COMM 333: Goodwin's model and Nirvana's Sliver

In the Sliver video, Nirvana chose to create an image of a garage band style performance. The song itself is about being babysat by grandparents as a child. The lyrics read as a personal story being told by Cobain about his life. In visual form, this is enhanced by the video's frequent extreme closeups on Cobain's face. It's contradicted by the presence of a medical model of a baby in the womb and a scarecrow-like dummy wearing a rubber mask. The juxtaposition of child-like themes, intimate close-ups, and things that a child would perceive as scary work to create an image that suggest a troubled childhood, something the lyrics do not confirm until the final moments.

The imagery looks as though it were made on low quality equipment. This is two-fold in meaning - firstly, the distortion of the music matches the distorted look of the video. Secondly, this can suggest the idea of young kids making their own music video, which plays to amplify the lyrics' storytelling quality.

The performance aspect of the video is very similar to a live Nirvana performance, but with a few key differences. The video is in a much more cramped space that the large stages Nirvana often played. The video is almost made in a way that suggests this is what the band looks like performing at someone's home. This makes the video more intimate and relatable than a performance video like Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, which takes place in a high school gymnasium. 

COMM 344: Doom and Modification Culture

Doom is widely known for it's extremely open stance on modding. In 1993, mods were limited to levels and basic graphic changes. Still, this was enough for many people. Tons of levels in the style of the original game were created, but some gamers weren't satisfied.

The first major Doom modification was Aliens TC, a total conversion of Doom into a game based on the film Aliens. It inspired a slew of other movie themed mods, including ones based on Star Wars and Batman.

Batman Doom is of particular note, as it was one of the first total conversions to use a program called Dehacked to modify Doom's code. This was at a time when Doom was closed source, and no one knew how exactly the game was coded. Dehacked worked by reverse engineering the game's DOS executable. People worked tirelessly to change a game that was mostly closed off from change.

But in 1996, Quake was released, and the Doom modding community began to die. But then, in 1997, Doom's source code was released in a not-for-profit license, and in 1999, it went GPL.

The result? Doom became the new Hello World. People run Doom on tons of different devices. People port other games to Doom's engine, including Sonic The Hedgehog, The DayZ, and Resident Evil.

A game so bright in the engine of a game that had more than 40 shades of brown in it's 256 colors.

The modding community has kept Doom alive 21 years after it came out, but Doom is also timeless for it's art style, which I'll cover in my next blog.

COMM 406: Frith Analysis

Ad - War Horse, Vanity Fair January 2012, page 11.

The surface meaning of this ad is simple: visually, this is a film, and in this film, there is a boy and a horse. Textually we see that aforementioned horse is of/pertaining to war in some regard.

The advertiser's intended meaning is that the film is epic, a journey, and even a tear jerker. This is a sad movie that will ultimately uplift you.

The cultural meanings are great and varied.

• The boy and his horse are close together. The horse is arching it's head over the boy, as though to hug him. They're friends.
• The boy and horse are looking to the left. Because of the way we read from left to right, this appears to be indicative of looking back on things. This is furthered by the boy looking over his shoulder.
• The sky also takes advantage of the left-right reader model. there is sunshine and blue skys behind us, and dark storm clouds ahead. 
• The overall color scheme, rich in reds and deep natural browns, indicates a historical setting, a serious tone, and a theme of passion. 
• The style of the image is evocative of Civil War era paintings, particularly the Gettysburg Cyclorama, which has far less horses than I remembered. The film itself takes place during WWI, but nonetheless, the cultural image of cavalry horses on canvas is a strong one to indicate bravery.
• The font of the words "WAR HORSE" is strong and serious, while dignified. This give the reader the impression that this film is high class drama, not Helvetica Hipster or something of that ilk.

COMM333: Analyzing Sliver

From it's intentionally low-fi video presentation (a novel idea in 1993) to the embracement of childlike consumerism, Nirvana's Sliver music video is something of a peculiarity. In 1991, Nirvana's Nevermind album knocked Micheal Jackson's Dangerous off the #1 spot in the charts. Yet two years later, here was Nirvana, the biggest band in the world, making a video that looked like a garage band.

Here's a song by a "big rich rock band" (as Kurt Cobain described his band on MTV Unplugged) that's lyrically about an upset child, yet the images of childhood are joyful, and the video looks like it was shot on the world's cheapest camcorder. Kurt Cobain's sweater is ripped. Krist Novoselic, generally the band's most charismatic member, is barely shown as more than a shadow. This is a video that hearkens back to the band Nirvana used to be during their time at Sub-Pop.

The video is interesting, then, because of the presence of Dave Grohl behind the drums. When Sliver was recorded in 1990, Interim drummer Dan Peters was the man behind the drums. The band used the audio from the Dan Peters version, but Dave Grohl is the one pantomiming in the video. The reasoning behind this is pretty obvious, being that Dave Grohl was the only drummer most Nirvana fans knew, and even Bleach/Sub-Pop era devotees would only recall Chad Channing's time with the band, but the idea gets fuzzy when one considers that, when Nirvana first recorded In Bloom, it was with Chad Channing, and he was in the original music video. When Grohl joined the band, they rerecorded the song and did a new, totally different music video. Why they would go to the trouble for one song and not the other is curious, but it speaks to a deeper meaning in Cobain's head.

Sliver was the video to promote Incesticide, a corporate cash-in album of unreleased tracks from the early days that Cobain only approved on condition that he was allowed to design the album art. If Kurt's gonna be forced to make an album just as quick buck for the label, he's sure as hell going to promote it in the most anti-commercial way he can. Of course, Incesticide turned out to be an awesome album, but Kurt's greatest influence on it was to make sure only the diehard fans would buy it. Making a music video that looked raw helped to insure that Nirvana wouldn't be only known as the band that beat MJ.

COMM 344: Doom and The ESRB.

Recently, Night Trap made the news. From having 203 copies traded into a game store, to how Kickstarter almost brought us an HD remaster. Night Trap is a strange game. For all it's innovation in full motion video, for the star power of Dana Plato of Diff'rent Strokes, for all the half-naked teenagers and PG-13 level violence, no one seems to care about Night Trap. Maybe it's because the game is generally considered terrible, or how full motion video in games didn't take off, but it begins to feel like Night Trap would be forgotten completely in a different world.

But that world is one where Senator Joe Lieberman never saw the violence and sexuality of Night Trap, The spine-ripping of Mortal Kombat, and the demon-killing bloody good times of Doom. That is a world where congressional hearings never lead to the creation of the ESRB.

Night Trap doesn't get much more sexual than this. (Digital Pictures/SEGA via Wikipedia)

At the time, Mortal Kombat and Doom had the most realistic visuals of any game on the market, and Night Trap was little more than an interactive movie. Games were experiencing a frightening amount of visual realism, which, when mixed with blood and breasts, creates a bit of a controversy stew.

Night Trap on it's own couldn't have this. The game wasn't particularly violent, nor was it particularly sexual. Worse things happen on TV every week. Mortal Kombat couldn't have done this on it's own. It was primarily an arcade game, and home versions were typically censored.

But Doom? Doom was it's own controversy. It didn't need the rare Sega CD that Night Trap needed. It didn't need a pocket full of quarters at a local mall like Mortal Kombat. Doom came on two floppy discs, and the first third of the game was free. All you needed was a DOS computer with an IBM 386 processor and 4 MB of ram. This was a lot more common than the Sega CD, and free is certainly cheaper than 25 cents every time you die. Confounding the problem was that id Software, the developers of Doom, encouraged people to share their shareware copy with friends.

Doom difficulty select. (id Software via GiantBomb)

Other games could argue that they weren't ulta-violent.  Doom couldn't. Hard mode on Doom was titled "Ultra-Violence".

It was great that the ESRB came along from this. No longer did gaming have to fear the stigma of being an industry for children. The ratings that the three games responsible received? M for Mature. In the modern day, the most revered games share that rating, and mature content isn't all shotguns, demons, and nightgowns. Games like Bioshock and The Last Of Us are mature for reasons beyond their violence, and without the path to violence that Doom helped to pave, they may never have happened.

And of course, Doom's modding community, which I'll cover in my next post, means that Doom can continue to get even more brutal.

COMM344: The Art and Influence of Doom.

It's older brother, Wolfenstein 3D, was the first ever first person shooter. It was the first game in it's genre to use varying floor heights, textured floors and ceilings, and varying ammo types. It single handedly created the massive game modding culture that is now one of PC gaming's most celebrated features. It was, along with Night Trap and Mortal Kombat, one of the reasons for the creation of the ESRB. It's nine free shareware levels, known collectively as "Knee Deep In The Dead" were some of the most iconic level designs in gaming history. 

The game was Doom, and it's influence was obvious. From the fact that a game from 1993 is now considered a must-have on every new console (and every console has it, from the Atari Jaguar and SNES to the PS3 and Xbox 360), to the plethora of derivative titles (Doom bore Heretic, which bore the Elder Scrolls franchise, Doom bore most shooters, but particularly Space Marine shooters like Halo, Gears Of War, Killzone, and Crysis) Doom was a massive success. This is a game that I have personally purchased on Xbox 360, Steam, Boxed PC Copy, and Game Boy Advance. Perhaps the only game I've purchased more times is Tetris, and that's not the same experience or worse on every system.

The important thing about Doom, besides it's incredible replay value, huge influence on the industry, and great art design, is the way it's perhaps the most charmingly violent game I've ever played. Plenty of games are violent, but Doom has a way of making violence make you smile. Mods and addons like Batman Doom and Brutal Doom (not to mention the massive conversion of Doom into Sonic Robo Blast 2) have extended the life of a 21 year old game into infinity. Everything about Doom makes me nostalgic, and I didn't even first play it until it and myself were 13 years old.

COMM406: Cult Branding and Technology.

Gaming has always been a beneficiary of cult branding. From the days of Atari vs Intellivison, to the days where you couldn't pick up a gaming magazine without hearing about how SEGA does what Nintendon't. In the modern day, this is often taken to an extreme in the console war, with the joke that goes as follows:

"Why do they call it an Xbox 360?"
"Why?"
"Because when you see it, you do a 360 degree turn and walk away."
"360 degrees means you would be walking towards it still."
"Shut up."

However, despite the vicious cult-like attitudes of console gamers, PC gamers are even more devoted. A quick peek into the /r/pcmasterrace subreddit shows a world where PC gamers are the "master race" and console gamers are "peasants". To a degree, this is done in jest, but the reaction that many PC gamers have to a Steam sale (i.e. compulsively spending money until they go broke) is reason enough to suspect something a little more extreme than simple brand devotion that goes even further into the Linux vs Windows (and never Mac) , AMD vs Nvidia, and Steam vs GOG vs Origin vs Uplay divides.

But PC gaming is still only a minor blip in the cult-branded market compared to the glory that is cryptocurrency.

Official Logo of Dogecoin

Bitcoin is, by nature, a political movement. It attracts libertarian politics and people interested in fiscal anarchy. Bitcoin is the spokesrebel of a generation of unenthused Batman villains.  More dangerous is the advertising methodology of Dogecoin. Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer left the community this summer after deciding that dogecoin was "cult-like". How is Dogecoin a cult?

- Dogecoin is spread via two methods: Giving away free money and relying on a well established cultural icon (the doge meme).
- Dogecoin's subreddit disallows negative statements about the coin, thereby keeping those who get into the culture from hearing things that would make them want to leave.
- Dogecoin's developers actively discourage suggestions that would improve the quality/value of the coin (such as limiting supply).

This has worked exceedingly well for Dogecoin. The official dogecoin subreddit has gone from 84 users in December of last year to 87,000 users today. If ever user had an equal amount of the 100 billion dogecoins that will exist at the end of September, it would amount to 187 dollars each.Of course, this is not the way things are. There are, as in any economy, the haves and the have-nots. But even those who only hold a couple hundred doge (the 467 doge I still hold is worth about 6 cents) are happy just to be a part of the group, a group that is ultimately a money-making brand.