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Considers the video game as a distinct cultural form that demands a unique interpretive framework. This book analyzes video games as something to be played rather than as texts to be read, and traces how the "algorithmic culture" created by video games intersects with theories of visuality, realism, allegory, and the avant-garde.

Notwithstanding the presence of extreme racialized tropes within the world of videogames, public discourses continue to focus on questions of violence, denying the impor-tance of games in maintaining the hegemonic racial order. Efforts to exclude race (andintersections with gender, nation, and sexuality) from public discussions through its era-sure and the acceptance of larger discourses of colorblindness contribute to a problematicunderstanding of video games and their significant role in contemporary social, political,economic, and cultural organization. How can one truly understand fantasy, violence,gender roles, plot, narrative, game playability, virtual realities, and the like without ex-amining race, racism, and/or racial stratification—one cannot. This article challengesgame studies scholars to move beyond simply studying games to begin to offer insightand analysis into the importance of race and racialized tropes within virtual reality andthe larger implications of racist pedagogies of video games in the advancement of Whitesupremacy.

In more than twenty powerful films, Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin has waged a brilliant battle against the ignorance and stereotypes that Native Americans have long endured in cinema and television.

This article coins the term gamescape to offer a way of thinking about the implications of the way in which landscape in video games is actively constructed within a particular ideological framework. The author examines the spatial practices used to construct the gamescape in Tropico and their attendant dangers. The author concludes with a discussion of the theming of this gamescape, and the way in which the trope of tropicalization is used to stabilize Tropico as an “Othered” space.

Killing the Indian Maiden examines the fascinating and often disturbing portrayal of Native American women in film. M. Elise Marubbio examines the sacrificial role in which a young Native woman allies herself with a white male hero and dies as a result of that choice. In studying thirty-four Hollywood films from the silent period to the present, she draws upon theories of colonization, gender, race, and film studies to ground her analysis in broader historical and sociopolitical context and to help answer the question, "What does it mean to be an American?"

Questions about the meanings of racialized representations must be included as part of developing an ethical game design practice. This paper examines the various ways in which race and racial contexts are represented in a selected range of commercially available e-games, namely war, sports and action-adventure games. The analysis focuses on the use of racial slurs and the contingencies of historical re-representation in war games; the limited representation of black masculinity in sports games and the romanticization of ‘ghetto play’ in urban street games; and the pathologization and fetishization of race in ‘crime sim’ action-adventure games such as True Crime: Streets of LA. This paper argues for, firstly, a continuous critical engagement with these dominant representations in all their evolving forms; secondly, the necessary inclusion of reflexive precepts in e-games development contexts; and thirdly, the importance of advocating for more diverse and equitable racialized representations in commercial e-games.

In this updated edition of his acclaimed and award-winning study, Stephen Bourne takes a personal look at the history of black people in popular British film and television. He documents, from original research and interviews, the experiences and representations which have been ignored in previous media books about people of African descent. There are chapters about Paul Robeson, Newton I. Aduaka, soap operas and much more - as well as several useful appendices and suggestions for further reading.

"Featuring Females analyzes the portrayals of women in a variety of outlets, including reality television shows, films, print and electronic news programming, magazines, video games, and commercial advertising. A highly esteemed group of scholars and researchers provides informed, original psychological study, and their thought-provoking findings address the ways in which aging, race/ethnicity, body image, gender roles, sexual orientation and relationships, and violence are treated in the media. Featuring Females is a diverse volume, exploring images and characterizations of women young and old and inspiring discussion of the effects that these representations have on girls, women, and society at large"--

Shanti Kumar's Gandhi Meets Primetime examines how cultural imaginations of national identity have been transformed by the rapid growth of satellite and cable television in postcolonial India. To evaluate the growing influence of foreign and domestic satellite and cable channels since 1991, the book considers a wide range of materials including contemporary television programming, historical archives, legal documents, policy statements, academic writings and journalistic accounts. Kumar argues that India's hybrid national identity is manifested in the discourses found in this variety of empirical sources. He deconstructs representations of Mahatma Gandhi as the Father of the Nation on the state-sponsored network Doordarshan and those found on Rupert Murdoch's STAR TV network. The book closely analyzes print advertisements to trace the changing status of the television set as a cultural commodity in postcolonial India and examines publicity brochures, promotional materials and programming schedules of Indian-language networks to outline the role of vernacular media in the discourse of electronic capitalism. The empirical evidence is illuminated by theoretical analyses that combine diverse approaches such as cultural studies, poststructuralism and postcolonial criticism.

Inventions have their greatest impact when they go beyond their possible practical applications and act upon the imagination. When Martin Behaim invented the first globe in 1490, a functionally useless object consisting mostly of terra incognita, he was widely ridiculed; but somehow the ideas that his globe represented stuck, and within a few decades the basic validity of his construction was confirmed by the voyages of Columbus, Cabot, Vasco de Gama, Magellan, and others. Today, with efforts to situate the rapid growth of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially the Internet, in the context of globalization, there is a similar division between those who dismiss it as being of no importance and those who see in it a looming (for good or ill) global revolution. But, as with Behaim's globe, the imaginary possibilities of these innovations are important in determining how and to what extent human existence is to be transformed by them

Globalization has intensified interconnectivity among television industries worldwide. Interconnectivity happens through structural and institutional linkages among television systems and industries worldwide, resulting in an increasingly integrated global business governed by similar practices and goals. The dynamics are reflected in the popularity of television formats. On the surface, global dissemination of formats may suggest not only the global integration of the economy of the industry but also the standardization of content. A dozen media companies are able to do business worldwide by selling the same idea, and audiences seem to be watching national variations of the same show. At a deeper level, however, formats attest to the fact that television still remains tied to local and national cultures. Bringing up examples of Latin American cases, this article argues that television is simultaneously global and national, shaped by the globalization of media economics and the pull of local and national cultures.

Conçu comme un discours et non comme un simple référent géographique, le Nord se déploie dans des formes littéraires et culturelles qui en déterminent les particularités. Pluriculturel, variable selon les époques, les lieux et les points de vue, le Nord ouvre des problématiques sur les liens entre le référent et la représentation, entre le discours et l'imaginaire. Qu'il soit scandinave, québécois, finlandais, inuit ou européen, qu'il se manifeste dans les récits, les films, les romans, la poésie, la photographie ou les arts visuels, qu'il soit le lieu d'une dénonciation post-coloniale ou d'un discours impérialiste, d'une recherche formelle ou de l'expression de la culture populaire, le discours du Nord et sur le Nord converge en des paradigmes et des problématiques qui lui sont propres. Dans ce recueil, issu des travaux du Laboratoire international d'étude multidisciplinaire comparée des représentations du Nord et initié par la tenue d'un colloque organisé en décembre 2003 par Joël Bouchard et Amélie Nadeau, le lecteur trouvera quelques pistes d'analyse pour saisir la complexité du système discursif du Nord, réparties en trois sections intitulées: «Formes et intertextualité», «Territoires», ainsi que «Iconographie, voyages, et cinéma».

The Velvet Light Trap 53 (2004) 26-39 On December 2, 2001, HBO began airing Project Greenlight, a twelve-part documentary series chronicling the production of a feature film by novice writer-director Pete Jones. With its spectacle of backroom dealings, unchecked egos, and human frailties, the television series capitalized on the contemporaneous success of like-minded "reality" programs such as Survivor and Temptation Island. Perhaps more closely, Project Greenlight also tapped into the current vogue for the "behind-the-scenes" and the "making-of" genres, represented by straight-to-video titles such as Star Trek-Deep Space Nine: Behind the Scenes (1993), Making of Jurassic Park (1995), and The Matrix Revisited (2001), television programs such as the Sundance Channel's Anatomy of a Scene, HBO's First Look, and MTV's Making the Video, and the proliferation of behind-the-scenes and making-of packaging on DVDs. A reflection of the growth of film-related ancillary products in the 1980s, the ever-expanding Hollywood ego, and the demands of a twenty-four-hour television cable market, the increased appearance of the making-of documentary format no doubt also reflects the renewed interest in amateur filmmaking promulgated by the age of desktop video. Perhaps as a manifestation of this interest, making-of documentaries have become increasingly more detailed in their coverage. Whereas the 1981 television special The Making of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (Phillip Schuman) focuses mostly on the film's stunt work, special effects, location shoots, and set design, the recently released making-of documentary The Matrix Revisited focuses on script development, preproduction, production, postproduction, and exhibition, introducing viewers to costume designers, storyboard artists, and editors along the way. This attention to production detail can also be seen in Sundance's Anatomy of a Scene, which hones in on the construction, from music to costume to camera work, of a single scene. And certainly raising the bar on the level of detail included in the making-of genre is Project Greenlight, which is a "warts-and-all" look at film production, from squabbles over budgets to catering fiascos. Despite the making-of video's increased attention to the minutiae of filmmaking, one of the areas that remains outside the purview of most Hollywood making-of documentaries is the production of sex. Discussions about the cinematic logistics of creating a sex scene—how, when, and with what resources—are usually not featured in making-of documentaries. Of course, given our celebrity-driven culture, the question of sex vis-à-vis film production, particularly a Hollywood film production, is hardly absent from the publicity that surrounds a film. It is not uncommon to hear actresses or actors discussing what it was like to kiss another actor on the set. But these kinds of concerns are usually the province of entertainment magazines and television, not the province of ancillary related products such as the making-of video. While stories of roles requiring nudity or sex scenes abound on television shows such as Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, and E! News Daily,these kinds of topics are less likely to appear in production-generated documentaries. Indeed, while the production of the provocative sex scene between Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton in Monster's Ball (Marc Forster, 2001) generated much discussion on television entertainment programs, talk shows, and newsmagazines, it was the film's prison execution sequence that was featured in the Sundance Channel's making-of special on the film. Given the lack of focus on sex scenes in most making-of documentaries, it is interesting to note that the two existing making-of documentaries for lesbian-made, lesbian-themed feature films—The Making of Bar Girls (1995) and Moments: The Making of Claire of the Moon (1992)—both heavily focus on the production of lesbian sex. Moreover, both lesbian making-of documentaries emphasize the cast's and the crew's sexual titillation over the creation of sexual sequences. In this essay I look at what this strategy reveals about the collective climate and concerns of lesbian feature filmmaking in the United States today.

The immediate aim of this chapter is to provide a critical overview of the place of lesbian films within New Queer Cinema. The task is not an easy one in a field which is as contentious as it is broad. The main difficulty seems to be how best to approach a range of definitions, from ‘new’ to ‘queer’ to ‘lesbian’, since with every one of them, we risk biting off more than we can chew. As often happens with formal titles, so with the New Queer Cinema, its lifespan (‘officially’ 1992-2000) now seems to have been a great deal shorter

In 1989, three years before the New Queer Wave was even invented or discovered, two very different yet interconnected films were produced on either side of the Atlantic. Both soon became critically successful and both would win a number of prizes at different international film festivals and venues. In retrospect, these two films have come to constitute the very incitement to the Wave. British filmmaker Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston premiered in early 1989 and American filmmaker Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied premiered later that same year, the latter including a still photo from the former so as to pay homage

In March 2001 a Japanese newspaper report entitled ‘Indians are addicted to a quiz show’ drew attention to a phenomenally popular television programme in India – a quiz show that attracts millions of viewers in which challengers strive to win prize money (Asahi Shinbun 2001). What was particularly eye-catching for the journalist was the profligately decorated studio set located in Mumbai (Bombay) and the caring guidance of the MC, a film star famous in India. The name of the show, as you might have already inferred, was Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.

The previous chapter introduced in broad brushstrokes the issues at stake in this study, beginning with a critique of globalization and moving on to sketch in finer detail national television systems, the role of local content, and the economic importance of formats. The chapter concluded with a brief overview of the vagaries of copyright law as it applies to formats. Here, we initiate a discussion of Asian television systems beginning with a much different perspective on the ramifications of cultural borrowing. In this context we note that the format business straddles the divide between creative endeavour and innovation on the one hand, and slavish imitation on the other. This polarization manifests in widespread misunderstanding of the goals of format producers and distributors, and the role that formats play in the shaping of television schedules. We need therefore to flesh out the in-between issues. These are primarily concerned with the relationship between the format and its localization, television consumption within ‘cultural continents’, and changes in media systems. Taking this further we note the relationship between production and reception within Asia, the growth of television industries in the region and the relationship between formatting and new media distribution platforms that use interactive technologies allowing viewers to feedback responses. This exercise enables us to identify an alternative list of conceptual tools to those championed by political economy scholars.

"By bringing together a provocative selection of essays and images, Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self addresses the issues of nation, race, and selfhood and how they are depicted in ways that are challenging and informative, prompting readers to consider the impact of photography on our everyday lives." "If photographs are chiefly responsible for perpetuating myths of American identity, can a different reading of these representations break down distorting stereotypes? This is the central question posed by Only Skin Deep. The authors in this book forcefully argue that race and nation - and, indeed, photography itself - are fictions, cultural constructions that shape our social interactions. Even as symbols, these photographic depictions of ethnic difference and cultural superiority have very real consequences. This collection of works and essays addresses, for example, the lingering consequences of American colonial expansion; the conflict between public and private visualizations of individuals; the role of commercial imagery in shaping gender roles; the impact of fantasy in ethnic or ethnographic photography; and the uses of science to provide justification for politicized depictions of "race."" "Accompanying a major exhibition of the same name, Only Skin Deep offers a critical rereading of the archive of the history of photography. This applies to the works of famous photographers - such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, and Edward Steichen - as well as lesser-known historical figures, including Charles Eisenmann, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Will Soule, and Toyo Miyatake. A substantial part of the book is devoted to contemporary artists and photographers who have moved beyond the multicultural approach to representations of "race" and have made an investigation of the semiotics of cultural identity a prevalent theme over the past decade. Among the recent photographers included are: Nancy Burson, Nikki S. Lee, Glenn Ligon, Paul Pfeiffer, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and Andres Serrano."--(BOOK JACKET)

In this essay I examine one particular feature of the films, the song-and-dance sequences, as they draw attention to the fractious nature of the postcolonial nation while simultaneously attempting to construct a space for the articulation of a consolidated national identity.

Games like Myst, Civilisation and Anno 1602 are centred around the virtual travelling of the gamer through unknown worlds. The voyage s/he undertakes often hinges on notions of colonialist exploration, turning the gamer into a traveller who surveys and masters unknown domains and learns to control techno-scientific principles along the way. Since such games are related to a mentality of colonialism, questions should be asked about how such games can be located in its discursive formation. This paper will shed light on these questions by analysing Civilization III and my experiences of playing this game.