Female Streamers — Case Study Part II

▶ BCM332 Global Media Interventions

Chelsea Sandy is one of the top Call of Duty players in Australia. She has competed in many kind of gaming events professionally like EB Expo, Gamescom and the Call of Duty World Championships (Streamerpedia, 2018). In 2015, she decided to quit her full time job as a pharmacy technician to pursue a full time job as a video game streamer and follow her dreams in playing video games for a living. Chelsea is one of the growing number of Australian women who make a living from twitch.tv (a popular streaming site). She goes by the username xMinks on all her social media as well as her main ‘gamer’ tag, and every night at around 10pm she streams to her 330,000 followers – chatting with them while playing her favourite game(s).

Image taken from theguardian.com

Despite already being a professional at what she is doing, she still receives abuse and harassment. This is because the gaming industry mainly caters to the men or the ‘boys’ rather than it being a “girl thing,” so whenever any woman enters the scene of gaming — instantly they get judged and attacked right away just from being the gender that they are.

Like what I mentioned in my previous case study, appearance is the biggest aspect when it comes to women who play video games. Chelsea falls a victim to this abuse, she mentioned in an interview that unlike women, men’s physical appearance does not matter if their gameplay is amazing (Convery, 2017). That being said, if you were to change this scenario and turn it into a woman being good at playing video games and has amazing gameplay; her appearance will be the number one thing that — unfortunately to say — men will critique first, and despite having good skills in playing video games, men will still find a way to belittle women that are just enjoying what they are doing.

Image taken from medium.com

Although there is still a positive future ahead in the female gaming community. After becoming a full time streamer/gamer, Chelsea says that certain things have improved over the years of her being in the industry — putting aside the negative comments. According to Bullen (2015), this is due to the increased spotlight of women in the gaming community — more and more “girl gamers” are surfacing on streaming sites like YouTube and Twitch, producing content and being active just like the men in the community. Women are playing video games just like how men do, some are just as professional and/or skillful and some are just as competitive just like how men are.

If women in the gaming industry were to keep up their pace and stay active and loyal to their followers and subscribers, I can guarantee that one day when you decide to open up YouTube or Twitch to watch your favourite video game being streamed — the top video or livestream available to watch may or may not be a woman instead of a man. I’m not trying to put down the men in the gaming community but if ever this situation were to happen – being a gamer myself and a girl — I’d be more than content.

References:

1. Admin. (2016, June 16). MINKS INTERVIEW (Chelsea Sandy). Retrieved June 11, 2020, from https://www.impulsegamer.com/minks-interview-chelsea-sandy/
2. Bullen, J. (2015, July 22). Bad shooters, sore losers: Men take aim at top female gamer. Retrieved June 11, 2020, from https://www.smh.com.au/technology/bad-shooters-sore-losers-men-take-aim-at-top-female-gamer-20150717-giezl1.html
3. Convery, S. (2017, January 03). The women who make a living gaming on Twitch. Retrieved June 11, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/03/women-make-living-gaming-twitch
4. SCUFGaming. (n.d.). SCUF Affiliate of the Week: Chelsea. Retrieved June 11, 2020, from https://scufgaming.com/int/gaming/scuf-affiliate-week-chelsea-minks-sandy
5. Streamerpedia. (2018, October 12). XMinks. Retrieved June 11, 2020, from https://streamers.gamepedia.com/XMinks

Blog 2 — American TV + Orientalism = ?

▶ BCM232 GLOBAL MEDIA AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Meme created by me

Orientalism in American TV shows and films have been very commonly portrayed, this way the audience has a generic idea of how the Eastern countries are typically depicted through the eyes of Western countries and even without having to travel anywhere at all. Although this causes a lot of backlash, as occasionally when using Orientalism in American TV shows and films; stereotypes and cliches of the East tend to shine out as a way to generalise and distinguish the East from the West.

Image taken from tvguide.com

Gif taken from tenor.com

Let’s take one popular comedy series as an example: The Big Bang Theory. In the series there is one character that particularly stands out from the rest, that is Raj Koothrappali — who is an astrophysicist that is originally from New Delhi but lives in California where he works with his group of friends (Pradhan, 2014). The series has a very comedic stance thus allowing the characters to comply in making a various spectrum of jokes; from being very lighthearted to a little controversial. On the spectrum of jokes, Raj has the tendency to joke a lot about his Indian background and the many quirks of his culture (one subject being his possible future of an arranged marriage).

One of the biggest stereotypes of what the character Raj delivers on the series effortlessly is the idea that Indians are depicted as geeky, intelligent and very talkative about their own culture — particularly of the culture in South India. Regardless of the stereotype that Raj presents in the series, his character has some traits that “differ” him from being the ‘typical’ South Indian that he is — what has occurred multiple times in the series, Raj always has a distaste in Indian food; yet all of his friends enjoy it. Ironically, Raj isn’t too fond of his own culture as well — which if his parents or relatives find out; they undoubtedly will get mad at him (with the possibility of even disowning him). However, Raj isn’t one of the only well-known South Indian characters that fit into the stereotype on American television — let’s move on to animation.

Gif taken from gifer.com

The Simpsons also has a South Indian character on their show and that was Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, unlike Raj’s career, Apu is a store owner. Despite the polar difference between their careers, Apu still holds the stereotype that Raj also shares (Marie, 2014). In fact, in the show; Apu graduated with a PhD in Computer Science and is an immigrant in the United States.

From looking more into Orientalism within these specific fields, I can safely say that American TV has done a great job in being consistent when it comes to portraying the East in a particular way. Whether it’s the accent or the stereotypical traits, American TV has painted a perfect picture of how they want to depict the East — which in this case; is the South Indian or Indian subculture.

References:

1. Marie, L. (2014, October 6). Edward Said’s Orientalism & The Simpson’s Treatment of the South Asian Subject. Retrieved from https://illiterocracy.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/edward-saids-orientalism-the-simpsons-treatment-of-the-south-asian-subject/.
2. Pradhan, A. (2014, May 31). A new form of the “Oriental” stereotype? An analysis of South Asian Indian characters in popular culture through Edward Said’s Orientalism. Retrieved from http://literophile.org/?p=803.
3. Simpsons Wiki. (n.d.). Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. Retrieved from https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Apu_Nahasapeemapetilon.
4. The Big Bang Theory Wiki. (n.d.). Rajesh Koothrappali. Retrieved from https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/Rajesh_Koothrappali.

Blog 1 — Popular Orientalism… wait what?

▶ BCM232 GLOBAL MEDIA AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Orientalism, what is it? The word Orient directly means the countries from the East — especially the ones from East Asia. You put -ism at the end of Oriental and you have a word that describes what the people of the West (typically those from North and South America) portray the people of the East. This goes down to stereotypes and impressions, a lot of which are usually depicting the East as traditional and undeveloped (Demerdash 2015).

Fast forward to the 21st century and… well, well, well, what do we have here? A lot of popular music in today’s day in age have used Orientalism in both music videos and in music; from the clothing and the settings to the instrumentals and the lyrics.

Gif taken from giphy.com

There has been a lot of artists that use elements of the East as a symbol of luxury and somewhat exotic instead of the typical stereotype that was portrayed in the past (Weheliye 2019). One example of Orientalism being used is in the music video by Cardi B titled Bodak Yellow, the song itself doesn’t refer to any means of Orientalism and is actually about how successful she is and has become and how despite she can be a humble person at heart but when she needs to she can show who’s the ‘boss’. The music video is set in Dubai as she quotes in an interview about the song, and you can see in the music video she’s wearing a traditional piece of clothing that most women from the Middle East wear — that is a niqab. Although, the song has nothing to do with the music video! She can be seen riding a camel out on a desert in some scenes, and later sat in front of a mansion with a cheetah as a pet. The way that Cardi B portrays the Middle East is completely different as to what it really is; almost as if it was a fantasy in the eyes of the West — it shows that the Middle East is extremely luxurious and far too overly sexualised.

Gif taken from gfycat.com

Surprise, surprise — Cardi B wasn’t the only artist who glorified Eastern culture. Nicki Minaj is guilty of glorifying Eastern cultures that aren’t of her descent, she’s done so more than once but the song (as well as the music video) I’ll be talking about is her most latest hit and that is of her song Chun-Li. When I first heard of the title I instantly thought of the female video game character from Street Fighter… Chun-Li, is Nicki referring to herself as Chun-Li?

Image taken from streetfighter.fandom.com

In the beginning of the music video, the title of the song is shown both in Chinese characters and in English — all while accompanied with the sound of a gong being struck. Nicki is then speaking as a voice over on top of a bunch of clips; some clips even show men in outfits that seem to be of Chinese officers — now that alone is already a clear sign of where exactly Nicki is taking us down the road. I’m not going to lie but, there isn’t much of the traditional elements of the Chinese culture being seen (like in the way that Cardi portrayed the Middle East), but you can see throughout the music video that the reason why it doesn’t seem like it really is ‘traditional’ is because the so-called ‘Chinese’ style was portrayed with a Western twist. Putting aside the very provocative outlook of the music video, Nicki is seen wearing chopsticks in her hair alongside with Chun-Li’s signature hairstyle and to top it off — Chun-Li’s iconic dress but sexualised. Oh but it doesn’t stop there, if you thought the chopsticks in her hair were already proving a point, in Nicki’s lyrics she also talks about those chopsticks. In the beginning of the second verse she raps:

I went and copped the chopsticks
Put it in my bun just to pop shit

Popular Music always tries to find ways to ‘spice up’ the industry and I never realised that Orientalism played quite a part of the ‘spicing up’. I believe that the main concept and idea of Orientalism hasn’t changed that much, instead different renditions of the idea are becoming popularised. I personally think that Eastern cultures have been glorified in a way that is portraying Eastern countries as an alternate reality and as a fantasy to the West — think of it as a fetish. The West takes elements and practices from the East and compose a glorified, fantasy-like piece of ‘art,’ with overly luxurious acts and clothing and let’s not forget the overly sexualised portrayal of some elements of the East that make the impression of them as uncivilised.

Gif from giphy.com

References:

1. Demerdash, Nancy. “Orientalism.” Khan Academy, Khan Academy, 2015, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/intro-becoming-modern/a/orientalism.
2. KOÇ, M. A. (2019). What is the “Middle East”? : Western-centric knowledge-power perception towards the “East.” International Journal of Kurdish Studies, 5(2), 482–489. https://doi-org.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/10.21600/ijoks.572942
3. Said, E. W. (2003). Orientalism / Edward W. Said. Penguin. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat03332a&AN=uow.b1506032&site=eds-live
4. Weheliye, Alexander G. “Sonic Alterity – Race, Orientalism and Popular Music.” Norient, 19 Mar. 2019, https://norient.com/stories/popular-orientalisms-2/.