Female Game Designers

          
             Most of the readings for class dealt with women in film. In Judith Redding and Victoria A. Brownworth's "Debra Zimmerman and Women Make Movies," the authors discuss how WMM help independent women filmmakers showcase/distribute their works. In the passage, Debra Zimmerman made a comment on the importance of getting men to realize that films about women are important. Zimmerman says that this problem still exists today. During a screening a man actually asked Zimmerman, "There are so many important things to make a film about, why did you make a film about women?" (How RUDE!) Zimmerman wants to change this way of thinking. She feels that men need to watch more female films. When men do watch the films, it cannot be a room filled with men it needs both genders, so that the men can hear the women's perspectives. The women can argue with the men and explain why films about females are important.
               In Reel to Real, bell hooks says we need to take films seriously. Films are actually teaching us things, and it's actually shaping society. bell hooks states, "Whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of many people. It may not be the intent of a filmmaker to teach audiences anything, but that does not mean that lessons are not learned" (2). In other words we learn a lot of things through television and film. (This is so true, the T.V was my babysitter, of course I would learn from it) At the end bell hooks says that she wants her readers to realize that television and films are shaping our culture and we need to learn to look at films in a different perspective. She explains that there is a time of submission, when a movie screens, and the audience is "seduced" by the images on the screen, and during this seduction the audience is absorbing all the "teachings" of the film. bell hooks on the other hand, uses this time of seduction to take notes and "critically understand and "read" what is happening at that moment, what the film tries to do to us" (4). She encourages her readers to do the same, she wants them to critique that moment where the film puts a trance on the audience, this way we won't get sucked in to the seduction. (You can critique a film and still enjoy it)
               Both bell hooks and Maggie Humm touch on the connection between literature and film. They both talk about how most films are made based on works of literature. As Humm puts it, "literature is the act of viewing." They discuss how, both literature and film shape society. Another form of media that helps shape society are games. Books, films, and games are different ways in "entering a world that is different from the one we know and are most comfortable with" (2). Games are another form of release, and they can seduce the player. Games should also be played with a critical interpretation. 
               Nowadays we have a type of game known as serious games. According to my "Concepts in Gaming" class (last semester), serious games are games that educate and bring awareness to it's players/audience, they are games with a mission to advocate. Recently two female game designers (Blair Kuhlman and Amanda Dittami) have developed a serious game called, "Gone From an Age: A Fitting." A Fitting is a serious game that touches on "the cultural and personal expectations of body image." 
               According to Kickstarter, the game play starts out with the player being a young woman standing in front of a mirror. The T.V screen is acting as the mirror, the player can see that the woman is surrounded by  a audience, that commands "demanding mumbles that manifest into a shadow casting over the young woman." Based on an interview with the developers, "the audience encourages the young woman to twist and contort her body in order to meet their expectations of her. The game challenges the player to contort the body of the young woman, along with their own, but at the cost of his or her own discomfort." This discomfort is suppose to help the player realize how immoral our expectations of body image is. It will also allow the player to question why we would conform to these discomforts.
                  The developers describe the game to be satirical. In their interview Kuhlman and Dittami state the reasons for the creation of the game, "The game revolves around issues with body image, which we believe is a very important conversation to have. It is an issue that a lot of people face, especially young women, and it is very unfortunate that it is so commonly accepted as the way things are."

Blair Kuhlman and Amanda Dittami

Sources:

Introduction to Making Movie Magic from Reel to Real by bell hooks

"Debra Zimmerman and Women Make Movies" by Judith Redding and Victoria A. Brownworth

Author/Auteur: Feminist Literary Theory and Feminist Film, by Maggie Humm

http://todayiconversedwith.tumblr.com/post/31516288031/blair-kuhlman-and-amanda-dittami#.UIgLo28xqSq

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1391208084/gone-from-an-age-a-fitting

https://mobile.twitter.com/amandaDittami

http://gonefromanageafitting.blogspot.com/