While working on my upcoming video series Tropes vs Women in Video Games, I was reminded of the first remix I made but never publicly released. It was back in 2009 during a grad school course called “Cultural Studies of Educational Technology” taught by Jennifer Jenson at York University. The 3 1/2 minute remix is a little rough around the edges but I thought I’d pull it out of the archives and share it with you. In this transformative work, I combined game footage with clips from popular televisions shows - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Angel and Bones.
Here’s what I wrote about the remix when I was back in school:
Taking theoretical ideas and expressing them through art can often create tension between what is viewed and what is intended. This mashup assignment is no different. As I thought through the ideas and concepts we read surrounding video games as educational tools, I began to think about the place video games have in pop culture: a source of amusement, often played by and/or marketed to boys, and the (erroneous) notion that it lacks any educational value. My remix is twofold: the first and primary aspect is intended to explore the ways that video games can facilitate problem solving skills, pedagogical techniques for sharing skills and information with peers or with those who know more or less about a specific topic. The secondary aspect is a critical look at the fan boy culture of video games and the systemic misogyny and/or sexism prevalent in many popular games… and I tried to wrap it all up in a fun, amusing and accessible format.
