I was doing research for my thesis, reading the forums on Afropunk.com when I came across an interesting thread that had a connection to our readings on videogames this week. People were talking about an article about racism in videogames, and specifically the Grand Theft Auto series. While most people agreed with the article (which condemned games like these for perpetuating racist stereotypes), a couple of poster were avid players of the game and felt that since there were stereotypes or everyone in the game, that made it okay.

Personally, I find the games very problematic, in particular “San Andreas”, which is the one I’ve seen the most/heard the most about. If games are a form of cyberdrama and powerful new storytelling tool, it seems that when it comes to representations of people of color in mainstream media, the form may have changed but it’s the same old story. I wonder who the intended audience for these games are. What does it mean for a white surburban kid to play as a black inner-city gangbanger? It will be interesting to see how larger systems of domination continue to affect (and limit) what kinds of stories games will tell.

I have yet to share my thesis topic so without further ado, here it is.

In my thesis, I hope to investigate the media representation of Jackie Robinson, looking specifically at his rookie year and how technique, content and language strategies of different forms of media influenced his iconic status as African-American’s first Major League Baseball player. Some questions I have are how constructed was the idea of “Jackie Robinson, African American hero”, by whom, and for what purpose. I’d also like to juxtapose Jackie Robinson’s rookie year media representation to the media representation of the second African-American MLB baseball player, Larry Doby, and to compare the similarities and particularly the differences, and examine why there are these differences.

Has anyone in this here cozy MS senior seminar blogosphere seen the show Flava of Love? Here's a quick synopsis: Flava Flav (you may remember him from Public Enemy, or his short stint on VH1's The Surreal Life) is looking for a mate on a television show which is basically a mockery of The Bachelor (Flav gives giant clock necklaces instead of roses to continuing contestants), but a whole lot crazier. In the first episode, for example, not only was there a fist-fight between two contestants (which one girl later attempted to reconcile by offering, "You want some Lip Chap??"), but one girl seriously took a crap on Flav's floor.