, the proud winners of the talent show K3 zoekt K3 were announced.  From now on Marthe, Klaasje and Hanne are going to fill the footsteps of Karen, Kristel and Josje to continue under the name ‘K3’.  K3 zoekt K3 is not the first talent show about the famous dancing, singing and acting trio. A few years ago one of the original members, Kathleen, was replaced by Josje in another fierce competition under the name ‘K2 zoekt K3’. After the ending of the show, the trio continued their career paths as if nothing had changed. They replaced one blonde with the other and went about their business for a couple of years. K3 was still K3, the only thing that was different was the name of the blonde one. Not long after the inauguration of Josje, the trio decided to call it quits all together and it was time for a new generation to set the stage. Even though the replacing of singers within bands is far from exceptional, we find it highly problematic to maintain the name of the group when ALL of the original members have been replaced. 

In many ways, the talent show K3 zoekt K3 is a typical talent show from the Idols mold. According to Challaby, Idols is one of four super-formats that broke new ground in terms of originality, world domination and cash generation in the format exchange. Even though the genre of the talent show is much older, it was only after the premiering of Pop Idol on ITV in the UK in October 2001 that a talent show format travelled all over the world. By autumn 2008, 41 licenses had been sold, two of them, in the Middle East and Latin America, covering 50 territories between them. The US version, American Idol, has sold in over 180 countries to date. (Challaby 2011: 301)
After firstly being adapted in the USA by Fox, the Pop Idol format opened up a new period for the format trade. The shift was profound and radically altered the structure, scope and pace of the international format flow. The so called ‘skeleton’ of the show (the basic structure) became a global phenomenon and this is something we nowadays still recognize in shows like K3 zoekt K3. The contestants are being judged by ‘professionals’ from the business, the audience can vote for their favorites creating an illusion of a democratized show, and the emotional journey of the girls is followed closely.

However there are also characteristics that set K3 zoekt K3 apart from other talent shows. Something crucial that we’ve already mentioned before is that the winners of the show are essentially auditioning for a part in a group that is already established. The show uses a talent show format, but it differs from the conventional one because they search for replacements of already existing personas. In this sense K3 zoekt K3 is more in line with talent shows in search of musical stars, like Op zoek naar Evita for example. They are not searching for a new ‘autonomous’ star. On the contrary: they are searching for three girls who fit the K3 mold and who can replace the current members without much difficulties. 

In practice this means that they want three young girls who can sing, dance and act, and have differing hair colours, all other individual characteristics are irrelevant. To prove our point we refer to one of the final episodes before the finale. Some of the girls had to dye their hair and compete against other girls within the same ‘group’ of hair colour. The blondes had to compete against the blondes, the brunettes against the brunettes and so on. This means that instead of their vocal qualities, their appearance had priority in the search of the new K3. If the three best candidates just happened to be red heads, though luck, they would not make the cut simply because of their hair colour. We feel that this takes the already heavily criticized superficiality of talent shows to a whole new level.

The finalists in anticipation of the moment to reveal their hair colour

The idea that talent shows breed superficiality is something Meizel conceptualizes in his book: Idolized: music, media, and identity in American idol. As he puts it: ‘Idols emphasizes the visual aspect of popular music, and ‘pop’ in particular – that is the ‘image’. This has led to the frequent discussion of physical appearance.’ Meizel (2012: 206)

Another theorist who is interested in ‘the image’ as a phenomenon is Appadurai. For him, the globalized economy comprises a set of five interconnected but subjunctive dimensions. One of them is particularly interesting in lights of this case study. When describing ‘landscapes of images’, Appadurai makes a distinction between mediascapes and ideoscapes. He notes that ‘mediascapes are ‘image-centered, narrative-based accounts of strips of reality’, whereas the images of ideoscapes involve political ideologies and counter-ideologies.’ The multiple mediascapes of talent shows produce diverse images, narratives, and metaphors upon which imagined lives and imagined worlds are constructed. (Meizel 2012: 209)

We feel that the narrative that K3 zoekt K3 produces is clear. If you win the show, you are catapulted into ‘instant success’. There is no need to build a repertoire for yourself because all the decisions have already been made for you, as well as the songs that have already been written, the shows that have already been booked and the choreography that is already decided on. This might have been the case in other talent shows as well to some extent, but K3 zoekt K3 takes this to a whole new level. We conclude that carelessly replacing ALL the members of the group implies that the identity of the girls is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter who won the contest in the end, because they will surely be K3, whatever that may mean.

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Thesis
Replacing all the members of a group inevitably means to change the essence of the group in question.

Bibliography:

Chalaby, J. K. (2011). The making of an entertainment revolution: How the TV format trade became a global industry. European Journal of Communication,26(4).

Meizel, K. (2011). Idolized: music, media, and identity in American idol. Indiana University Press.

Week 10: The Power of Social Media and Audiences

On November 2, 2015 Essena O’Neill made an announcement that went viral on social media, reaching more than her followers on Instagram and YouTube. Those who were not aware of the nineteen years old Australian girl’s relevance on social media, with over half a million subscribers on Instagram, became acquainted with her as the girl who quit social media. O’Neill’s announcement sparked a conversation about the reality that is presented on social media. In her video announcement O’Neill claims, “social media is not real life” and platforms such as Instagram proffer a mediated reality to young minds, allowing subjects to present a “contrived perfection made to get attention.” These statements have initiated a dialogue among online media audiences, revealing what seem to be two opposing opinions on the subject: one against the power of social media and one for the power of social media.

The rapid dissemination of this video and the juxtaposing opinions it has provoked throughout social media raises some interesting questions in regards to the role and agency of the audience in contemporary digital media environments. Therefore, in relation to this case study, we are going to look at different questions such as, what are the different audiences involved in this discussion? What are the dynamics present among producers and their audience? When does being an audience stop and being a producer start? How are audiences performing themselves? And finally, has technology really blurred the line between real and online realities? These questions and case study will be analysed with the help of Shayla Thiel-Stern’s essay “Beyond the Active Audience” and Jack Z. Bratich’s essay “From Audiences to Media Subjectivities.” These texts explore the construction of a new audience and how technological developments have intensified and transformed audiences’ practices. Moreover, it studies the dynamics between audience and institutions, and how the audience’s power has been intervened and activated to then be pacified towards constituted ends (Bratich 2013).

In her essay “Beyond the Active Audience Shayla Thiel-Stern argues that the existence of a traditional audience as the receptor of media is obsolete. Instead she perceives the emergence of a new multilayered audience present in the new media landscape of Web 2.0 proffered by a entrepreneurial attitude among its participants. This new audience is one that is active and aware of its influential power on others. Thiel-Stern calls this new audience the “Audience 2.0”. Beyond its self-awareness this audience can also be a producer, one that is consciously seeking an audience (6, 9). It is an audience that has a “built-in-audience,”  as Thiel-Stern explains (7). This emergence of  an “audience with an audience” is a consequence of the interactivity proffered by technological developments and the features they offer, e.g, writing, publishing, commenting, posting, tagging, liking are some examples of these interactive features (Thiel-Stern 7). We will employ Essena O’Neill as an example of a member of this “Audience 2.0” that demonstrates the oscillation between being an audience and a producer.

Even though the audience is now perceived to have more power with its position as producer, this notion is still very much isolated. Bratich problematizes this in his text by addressing how the collective power of the audience is still very much “a target of knowledge and intervention” (11). This is a notion very much in line with the scholars of the Frankfurt School, who perceived consumers not as passive recipients, but as targets of the culture industry. As targets, consumers were transformed into masses and organised as passive consumers of cultural products (Durham Peters qtd. in Bratich 14).

O’Neill’s critique on the powers of social media are along the lines of Bratich and Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of the intervening forces of the industry. In the case of O’Neill, she entered social media when she was just twelve years old, as she explains in her vlog. Immersed in the world of social media for seven years gave her “an insight into the world of social media…in terms to how it works with advertisements (Let’s Be Game Changers).” O’Neill explains how she believes the advertising industry has taken over social media by employing young influential (in terms of the amount of followers) subjects in order to gain revenue by reaching these subject’s audience. By using an audience with an audience, the industry is playing with the relatable-ness of (in this case) the girl next-door, instead of a celebrity. Employing a non-celebrity allows the industry to activate and direct the collective power of the audience by projecting an identifiable image to them.

Another important point in this discussion is identity construction in relation to digital technology and how we perform ourselves online. Thiel-Stern explains how the increased audience’s awareness of their presence online starts to affect the manner in which individuals construct and perform their identity (11). According to O’Neill, her introduction to social media at such a young age made her become obsessed with one day being able to live the spectacular lives that were documented, filtered and uploaded on the photo sharing service: Instagram. O’Neill also accounts how she started to define herself through the amount of likes she gathered by posting perfectly constructed pictures online. O’Neill’s behavior reflects upon Butler’s theory on identity as performativity and how it is a construction that we perform, which is embedded in historical situatedness and discourse (520). Gender and identity performativity on social platforms illustrate how it is a conscious act. These media subjects are consciously and intensively performing their gender, identity and lives, because they are aware of the fact that there is an audience that is constantly watching in return.

According to Bratich, another critique of the autonomous individual in relation to media is that social relations determine identity. Identity cannot be isolated from race, gender, or sexuality. To understand audiences as identities is to refute the notion of a homogenous audience. Instead, audiences as identities seek to find diversity (16). However, the proliferation of images that present mediated fragmentations of life help construct and promote homogeneous ideals that are further mediated and disseminated through the interactive relation between audience and medium. The “online participatory environment,” has transformed the practices of consumption and most importantly production (Thiel-Stern 10). This affects the balance in power, agency, and influence of media producers. In the case of O’Neill, she problematized this shift in balance by illustrating how the media allows users to construct, edit, and filter anything, which results in the creation and promotion of manipulated and false representations of life.

On November 2 O’Neill took down her Instagram, only to later reopen it as an account that would help raise awareness of the ‘fabricated’ nature of social media. O’Neill reopened her account only including a selection of pictures with elaborate descriptions. These descriptions revealed the reasons why these photos were taken and the amount of time and work it required to get one “perfect picture.” This dedication to self-promotion and representation of a perfect life reflects upon Thiel-Stern’s statement of how seems that, “being watched, or the potential of being watched, by one’s peers is in many ways the entire point” (14).

To conclude, we have looked at the audience present on social media from different angles. We have looked at their status and roles as users, producers, and consumers. We have also looked at how these roles have become interrelated and how this has compromised how we perform ourselves online. We believe O’Neill’s radical action and announcement elaborates on one side of a two-sided argument. O’Neill’s critique is on the dangers of social media in relation to how it has become immanent to an industry that appropriates media subjects for marketing purposes. In her opinion, media subjects are passive entities that have become commoditized, thus making the representation of their identity a staged one. However, she dismisses the intricacies of power relations and does not take into account how active these subjects are in this process. We could argue that now more than ever, knowledge and power are tangibly everywhere and individuals are not second-guessing activating it. Ironically, O’Neill is employing social media to spread this warning, thus relying on the power of social media and agency of her audience.

Thesis: “With great power comes great responsibility” Are we, as audience 2.0, being responsible with the modern age communication tool of social media?

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Works Cited

Butler, Judith. ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: an Essay in Phenomenology and

Feminist Theory’, in: Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 519 – 531.

JSTOR.

Durham Peters, J. (2002). The subtlety of Horkheimer and Adorno. In E. Katz, J. Durham

Peters, T. Liebes, & A. Orloff (Eds.), Canonic texts in media research (pp. 58–73). New

York, NY: Polity.

O’Neill, Essena. Lets be game changers. Web. 13 Nov 2015.

Jack Z. Bratich (2013), ‘From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum’,

in: Kelly Gates (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Volume VI:

Media Studies Futures. Malden & Chichester: Whiley-Blackwell.

Shayla Thiel-Stern (2013), ‘Beyond the active audience: Exploring new media audiences and the

limits of cultural production’, in: Radhika Parameswaran (ed.), The International

Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Volume IV: Audience and Interpretation. Malden &

Chichester: Whiley-Blackwell, pp. 389-405.

Week 9 - Empathy Games: Life, Death and Digital Narratives

Video games have come a long way since the days of Paperboy and Pitfall, and so have those who play them. Walking side by side with computing technology, today’s games offer photorealistic graphics and simulate our world to a degree which is astonishing in different, and sometimes even odd, ways. In this blog post we are going to explore how game designers are involving players in new narratives in which they have to deal with emotional conflicts that seem real - and reality often comes with sadness, emptiness and representations of death.

We are living in a golden age of video games. According to the ESRB, responsible for assigning rates related to age-appropriateness and content in the United States, games are leading the entertainment industry revenues and earned 46.5 billion dollars in 2014. So gamers are faced with a proliferation of options that continue to expand, fueled not only by the increasing number of devices on which video games can be played, but also by the diverse production of titles (ESRB, 2015).

In this dynamic market though, breakaways are common. Developers often leave their current studios to start individual projects, giving more poetic treatments to their narratives (Wolverton, 2005). As a result, the stories of video games are becoming more complex and experimental, expanding the logic of their inceptions. Thus, games are getting to the point where providing 'fun' isn’t the reason for its production as designers are interested in creating experiences that make people uncomfortable, allowing them to empathise with situations they otherwise couldn’t understand. It is the emerging genre of 'empathy games'.

Brian Albert once published in the Game Informer Magazine that "while big-budget titles strap you into iron-clad boots and decorate your torso with rifles and grenades, a game like 'Cart Life', for example, hands you divorce papers and a small sum of cash and asks you to provide for a daughter." Another household drama is addressed in the game 'A Song For Viggo', which revolves around a terrible situation: could a family stick together after the father kills his son by accident? The delicate subject requires the player to perform tasks that are not usually seen in other games, as to prepare the child's funeral. The sensitive plot is also represented graphically, using paper scenery and stop-motion animation technique.

Therefore, through intelligent writing and aesthetic choices, these creators have decided that expression using video games was the most powerful way for them to tell their authorial stories. One can say that games like 'That Dragon, Cancer', dealing with a child who is terminally ill, are more 'interactive art' rather than 'games' in the traditional sense, as they make a deeper connection to the characters inside these narratives and situations they are in. Make no mistake, though. Art or not, these producers are chiseling their names into this industry as fervently as others by bringing to light such touching initiatives (Albert, 2013).

There are also games that raise criticism of political systems and portray what living the misery of war and dictatorship is like. This is the case of 'Papers, Please', which puts players in the role of an immigration inspector in order to control the flow of people entering the border. At the same time, 'This War of Mine' tells how shortages of basic supplies can make the lives of ordinary people a real nightmare. Early in this year Maddy Myers, an editor of Paste Magazine, made a review about 'This War of Mine': "I’m not sure if this game is accessible. The depth of its sadness renders it unplayable, at least for me. [...] It made me angry and frustrated, and then I felt guilty about feeling angry and frustrated. The characters were going through so much, and there was nothing I could do to help them. The worst part was knowing that was exactly the point" (Myers, 2015).

It is still a new concept for games to explore the emotional spectrum of death, and we’ve got a couple of examples digging deep into this idea from totally different angles. As a medium, video games have storytelling opportunities that film and TV don’t have, as they use different structures when it comes to tell their stories. However, we can't come to a consensus about what video games even are anymore as the examples we mentioned suggests they're quickly becoming something else (Klepek, 2015). As possible pieces of art, they don't have to be accessible or fun, but we sure do seem to lack the vocabulary, as consumers, to talk about games that do not play by ordinary rules.
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If we consider these experiences as merely games in the most literal sense of the word, even transcending the boundaries of shallow shoot-em-ups, it begs the question: do we want to play these games? What makes them 'good' games? What price-point would be fair to put on a completely miserable experience? Patrick Klepek (2015) raised these questions in his article 'When Games Make Us Feel Sad, Disgusted, and Empty' in the Kotaku Magazine. Yet, he came up with the answer that we are in the beginning stages of understanding the long term impact of technologies such as emotional games and virtual reality in our daily lives.

But if the intentions of the developers were not to make a 'good' game with high-enjoyable value, what are they trying to do then? We can look for a reasonable explanation in the article Beyond Polemics in the Media Violence Debate by David Trend (2007). According to him, a title like 'This War of Mine' makes you think about what happened during that time (Sarajevo, for instance) and what the hard decisions were that someone would have had to make in order to survive. In that sense, it is a 'good' game because it keeps a memory and a political reflection alive. "Sometimes people need to be activated to certain facts" like the ethics of war, Trend asserts.

Therefore, the appropriation of the immersive aspects offered by games for commenting terrible things that happened is a very important characteristic of this new genre. Especially in a moment when the speed of transmission and reception of information on media is tremendous and people tend to forget facts far more than they can remember them (Trend, 2007). Thus, still according to Trend, memory plays an important role in "guarding against the repetition of human failure and atrocity", made possible at this time by the learning process that game playing can offer us.

There are other empathy titles that are equally important as it requires you to look at sad aspects of life and reflect about what those experiences suggests. In 'That Dragon, Cancer', - which is probably the most devastating interactive drama because it is autobiographical - Ryan Green started developing the game whereas Joel, his son, was still fighting against his disease. Unfortunately, he died in March 2014 by the age of five. It makes us think if the process of creating and playing games like 'That Dragon, Cancer' impacts grieving behaviour and how it could fit in the category of 'memorial games', in analogy with the concept of 'memorial sites' suggested by Folker Hanusch in his text Representing Death in the Online Age (2010). He mentions that, in our days, the relatively private expression of grief has moved further into the public sphere, giving people an opportunity to enrich the collective memory by linking it to news stories (Hanusch, 2010).

Every single aspect described in this post is a brilliant subversion of what we think of entertainment and recreation: something that can only be conveyed through an interactive medium. The discomfort of these narratives is given by the confrontation with the dark side of the human experience. But instead of fight (and win) a war to become a hero, these games affect players differently by dealing with issues on a more personal level, susceptible to mistakes, or simply beyond our control. Yet, they deserve a closer look for their unique way of representing the pain of the other.

Thesis: Can empathy games play a new role within our society by presenting narratives that we don't want to deal with?

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Hanusch, Folker. Representing Death in the Online Age (2010).

Trend, David. Beyond Polemics in the Media Violence Debate (2007).

Myers, Maddy. Romanticizing Tragedy: Should Disaster Games Be Fun? (2015).

Klepek, Patrik. When Games Make Us Feel Sad, Disgusted, And Empty (2015).

Albert, Brian. Empathy Games: Life Meet Play (2013).

Wolverton, Troy. Activision Aims for Sweet Spot (2005).

ESRB. How Much Do You Know About Video Games? (2015).

Week 8: YouTube Red - changing the world of online video?

A few days ago, on October 28th, YouTube launched its new service: YouTube Red. A lot of criticism has swirled around the internet since the announcement of the new service a week before its launch, because this service might change YouTube forever. Whether this change would be for the better or worse will be explored in this blog. We will explore questions like; why did YouTube come up with Red in the first place? How does it affect users (both viewers and creators) and does it change the core, the identity of the medium itself?

Before getting all wound up in questions of identity, let’s first endeavor on a quick summary of what YouTube Red actually is. Red is a new service by YouTube which can be purchased for $9,99 per month and is an extension (definitely not a replacement) of the YouTube we already know. Most importantly, it shuts down all forms of advertisements you would normally see on videos, making subscribers less vulnerable to their influences. YouTube Red also gives the option to put videos in ‘offline playback’ mode, which allows you to watch them everywhere without ruining your data. Another new option is background playing, which enables you to multitask on your device with YouTube in the background. Perhaps a more significant aspect is the promise of new shows produced by the top content creators of the original YouTube, which will only be available to subscribers of Red. For instance, YouTube star PewDiePie (a.ka. Felix Kjellberg) is creating a new show with creators of The Walking Dead, making the television industry enter the realm of online video like it hasn’t done before.

The perks are nice, but putting a price tag on a platform known for its equal accessibility is causing some uproar. Viewers are questioning  why they would pay for Red if they could just install adblock for free instead. This is actually a kind of petty argument, because an important reason for the creation of Red seems to have been the problems YouTube is experiencing in making a profit. In 2014, YouTube made 4 billion dollars, which is close to their breakeven point. Adblockers are currently causing a 40% loss of revenue, endangering the very existence of YouTube and harming their creators. Besides the adblock discussion, users feel cheated by the fact that a part of YouTube (the new original shows) will be put behind a paywall, creating a distance of ten dollars between creators and their viewers. Creators will encounter a different and perhaps more competitive culture on the platform, as some of them will be favorited by YouTube and supported to create new high-quality shows. The big stars will be assisted in getting even bigger, which creates a more hierarchical or capitalist environment compared to the rhizomatic structure YouTube started out with. The change in YouTube’s ways of production, distribution and consumption in a way tie in with Adorno’s critique on the culture industries, especially when looking to the earlier mentioned new and exclusive shows. Adorno states that the culture industry employs the strategy of pseudo-individuality. This refers to cultural products introducing a trait that seems an optional variation of the standard product, which enables it to justify its claim to originality. An important requirement for pseudo-individuality to work is that the recipients of cultural products close their eyes to mediating agencies. When taking PewDiePie’s new show Scare PewDiePie into account, those agencies would be YouTube, Maker Studios and Skybound Entertainment. It is likely that PewDiePie’s viewers will still think about this show as being created by him alone, which would have been the case in the pre-Red era. In this old situation, viewers could almost beyond a doubt know that content they watched would be free of direct influences by other agents. With the creation of YouTube Red, this quality of the YouTube will be partly lost.

The formerly mentioned equal accessibility of YouTube has always been one of its greater advantages, and perhaps a reason for the website becoming one of the most successful websites of the Web 2.0 era. This digital era saw the emergence of virtual communities and user-generated content, making it an ideal environment for the rise of the prosumer. ‘Prosumer’ can be defined as consumers undertaking value creation activities that result in productions that can eventually be consumed and experienced (Xie, Bagozzi & Troye, 2007). YouTube offers all its users the opportunity to be a prosumer by offering them a platform, tools and guidance in their process of creating. Users that only identify as viewer can also have plenty of options to become a prosumer or co-creator, by making video responses, starting discussions and creating or contributing to fan communities. The introduction of the paid service creates a distance between non-Red users and Red users, as their access and options will differ. It could also create distance between viewers and creators, as some of the latter will turn into star producers acknowledged and employed by the company that YouTube is becoming, and will have content only available to those willing to invest. Subscribers can be sure that the content they pay for will be of quality, something the free content of YouTube could never guarantee. Another thing subscribers can be sure of, is that the creators they like and follow will be paid out of their subscription money, which might feel like a much fairer system than the annoying and unwanted advertisements that did the job before.

YouTube Red makes visible what has always been a part of YouTube: its place in a capitalist system. In the advertisement-based model, users weren’t as highly aware of the money-making processes of YouTube. Now that there has been put a pricetag on experiencing online video, the identity of YouTube is changing. YouTube Red is not a platform, but a service. The possible results of this shift are hard to predict, but we are sure that a lot of critique by both viewers and creators will help shape YouTube Red to become more valuable to all parties involved.

Thesis: Could YouTube Red ever become a success? Or is putting a pricetag on a formerly completely free medium prone to failure?

AH - SH - MS - GV - MW

Bibliography

Sarah Kember & Joanna Zylinska, ‘Remediating Creativity: Performance, Invention, Critique’, in: Life After New Media: Mediation as a Vital Process. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012, pp. 173-200.

Raúl Rodrígez-Ferrándiz (2014), ‘Culture Industries in a Postindustrial Age: Entertainment, Leisure, Creativity, Design’, in: Critical Studies in Media Communication 31 (4), pp. 327-341.

Xie, Bagozzi & Troye. (2007). ‘Trying to prosume: toward a theory of consumers as co-creators of value’ in: Journal of Academic Marketing Science (2008). 36: 109-122.

http://download.springer.com.ru.idm.oclc.org/static/pdf/89/art%253A10.1007%252Fs11747-007-0060-2.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007%2Fs11747-007-0060-2&token2=exp=1446370475~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F89%2Fart%25253A10.1007%25252Fs11747-007-0060-2.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Farticle%252F10.1007%252Fs11747-007-0060-2*~hmac=af208131f99188a0552ccd7a8451ffe4042ad1dc32015d0433975ea67f6afaaf. Accessed on: 31-10-2015.

The official YouTube partners and creators blog: ‘YouTube Red is here: Seven things you need to know about our new subscription service’:

http://youtubecreator.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/youtube-red-is-here-seven-things-to.html. Accessed on: 1-11-2015.

Gutelle, Sam. (23-10-2015). ‘Let’s debunk seven myths about YouTube Red, YouTube’s new subscription service’: http://www.tubefilter.com/2015/10/23/youtube-red-myths-subscription/

Accessed on: 1-11-2015.

‘Youtube teams with Maker Studios & the creators of “The Walking Dead” for original series “Scare PewDiePie”’. https://sites.google.com/site/ytredpress/youtube-originals/scare-pewdiepie-from-pewdiepie. Accessed on 2-11-2015