Share your toys
Diversity is a hot topic right now and where I am, in Australia, gender diversity is a national conversation. My home town Sydney is one of the world’s most multi-cultural cities but you wouldn’t guess that from our screens. When it comes to AR/VR platforms, the warning signs are already there that the same old rules might apply. White male perspectives dominate and all others struggle for equal access to the frontier. Forget any notions of meritocracy and social justice, if VR is going to offer a mono-culture then we all lose. It will be bloody boring. If you’re reading this, chances are that you’ve already drunk the VR Kool-Aid. You don’t need me to explain the potential for new experience and presence but a lot of folks simply aren’t present. So if you’d like exciting media experiences that reflect the world’s rich diversity, here are some ideas on how you can help.
Think before you speak
If you’re in the media spotlight, check your privilege and think before you speak. In our post-factual world, off-the-cuff remarks carry weight well beyond merit and intent. Just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean you should air it in public. Especially if it causes harm. Perhaps you mean to cause harm but if you don’t, think before you speak publicly. Maybe save off-the-cuff remarks for your mates. NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made a joke last week at a San Francisco meetup when presenting a female raffle winner with one of NVIDIA’s latest graphics cards.
“You don’t even know what a GPU is, huh?”.
It’s about 42 minutes into this video if you really want to witness his gaff. Regardless of his intent, and let’s give this guy the benefit of the doubt, this kind of ‘humour’ from tech industry leaders can damage self-esteem and community building. Women, making up 51% percent of the potential market, may even decide to go elsewhere.
I recently got called out by friends on social media for joining in angry calls for Channel 9 celeb, Sonia Kruger to apologise for her anti-Muslim rhetoric on an (all-white) TV panel called (no less) Mixed Grill.
Sonia is a host of light entertainment reality TV. On the morning TV talk-show that she co-hosts, her job is to present advertorials and segments on topics such as lifestyle, fashion, beauty, and entertainment. On a recent episode she waded, unaided by facts, into Australia’s contentious immigration debate by calling for a complete ban on Muslims entering Australia.
“Surely it is better to be aware of these views?”, my friends asked. “Doesn’t everyone have the right to an opinion?”My position is yes, absolutely everyone does — but does everyone have the right to make inflammatory fear-mongering ignorant remarks on mainstream television? No. Only the privileged few get to spray their opinion from that platform. It doesn’t matter if me and my friends hate what she said. It’s the platform that’s the problem. The following week Kruger was back on air and this time used the platform to voice her opinion that scholarships for disadvantaged LGBTI students is a case of “reverse discrimination”, kicking off another round of angry social media filter bubbling. Channel 9 is clearly onto something eyeball-attracting here. Expect to see more “Kruger-Rants” to come.
We’re getting used to the idea of the filter bubble, typified by Facebook’s timeline, where the media we’re served is curated more and more to match the world view we’ve already formed. I’m really not looking forward to how this will translate into real-time 3D.
Fans, share your toys
The recent fuss over Ghostbusters doesn’t show humanity at its finest either but anthropologists will have a field day. Minor spoilers ahead. The reboot of a middle-of-the-road 80s comedy story universe seems to have struck two different chords. On the one hand, making the lead characters female is a heinous crime against comedy apparently and that’s a shame. And yet, for others who loved it (7.8 from me), what is simply supposed to be a fun night out at the movies was tinged with a different kind of shame. Why would you subject film-makers and actors to this much grief?
The night my partner and I went to see it there was a Hodor-like fella sitting a few rows behind us at our screening doing a deep ho-ho-ho laugh every few minutes. It was a little creepy at first. He started right from the beginning of the movie. Was it some kind of Gamergate intervention I wondered? I don’t think so but it set off a chain of nervous laughter — complementing enormously the film’s stupid gags for some 360 degree fun.
I liked the nice-but-inept co-worker gags. I liked the way a lot of “the most disliked movie trailer in history” bits were cut from the release to tighten it up. I loved the Bollywood-inspired dance number throughout the end titles. Sony pulled out all the stops on that one.
I loved all the cameos, especially the cameo-as-testimonial reference. A newscaster asks Bill Murray’s character to confirm that his approval would provide legitimacy to the new crew. He agrees and then pronounces they are absolutely not legit.
And it wasn’t just us old farts enjoying it. The teens in the row behind us seemed to be having a great time. Obviously too young to have their childhoods ruined. “What’s Zuul?” one muttered after the credits. “Have to look that up.”
This movie aces the Bechdel test. No hubbies back home to bog down the plot. No kids to feed. Just a bunch of women getting shit done. Which is clearly outrageous. As the New York Times said,
Ghostbusters “shows girls they can run science labs and have fun”.
Enough said.
The action sequences are equally no-nonsense. Apart from a cringeworthy “Ms-Pacman” style Slimer character, the ghostbusting action is generally free of sexual puns and suitable for a family audience. Sony is clearly laying the groundwork for their franchise. And why shouldn’t they? This thing cost a bomb. The 3D effects (worth the ticket price if you like your high-end VFX with cheese) are obvious and fun.
That fun night at the cinema was all we were asking for. But no. After leaving the cinema to the sound of happy punters, we get to read about online harassment of the on-screen talent. To hear that comedian Leslie Jones has been hounded off Twitter.
My only beef so far with Ghostbusters has not been the film but the much-vaunted VR extension at Madam Tussaud’s in NY. I was so looking forward to The Void’s Ghostbusters Dimension where you wear a backpack mounted VR kit but The Verge’s review makes me now hesitate.
“I found it a little disappointing that Dimension, a tie-in for an all-female Ghostbusters film, has each player default as a generic white male avatar from your perspective”
And then there’s the comments section of the review. No surprises there. Writes commenter MRIsHere (now deleted):
“I stopped reading this moron’s article after seeing this idiotic comment. Seriously? Must have been difficult to drag both sex and race into an article about MR (Mixed Reality). Congratulations.”
For every irritated person wondering why the social justice warriors (SJWs) just keep bringing up this bloody topic, there are probably another ten or so who simply roll their eyes and move on with their lives. Why bother engaging with a culture that excludes you? Result — more boredom for the rest of us. For those who’d like diverse voices and faces in our media, which now includes VR, this is a problem.
I get folks like MRIsHere. They see Male as default human and anything else as fringe. But that’s not reality. It doesn’t have to be virtual reality either.
IMDb has become the battleground where the haters’ campaign tactic is to rate it 1-star and those who disagree rate it 10-stars simply to pull the average up. As of today Ghostbusters is rated 5.4 on IMDb with an almost equal percentage of 1 star as 10 star reviews.
It’s only a movie but what a fuss.
Technologists like me build this internet platform thingy but it’s up to all of us to make it work. The social network system providers aren’t responsible for managing social mores, nor should they be. Facebook may own Oculus but they won’t pull back future VR fanboys from going feral. That’s up to us.
Share the sandpit
Let’s face it. When it comes to VR, no one knows anything yet. The first blockbuster is yet to be released. We’re developing our experiences in a post-factual age that easily drowns out rational thought. The worst thing I can possibly imagine for diversity in VR is for people to hunker down in their silos to grow mono-culture. Get out of your houses people. Talk VR with someone who’s not at all like you. Invite them in. Smile with them. Question their perspectives. Respect the fact that we’re all better off with a broad canvas. Then you might be able to make something real for people.
We feminists have our work cut out for us in 2016. So be it. Women will continue to have the gall to claim our share of the fun stuff.
Luckily, as celebrated in the opening of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidit, “females are STRONG!”.
