Frustrated! (Venting and Graphic Language Abound)

The conference is over and I gave my paper today. As a side note, the general consensus of some folks that the middle aged white men in suits were probably public school administrators because almost every question that they asked at every presentation was about how what people were doing fit in to the "standards". At the ame time, you can see from my notes, that a lot of folks were talking about teaching to the standards woth games. * sigh * I was hoping for more. This is the first year of this very expensive two day conference ($300 early registration). I might give it another chance next year to see if a broader range of folks and mainstramer commercial developers come out. Don't get me wrong, there were some great sessions that gave me some hope. I'm wondering if Education Arcade or the women in gaming (or something) might not be a better fit for me and the kind of theorizing that I am doing. More and more I am starting to wonder if my work fits anywhere at all.

Today I did a presentation on rhetorical representations of race in GTA games ( slideshow ). The talk seemed to receive mixed reactions. There were lots of questions after. People wanted to know if I thought games were really developed around stereotypes and if they were was that really a bad thing since stereotypes were based on fact, right? (What the Fuck?) Yeah, you heard me. There are folks who still want to dismiss racism in games because some games that allow you to make your own avatars let you make brown avatars of different body shapes or to cross dress. (Yep, that makes it all better). People seemed to warm to comments that I made about gender issues in gaming, but not so much about race. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't everyone. Almost all of the folks in the room that could be considered Other came up to me and thanked me for being there and for saying the things that I said. One person just looked around and said "They just don't get it" Why is it that folks are just not getting it? Are folks still so damned afraid of being labeled racist that they won't even have an intellectual discussion about it?

I passed out lots of business cards to students who are interested in working on race and game theory. To be honest I'm frustrated on a number of levels. There is a call for scholarship on race, but no one wants to deal with if it makes them feel "yucky". At the same time I feel sorry for the up and coming grad students of color who have to deal with this bullshit! After almost 15 years I'm getting used to it, but damn I was hoping by this point that things would be getting better. Are these budding scholars really going to be able to do the work that they want and NEED to do if folks in the field don't see the value? This ain't to say that all of the folks in the field are this way, but enough to frustrate me...at least today.

There are truly some days when I want to call it quits. I can't do the feel good scholarship that people seem to want because most days there just ain't shit to feel good about. Then I step back and remember why I said I was going to do this in the first place. This is work that needs to be done, but the real world is looking better and better everyday.