I watched The Sarkeesian Effect so you don’t have to
Okay, you never had to either, and probably, you never wanted to. But I saw the movie and decided to give my reflection.
First of all, my PRAISE (yes, you read that correctly) Jordan Owen has done a pretty good job editing the thing. Davis Aurini doesn’t appear at any point during the show. Not even a single skull appears. Jordan’s removal of Aurini, given their released footage, I can only describe as surgical. Beyond the occasional laugh or cough, there is no evidence that Owen ever had a partner in this enterprise. It’s clear that Owen knows his keyboard shortcuts.
Now to the movie itself:
The movie begins with a quote from psychologist Gordon Allport: “Our censure should be reserved for those who would close all doors but one. The surest way to lose truth is to pretend that one already possesses it.”
Owen describes Sarkeesian as “the gaming industry bowing down to a bully like one it had never encountered before.” Obviously, he knows about Jack Thompson, who literally tried to ban video games using legislation, because he appears in this film. So I don’t know how Sarkeesian is a bigger bully than Thompson. But he will attempt to explain:
The opening animation reminds me of Wolfenstein 3D, but I guess the low quality is permissable given the subject matter. The weird thing is, it’s an animation of photos pinned to a corkboard and strung together with red string, which is probably a bad way to illustrate that this is not just another dumb conspiracy theory. One of the connections involves DARPA, which is never again mentioned in this documentary. Probably it was a connection that was later abandoned.
The film is credited to “JO42 Productions,” Jordan’s personal YouTube account, highlighting his disconnect from Aurini. The opening credits are: Brad Wardell, Jack Thompson, Mercedes Carrera, Cathy Young, Jim Goad, Paul Elam, Phil “Thunderf00t” Mason (text not centered), and the Honey Badger Brigade. Of these, only one (Wardell) has anything to do with the games industry, the rest being Men’s Rights Activists and porn stars.
The film opens with Phil Mason, Thunderfoot, who has since publically and scathingly disowned and condemned this documentary. With his microphone very visible on his white shrt, he condemns Sarkeesian as using the same arguments as creationists.
The font that Owen uses for his credits and subtitles changes constantly, with no consistency.
In all of the interviews, Owen or Aurini’s hands, feet or foreheads appear in the shot. Owen’s voice can be heard constantly during interviews, going “yeah, uh-huh, sure, yep, sure, okay, yep, okay, sure.” Pro tip, you don’t need to constantly reaffirm to your interviwee that you’re still listening.
There’s a Black Sabbath quote. Seems Owen couldn’t help himself.
They interview the Honey Badgers ladies. Karen Straughan stares directly into the camera the entire time. You should have told them, don’t look at the camera, that’s bad form.
They interview Cathy Young. Can’t really hear what she’s saying because the audio is so bad, but I’m pretty sure it amounts to: Boys will be boys, all threats against Anita are just third party trolls.
Owen claims all of Anita’s death threats are fake, uses Milo Yiannopoulos as a source. Claims if any of the threats were real, they would have been carried out.
Now he goes into Anita’s history working for Burt Baggett and (after an out of place segue) Alex Mondossian. Dips into Jordan’s pet theory that Anita is using Mondossian mind control techniques on her fans.
He publishes text from the police but also puts more text on top of it so that you can’s read either.
Jordan neglects to edit the lip-smacking noises out of his narration.
We’re 40 minutes in and — a wild Jack Thompson appears! The reflection of Owen and Aurini are stupidly obvious in the glass door behind him. Thompson argues that he is not actually in favour of censorship. Owen’s conclusion is this proves that Sarkeesian is worse than Thompson because she approves of censorship as proven by the subtext of her videos.
Thompson says that there are problems in the world worse than misoginy in video games, such as ISIS. He reaffirms that threats on the internet are not real.
Thompson says that Charles Lindberg declined to receive an award from Hitler, but yet Sarkeesian accepted an award from the video game industry. Are you sure, in a documentary about video games, you’re comfortable with comparing the industry with the Third Reich? Apparently, Owen is.
Jack Thompson questions her dedication to the Social Justice Warrior movement by saying that she’s not waging war hard enough to be considered a “warrior.” This despite the fact that “social justice warrior” is not a term that she actually uses, but is uniquely a pejorative used by reactionaries against her.
Thompson ends the interview by suggesting that Anita should be proud to have someone shoot at her, because it would validate her position.
This is where mention of Sarkeesian ends and the documentary goes into Rebecca Watson and Elevatorgate. Thunderfoot says she invited it by being at a bar, so being hit on can only be expected.
We switch to Jim Goad, who suggests feminist criticisms are all invalid because there’s violence in the third world.
Then there’s an interview with Nick Robalik which is so inaudible it sounds like it was recorded through an air conditioning duct from the far end of a hallway. Ill-fitting classical music overshadows the interview, but the message I got from it is that internet threats aren’t real.
Now they play the internet notorious video of feminist boogeywoman “Big Red” in its entirety.
Here there’s about 20 minutes of some nobody’s interaction with internet feminists, and there’s no relevance to anything.
Now we get back into it, with Jordan saying that feminists are maniacal, mean-spirited, malicious thugs, but at the very least, they don’t deserve death threats.
OK, I was going to provide a total review, but this is an extremely LONG movie and from here on it’s more of the same. Let’s just say that Owen never finds a cohesive thesis and, though he’s probably better at creating an actual argument than his partner Aurini, neither of them know what the fuck they’re talking about.
(Credit for original post: /u/occams_nightmare)
