Jimquisition: Jimquisition Extra: Virgillio Armarndio's Art Hole

[Scrustle]

Excellent, more Jim! But I would have thought that the player... thing in Space Invaders looked more phallic than feminine in any way.

 

[ms_sunlight]

Good episode, extra is always good. Speaking about what game is Art or not, is pointless, one can see art anywhere, it is subjective. Actually labeling a game as "An Art Game" undermines the hobby since it assumes the other games are not art.

Let me reach back into the distant past and see if I can remember anything from when I did an aesthetics course at university.

Calling something you produce an art game is a self-conscious declaration that you made it for art. That said, the game still needs to be functional as a game. When Salvador Dali designed a sofa in the shape of Mae West's lips, it was art, but it also had to be comfy to sit on.

Something can be made for other purposes than art - Space Invaders was clearly made to part arcade customers from their hard-earned coin, through being an engaging experience that encouraged return. You can see beauty, interest or symbolism in something not intended as art. You can use something not intended as art for the same purposes as art - for example, a map or blueprint might be pretty or interesting enough to frame and use as decoration.

I don't think that asking whether a game is art is always a useful question; I think asking whether it fulfils its purpose is. Does it explore certain topics? Give you a particular kind of engagement? Make a political point? Games can have multiple - even contradictory - purposes. Not all games have to be all things. Art is just one of those purposes.

 

[J9ACK9]

*deep sigh* OBVIOUSLY, Virgillio doesn't UNDERSTAND "Space Invaders", as it's deep cultural context is OBVIOUSLY underpinned by the imagining that the "cannon" is inherently MALE, (as conceptualized throughout by a phallic image) and that the patriarchy is "defending" it's "bases" from the encroachment of radical feminism so OBVIOUSLY abundant in the decade preceding it's release in the late 1970s...

*exasperated, deeper, condescending sigh*

OBVIOUSLY, this product of a bygone era coincides with other such gender-biased games such as "Off the Wall", "Custer's Revenge", "Hard Drivin" (I'll allow you to figure that one out on your own) and "Joust", wherein videogame designers attempted to subvert the expandng cultural paradigm shift, by appealing to their consumers (or "sheeple" if you will) that the "feminist movement" was nothing short of encroachment onto men's ideals and sense of social norms.

Hence: "Space". "Invaders".

Encroachment.

Other than that, Virgillio Armarndio continues to assuage nouveau-political lamentations in a diverse plethora of expedient new alternatives, and I look forward to watching next week's episode.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/3285-Defending-Call-of-Duty

Yeah okay.

You do realise that you're linking an Episode to the creator of said episode

Too funny that Jim actually got a warning (or maybe it's all part of the show?!)... I'd say that he was responding in character. Like the guy he's playing in the video for what I'm commenting on.

 

[Findlebob]

THE HAT!!!!

 

[Ickabod]

I want my 4 minutes back.

 

[TheyTookOurJobs]

Why hasn't the Escapist given Virgillio Armarndio his own show? :/

 

[Aureliano]

Jim, I have to say that the sheer artistic merit of this episode brings tears to my eyes. And also a boner, for some reason that I can't explain. To my eyes. I should probably have a doctor check that one out actually.

Brilliant stuff. And much like some others in thread, exactly 0% of me misses Extra Credits. I have never before seen any person or persons so proud of themselves for such minor theoretical insights. It's like watching a twenty-five year old tie their shoes for the first time with no hint or irony or self-reproach for their glee. I'm sure they'd start a religion if they could, though they'd be very 'modest' about it.

 

[OneTwoThreeBlast]

"Ugh, here comes another COD fanboy, not getting the subtlety of art.

Go back to your shootans, CODboy."


I don't think the moderator who gave Jim a warning for this post understood that he was posting as his Art Hole character here, not being an actual dick.

Seriously guys. Irony. You have to allow for irony. Please. This community needs it, Jim needs it, we all need it.

EDIT: it just occurred to me that maybe Jim asked the moderator to do this on purpose, in which case I clearly missed the super-irony of it all. If so, well-played. If not...please let irony live

 

[UnderGlass]

After the last episode I approached this one with trepidation.. Why not, I guess? Regardless of the original intent even the simplest things can be creatively used to evoke or illustrate other meanings.

Just like Jim uses his one-note show and enormous potential to positively influence gamers towards open-mindedness, to act like a complete tit.

... like the spaceship obviously represents.

 

[Jonsbax]

For anyone interested, here's Jim doing basically the same thing except it's not quite as far fetched, making it all the more hilarious.

Seeing this gave me a whole new level of appreciation for Altered Beast.

 

[OneTwoThreeBlast]

Jim: you complete me.

Your videos are the most awesome thing since that "awesome sauce" that everyone keeps talking about, but which I just can't seem to find in stores...it must be because it sells out so quickly.

 

[Hitchmeister]

I prefer to view the player character ass a boob, who uses squirts of milk to pacify the infantile state of the male brain.

Yea, I always thought that looked like a nipple shooting milk.
What does that say about me?

I like Jim's clown costume. Can I hire him for my kid's birthday party? What kind of baloon animals does he do?

He doesn't do balloon animals. Now if you want balloon sexual organs at your birthday party...

 

[masticina]

Art..call that art! Its to colourful! it is not Oppressive enough how can one write pages of poetry over.. colours.

No.. no! THAT is not the meaning of ART!

 

[Bloodtrozorx]

Am I the only one who finds it funny that Jim got a warning?

Fantastic video, Thank god for Jim.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I prefer to view the player character ass a boob, who uses squirts of milk to pacify the infantile state of the male brain.

Yea, I always thought that looked like a nipple shooting milk.
What does that say about me?

I like Jim's clown costume. Can I hire him for my kid's birthday party? What kind of baloon animals does he do?

He doesn't do balloon animals. Now if you want balloon sexual organs at your birthday party...

Meh, you just tell the kid it's a turtle or a giraffe.

 

[Lunar Templar]

o.0

what the hell was that .....

 

[esperandote]

The player looks actually way more like a pennis.

I thought so too, with the side bits being ballbags. Wasn't the whole subtext of partiarchal oppression in Space Invaders that the male sees the female as less than human and is interested in nothing more than shooting his sperm into her? The fact that a hit Invader disappears symbolizes that a woman is no longer considered of any interest to men once she is already impregnated, which is to say she effectively ceases to exist.

Someone noticed that Virgilio looks a lot like Jim?

Lunacy.


PS: If you can't take a joke, please don't quote me. I'm not being serious at all.

Lol, don't underestimate me that much.

I thought it looked like a guy from an air perspective and that only his pennis stood out and that he shot semen too. Well thought about that women/aliens and pregnancy stuff, I'd add that what they shoot are tears (consistent with them falling) that represent women emotiveness that the barriers the player use as cover represent men reluctancy to listen to women feelings and express their own.

Virgilio got it all reversed.

Oh shit, Jim sterling was warned for defending Virgilio. I'm not sure why he took so personal what the other guy said about Virgilio, not being the same person and all...

 

[Waffle_Man]

It really came off when they talked about how Other M screwed up with the story on how they characterized Samus. This struck me as pretentious because they are telling Yoshio Sakamoto, the man who wrote all but one metroid game, that HIS character is wrong because THEY thought of her in a way that was misinformed.

Simply because someone writes a character doesn't necessarily mean that they can't screw the character up. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thought the way George Lucas handled Anakin in the phantom menace was well handled. They weren't saying that Other M wasn't how the character was written. Rather, they were saying that everything that made Samus compelling as well as everything that had been established about her was at odds with Other M.

Id est, Other M was a bad decision, not a wrong decision.

It was also lol worthy when they blamed the wrong people on how the story and character are wrong, even though Mr Yoshi was the lead director and writer on the game, so if something had been going as WTF wrong with it as people seem to think he coulda (And would have) stopped that.

Again, the point wasn't who did what with regards to itsy-bitsy details, rather that the overall plan was sour. I doubt that many people would blame him for every little thing that went wrong. Rather, it was one really big bad decision that lead to lots of bad results in spite of what Yoshi's intentions were.

So I may have been exaggerating when I said more often than not, but its still there and obvious at times.

I'm not going to say that extra credits is perfect, but using the word pretentious to describe them shows a lake of critical examination and degrades the word. In every episode, they use incredibly clear language and they're one of the few internet "personalities" that doesn't bask in cheap jives and insults.