After the Fact - Feminist Frequency: Part 1 - Conversations with Pop Culture

     Welcome all to the first entry in a series that I hope to have a long and prosperous run. I'll be talking about internet news of old, attempting to bring together multiple view points into a discussion about these topics and what they meant to each of us at the time. While I will attempt to stay objective, no journalism is completely free of bias and my own personal view points may bleed into this entry. I will endeavor to contain those view points in their own paragraphs when they come up.

Introduction

Feminist Frequency has had a long journey from its humble beginnings back in 2009. While the company originally started out just making videos "with a borrowed camera and some lights", Anita Sarkeesian and her team of advocates and business people now run a semi-successful not-for-profit NGO based around assisting minorities within the gaming community, whether they're game developers or simply professional gamers.

    While their current content is mostly based around podcasts run by the staff that have led to very low viewership as compared to the older Tropes Against Women videos that they became known for, I have to respect the continued dedication to bringing a feminist point of view when it comes to media, even if they have turned away from talking about video games.  The last video that talked about video game tropes at all was released back in 2019, nearly two years ago as of writing this post, and it was about gay coded characters in gaming in a very short lived series about queer tropes that was probably killed due to low viewership at the time, this was after the finale of their flag ship series, which still only really made middling views compared to the first season of this series. Now they mostly make podcasts with one series focusing on a variety of media while another series focuses on Star Trek, very few of their videos break 1000 views now a days, which is probably why they don't have nearly as many big budget productions as they used to.

Conversations with Pop Culture

    Starting off with the first episode of this show it's very obvious that Anita Sarkeesian was not a practiced public speaker back in 2009. She has a fairly monotonous voice and seems very uncomfortable in front of the camera at first. That said, she gets better as she continues through this first series. Her video on Doll House and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles is interesting, the Veronica Mars video is honestly pretty boring, her Twilight video was a hot take at the time, I had a hard time watching her True Blood video (in spite of sharing her views on it), her video on the Bechtel Test was what introduced me to the concept at 18 and I'm honestly disturbed they don't teach it in high school because it's really a given to writing good literature, her video on Caprica is a good introduction to the concept of gay men being violent and obsessed with phallic imagery. This first season was fairly poor quality, it's obvious that Sarkeesian had very little experience and took some time between seasons, to learn her way around production a bit more as the next season is a fair amount better.

    Season 2 of Conversations with Pop Culture is much better. There's still some sound quality issues and a good portion of her videos are over-exposed, but Sarkeesian was a gender studies major, not a film major. Making good videos is difficult and in the end it's the content she's producing the message she wants to get across that's important. It's obvious that she started scripting her videos, which helped a lot in the production quality. The first video about the use of fem-bots in media, specifically in advertising, the second talks about how cultural misogyny affects men as well as women even if it doesn't actively oppress men. The third video is interesting as it's more a criticism of bit-torrent websites allowing porn ads while also basically stating the media piracy is a cool thing (which I'm on board with depending on the person), though claiming that these sites were contributing to a boys club was probably inaccurate, while it makes it less accessible, these sorts of companies were probably just the only companies willing to pay for ad space on these legally dubious websites. While there is definitely something to be said about the considerations that you need to make when allowing advertisers on your sites, this sort of independent, not-for-profit service needs to make money some way. The fourth video is about misogynistic click-bait, the fifth video is about retro sexism, the sixth video is about the sexualization of the infantilization of women, and the seventh video is about the difference between advertisements between boys and girls toys.

    Season 3 further shows a raise in quality, specifically in lighting. The first video is about Kanye West's Monster music video, the second is about the lack of stories about women in films and how the Oscars are a boys club, the third is about True Grit and how it's a feminist story, and this is where I'm going to deviate as she starts to include the Tropes vs. Women videos into the these playlists. I'll give those videos their own section, as well as providing the Tropes vs. Women in Gaming series with its own section. Feminism in Focus - Anita Sarkeesian is about why she started the channel, to give an understanding feminist voice to without going deep into terminology. The next video after that is about Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, which is definitely a terribly misogynistic film. Top 10 Best Non-Violent iPhone Games is as it sounds, it's a list of 10 games that Sarkeesian liked at the time of the video that aren't violent by any means. Top 5 Creepy Christmas Songs is talking about lyrics to old Christmas songs that Sarkeesian deems as problematic, I'll talk a bit more about this one. 

    Her problem with All I want for Christmas by Mariah Carey is that it talks a lot about a woman needing a man in her life, and while I think it's a bit of a stretch to call the song itself misogynistic, it is definitely a symptom of a misogynistic industry that's still in use today, the song is overly produced and written specifically to give male listeners a feeling that a beautiful woman like Mariah would like to be in a relationship with them, it's definitely misogynistic, but more in a meta way than in the way she's claiming, it's more akin to adhereing to the male gaze. I don't agree with her view on I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, she's basically bringing up that it's either about cheating or seeing your parents kiss and that disturbs her but I honestly think it's a cute song. It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas by Bing Crosby definitely re-enforces gender stereotypes, but it's also old... like even in 2011 this was a very old song and you have to give them some slack for music at the time because different things were more appropriate at the time, granted, now, a decade after this video was made, I'd expect a modern artist to make alterations to the song, specifically replacing that bridge, but if we're talking the original version then I'd hesitate to hold it to modern standards of political correctness, remember that Bing Crosby did dress in black face in Holiday Inn. With Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt, I think Sarkeesian is missing the point of the song, it's sarcastic. All of Kitt's more feminine songs are sarcastic as she was a major feminist icon. That said, most covers of the song lose the sarcasm and lean right into the sexiness or cutsiness, completely defeating the charm that Eartha Kitt brought to it. Baby, It's Cold Outside by Dean Martin is definitely rape-y.

    The fourth season has her more well known level of quality, meaning decent, industry quality. The first two videos are on The Hunger Games, comparing the novel and its adaptation. I think the biggest thing I'd mention is that she never mentions how directly similar the story is to Battle Royale by Takami Koushun. Really it's more of a direct comparison praising the movie for not sexualizing Katniss or glamourizing the violence. The third video talks about the Oscars and how few Oscar winning movies pass the Bechdel test. And the last two talk about Lego and how around the time that these videos game out, they were coming out with gender specific toy lines (which, to my knowledge, has stopped happening as of late 2021/early 2022).

    Watching through these videos and seeing Anita's growth as a content creator over the course of three years was honestly pretty interesting. While I agree with a lot of her views there are a few that I think she just misses the mark on, not that I even disagree with her overall beliefs on those topics. Moving forward we'll be talking about her Tropes vs. Women series, both parts of it (that being in general media and in video games) and I'll discuss more on those topics.

    I hope you enjoyed the read and are looking forward to more content.