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

From: Diane Hodges (dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 06 1999 - 10:13:47 PST


xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>
>Diane,
>
>I don't know who you're responding to or who said that
>
>
>>more research is needed before anyone can recognize how
>
>
>I said that more research needed to be done to determine whether Pokemon
>was
>restricted to white middle class kids, the position that you asserted.
>Eugene provides us one counterexample, and I'm sure there are more.
>
>But I'm curious as to why you are so determined to link Pokemon to your
>sex/gender and now, class/race issues? I think that Pokemon might be one
>of
>the first truly global tertiary artefacts shared among pre-pubescent
>children. Does that threaten you somehow?
>
>Paul H. Dillon
>
>
oh paul, paul, paul. why so hostile? really, there is nothing about
popular culture
that could "make sense" but rather it is the folks who desire to make
sense of the thing
who have to rewrite it into something else, like "tertiary artefacts" and
- whew! _global_ ones at that!

uncritical infatuations of capitalist culture always threaten me, of
course.
i am not specifically "determined" to link pokemon to systemic
inequalities, like sex/gender normativities
("pokemon is for boys AND girls!!)
or class/race (the poor play too! blacks, hispanics, asians, whites, !! )
- like this is all some sort of

"see how GREAT this is?" endorsement... nothing is innocent, of course.
that "boys AND girls!!"
and "middle class AND poor" and "ALL the races!!" play this "game" doesn't
mean it isn't

representative of a particular white/straight/middle class infatuation
with normal/domination - it just means that the seduction of
white/straight/middle class normativity crosses a lot of boundaries, via
the capitalist train -
- the trick is not to impose critical structures, or course, but to
recognize how systemic structures
get normalized so that it all seems innocent and "good clean fun" and so
on -

so, the game is normalizing - that, i thank eugene for expressing in the
contexts of who (race/class) plays -
and phillips (girls play too!) -

but what the heck is your investment in this? and gee what's with all the
anger at me? i don't have to think the "artefact" is gorgeous, do i?
diane
>
>

   ' 'We have destroyed something by our presence,' said Bernard, 'a
world perhaps.'
     (Virginia Woolf, "The Waves")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, vancouver / university of colorado, denver

Diane_Hodges@ceo.cudenver.edu



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