Menu-Driven Ethnicity and Race

According to Nakamura, new web technologies have taken the idea of races to a whole new level in cyberspace; however digital spaces limit “the user's racial identity within the paradigm of a ‘clickable box’-one among the many on the menu of identity choices" (Nakamura 102). This implies the idea that racial representations in cyberspace are extremely stereotypical and limited. She brings on this idea of race as a menu with “limited” options from where to choose from and to which you cannot modify.

Personally, I think that the website, Race: The Power of Illusion does a really good job at explaining what race is believed to be and what race is not about. I do not think that I see Nakamura’s menu-driven identity here as much. Among the many statements made by this interactive website are the following:

• “Race has no genetic basis”
• “Human subspecies don’t exist”
• “Skin Color is only skin deep”
• “Most variation is within, not between races”

Therefore, this site does not mean to tell us what race is all about and how we should classify ourselves based on predetermined “races”. In fact, this website tell us that there is no scientific proof of race, that race has no biological identifiable traits, that humans are all humans and that we are not divided into subspecies and lastly, that the color of our skin, is just a color.

If, this website supports or demonstrates the idea of a menu-driving ethnic identity, it would be under the activity where you can sort people into different categories. 

Under this activity, this website classifies U.S. population into 5 categories: American Indian, Asian, Black, Hispanic/Latino and white. This is menu-driven because

• it is giving us the categories so that we can sort people in
• it does not give us the option of creating more categories according to our own jurisdiction
• it does not give us the option of  modifying the categories
• it does not have an “other” or “mixed races” category (no mestizos are allowed)
• it is assuming that everyone should fit into one of this categories

Other than this menu-driven activity, the rest of the website intends to declare that even tough racism is real; race is often a misconception of stereotypes when looking at it from a third-person point of view.

“We are all more than just physical traits and our race is better kwnon to us than to others” Jesica Garcia de Laya

Citations

"RACE: the power of an illusion." PBS. California Newsreel, 2003. Web. 28 Oct 2010. <http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm>.

Nakamura, Lisa. Cybertypes: Race, Ethinicity and Identity on the Internet . Routledge: New York, 2002. 102. Print.

Cybertyping and Identity Tourism

Cybertyping

New technologies often allow people to free themselves from their real live, but since the separation of virtual life from real life (non-virtual) is hard to establish, many of the bad things that real life has are often taken into the virtual world. Some people will believe that the virtual world offers them the opportunity to create and enhance their identities online, while others will believe that the virtual world helps them destroy and recreate their identities, but the reality is that whatever there is in real life, might also be present in virtual life and this is true for racial stereotypes.

In her book, Lisa Nakamura describes cybertypes “as the distinctive ways that the internet propagates, disseminates and commodifies images of race and racism" and cybertyping as act of representing ourselves and our race through the use of new technologies (Cybertypes, 3).  From this definition, we can conclude that cybertypes are racial stereotypes within virtual communities and cybertyping is our self representation of race in our virtual life. 

The purpose of a virtual life is to improve real life, right? But how do we use new technologies to improve the lives of minorities when we have the online version of discrimination or redlining going on?

There is an erroneous belief that access to new technologies alleviates the digital divide, but this is often not true to minorities. Sometimes even if minorities and women have access to technologies they could still face some setbacks (Cybertypes, 10). The problem here is not that minorities do not have access (well part of it is, but not all), the real problem here is that new technologies are often dominated by the white middleclass men, meaning that the purpose of new technologies is often geared towards their benefit. Now why for their benefit? Well… there is no one willing to state that new technologies were made for the middleclass white males, but if we look around, we will see that many new technologies force you to choose between two genders only (what about transgender?) and do not offer the choice of choosing your cybertypes (racial identity) and social status assuming that everyone is the same, in case that everyone could be a white middleclass male. If it does let you choose your cybertypes; it is very possible that the racial identity, to which you are supposed to identify to, is often represented in terms of negative stereotypes. Just look around the web for programs that allow you to choose your own cybertypes and you will see that the representation of your race, if it is not white, will more often than not, give a really bad representation of you. Do all Hispanics have to have a dark hair… can’t they also have red hair? Do all Asians have to know martial arts and be skinny and with dark straight hair? Can’t an African American have light skin and if so, will he still be an African American? And further more… what about those with mixed races?! Do they have to choose between the “best” of the two… or three… or more that they carry?

Identity Tourism

One of the main purposes behind new technologies is to allow the user to “free” themselves from their real life and to allow them to explore a different life. This not only means that the user is disembodied from the real world and that he/she can travel within the cyberspace, this also implies that the user can experiment with new identities in many different ways. Through the use of new technologies in cyberspace, the user can change their gender, age, social class, education, jobs, race, and whatever else that he/she might chose to do so. The exploring of such options is called identity tourism.  Social networks, games and any other technology that allow us to interfere with others require that we choose an identity or character. However, it is important to mention that the real identity behind the avatar, the user profile, or the character is not known and since we only know what the individual choose to tell us or show us about them, the character might not resemble the physical properties of the real individual behind the character (Race in/for Cyberspace).

Analyzing Street Fighter II World Champion Edition in Terms of Identity Tourism

Street Fighter II offers players the opportunity to choose among the following options to provide identity tourism

Gender: Street Fighter II offers players the choice of selecting among twelve characters. However 11 out of those 12 characters are males and only 1 of the 12 is a female. Therefore, this game provides male players with a very slight possibility of touring among genders (if they want to try out the opposite gender they can only choose the one female character that is available), but for female players, it allows them to tourism gender with 11 options of male characters.

Race:  Street Fighter II definitely provides players with the opportunity to tourism among different races.

• Ryu: Japanese (NTE)
• Ken: ¾ Japanese, ¼ Caucasian (NTE)
• Edmond Honda: Japanese (Street Fighter II)
• Blanka: Brazilian (NTE)
• Guile: Caucasian (Street Fighter II)
• Chun-Li: Chinese (Street Fighter II)
• Dhalsim: Indian (NTE)
• Zangief: Russian (NTE)
• Balrog: Caucasian (Street Fighter II)
• Vega: Spanish (Street Fighter II)
• Sagat: Thai (Street Fighter II)
• M Bison: Russian (Street Fighter II)   

Physical Appearance: Once you choose they character that you want to choose, this game will not allow you to change any of the physical attributes of the character.

Specie:  It is possible to say that Street Fighter II allows the players a slight opportunity to choose among “species” because this game has what might be considered a mutant human being among the twelve characters available. Blanca, is considered to be human because he was born human, however his time in isolation from civilization and with other species have allow him the ability to control and generate electricity from his body, which is not necessarily a human trait (NTE).

Works Consulted:

Nakamura, Lisa. “Cybertypes: Race, Ethinicity on the Internet and Identity.” New York: Routledge, 2002. 1-31. Web. 20 October, 2010 http://paulmuhlhauser.org/475/Readings/Cybertypes1.pdf

Nakamura, Lisa. "Race in/for Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet.” The Cybercultures Reader. David Bell and Barbara M Kennedy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print

NTE. “Street Fighter Characters”. Love to Know Video Games. Web. 21, October 2010 http://videogames.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Street_Fighter_Characters

 “Street Fighter II”. Wikipedia. Web. 21, October 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_II

Games and Gender

OK first of all, let me say that I do agree with all of this week’s readings that state that most of the games are created by men and for men. I say this because I am definitely not a game lover, the only games that I ever played were Mario Bros 1 and another one (I do not even remember the name) and it was because I would play them with my dad, but I never really played them by myself and it is not that I liked dolls either (I never liked dolls), it was simply that I preferred to play “real games” with real people. To proof that games where not designed for females let me say that it took me 2 hours to finally get to actual game part where you finally see some action in Super Mario Bros 2 game, I just could figure out how to select a player and how to go in trough the mini door and once I was in the game, no matter how many times I tried, my characters would always end up dying before the first cascade.

Now to the gender stuff…

I think that Super Mario Bros 2 definitely follows gender stereotypes due to the following…

Mario is short and fat. He wears a typical red shirt and blue overalls depicting that he is a “hard working” and “always busy” man and he has a big mustache (typical of a macho man). Males are often stereotyped as aggressive and I think that Mario has some aggressiveness or rudeness in this attitude. I believe this, because I choose Mario as a character, Mario puts his hand up and his tongue out, as if he was saying “yeah it’s me losers” or something along those lines. When he is walking, Mario has his hands to the side as if he was simply too cool to move his hands as he walks, and when he dies, he can really show that he is not to good at expressing feelings because his cheeks blow up but he never screams (men usually hold feelings in and that’s why he has his cheeks blow up).

Luigi follows male stereotypes just as Mario does. He is a little bit taller than Mario, but he still has that really big nose and wears the same blue overalls that Mario wears, he has the macho mustache as well and wears a different color shirt than Mario (its green). When walking, he also has his hands to the side (too cool) and when he is picked on he acts rude like Mario and pulls out his tongue as well. Like Mario, Luigi also never screams and if he dies his cheeks also blow up holding back feelings. When Luigi jumps, he jumps higher than Mario and makes weird fast movements that allow him to suspend himself in the air longer and further when the walks and jumps.

I think that Princess just couldn’t be any more feminine in this video game. First of all, why do the rest of the characters have names and she is just called Princess?? It appears that on the original game (I believe its Japanese) she was originally named Peach for her sweetness (yeap female attribute) but when the game was translated, she was simply named Princess. Princess loves pink and obiously wears a pink dress with a crown (aww all females want to be princesses) and I wouldn’t be wrong if his girl was wearing some pink high heels as well (they are not visible, but a dress and high heels go hand in hand). Princess is tall and thin with long  hair, makeup and a tiny waist that gives her the illusion of having big breasts (typical of female models). Princess is really girly. She screams when she it’s chosen as the player as if saying “OMG I can’t believe you picked me,” she gets all excited like a cheerleader when she jumps pulling her hands up, legs to the sides and screaming (yeap, girls love to scream). When the walks and jumps, she jumps as much as Luigi does, now I am not sure why, but do girls usually love jumping or something? When she is walking he has her hands right next to the dress and it makes her see as if she has holding the dress not to get dirty and if she dies, her cheeks turn red and she screams as if wanting someone to save her.

Toad has a weird personality. I think he is supposed to be a man with a female personality aka a drag queen (we is wearing white pants and a  vest with his torso showing as if he wanted to show off his six pack or something). He is small and fat like Mario and jumps as low as Mario does, however I think he runs faster. His female personality comes in when he is picked on (because he screams), when he jumps (Hands up, legs to the side and a big scream) and if he dies, he shows his feelings just like Princess does.

Schleiner, Females and Games…

Schleiner believes that games are usually male centered and females only appear as trophies (Schleiner 222). This is true because if I remember correctly, in Super Mario Bros 1, Princess didn’t appear until the end, when she was rescued and married by Mario (she was the trophy to Mario’s quest I guess). Super Mario Bros 2, changed the roles a little bit and allowed Princess to be one of the players, allowing males to have “a safe zone to experiment with genders” and allowing females to see themselves as players hoping to get more women engaged in video games (Schleiner 223-224). Now, the character Toad plays a mix gender, which might be suggesting that males can be feminine as well. Close the conclusion of her article, Scheleiner states that having “bad girls” in video games could in fact be beneficial for girls and I see where she is going (Schleiner 224). I think that the purpose behind bad girls in video games is not to develop harsh and aggressive girls, but to develop girls with more confidence in herself and her actions. Games like Super Mario Bros 2 teach girls that you can wear a pink dress and run in high heels and still be adventurous in a game, however since I didn’t get to the end due to my bad video games skill, I am not sure what type of trophy Princess would get.

Works Cited

Schleiner, Anne-Marie. "Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games." Leonardo 34.3 (2001): 221-226. Web. 7 Oct 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/pss/1576939>.