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Tag: Colbert

  • Anita Sarkeesian Talks #GamerGate on Colbert

    For years now Anita Sarkeesian has been under attack. As a blogger Sarkeesian writes Femenist Frequency, a blog and video series dedicated to examining the representation of women in pop culture. Her work often focuses on touchy subjects within subcultures, making her a target of frequent threats and hate speech online.

    Now Sarkeesian is at the center of a months-long controversy within the gaming community. While the “gamergate” controversy has grown to encompass topics of misogyny, games media ethics, and what it means to be a gamer, Sarkeesian has been battling against online threats serious enough that they recently drove her to cancel a speaking event. She recently appeared on The Colbert Report to plead her case against gamergate:

    Though Sarkeesian characterized gamergate as “men going after women in really hostile, aggressive ways,” the situation has grown more complicated in recent weeks.

    Broadly, gamergate is an uproar withing the gaming community that has been raging for over two months now. The name refers to a Twitter hashtag that was coined by former Firefly actor Adam Baldwin.

    The controversy began in mid-August when an ex-boyfriend of indie game developer Zoe Quinn posted an extensive and salacious blog post about Quinn’s involvement with various members of the gaming media. This led to some limited cries of corruption from gamers, but mostly resulted in harassment and threats specific enough to drive Quinn from her home.

    In the days that followed, other women involved in gaming began speaking out against such harassment and telling their own stories. At the same time, large forums and publications dedicated to gaming began heavily moderating discussions of the allegations against Quinn, leading to calls of censorship.

    On August 28 several articles appeared on popular gaming websites declaring the entire gaming subculture to be doomed. Many of the articles referred to gamers with hostile language, calling them nerds, socially inept, “lonely basement kids,” and worse. These articles lit a spark that prompted the gamergate movement to organize behind a cry of improving ethics in games journalism.

    The movement initially focused on bringing attention to an email group set up for games writers to collaborate. However, when a Gawker writer on Twitter advocated bullying nerds, gamergate began targeting the Gawker network’s advertisers. Gawker reacted with defiance, insulting one of its advertisers, Intel.

    Throughout all of this Sarkeesian and her supporters have maintained that gamergate is, at base, about an undercurrent of misogyny that pervades gaming culture. The online harassment of Sarkeesian and others has continued, and the story has now found its way into mainstream publications and TV news.

  • Stephen Colbert and Hugh Laurie “Bring it” to Broadcast TV

    Drop a challenge? Leave it up to funny man pundit Stephen Colbert to lay down a gauntlet.

    During an episode of the Colbert Report, a popular late-night cable show, he paired up with British actor Sir Hugh Laurie for an airing that was anything but typical.

    An appeal for a broader interpretation of television’s indecency standards by multiple broadcast networks prompted Colbert to dish up his own bawdy brand of comedy in response. He, along with Laurie, with much dramatic air, spoke aloud phrases such as “nutsack” and “cooch juice”; seemingly labeled too “hot” for broadcast television. ABC, CBS and NBC, television’s broadcast “trinity,” say that under the current standards, they cannot maintain the level of viewership enjoyed by powerhouses’ such as Viacom.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L4JnmCScSE
    It wasn’t the first time Colbert was reported as upsetting the boundaries acceptability. According to FCC reports, there have been more than a dozen complaints for indecency levied against the Colbert Report and the late-night talk show host. One report, submitted by phone to the FCC in 2008 says an episode of the Colbert Report advocates racist violence.

    “The Colbert Report featured Toby Keith as a guest star. Toby Keith performed a racist song that advocates lynching. The song includes the following lyrics: ‘Grandpappy told my pappy back in my day, son A man had to answer for the wicked that he’d done. Take all the rope in Texas Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys Hang them high in the street For all the people to see’ The violent, racist history of the southern U.S. is nothing to be proud of. This blatant advocation of lynching is highly offensive and has no place on the air.”

    Another FCC complaint characterized the Colbert Report as promoting necrophilia.

    “Colbert did a report about a new exhibit dedicated solely to dead bodies having sex as part of the Body Worlds exhibitions. Onscreen for several minutes was a photo of one of the displays from the exhibit featuring the dead bodies of a man and a woman having sex. The woman was seated upright on top of the man. I was not happy to have my teenage son see this.”

    When responding to broadcast networks’ “cultural appeal” for freedom, Colbert taunted with a biting wit.

    “ You can whack my bag anytime.”

  • Breaking Bad Meets Downton Abbey and Cooks Up One Hilarious Cup of Tea

    Thanks, Colbert Report. Thank you for this wonderful brew of two great shows. Thank you for getting the cast of Downton Abbey to participate. And most importantly, thank you for getting Lord Grantham to say “mo money, mo quandaries.”

    If this doesn’t make you excited for the upcoming seasons of both Breaking Bad and Downton Abbey, I don’t know what will.