What could have been At the Mountains of Madness

One of the sadder news this year so far was the cancellation of production on Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness. Since I am very much a fan of his work on Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth I had been looking forward to this movie quite a bit. It was much more than just a consolation prize for Del Toro not directing The Hobbit anymore and it seems that the project meant a lot to him as well.

However, since we have such amazing things as the internet these days, production hell now no longer means that nobody will ever get to see any of the hard work that has already been done. That way fans might at least get a faint impression of what the movie could have been like.

A thing that bothered me was that Tom Cruise's name seemed to be fastly attached to the project. This may be disconnected from his acting abilities but I prefer to not feed a crazy scientologist if I can avoid it. Thus the project being stuck in production hell also frees me from this moral question.

On the other hand I can't really picture Tom Cruise as Dyer. Especially with Dyer being depicted as a young (25, wasn't he older in the book?) father-to-be, who is seduced into going onto the dangerous expedition even though he knows he should probably have stayed at home with his dear wife, I can't quite put Tom Cruise into this role. There are many younger actors who would be great for the part I'd imagine.

Another thing that might work against the production is its closeness to a well-known movie, which is "The Thing from Another World" (1951) and John Carpenter's "The Thing" (1982). Even moreso because, as far as I can tell, there's a prequel to "The Thing" planned for release in 2011.

The closeness between the two stories those movies are based on has already been pointed out many times before. The "Thing" movies are all based on John W. Campbell Jr.'s novella "Who Goes There?", which was first published in 1938. However, Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" was written in 1931 and published in 1936. Since Campbell was a science fiction fan and also an editor of a science fiction magazine, I think it's very likely that Campbell had read At the Mountains of Madness and took his inspiration from there.

The stories actually don't have so many things in common. The main things being: An expedition to antarctica, the finding of a being from outer space under the ice, the alien being attacking the expedition crew. There, that's about it. But At the Mountains of Madness goes further and puts this whole plot into the context of the Cthulhu mythos and sets the stage for a showdown between Elder Things and Shoggoths. And super creepy six foot tall albino penguins. One must of course keep in mind that the movie would have probably included more monsters than the original plot, which most likely won't sit well with the Lovecraft purists. Especially the mutating and shape-shifting Shoggoths have been expanded upon, which puts this incarnation of At the Mountains of Madness closer to The Thing than the original text.

Since Guillermo del Toro is extremely good at creating creatures for his movies I think he's as close as it gets for a "perfect" choice for this movie. His way of avoiding CGI as much as possible and often relying on prosthetics, masks or even full bodysuits for his actors to squeeze in create timeless movies that are still impressive years later. I have observed this in Lord of the Rings already, where a lot of work was done with miniatures and costumes. These scenes don't age as much as the CGI ones. Del Toro would have done a great unforgettable work and I would very much have liked to see Doug Jones as one of the creepy towering Elder Things.

The next project that del Toro seems to be doing now is a PG-13 monster movie named Pacific Rim. Even though I am happy that he is doing something, this sounds like a bad consolation prize, especially considering that del Toro wanted to cut no corners and make a good R-rated monster movie out of At the Mountains of Madness. I don't think we have had any like these in a while.

Anticipation for Sucker Punch as a Popcultural Database Movie

Being swamped with a bit of university work at the end of the semester I (noticably) didn't have much time and muse for writing about movies and videogames on here.

Coincidentally I came across trailers for the new Zack Snyder movie Sucker Punch. Previously I had just seen teaser posters, snippets and stuff like that and couldn't help but scoff a little bit at the character designs. Babydoll? That isn't a person, she is a synthetic comic book character.

But finally watching the trailer it became apparent to me that this was no overworked design, this was not "too much", it was simply an artful expression and reflection of popular culture and the way we consume it today.

Every still frame of the trailer is a panel in a comic book. Every scenario in the movie is a videogame. Instead of products of popular culture being created in the image of real life, it is real life that we translate into scenarios and entries in the popcultural database.

My first action after watching the trailer was doing an amazon search for the comic book that Sucker Punch is based on. But my impression was confirmed in the fact that there is no single source material.

Sucker Punch is synthetically created out of our common database of popcultural elements. The first few moments we watch the trailer we begin to wonder "Is this the film adaption of one of the games that I played but forgot about?" It could very well be. But Sucker Punch is probably even more than that. It consciously references and plays with the age of database consumption that we are in now.

The title "Otaku: Japan's Database Animals" suggests that Azuma Hiroki was dealing with a distinctly Japanese phenomenon when he wrote about the shift in the way of consumption of popular culture that happened in the Otaku world roughly from the early 1990s until today and the underlying theoretical and philosophical reasons for it. But reading his text I found myself coming up with all kinds of details from the western world of popular culture as well that were conform with this theory.

Since the grand narrative of organised religion was declared dysfunctional, cults like Aum Shinrikyo could thrive and gain power. But in that context shouldn't it also be mentioned that it was no coincidence that the founder of Scientology was a science fiction writer? The decline of the grand narrative is of course also apparent in the western world and thus I think that the model of database consumption can be evidenced in western geek culture and Japanese otaku culture alike.

Hence we have movies like Sucker Punch coming out. Sucker Punch is not the first product that is consciously constructed this way. Tarantino has always been a filmmaker that made a lot of references and drew on a catalogue of settings, characters and plots that had in some way been established before and gave them his own twist. But Sucker Punch goes one step further. Sucker Punch does not explicitly reference works like Lady Snowblood, instead it uses the archetype of the girl wearing a Japanese school uniform. A girl wearing a Japanese school uniform and wielding a Katana.

So essentially archetypes, settings, plot structures and all these things have become entries in the popcultural database. While some creators tell stories in the supposedly traditional way, more and more creators become conscious of the popcultural database and start using the elements consciously and without shame. When copy and original have the same value there is no shame in being a "copycat".

I am very much looking forward to the movie and while I think it might be a little bit silly in itself its construction is extremely interesting and might even change the way people look at movies just a tiny bit.

Bulletstorm - Balm for the Wounded Hypermasculine Egos Out There or Just a Fun Game?

This entry will not contain any pictures. Most of you will know what it looks like anyway and I can't be arsed to dig through websites and trailers to grab pictures.

The first trailer of Bulletstorm that I was shown was the one where you blow the guy's asshole out. I felt a very strange sensation. Normally I absolutely relish in defending videogame designers' and developers' rights to practice their art and design whichever game they want to design. Every time an election draws near (and might it be just a small one) it is my favourite Saturday morning passtime to go up to the info stands of local politicians and start a little bit of hell there. Many of you may not know it but together with Australia Germany has the strictest standards when it comes to videogame violence in the whole world (at least out of the "democratic countries", I don't know if videogames are being censored in China, Afghanistan or the like). Even a lot of games that can only be sold to adults in the first place are only available in a censored version in Germany. I just don't think that is right (why the hell censor Portal??) but more on that later.

So with my mindset that you should never try to restrict the recreational media that any adult in any country would like to access in their freetime, I was suddenly faced with a very strange sensation when I witnessed the first trailer. I didn't like it at all. Something about the sexualised violence made me extremely uncomfortable, which did open up a deep conflict within myself. I guess this is what all the conservative people out there feel when they see pretty much any videogame. "I don't like it, I think it is harmful, it should be banned!" However, I'm too smart to come to that conclusion. And in a way it also relieves me a little bit that some form of videogame violence can still make me uncomfortable. That's good, right?

Anyway, I have been thinking about Bulletstorm. Something that I purposely haven't done was checking out the old media coverage of the game, since I know from countless instances in Germany that reports about videogames are routinely chock full of false facts. It is very noticable that the journalists themselves have apparently never touched the videogame they are talking about and are instead relying on some kind of contorted hearsay. But yeesh, to make it onto Fox News, I think Bulletstorm must have caused a kind of ruckus.

I did read some quotes from the developers of the game, talking about how it was just supposed to be a fun game and that they were in a situation where they could just make any game they wanted to make without much restrictions and this sounds great indeed. The mock-game Duty Calls, which is a parody on all kinds of military shooting games shows that they are really self-aware as videogame developers and that they have a great critical knowledge of the conventions of the genre. There is nothing about these guys that says "dumb" or "violent" to me.

However, what I have seen of the game so far reminds me a lot of one of my very first gaming experiences, which was Duke Nukem 3D. The hypermasculine protagonist that spews witty lines and taunts while killing enemies seems to be largely the same in the two games. Now where does hypermasculinity come from? Hypermasculinity that expresses itself through violence against other people is a sign for two things: 1) neurosis, 2) neurosis because of marginalised masculinity. Marginalised masculinity is what happens when a male gendered person realises that they do not fit the standards for what is in their society regarded as hegemonial masculinity, more often than not being 1) heterosexuality and reproduction, 2) strength to defend oneself and their family and 3) the ability to sustain a family as a breadwinner. It is often observed that male gendered people who do not fit these standards make up for this by making use of a hypermasculine image for themselves, which might in cases depend very much on the use of violence against other, weaker people to demonstrate strength. Now, choosing the protagonist for your new game as that kind of person can indeed be seen as a clever sarcastic element to the game that doesn't take itself seriously anyway.

On the other hand, I do know the gaming community. And this is where I get back to my purposely sensational title for this blog post, because I am trying to make a point here: Whether Bulletstorm is balm for the wounded hypermasculine egos of losers out there or just a fun game for a well-adjusted person is ultimately decided by every individual themselves. In a free society it is common to trust in adults to consume products of popular culture in a critical and aware way and I believe that the majority of people is absolutely capable of that. Thus I see next to no harmful content in Bulletstorm, provided it is consumed by people of legal age. However, I have also seen my fair share of dumb, misogynist and homophobic assholes in the gaming community, who will not consume the game in a critical way but instead enjoy the (sexualised) violence for what it is. "But it's just a gaaaame!" Come on, I always look at all kinds of media from a critical and also a gender viewpoint and it would be stupid to not do it for this game just because it is a videogame.

That does not mean I endorse censorship of games at all. But if I have come to the conclusion that I do not wish for a movie like A Serbian Film to be censored, even if I see no point in it and think the director might have done better by getting a deviantart account to convey his message through "art" instead of subjecting hundreds of unsuspecting festival goers to that, I of course also do not wish for Bulletstorm to be censored. Let's be frank here, that's not my choice at all and it will be censored in Germany anyway (if it even comes out). But that does not mean I have to like the game myself or personally see much of a merit in it. I don't even want to try playing it. Of course, the huge monster in the trailer looked really cool but the moments of violence just weren't my cup of tea. I am glad that games like Bulletstorm exist, so that even the more liberal people amongst ourselves might have to say "I don't like this, I think it might magnify harmful tendencies in some people, but I see no reason why this should be censored at all". We should all at some point be in that position, reviewing our positions and reevaluating our principles.

That still doesn't mean I won't give you the side-eye if you are one of those people who don't question the dimension of violence and the perpetuated gender images in media like this at all and are too dumb or lazy for critical thinking when it comes to their own free-time.

The Depiction of Videogames in Novels

There is something quite unfortunate about the depiction of videogames or pretty much anything having to do with computers and internet in novels.

The starting point always seems to be a quite self-conscious conception especially from authors of children's literature that videogames keep children from reading books and in essence produce dumb people. That is a harsh prejudice that is simply not justified. Children these days will read books or they won't. Videogames are not going to change that, you might as well blame TV for the decline in sophistication. And true enough, when TV was at its advent the older media had a very critical view of the new media on the block.

Furthermore, even though I have to admit it is only a small exception, some games are in their narrative and psychological framework just as brilliant and sophisticated as a good movie or even a novel. Sadly, these works of course remain in the minority but if you have a look at any medium you might find an overabundance of trivial narratives and flat characters anywhere.

But even if you disregard the very sceptical and sometimes downright condescending point of view of the author, oftentimes the depiction of videogames is ridden with silly mistakes that make it very obvious the author probably has never touched a videogame with a ten foot pole. I vividly recall one instance where a new game was installed on the pc by putting a new microchip on the motherboard. Ridiculous.

Then I remember a novel series that was entirely set in a bleak future in which social power is earned by successfully fighting in a MMO type of game. The depiction of the MMO game within the novel was actually very accurate, so much that it poked fun at typical behaviour of MMO players, such as grinding or power gaming. On the downside the narrative soon lost itself in the most terrible and dumb Mary Sue characterisation. If I want to play an MMO game, I go and play. If I want to read a book I do so. I do, however, not see a point in reading a book about people playing MMO games, assumed that the narrative doesn't offer any other interesting points, which it sadly didn't in the admittedly brief time until I lost my patience with the book series.

I have yet to read a believable and also interesting depiction of a videogame in a novel. Most of the time the author tries to cram in some kind of message about how videogames are evil and are programming the young generation to be killing machines. Sadly, even Terry Pratchett's novel Only You Can Save Mankind seems to be one of those novels and even though I usually love reading Pratchett I can't bring myself to give that book even a try. Maybe once videogames have become a respectable enough medium, such as it happened with film, people are able to write about them in a reasonable and realistic enough way.

Alternate Models of Families in Pixar movies: The Toy Story Trilogy

Chances are you will be surprised at what I am going to write now: I wanted to write an entry about how Andy's dad is absent from the family in the Toy Story movies. Are you surprised? Or have you always consciously noticed that Andy's father is never mentioned in the films and that he is completely absent from the family?

It did take me a while to notice that there was no father present and from what I have seen in online discussions it is a thing that most people don't notice at first until someone else points it out to them. Granted, the movies are, as the title already suggest, first and foremost about toys! The toys are the most important characters in the movie and it is their struggle that makes up most of the plot of the films. Also, from a technical point of view the animation team concentrated on the toys, the human characters mostly just making up a framework for the story. Many people explain the lack of Andy's father simply with: "They didn't animate that much."

But that's not really the Pixar we know. If one listens to the audio commentary of Toy Story 3 they mention how they at first didn't plan to even have a model for young Andy for this movie and that they at first had planned to leave it a bit botchy and chalk it up to the inferior camcorder quality so it would fit right in with the video that shows us young Andy playing with his toys. However, as they developed a model for young Andy, they just couldn't make it halfhearted, if they do something, they do it perfectly. Thus I do think that technical constraints don't mean a whole lot at Pixar and the decision to leave Andy's father out of the movie was at least in part a conscious one.

If you google further it appears that, despite the absence of Andy's father being not a plot point in the movies at all, many people are upset by this. They claim that it is just not "right" that any movie propagates such a "new normal" which "isn't normal at all", scoffing at how Andy is "too well-adjusted to not have a father around" and that "America needs examples of how a real family (a man and a woman [obviously they felt the need to specify that]) are formed".

I can say that I am really happy we have movies like Toy Story, which portray alternate models of families in a good or at least neutral light, without making the whole movie about it. Pixar tends to do these little nods to really progressive themes without making a spectacle out of it and that's what I find great about their movies. It's just one of the reasons why people of all ages can find something in the movies that touches their life or their views in some small way. I find this to be much more delicate than to target more mature audiences exclusively with adult humour.

Anyway, I think the very non-chalant portrayal of a single-mother family (for whichever reasons it may have ended up like this) in Toy Story is a great thing and it shows that alternate models for families have come a long way on their path to acceptance. It is great to see an alternate model of a family portrayed as if it's the most normal thing in the world, as I mentioned, many people don't even notice anything is missing from the picture to begin with. Besides, since Finding Nemo is a movie about a fish growing up without a mother (and I don't hear anybody complaining about that), shouldn't it be alright for Pixar to make a movie that only just slightly and softly touches on the subject of a boy growing up without his father and turning out alright after all?

Then of course the Toy Story movies aren't even devoid of positive father figures! Of course you can count Woody as one of the nurturing and loving father figures in the movie. His first priority has always been to be there for Andy whenever he needs him and Andy stresses that Woody has been his best friend for as long as he can remember. Buzz Lightyear, when he first comes into the picture does appear a bit like the shiny new toy that maybe some stepfather might have gifted Andy and indeed, the squabble of Woody and Buzz in the first film could be seen as an allegory for the actual father and the step-father fighting over the affection of their son. Lastly, the odd group of toys can also be seen as a family of course. Especially in the end, where Woody realises that the other toys have over the years become equally important to him and he can not face being without them, as they too have become his family.

I think Pixar promotes healthy families, just not necessarily families that always adhere to the most rigid standards that conservative people might think up. There is love and nurturance to be found in the oddest assortments of people and being of the same sex, being of different kin or any of these things have never stopped people from being a family to each other. I don't find that there is anything to criticise in this healthy message of the movies.

The Silent Hill Movie that never was - Shutter Island

Personally I think Shutter Island was DiCaprio's best movie last year. Better than Inception. (And it should go without saying but there are spoilers to the ending of both Shutter Island and Silent Hill 2 in here!)

Shutter Island is a classical psychological horror movie that is simply a pleasure to watch. Starting out in line with a tradition from the crime and mystery genre - an investigation taking place in an isolated sphere, thus limiting the possibilites and culprits - it quickly becomes clear that this will be no ordinary criminal investigation.

DiCaprio's character, U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels, is asked to investigate the disappearance of a female patient from a mental hospital located on an island. As the investigation continues he is faced with unhelpful hospital staff and a resurgence of his own war trauma. We, as viewers, first start to be suspicious of everyone on the island, then of the marshal himself.

The thing that pleased me the most in the movie were parallels that I could see between the plot and also the visual design of Shutter Island and Silent Hill 2. Some passages are very similar in overall style and development.

We start by entering a foggy and cold world. A mysterious and vaguely dangerous place. But Shutter Island continues to have its world inhabitated by people. Even if they are unhelpful or downright hostile there is no direct sense of isolation. In Silent Hill 2 you spend most of your time alone, only sometimes coming across a handful of people that are wandering the town as well, but never meeting more than one person at a time.

Then the imagery of movie and videogame crisscrosses again when we enter the prison world. Both Shutter Island and Silent Hill 2 contain a prison sphere, which signifies physically by the descent into the hidden and deep and visually with the darkness and ugliness, the travel of the protagonists into the abyss of their own souls and coming face to face with their own monstrosity down there. But yet, they are unable to believe and it is only during the final moments of the movie or videogame that they are able to face their past.

Two different interpreations of the end of Shutter Island - Daniels choosing to revert back into his delusions because he can not cope with his past and Daniels pretending to revert back into his delusions because he hopes to find oblivion in the impending lobotomy - correspond to two different endings to the videogame: James leaving the town together with the manifestation of his own delusion, Maria, her cough at the end signifying that there can be no happy ending; and James deciding to commit suicide because he can not live with what he has done.

I don't think there ever will be a good movie adaption of Silent Hill 2. But I don't belong to the people who claim videogames like this are unfilmable. Shutter Island shows us what could have been a perfect movie quite like Silent Hill 2. It is not impossible to do it. People just need to realise the essence of it. Silent Hill 2 draws on a number of works by David Lynch, among them Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks and these came from the medium film to begin with. So creating a movie that is true to the essence of Silent Hill 2 should not be impossible at all.

On the other hand, when people think of (survival horror) videogame movies, they think of Resident Evil and Uwe Boll and Silent Hill 2 couldn't be further from those sorts. So for the time being I am completely content with pretending that Shutter Island was in fact Silent Hill 2 The Movie.

Gender in The Walking Dead (part 2)

I know this post is coming a little bit late but I can explain! I've been busy reading through the first The Walking Dead Compendium, which contains the first 48 issues of the comic book series. Still, the notes that this post is based on date from before I have read the comic and it's still a look at the TV series only.

In the last post I examined the depiction of gender images in the first three episodes of The Walking Dead. It already became obvious that the dominant themes in this TV series seem to be fatherhood and the benevolent patriarchical group leader.

Now in the following post I want to continue analysing relevant scenes from each following episode and confirm the first impression on gender images in The Walking Dead that I obtained by analysing certain scenes from the first three episodes.

Episode four of The Walking Dead starts out with two of the female characters, Andrea and Amy, sitting in a boat on the little lake near the camp. They are catching fish for dinner. While waiting for the fish to bite they start a conversation in which we find out that their father taught both of them how to fish when they were younger, however he taught them different knots. Andrea at first suggests that this was just a coincidence but then they come to the conclusion that their father probably taught them different fishing knots because of their differences in personality. Remembering their father and childhood memories, they’re both starting to cry but the scene ends when a fish bites.

In this scene we also see the father figure as a strong, nurturing and benevolent motive. It is nice to have a father going fishing with their daughters, especially when this is usually known as the typical father and son activity to do. However, the complete absence of their mother in that nostalgic and slightly painful conversation is striking as well. When they think back to their normal comfortable life before the zombie apocalypse the first thing that comes to their mind is their father, not their mother.

What I liked about that scene where they return from the lake was that they had actually managed to catch a big bunch of fish. At least as many as Daryl managed to catch squirrels on his hunting trip. One male camp inhabitant even comes up to them and says: „Thank you! Because of you, my children will eat tonight“. This is a single instance where we can see the typical role model of nurturing father subverted and it’s actually the women getting food on the table. However this is also relativised a bit by them stating that it was Dale’s boat and fishing rods and that after all it was their father who taught them how to fish.

Since Rick has left the camp again together with Glenn, Daryl and T-Bone to go back into the city and save Merle and bring back that bag of guns as well, it is Shane who has to deal with Jim, who obviously is developing some mental problems. Jim had been keeping himself busy with digging graves near camp all day under the hot sun and Dale already reached out to him and asked whether he maybe wanted to take a break or at least drink something.

When Shane confronts Jim together with the group he doesn’t just ask Jim, he doesn’t accept no for an answer. His handling of the situation starts to appear a bit questionable especially when Jim calls him out on beating up Ed. This is also a moment in which the domestic violence coming from Ed is relativised and Jim says that „it is their marriage“ and none of Shane’s business. Finally Shane restrains Jim by force and ties him to a tree. As viewers we realise that there is danger coming from Jim, at the very least for himself but we also question the way Shane is dealing with the situation. In contrast to the way Rick always used to handle things Shane’s attempts look heavyhanded and not thought through. It becomes clear that Shane is not as good a leader as Rick.

There is also a brief moment in the scenes from the city in which an old woman appears through one of the key moments. Rick, Daryl and T-Bone are having a face-off with what seems to be a Latino street gang, who have kidnapped Glenn and set their eyes on the bag of guns, and the situation is approaching escalation quickly, when an old latino woman appears seemingly out of nowhere and walks into the middle of the scene. At that point all men put away their gun as there seems to be an emergency. The latino street gang is actually revealed to be employees at a nursing home and relatives of the old people who have been abandoned there. It’s a pretty imaginative scene but it seems a bit badly pulled off. It also does rely on the stereotype that latinos are generally more connected to their family and traditional values, etc.

The old woman defuses the situation and does appear as a positive figure. However, since she is so old already she is not exactly regarded as a woman, more as a grandmother or general mother figure. The men don’t stop fighting because she exudes some sort of power or authority but rather because she is old, helpless and pitiful. Thus, her positive influence on the scene also stems from her being understood as a traditional role for a woman – a mother or grandmother.
Finally the episode ends with a scene of great catastrophe. The zombies start to invade the camp. This scene undoubtedly stands for action and progress and has probably been hoped for by numerous people already. Ed, who refused to join the group for dinner, ashamed of his horrible bruises, is eaten first in his tent. Then Amy, who has gone away from the camp fire as well to go to the toilet is bitten by a walker. Some random guy gets eaten as well but I am not even sure he had a name.

The fact that Ed is killed first can be seen as his ultimate punishment for the domestic abuse of his wife. However, until the end we don’t see any development in his character and again evil is not punished through reason or criticism but by brutal force. The fact that Amy is killed seems to mean that she wasn’t that important after all. She will in the following episodes work only as a trigger for her sister Andrea, much in the way that a lot of women in movies solely exist to die and give the male main character a motivation to do something or a background of melancholy. But as of the end of season one we can not see Andrea getting any kind of motivation from the death of her sister, we will only be able to see her mourn for the rest of the season.

It is this mourning process that starts episode five. When the episode begins we see Andrea still kneeling by her sister Amy while the rest of the group is busy tidying up their camp, disposing of the corpses of both the zombies and their dead. The survivors are starting to get increasingly restless because Amy hasn’t been properly disposed of yet. If her brain is not destroyed she might come back as a zombie any time.

Now this is a mechanism very familiar to the fans of zombie stories. Fans are trained to quickly favour the decision of killing infected people. After all, that is the only way to contain the infection and not endanger oneself. So the long drawn out scenes of Andrea staying by the corpse of her sister will either bring great tension to the audience or great frustration at the unreasonable and sentimental behaviour of Andrea.

When Rick tries to confront her she pulls a gun on him and assures him that this time she has not forgotten to remove the safety. Thus Rick leaves her alone. Dale also tries to reason with Andrea. He comes to pay his respects to Amy and tells Andrea his own personal story of the loss of his wife. Finally he concludes that since that loss he hasn’t felt love for anybody but the two of them. Andrea and Amy are constructed to be the surrogate daughters for Dale, who has lost his wife (children are never mentioned). Thus Dale is also constructed as a father figure in the same way as Shane accepted his role as a surrogate father when he believed Rick to be dead and took care of his family.

Finally when Amy does come back alive the viewer almost expects Andrea to be bitten. We expect Amy who is just waking up into her new life as a zombie to quickly grab and bite Andrea at any moment, as we have seen it happen in a lot of zombie movies before. However, Andrea just says goodbye to her sister and at the very last possible moment she takes her gun and shoots Amy in the head. At that point we realise that she has been in control of the situation all along. This is maybe one of the only moments where we see a woman completely in control of her situation, even despite her heavy grief.

In that episode the conflict between Rick and Shane is also deepening. As they continue to dig graves to bury their dead Shane tells Rick he blames him for leaving and thinks that not as many people would have died if he had stayed. Rick however reasons that without the guns he brought back even more people would have died. Touché. Later as Rick and Shane scout the woods they have a conversation about either leaving camp and going elsewhere or staying there and sitting it out. Shane is in favour of staying, while Rick prefers to leave.

One very significant sentence almost sends Shane over the edge: „You don’t know what it’s like, you don’t have a family.“ Shane gets extremely angry at that and tells Rick that he HAS had a family, Rick's family, that he had taken care of when Rick was gone. It is almost implied that after all it was Rick who now has taken that family away from Shane again. Frustrated, Shane even points his shotgun at his colleague, when they hear a noise in the woods and Rick goes on to check ahead. Shane struggles for a moment and the anger is very visible on his face. He is clearly considering shooting Rick and finding an excuse for it. But then he takes down his rifle and to his horror realises that his moment of plotting murder has been observed by Dale. Dale is completely shocked by what he just witnessed and Shane sheepishly tries to escape the situation by calling out to Rick and suggesting going back to camp.

We can see from that scene how important that father role was for Shane and how much of his self-worth he drew from that. Now that Rick, who is better at being a leader, better at taking care of a family and better at solving group problems, has come back he feels that he is not the alpha male anymore and has lost a significant amount of his masculine power. The father and group leader role is depicted as the ideal for a man. We also see Dale as a passive father figure (possibly because of his age) but a moral authority nonetheless. In the end Shane submits to Rick's authority and supports his decision to leave camp.

In the final episode of the season the group is briefly allowed to enjoy a bit of civilised comfort as they find shelter at the CDC. They have electricity, warm running water, books and can sleep without being afraid of waking up to a zombie trying to eat them. In this episode we can see Andrea still mourning her sister Amy. It becomes obvious that she has given up on the whole world and even herself in a scene where she throws up in a bathroom and has a conversation with Dale. She suggests that everything is gone now, there most probably are no other research facilities around the globe trying to find a cure for the zombie disease. Dale however tells her that he sees this apocalypse as a chance to make a second life after his first one ended. In that scene Dale is also further established as somebody who is there for Andrea, which is a dominant theme in this episode, as it plays a significant role in one of the final scenes as well.

But we also have Shane further slipping away into self-doubts and anger. He drunkenly tries to confront Lori about their relationship, tries to tell her not to shut him out after all that happened between them but Lori refuses and the scene ends in an attempted rape, only stopped by Lori actually defending herself. Shane leaves the room in shock and anger. The next morning somebody confronts Shane about the wounds on his neck and he says he must have scratched himself in his sleep. Rick says that he has never seen him do that before and Shane answers "Me neither. Not like me at all." at which he looks Lori in the eye. The fact that he does meet Lori's eye in a sort of reproachful way tells us that he isn't ashamed of what he did. If he was ashamed, he'd maybe state the same thing but he wouldn't aggressively meet Lori's eye in a way of saying "we both know that you did that to me". I believe that Shane at this point is beyond redemption (which is further confirmed in a later scene where he flips out and Rick has to actually physically restrain him) and I really wouldn't know what to say if the creators of the series decided to "redeem" him in the next season. I really do wonder why the creators of the series keep him around, as the whole Shane-problem is much more easily solved in the comic books, before they even leave camp. I have heard words like "love triangle" been thrown around but in both the comic book and the TV series Lori does nothing but hate Shane's guts so I have no idea what the creators of the series are thinking right now. You better not come forward with some rape-apologism here, guys.

The final scene I want to have a look at is the scene where Andrea tells the group that she doesn't want to leave the CDC, effectively choosing suicide, and Dale stays with her to convince her otherwise. It is also very striking that nobody cares about the black woman, of whom we don't even really know the name. I know she has a name but next to nobody would remember it when talking about this scene. Nice to see that she doesn't merit a little "you can't stay here, come with us"-talk by Dale. Dale however tells Andrea that if she stays there he has no reason to leave either and Andrea tells him to get out and leave her alone. In the end she decides to leave with him after all. Thus Dale is sort of portrayed as a saviour to Andrea but the way through which he did it is also problematic. Ultimately he blackmailed her into going with him, he completely overruled her own judgement. Of course this means that Andrea will survive (and I am happy at that because she seems to be the only female character that isn't stuck in a mother-role so far and could get really badass) but we know that it will always be Dale who saved her. In this scene we can also see the final cementation of Dale's role as a father figure for Andrea and Andrea as his surrogate daughter. Or so I thought, when I had seen the series. Let's just say they will have to bring forth much better writing if they want to convince people that things can go the way they go in the comic book without being creepy or at least mildly inappropriate. But maybe Dale and Andrea will remain in their father/daughter relationship forever in the TV series.

So this was pretty much it, the first season of The Walking Dead. We can see that the strong underlying themes are fatherhood, as it is portrayed in the roles of Rick, Shane and Dale and the benevolent patriarchical group leader as it pretty much culminates in the main character, Rick. The reason for all of them to live are their roles as paternal authorities, protectors of the groups and their leading qualities. Rick for example, explicitly states at some points that he is "just a father looking for his family" and that all other things are less significant to him. He is fairly confident and powerful as a father and it is also from this role that he draws his masculine power over the group.

Shane is along for a bumpy ride. At first he is empowered by his role as a surrogate head of family for Lori and Carl but then he experiences an extreme loss of masculine power when Rick comes back and takes back his family and also proves to be a better group leader and decision-maker than him. This loss of his traditional role as the head of the family and indeed the head of a whole group of people, which he had never experienced before during the time before the apocalypse, makes Shane go mad with anger and we see him actually becoming a secret enemy to Rick.

Dale is a quite passive person who never gets to make big decisions, his role is more that of a protective father and not an aggressive authority. This may very well be just due to the fact that he is old and thus maybe rather fits into a "grandfather" role than a father role. However, by "adopting" Andrea as his daughter he is also clearly portrayed as a father figure. Even the little test you can take at the AMC webpage for The Walking Dead describes Dale as a "father figure".
The relevant women in the first two seasons are Lori and Andrea. Lori at first doesn't seem like a very good mother but as soon as she is reunited with Rick she goes back to her role as a protective mother and shuts out Shane, completely severing ties with him. It is also interesting that the relationship to Rick suddenly seems to be an ideal one, old relationship problems (which we knew existed from the car conversation in the first episode) are never mentioned anymore and the family becomes the most important thing to everyone involved. All in all Lori is depicted as relatively strong but only in her role as a protective mother. When she tries to argue decisions made by the group leaders, she doesn't get anywhere. So Lori is extremely passive and also very much dependent on Rick.

With Andrea, it is maybe significant to also have a look at her name. "Andrea" means "manly" and "virile". Thus it is not surprising maybe that she is the only female character so far that gets to show some backbone. She is easily the strongest female character in the first season. She criticises Ed for beating his wife and she is completely in control when she takes care of her sister Amy. Also it is not insignificant that in one episode Andrea and Amy manage to catch a lot of fish, thus satisfyingly filling the roles of nurturer for the group. Finally during the last episodes of the season Andrea becomes quite passive but this understandable as she is mourning the death of her sister. Still, if we hope to see a strong female character in the next season Andrea is probably our best bet.

Looking back at the whole analysis one can see that the traditional role of father / benevolent patriarch / group leader is depicted as ultimately ideal and desirable within the series. Women are mostly depicted as passive, problematic, very emotional and impulsive, which has to be balanced out by the reasonable males. Also the collaboration of father and mother to form a traditional family are very important. This is of course also owed to the fact that during a zombie apocalypse society does revert to a rather premodern state. As some people have worded it "feminism bullshit isn't relevant during a zombie apocalypse!". Of course, this could be a fact. However it is interesting to see that the zombie genre, as a genre that is very popular with the younger male geek generation and could even be understood as a sort of counter-culture to the mainstream popular culture, relies on the traditional values of family and masculine power. It is even experienced as a point of pleasure to see how modern society mechanics are removed and a group of people must revert back to life in a premodern world. People who feel unaccepted in today's world might not feel a big loss at having the current society structures vanish and be able to put their own brush on the canvas and finally be considered useful by whatever peers they may encounter. But why are traditional family values the ones that are being depicted as ideal then, when there has previously been a feeling of frustration at the way in which modern society works? This is a very interesting subject matter that I definitely want to look at in more detail with other products of the zombie genre as well. What I also found striking is that all the other characters, which don't fit into a clear mother/father role, such as Daryl or Glenn get very little development. Especially Glenn with his cute geekish ways should be an easy figure of identification for the target audience, yet he remains very passive and doesn't get a lot of chances to shine.

Now having read the comic book I have to say that I am glad I didn't read it before watching the series as I would have been disappointed in all the quite unnecessary sub-plots that are being added into this series. I know a TV series can't always be completely like the comic but the underlying feeling does suffer some and certain additions just look clumsy and bad.

However, there are of course also redeeming qualities in the TV series. For once I thought the dealing with basic humanistic ideals was very interesting. There we can see that the zombie genre definitely benefits from having a bit more time to spend on relatively calm scenes. Humanistic ideals such as "not killing people even if we don't like them" aren't necessarily present in today's society and are especially not on the mind of the audience of a zombie story. One of the very basic things that viewers of zombie stories are quickly taught is that you don't have time to wait to shoot somebody when they are infected and pragmatism is the key to survival. Thus, I found it quite interesting that the group did decide to go back to Atlanta and save Merle, even though I bet it was a source of great frustration for the audience. I know from the comic book that the theme of humanism and humane decision making is a very important one to the series and despite the TV series being quite different I appreciate it that they tried to keep that aspect even though it will frustrate a trained zombie-movie-audience.

Another thing that's very similar to the humanistic ideals of the group is the humanisation of zombies. We can see Rick showing sadness and regret at killing the bike girl zombie as well as taking a minute to find out who he zombie was that they are chopping up to take the guts. The very long drawn out scenes of Andrea saying goodbye to Amy also belong into that category. In your average zombie movie there is almost no time for scenes like this so it is a really welcome change to see the survivors take some time to deal with their emotions from time to time.
For the next season we can expect some interesting developments. My hope is that Andrea will develope her potential to be a strong female character and I also hope there will be a satisfying resolution to the situation between Lori, Rick and Shane. So let's wait and see what they have in store for us next Halloween!

Gender in The Walking Dead (part 1)

My fingers have been itching to write about this but I wanted to wait until at least the first season of The Walking Dead was over. Now I have seen all the episodes and I want to write down my observations and impressions about how the issue of gender is being dealt with on The Walking Dead. I will do this by not fully analysing every episode but rather dealing with a few key scenes that I will take a closer look at. Episode by episode an underlying theme and motif should become clear.

Before I start writing away however I also have to mention that I have not read the comic book. I did this on purpose so that my experience of the TV series wouldn't be influenced by any preconceptions.about the characters. As I understand it towards the end of the season the storyline has started to deviate a lot from the comic book anyway, so I might still read the comic books at some point. However all that I write here is only about the TV series as I have seen it and I don't know how this corresponds to the comic books at all.

I want to begin with episode one. The first scene with actual dialogue in it introduces the main character Rick and his colleague Shane by letting them have a conversation in their cop car about "the difference between men and women". Shane starts talking about how women are too stupid to turn the lights off. All of this is done in a joking way, an assholeish joke maybe, but a joking way nonetheless, which is probably supposed to be endearing or something. When Rick starts talking, things immediately go serious and he talks about his relationship problems between his wife Lori and him, finally coming to the conclusion "the difference between men and women? I would never say something that cruel to her". What starts out as a funny conversation about women being too dumb to turn the lights off turns into a dead serious declaration that women are fundamentally crueler than men. Now of course you can say that this is supposed to show that these guys are a bit fucked up and have problems with women but I think it is a pretty risky thing to have the first conversation in a new series, which is simultaneously supposed to introduce two male lead characters, make such a bad and one-sided statement about women. Personally it just gave me the reaction of: "Okay, maybe you guys are just getting what is coming to you". Let's just say that in terms of gender images we aren't off to an all too great start with this series, even though I can also acknowledge the kind of ambivalence this first scene has when it is seen in context with later scenes. Still the first impression that the viewer gets is that this Lori must be a heartless bitch.

Another significant scene in the first episode (and sort of the only other scene where a woman has any significance) is the camp scene where we are reassured that both Shane and Lori (and her son) are alive. We are also introduced to the fact that they have started a relationship. This does not come in favour of our already slightly prejudiced image of Lori. First she is cruel to her husband and now she has an affair with his colleague, just like that? I feel like most people will first start questioning her morals and maybe as an afterthought we will get our first doubts about Shane's morals as well. This scene is significant as well because it shows a difference of opinion between Lori and Shane. The one time in the pilot episode that a woman gets to suggest something significant (wanting to go warn Rick, who is approaching the city, about the danger that lies there) and she gets talked down to by Shane and she finally obeys him. It's a bit of a buzzkill and it also vaguely depicts the woman Lori as impulsive and emotional, while Shane is the voice of reason in this scene. This fits together a bit with the general depiction of women later in the series.

So the pilot episode does not pass the Bechdel test. It doesn't have a whole lot of women in it and the way they are talked to and talked about is mostly, let's be honest, bad. However, much of this can also be explained or at least relativised by context and later episodes do shine a light on the relationships between certain characters. So let's look onward at episode two.

In episode two we have a kind of uncomfortable scene in the beginning with Lori going into the forest to look for mushrooms. She hears a noise and starts looking around for zombies. The experienced viewer knows that this is the moment where not a zombie will come but instead a cat will jump out at the character or something similarly mundane as that. However, it is a tense moment and it turns out to be Shane who jumps Laurie. He holds her down for a moment to keep her from making a surprised noise, alerting the rest of the group, so they can have a bit of "private time". Before they have sex on the forest ground Lori takes off Rick's wedding band that she still wears as a memento. The viewer realises that Rick or at least his memory still holds some kind of significance for Lori but she does have sex with his colleague nonetheless. Her image doesn't really change from watching that scene but I felt like Shane is starting to get increasingly creepy.

One of the earlier scenes in the city has Andrea confronting Rick about his careless behaviour in the city filled with zombies, holding a gun to his head. She is angry at him for attracting a lot of zombies and making it difficult for her group to get out of the city alive. There we find the same pattern of women being portrayed as impulsive and emotional when under pressure. The only guys portrayed in a similar way in that series? The racist Merle and his slightly less offensive brother Daryl. But those guys actually do something, they fight, beat up people and kill zombies, while women rarely get a chance to fight in a similar way to men. But more on that later. In a later scene we also hear from Rick that he remained so calm with a gun pointed at his face because the safety was still on. Women... always leaving on lights and safeties! But nonetheless, the viewer can empathise with Andrea because she does get to tell a bit of her backstory, we realise she has a sister and she even gets to crack a little joke. She is introduced as impulsive but not cruel or unfaithful.


Finally, episode three! In that episode we have the big family reunion of Rick, Lori and Carl. This scene and this episode are very significant to the development of the relationship between Lori and Shane, now that her real husband has come back. When Lori and Carl suddenly see Rick standing there in their camp their joy is very visible on their faces. But with all that joy in Lori's and Shane's faces we also see a bit of shock. We come to realise that Lori is really and honestly very happy to have Rick back and that she very deeply regrets having slept with Shane. This earns Lori a bit of sympathy already.

Then there is another very significant scene, which also gave the whole episode its title. Tell it to the frogs! In that scene Lori comes to fetch Carl from the lake where he has been trying to catch some frogs with Shane as was arranged earlier. Lori tells him to go back to the camp and severs ties with Shane. This is a big turning point in our image of Lori, as we realise that Shane told her that her husband died FOR SURE. Suddenly it even seems a bit like Shane wanted to get his hands on that happy family (as he has always been plagued by girlfriends who left the lights on and as he remarked in the car, Lori is really good at turning the lights off!) and has no qualms whatsoever to jump into the gap when his colleague is disposed of. Or at least, if the thing wasn't planned then at least Shane didn't seem to wait for long. No matter how we precisely interpret Shane's intentions, in this scene he very much appears like the unethical one in this situation. Lori is also suddenly portrayed as a very strong and protective mother, trying to keep everything that harms her family out. And Shane no longer belongs to this family.

This, together with Rick's return leads to a very difficult situation for Shane. On the one hand, he is not the only cop in the camp anymore. He is not completely in charge anymore. Now I bet Dale also always had a say in things but from the way things were being handled when Lori suggested to warn Rick when he approached the city, it becomes rather obvious that Shane was the authority in the camp. That's probably the way things would go, if there's a cop still alive people would look to him for guidance. Now Shane has to share his power with his returned friend. On top of that he loses his newfound "wife" and "son". He doesn't only lose a part of his masculinity by losing authority over the camp but he loses the ego boost he gained by suddenly being in the role of a family father and protector as well. We can see that this takes a very harsh toll on him when he flips out at the wifebeater in the next scene.

This is also a rather important scene when one wants to talk about gender images in The Walking Dead. The scene begins with the women from the camp sitting at the lakeshore and doing the washing. They talk about what they miss from the life that they had before. Ding ding ding, I think we might have a winner here! This might be the first scene with which The Walking Dead passes the Bechdel test! Halfway into the first season, that's not so bad. To be fair, it's a very short season, too. Eventually the conversation strays to why the women have to do the washing while men stand around and smoke a cigarette (as Ed does) and Shane plays around with Carl in the water. When Carol admits that she misses her vibrator, too, the women break out into laughter. Annoyed by that, Ed, Carol's husband, comes along and tells them to laugh less and work harder because this isn't a "comedy club". The women don't immediately talk back at that but the scene instead cuts back to the scene between Lori, Shane and Carl. Then when the scene cuts back to the washing women Andrea gets up and tells Ed he can do his laundry himself and questioning what his job at the camp is. Ed reacts by telling his wife it's time to come back with him but Andrea objects and tells him she doesn't have to go anywhere. Ed threatens Andrea with violence and the situation quickly escalates when he punches his wife in the face. Of course at that moment, Shane who has witnessed the argument from afar comes running to save the day. He beats up Ed pretty badly. This is a very significant scene as it shows all that frustration that Shane feels now that his authority is standing on clay feet and that he has lost his would-be father role to Carl. He reinstates his masculinity by being the benevolent saviour of a bunch of harassed washing women. Ed is the perfect punching bag as nobody will, rightfully, feel sorry for him.

Now I have heard that this scene wasn't originally in the comic book, so adding a segment about domestic violence in which the offender is at first criticised and then also punished seems pretty progressive and praiseworthy, doesn't it? However, when you look at how the scene is solved it leaves a stale aftertaste. The criticism made by the women in the first place, about the division of labour within the camp and about Ed's treatment of his wife doesn't go anywhere. They can not protect Carol from being harmed and they can not defuse the situation once it starts to escalate. Instead they need a man to reinstate order. They need masculine violence to fight masculine violence. So in the end, even though I don't doubt it was meant well, the scene doesn't actually deal with domestic violence in a very progressive way. Now most people will agree that Ed deserved that kind of punishment and I am not even sure he didn't but the fact remains that women in that scene got nowhere with their talk and criticism and only male fists solved that issue.
Overall in the first three episodes we generally see women being portrayed as quite helpless, even if they try to be strong. They obey what men say and even if they try to fight they don't get anywhere. The two female characters with the biggest amount of lines, Lori and Andrea, are still quite ambiguous. Lori had a very bad image from the very start, being introduced as "cruel" and as the episodes progress we also see her having sex with her husband's colleague. However when we realise that Shane told her that her husband was dead for sure, thus seeminglylying to her and as we see how much she regrets having slept with him we get more sympathetic towards her case. Shane in contrast loses some of our sympathy and finally at the end of episode three we can see him become increasingly unhinged as he tries to rebuild his hurt masculine pride. Andrea didn't get a whole lot of lines yet but she comes across as probably the strongest female character of the series, confronting Rick angrily at his careless behaviour and also standing up to a wifebeater. There is no reason why the viewer would dislike her, we only laugh at her a little bit when we realise she had forgotten to remove the safety of her gun. Another thing that is increasingly stressed is the role of Lori as a protective mother. This is a quite conservative role for a woman to fit in but in the coming episodes we will also see that The Walking Dead relies heavily on the themes of fatherhood and as an opposite to that naturally motherhood as well.

My impression from the first three episodes is that it has already become quite visible that this show is aimed at males, with women getting significantly less screentime and not having as much background info and significant roles as the males. But of course a series isn't immediately sexist because it has male lead characters. I will however continue to analyse the underlying themes and motifs in that series and aim to come to a final conclusion about the whole first season in the next post. Then I will of course also deal with episodes four to six in detail.

I actually really enjoyed watching the series, because I like watching stuff about zombies. Also I'm not even sure the handling of gender images was the worst thing about this series. What kind of bothers me is that Rick so far feels like sort of a blank. Maybe it's just because I'm not exactly the target audience of The Walking Dead, but most of the time I can not fill his blank emotionless stares with content and put myself into his shoes. It's still the series I've been looking the most forward to watching during the last few weeks since Halloween. Rest assured, people can criticise aspects of products of popular culture and still be a fan.

Videogame Industry done right

Next week (hopefully) we will get the new (and completely free on the PC) release of another campaign of Left 4 Dead / Left 4 Dead 2. I will take this as an occasion to use Valve Corporation as an example of how video game companies can do it right.

Valve Corporation is probably best known for their long-running franchise Half-Life, which maybe became even more famous through the fanmade mod of Counter Strike. I don't think you can call Valve an ordinary game company. Because of them we have invented terms like "Valve-time", coined after lots of delays in production and release of new content. But even though Valve isn't always the quickest in churning out sequels (like SOME companies) they do make sure that what they publish will fufill certain quality standards.

Valve hasn't released a lot of games but all of them are really good. Half Life, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, Portal, all of those games are wellknown with gamers for a reason. To go into detail of the awesomeness of each of these games would be too much for a single entry, so I am going to focus on the way in which Valve perceives their task as a game developer and thinks about the desires of their customers.

One of the best things about Valve are their free updates (at least if you are on the PC) that keep games alive even years after their release. Probably the most changing updates were those made to the game Team Fortress 2. Since the game came out in 2007 (eight years after its predecessor, by the way), all character classes have received new specific items and also funny little collective items like hats have been added to the game. Furthermore, the game started out as a game with a rather cryptic (some may say non-existant) storyline of two companies that are for some reason fighting against each other, having to deliver bombs and capturing points. Through the years its storyline has been fleshed out through comics and character videos, being a story of two feuding brothers and the motives of another force in the background (the Announcer) still unknown. The overall tone of the game seems to have changed a little bit as well, with items like a brainslug, a fake beard and a monocle, an Elvis-esque hairdo it now comes across as rather amusing.

The free updates for Left 4 Dead are much more epic. Entire new chapters are revealed that drive the story on and recently Valve has started using comics for storytelling in L4D as well. That comic really is surprisingly good. If made into a movie, I think it would turn into one of the best zombie movies out there. A twist that has been foreshadowed but never in a too obvious way is slowly being revealed: The survivors, which we know to be immune to the zombie virus, are actually carriers of the virus and thus, highly contagious. Now where can they go to escape the zombie apocalypse if even the safe zones won't want them? This is where The Sacrifice seems to start out.

Also, when it comes to content, Valve is very innovative. A lot of games require shooting in some way shape or form but Portal, for example, is pretty much violence-free and was a big hit when it first came out, as a refreshing new genre: first person puzzle game. The famous companion cube quickly became a meme, just as the saying "The cake is a lie". How many people are even aware that this saying came from Portal? Another thing that I think is really worth mentioning is the portrayal of female characters in Valve games. None of their videogame females are scantily clad or the inappropriate attention magnets that videogame girls usually are. In Half Life 2 you have the sympathetic Alyx as your main sidekick. She's the person that Gordon Freeman interacts with the most and plays a big role in the story. Portal even sports a female main character, you play as the test subject named Chell. Based on the same face-model, the character Zoey from Left 4 Dead is probably my favourite female character made by Valve. She is a young college student, majoring in film studies but already on the way to dropping out. She stayed in her dorm for the majority of the previous semester and watched zombie movies, which in the end were a nice preparation for her facing the zombie apocalypse. She also has a strong relationship with her father, with whom she used to watch those movies together and who keeps defending her even if her mother criticises her for dropping out. Zoey, to date, is probably the character that I can most identify with. Left 4 Dead 2 also sports its female character, Rochelle, a tough reporter girl from the South who was supposed to do a report about that new flu when the zombie apocalypse decended on them. I really think that Valve does good, probably better than ANY game company I know, in the portrayal of females in videogames. I can easily identify with all their female characters.

Gabe Newell once said that videogame pirates are nothing more than unsatisfied customers, people that you have to win over by offering a good product. This is the most constructive approach to the issue of videogame piracy that I have heard of to this day and Valve seems to be the first company that actually understand what they are doing. When their games come out, they sometimes can be little more than bare bones (as was the case with Left 4 Dead 1) but the loyal customer buys those games because they know they can rest assured that Valve will keep on supplying them with new content soon. That's why people were extremely upset when they heard about the sequel, Left 4 Dead 2, so soon after the first installment had been released. They feared that Valve would stray from their reasonable path and I have to say I was highly suspicious of this new game as well. I have to say though, that I have been completely blown away by the trailer and all my doubts were erased when I finally got to play the game. It really was more fun than its predecessor and worth buying in every regard.

Now with the next update Valve assures us that they aren't abandoning L4D1 as a game. They have developed new content for it for the second time now and continue to do so free of charge. Recently they also released a whole game for free, Alien Swarm, which is a nice little 4 player co-op game about shooting aliens. There have also been periods of time when Portal was completely free and you could get yourself a permanent copy of that, or weekends where Team Fortress was free to play or drastically reduced in price (3€!!). I think that was especially done as an experiment to see how a videogame company can profit from making their products much cheaper and their sales shot through the roof. Even though the individual unit price was lower, they did make more money in the end because of the sheer number of copies they sold.

Valve thinks about what customers really want, what is fair to them and they keep their promises. That is why I still trust Valve, even after I was highly suspicious of their business with Left 4 Dead 2. When I attended gamescom 2010 it also became obvious which videogame companies were generous and which weren't. Valve gave away free t-shirts of Portal 2 AND free codes for full-price, full-version games and not just one but one for you and one for a friend that you could invite. How awesome is that? In the end I can say is that I support Valve and the way they are working and I think they might probably be my favourite videogame company ever. Even if I am not that interested in Portal 2, I will continue to support Valve in whatever they do.

Pixar vs. Dreamworks

Picture courtesy of the internet, though I think it might have originated on the SA forums?

Now, having had a look at that accurate graphic, you could pretty much leave it at that.

On the other hand, of course I am here to elaborate on the matter. There was a time when I was sort of prejudiced towards computer animated movies. Sure, I loved Toy Story back then and I also liked Finding Nemo but then I just got annoyed at the sudden boom of computer animated movies starring animals that got churned out quickly. Back then I didn't care about studio names, I just noticed that most of the trailers look the same and show the same kind of humour that I was quickly growing tired of.

Now I have taken some time to sit down and actually watch some computer animated movies and pay attention to the fine differences between studios. While movie franchises like Toy Story and Shrek are similarly successful there is an underlying difference in the way they work. Both studios direct movies that are primarily intended for children audiences but as critics will always state "adults can enjoy them as well". This might lead one to believe that they are achieving this in a similar way but they don't.

If you look at Shrek as an example of Dreamworks' work then you can see that the studio is using a setting that has proven its popularity with children for decades (fairytales) and the appeal for the adults in that movie comes from the quite cynical humour that is used within it. The whole fairytale world is a little bit twisted, with fairytale creatures behaving in a way we wouldn't expect them to, watching TV and making jokes. Even its main protagonist, Shrek, is your typical flawed hero. He burps and farts and has a very cynical outlook on the whole fairytale thing to begin with.

Adults will watch these movies because "they are much more funny than expected". It's the kind of humour that children don't really get though, so we have two fields that are pretty much seperated from each other within the movie. We get the adult and cynical humour on the one hand and the fairytale or goofy animals-as-protagonists setting on the other.

Now Pixar does approach this whole thing a bit differently. Sure, there are also cynical characters within Pixar's movies who make references that children probably won't understand. But the whole underlying feel of Pixar's movies is not cynical. The world within the movie, as childish or ridiculous as it might be, is taken seriously by all characters within the movie and thus also by the audience. Pixar's movies communicate with an adult audience because they bring up adult matters that are very relevant to the living reality of adults and they don't do this at the expense of the world within the movie's integrity. Whereas Dreamworks works with jokes that people of certain age gaps will either understand or not, Pixar works with the serious telling of a story that people of all ages can fill with their own kind of meaning.

Whether the struggle of Woody to not be ignored in favour of the new space toy Buzz Lightyear is just that, the struggle of a poor toy who might have become boring, or if the whole story can be seen as an allegory for a father and a step-father fighting over the attention of their son (and have you ever noticed that Andy's father is never mentioned? It's always just his mother, his sister and him in any pictures. I get kind of sad thinking about that, but I also love the subtlety with which Pixar employed this minor but meaningful plot detail), or if it's on an abstract level about fears of abandonment that most people face at some point in their life, people of all ages can find meaning in the stories as they are presented by Pixar. Their stories are well-crafted and meaningful and more often than not also extremely innovative.

You might like Cars or not. Personally, I don't like cars in general at all and the idea of a movie entirely based on cars as the protagonists in a world completely inhabitated by cars sounds ridiculous. However, when you watch the movie you realise that they have made it work in their own way. A ridiculous idea like that and halfway in you don't feel like something is "weird" or "out of place" at all. Even if you don't like the movie you have to admit that just thinking up such a scenario and making it work is more innovative than your usual "there are talking animals and they do things that animals normally don't do"-schtick.

Dreamworks movies aren't necessarily bad. I just can't stand them. I have to say however, that in Pixar movies usually the different appeals to different target audiences work all together, as if out of a single mold and not seperate from each other, or even in concurence of each other as it might be the case with Dreamworks movies.