Re: Re(2): the whiteness of middle class play

From: Paul Dillon (dillonph@northcoast.com)
Date: Sun Dec 05 1999 - 16:53:43 PST


I don't get it. from asking a question you've jumped to a conclusion with:
"the predominance of white middle class kids engaged in pokemon indicates
something, to me",-- what is your evidence for this type of statement whose
truth value can only be evaluated quantitatively, although I suppose some
insight could be gained through talking to non-middle class whites and
non-whites of all classes to see what they think.

As many have pointed out during this thread, there is really a need to do
some research on this phenom. Simply stuffing it into interpretative
containers that we carry around as part of our own personal take on things
doesn't tell us much about Pokemon COPs although it does tell us a lot about
the interpreter.

"without homoerotic play, what are queer kids to do?"

do you think Pokemon is a force against homo-erotic play?? That's a wild
interpretation. Although everything is ultimately related to everything
else, some things are pretty irrelevant to explaining other things, and I
really don't see the relevance of queer kids and homoerotic play to the
phenomena I originally described. As far as I know Pokemon aren't even
gender specific, rather androgynous, so how you could play queer with them
is beyond me. I doubt the issue ever crossed the minds of the designers
although maybe they made them androgynous to avoid all issues of gender
bias. This is interesting because as far as I can tell they lack any overt
gender signifiers. But if you really wanted to play queer with Pokemon I
suppose you could, like my mom always said, where there's a will, there's a
way.

Paul H. Dillon



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 11 2000 - 14:04:06 PST