Academia: February 2008 Archive Page

Greg Costikyan on Play This Thing!

A review is a buyer's guide. It exists to tell you about some new product that you can buy, and whether you should or should not buy it. A good review goes beyond that, and suggests who should buy it, since not everyone enjoys everything. (E.g., A romance novel may be very fine of its kind, but is quite unlikely to appeal to me, since it is not a genre I enjoy.) 

Thus, Ebert is, ultimately, a reviewer; the net result of his discussion of a work is a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Mind you, he is also an informed and intelligent watcher of film, and his discussion of a movie frequently veers in the direction of criticism; but he is not being paid to write critical works. Pauline Kael was. 

Criticism is an informed discussion, by an intelligent and knowledgeable observer of a medium, of the merits and importance (or lack thereof) of a particular work. Criticism isn't intended to help the reader decide whether or not to plunk down money on something; some readers' purchase decisions may be influenced, but guiding their decisions is not the purpose of the critical work. Criticism is, in a sense merely "writing about" -- about art, about dance, about theater, about writing, about a game--about any particular work of art. How a critical piece addresses a work, and what approach it takes, may vary widely from critic to critic, and from work to work. There are, in fact, many valid critical approaches to a work, and at any given time, a critique may adopt only one, or several of them.

One of the first things I do in my Video Game Culture and Theory course is have students compare a games magazine review with a "new games journalism essay" (in order to get them to realize how much else there is to write about besides simply reviewing the game for a person who has never played it).  I then introduce games scholarship, and have students write their own academic research paper on games.  The first time I taught this course, in 2006, there was plenty of scholarship of the kind Costikyan calls for, and when I taught it again in 2008, there was so much that perhaps next year I will demote the importance of "new games journalism" and jump right into the criticism.

ABC News:

In the comic, Dilbert asks, "Why does it seem as if most of the decisions in my workplace are made by drunken lemurs?"

"I wanted to try to boost the morale for the employees," Steward said.

His bosses, however, didn't find the joke so funny. They didn't like the implication that they were the drunken lemurs in this scenario.

Using surveillance video, his bosses identified Steward as the comic culprit and fired him.

I'm posting this as another example in a long line of posts that I hope will encourage my students to be careful about what they write about on their blogs and personal profile pages.

I don't think that publishing a cartoon is a terminal offense.  I don't want to fail a student for showing passion or voicing an opinion, since I'm trained to see even a negative outburst as a "teachable moment" that can benefit the whole class (and my own superiors feel I am doing my job when I try to salvage a difficult situation with a frustrated student, rather than isolating and ejecting every student who causes friction).  I don't know anything else about Steward's situation.  Perhaps this comic was just one volley in an ongoing toxic battle that was affecting productivity.  But, more likely, his action angered powerful people who aren't used to being challenged.

But regardless of what I personally think, the truth is that employers have the legal right to hold you to whatever contract you signed when they hired you.

Elia Powers, Inside Higher Ed:

What plays into coverage of violence, both on campus and elsewhere? The answer, most experts agree, is a confluence of factors.

The obvious starting point -- and one that media analysts say weighs heavily on the minds of editors in all tragedies, not just school shootings -- tends to be the number of victims. Look at the math in the three recent college cases: Virginia Tech (33 dead, dozens injured). Northern Illinois (6 dead, 16 others injured). Louisiana Technical College (3 dead, no injuries).

It's also a matter of the news cycle. The Virginia Tech attacks took place during a period of relative calm. These latest shootings occurred in the midst of the busy election season. Some also point to the fact that Virginia Tech came first and with the descriptor "worst shooting rampage in modern United States history." Since then, school and store shootings have become somewhat regular occurrences.

"This has now become, sad to say, a genre of news story -- the crazed gunman in the school or work place or mall," said Roy P. Clark, vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute.

From The Boston Globe:=

College administrators say that intense pressure to gain acceptance to selective schools has compelled parents to turn to high-priced essay editors and coaches. "The euphemism we use is polished," said Parke Muth, an admissions dean at the University of Virginia. "If you're paying someone that much money, there shouldn't be fingerprints. But some essays have that sheen, that lemony-fresh smell that makes you wonder." Outright plagiarism usually sticks out like a sore thumb, and suspicions can often be confirmed with a Google search. But detecting the helpful hand of a parent, guidance counselor, or writing coach, even for admissions officers who have read thousands of personal essays, takes a keen eye.

Gettysburg College:

Students create text-based "interactive fiction" games that are rigorously derived from archaeological data and filled with references to Viking and other cultures. The games describe a scene or object in detail, then ask players to make a choice, such as "go east" or "take sword." Each decision leads to a new set of possibilities. "From an English professor's point of view, this is really creative writing," said Fee.

Don't forget the red lutkefish puzzle.

My students are working on showing and telling. It's a difficult concept to learn, and I've found over the years it's not that easy to teach.

So as part of an upcoming short story assignment, I've started to introduce the concept of "pointless showing" to define the practice of avoiding clear language in the misguided belief that "being obscure instead of direct" is the same thing as "showing instead of telling."

• Pointless Showing: "A stream of thick red substance sliding from the jar into the pot... the long strands in the pot, undulating and flowing like hair, like Lucy's hair, took on the crimson hue, and moments later the silence of the empty apartment was broken by the slurping sounds of eating. Or was it weeping? Not even the absent Lucy would have been able to tell for sure, even if Jack could have choked out the question. He reached for the cheese grater, held it to his chest, and ground, ground, ground his love into Lucy's favorite dish."
  [What the hell? Showing isn't simply about being obscure. It's about choosing details carefully, in order to lead the reader to figure out, on his or her own, what precisely the details show.]
  
  
• Good Showing: "Bill still cooked himself pasta with the sauce he made Lucy's way. He hoped he might learn to love pasta, but feared Lucy had learned to loathe him."
  [This scene uses plain language to tell what the character is doing and thinking... but it doesn't come right out and tell the significance of each action, or announce how Bill feels at any particular moment.  This version SHOWS something that is not explicitly stated in the pasta example -- that Bill associates Lucy and pasta in his mind, and that the habits he has developed about pasta echo the habits he has developed around Lucy.  There's no big dusty book that says "Pasta is a symbol of romance," but if the scene progresses so that the pasta catching fire, or Bill throws it away and cooks something else, or he chokes on the pasta and throws up on the floor, we can figure that's a hint about Bill's chances for a relationship with Lucy.]

See also Planning Your Short Story

Amanda Cochran, who was a student in my freshman composition class not too many years ago, went on to be the editor-in-chief of the student paper, and is now in grad school at NYU. She writes about taking on an assignment on short notice.

I was nominated to cover the story yesterday by one of my professors, and just on a whim, I said yes because the press credential online option was closing down and I was one of the only people in my class available to sign up.

So I did.

It wasn't just any assignment... she was to cover Hillary Clinton's Super Tuesday campaign party, and then report live on the NYU Tonight broadcast.  Minimal time to prepare; a chaotic environment; a pressing deadline; competition with a pack of dedicated professionals; then the added pressure of delivering the report live. What did she have to say when it was all over?

God, I love journalism.

Update: added screenshot via this entry.