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Despite great heterogeneity, the vast continent of Africa and the diverse people of its countries and diasporas have often been represented through the most reductive, essentialising, and denigrating paradigms— a process that Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi has referred to as “the danger of a single story”. One of the most dangerous of these paradigms is the developmentalist one, which shoehorns Africa into a western, capitalist teleological framework that overlooks and denies Africa’s production of and participation in forms of leisure, pleasure and entertainment.

El objetivo del artículo es discutir la potencialidad de prácticas artísticas contemporáneas que plantean ejercicios decoloniales al desestabilizar las matrices perceptivas eurocéntricas sobre grupos étnicos latinoamericanos. Desde la perspectiva de los estudios visuales, aborda la tentativa de demolición crítica de la cultura visual y los regímenes de visibilidad regidos por la lógica de la hipercomunicación y las tecnologías digitales. El punto de partida es el análisis del videoensayo Ashipegaxanacxanec iniciado en 2020 a partir de las acciones de control implementadas en la pandemia de covid-19. La producción se inscribe en las líneas de investigación del Núcleo de Estudios y Documentación de la Imagen (Nedim), Conicet-UNNE, con la finalidad de resignificar el acervo fotográfico del antropólogo alemán Lehmann Nitsche obtenido en el contexto de la masacre indígena en la Reducción de Napalpí, Chaco, en 1924. Metodológicamente, la propuesta explora la configuración experiencial de visualidades expandidas en la escena contemporánea, a partir de un anclaje en la dimensión especulativa en sintonía con un acercamiento contextual situado en las relaciones de convergencia entre pro- cedimientos, materiales, formatos, dispositivos e instancias disruptivas de prácticas y trayectorias estéticas. Ello supone la activación de procesos heurísticos y poéticos mediados por el ensayo y la escritura como montaje. Propuestas como el videoensayo analizado instauran la pregunta por el archivo y la memoria a través del montaje de temporalidades contradictorias. Su lugar de enunciación se posiciona como posibilidad de insurgencia estética que clausura tentativas de exotización hegemónica por parte de los dispositivos de control contemporáneos. The goal of this paper is to discuss the potentiality of contemporary artistic prac-tices that propose decolonial exercises by destabilizing the Eurocentric perceptual matrices on Latin American ethnic groups. From the perspective of visual studies, it addresses the attempt to critically demolish visual culture and the regimes of visibility governed by the logic of hypercommunication and digital technologies. The starting point is the analysis of the Ashipegaxanacxanec video essay started in 2020 based on the control actions implemented in the COVID-19 pandemic. The production is part of the research of the Image Studies and Documentation Center (Nedim), Conicet-UNNE, with the purpose of redefining the photographic collection of German anthropologist Lehmann Nitsche, obtained in the context of the indigenous massacre in the Napalpí reduction in Chaco, in 1924. Methodologi-cally, the proposal explores the experiential configuration of expanded visualities in the contemporary scene, based on an anchoring in the speculative dimension in tune with a contextual approach in the convergence relationships between proce-dures, materials, formats, devices and disruptive instances of practices and aes-thetic trajectories. This supposes the activation of heuristic and poetic processes mediated by essays and writing as montage. Proposals such as the analyzed video essay establish the question about the archive and memory through the montage of contradictory temporalities. Its place of enunciation is positioned as a possibili-ty of aesthetic insurgency that closes any attempts at hegemonic exoticization by contemporary control devices

Independent Videogames investigates the social and cultural implications of contemporary forms of independent video game development. Through a series of case studies and theoretical investigations, it evaluates the significance of such a multi-faceted phenomenon within video game and digital cultures. A diverse team of scholars highlight the specificities of independence within the industry and the culture of digital gaming through case studies and theoretical questions. The chapters focus on labor, gender, distribution models and technologies of production to map the current state of research on independent game development. The authors also identify how the boundaries of independence are becoming opaque in the contemporary game industry – often at the cost of the claims of autonomy, freedom and emancipation that underlie the indie scene. The book ultimately imagines new and better narratives for a less exploitative and more inclusive videogame industry. Systematically mapping the current directions of a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly difficult to define and limit, this book will be a crucial resource for scholars and students of game studies, media history, media industries and independent gaming.

As a media form entwined in the U.S. military-industrial complex, video games continue to celebrate imperialist imagery and Western-centric narratives of the great white explorer (Breger, 2008; Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009; Geyser & Tshalabala, 2011; Mukherjee, 2016). While much ink has been spilt on the detrimental effects of colonial imagery on those it objectifies and dehumanises, the question is why these games still get made, and what mechanisms are at work in the enjoyment of empire-themed play experiences. To explore this question, this article develops the concept of ‘casual empire’, suggesting that the wish to play games as a casual pastime expedites the incidental circulation of imperialist ideology. Three examples – Resident Evil V (2009), The Conquest: Colonization (2015) and Playing History: Slave Trade (2013) – are used to demonstrate the production and consumption of casual empire across multiple platforms, genres and player bases. Following a brief contextualisation of postcolonial (game) studies, this article addresses casual design, by which I understand game designers’ casual reproduction of inferential racism (Hall, 1995) for the sake of entertainment. I then look at casual play, and players’ attitudes to games as rational commodities continuing a history of commodity racism (McClintock, 1995). Finally, the article investigates the casual involvement of formalist game studies in the construction of imperial values. These three dimensions of the casual – design, play and academia – make up the three pillars of the casual empire that must be challenged to undermine video games’ neocolonialist praxis.

Game studies has been an understudied area within the emerging field of digital media and religion. Video games can reflect, reject, or reconfigure traditionally held religious ideas and often serve as sources for the production of religious practices and ideas. This collection of essays presents a broad range of influential methodological approaches that illuminate how and why video games shape the construction of religious beliefs and practices, and also situates such research within the wider discourse on how digital media intersect with the religious worlds of the 21st century. Each chapter discusses a particular method and its theoretical background, summarizes existing research, and provides a practical case study that demonstrates how the method specifically contributes to the wider study of video games and religion. Featuring contributions from leading and emerging scholars of religion and digital gaming, this book will be an invaluable resource for scholars in the areas of digital culture, new media, religious studies, and game studies across a wide range of disciplines.

Este trabajo se propone comprender la incidencia de las relaciones de poder que ciertas representaciones temporales acerca de grupos indígenas pueden ejercer en nuestra comprensión pasada y actual. Diversas imágenes reprodujeron ideas de indígenas que, aunque estuvieran vivos, mostraban una cultura asimilada a un pasado de amplias dimensiones. Por lo tanto, para comprender el proceso de invisibilización de la diversidad indígena en la cultura nacional, es relevante considerar los mecanismos de montaje discursivo —visuales y textuales—, vinculados con las nociones temporales de indios viviendo en un supuesto tiempo remoto. Atendiendo a ello, se analizan los procesos de montaje, desde la producción de las fotografías hasta la edición y presentación de imágenes, tanto en la prensa como en postales, publicaciones científicas y de divulgación, para ver cómo a veces pequeños cambios de encuadre, contraste, retoque o selección pueden incidir en la construcción de diversas historias, en la comprensión y en los sentidos construidos y en pugna.

Video games have long been seen as the exclusive territory of young, heterosexual white males. In a media landscape dominated by such gamers, players who do not fit this mold, including women, people of color, and LGBT people, are often brutalized in forums and in public channels in online play. Discussion of representation of such groups in games has frequently been limited and cursory. In contrast, Gaming at the Edge builds on feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories of identity and draws on qualitative audience research methods to make sense of how representation comes to matter. In Gaming at the Edge, Adrienne Shaw argues that video game players experience race, gender, and sexuality concurrently. She asks: How do players identify with characters? How do they separate identification and interactivity? What is the role of fantasy in representation? What is the importance of understanding market logic? In addressing these questions Shaw reveals how representation comes to matter to participants and offers a perceptive consideration of the high stakes in politics of representation debates. Putting forth a framework for talking about representation, difference, and diversity in an era in which user-generated content, individualized media consumption, and the blurring of producer/consumer roles has lessened the utility of traditional models of media representation analysis, Shaw finds new insight on the edge of media consumption with the invisible, marginalized gamers who are surprising in both their numbers and their influence in mainstream gamer culture.

Game Studies is a rapidly growing area of contemporary scholarship, yet volumes in the area have tended to focus on more general issues. With Playing with the Past, game studies is taken to the next level by offering a specific and detailed analysis of one area of digital game play -- the representation of history. The collection focuses on the ways in which gamers engage with, play with, recreate, subvert, reverse and direct the historical past, and what effect this has on the ways in which we go about constructing the present or imagining a future. What can World War Two strategy games teach us about the reality of this complex and multifaceted period? Do the possibilities of playing with the past change the way we understand history? If we embody a colonialist's perspective to conquer 'primitive' tribes in Colonization, does this privilege a distinct way of viewing history as benevolent intervention over imperialist expansion? The fusion of these two fields allows the editors to pose new questions about the ways in which gamers interact with their game worlds. Drawing these threads together, the collection concludes by asking whether digital games - which represent history or historical change - alter the way we, today, understand history itself.

I was about 10 or 11 years old when I, together with my parents, religiously tuned in weekly to the situation comedy ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? While I do not recall the specific year the show aired in Puerto Rico, I do remember that it was broadcast on WIPR-Channel 6, the island’s public television station. Watching one of my favorite sitcoms on what I then considered the boring channel was rather odd. However, I never thought it strange that the Peñas, ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? ’s working-class three-generation Cuban/Cuban-American family, resided in Miami or that some of the characters communicated bilingually in English and Spanish. For me, ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? was a show that resembled other locally produced situation comedies broadcast on commercial television, with the difference that the Peña family were Cuban immigrants who, instead of residing in Puerto Rico (like some of my childhood friends), lived in Miami (like many of my friends’ relatives). Probably as a result of the principal characters’ cultural references and their accents in Spanish, I decoded ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? as a Cuban sitcom. Fast-forward to 2004. I was invited to write a 500-word encyclopedia entry on ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? Without having any information on the show at hand, I immediately accepted. This was an opportunity to revisit a program I loved. After conducting the research I realized the uniqueness of ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? Sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education Emergency School Assistance Act– Television Program (ESAA-TV), ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? —considered the first bilingual situation comedy broadcast on U.S. television— addressed the culturalgenerational misunderstandings and the socio-cultural adjustments endured by the Peñas, a 1960 Cuban exile family.

Though research examining violence in video games (VGs) and its potential real-world effects has been a target of academic attention, content analysis of demographical marginalization in VGs has not been as prolific. What little research there is reveals a pronounced absence and stereotyping of women and racial or ethnic minorities but ignores queer content altogether. This work explores video game demographics through quantitative analysis of the demographic composition and stereotyping of characters from 30 popular VG titles. Findings of this study support that of past analyses, evidencing that the representation of women and racial minorities is both rare and stereotyped. Queer characters are also shown to be sparse and stereotyped. While past research has largely treated race and gender separately, this study shows that multiply marginalized groups, including queers, are even more underrepresented and stereotyped. The sociocultural implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions are made for future analysis and marketing.

This chapter analyses a profound transformation of Bengali regional-languagecinema since the early 1980s, a transformation that fundamentally changedthe industry and one that can arguably be attributed at least partly to thecreation of a Bengali television-watching public in the same period. Itfocuses on a trend that emerged in mainstream Bengali cinema during the1980s and was sustained thereafter, and brought into prominence a newconfiguration of elements previously marginal to Bengali films. This trans-formation was to do with mainstream Bengali cinema’s increasing adaptation of what are commonly known as the ‘‘masala’’ or ‘‘formula’’ elementsof Bombay cinema such as racy dialogues, stereotypical villainous char-acters, stylized fights and song-and-dance sequences. This new genre, whichhas commonly been discredited as the Bengali film industry’s totally unim-aginative imitation of the popular Hindi-language cinema of Bombay,completely altered what had been the dominant aesthetic of Bengali cinematill about the mid-1970s. Until this point, Bengali cinema was marked by itsclose relationship with Bengali literature and a Bengali middle-class worldview, greater realism than Bombay cinema or other mainstream regionalcinemas, and naturalistic acting styles, and was radically transformed by agrowing adoption of the ‘‘formula’’ elements commonly identified withpopular Hindi cinema. Industry sources, however, indicate that this newtrend was successful in boosting the Bengali film industry, which had beenswamped by a severe economic crisis since the 1970s. The industry’s crisiswas caused by a host of factors: the most important of these was the Ben-gali middle-class audience’s shift to television as a result of an increasingly unsatisfactory film-going experience in this period. The creation of a Ben-gali television public in the early 1980s shifted audiences from the cinematheatres, thereby significantly reducing film revenues in Calcutta, until then the prime market for Bengali films.

"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"--

Taiwan residents enjoy one of the most abundant television diets in East Asia. Eighty per cent of households subscribe to cable television services, offering a buffet of more than eighty channels including niche and full service channels. Taiwan’s television industry, while relatively small in comparison with its competitors in East Asia, has established a reputation for creatively re-generating formats developed elsewhere.

In the eyes of many observers the Philippine cultural icon that is synonymous with travel, as well as being the subject of numerous advertisements is the jeepney, a public-transport vehicle assembled in the style of the US military jeep but lengthened to accommodate from fourteen to twenty-two sitting passengers. What distinguishes the jeepney from run-of-the-mill public transport however is its artistic décor: a clutter and kaleidoscope of various artefacts from miniature steel horses dotting the hood, to massive, jazzy plastic or steel billboards announcing the name of the jeepney, to murals painted in fiesta colours at the sides, to a bizarre combination of items in the front windshield juxtaposing conflicting images of the Sto. Nino (the baby Jesus Christ) and stickers with sexually risqué messages.