An Analysis of Scene Composition and Violent Action During Sergeant Catherine Cawood’s Rescue of Ann Gallagher Introduction It was a 4.5-minute sequence of British television that made headlines. Police Sergeant Catherine Cawood, protagonist of the BBC’s Happy Valley, is beaten to a bloody pulp by a sociopathic kidnapper and serial rapist while rescuing a kidnapped … Continue reading ‘Out of Darkness’: The Heroic Women of BBC’s Happy Valley
Of Madness and Metaphysics: Italian Futurism at the Dawn of the 20th Century
Introduction When Filippo Marinetti sat down to pen his polemical Founding Manifesto of Futurism (1909), the French language treatise that gave rise to the Italian Futurism avant-garde movement, the streets of Milan hung with electric lights, the Italian landscape was slashed with steel railway lines carrying double-decker train cars, the air crackled with early experimental … Continue reading Of Madness and Metaphysics: Italian Futurism at the Dawn of the 20th Century
Digital Games As Empathy Machines
Introduction Are digital games empathy machines? How do they differ from other modalities in their ability to produce affective empathy? Drawing specifically on the perspectives Flanagan (2009, 2014), Isbister (2016), Gee (2007), Bogost (2007) and Keogh (2018), I will demonstrate how digital games are a means to share lived experiences, and can help players experience … Continue reading Digital Games As Empathy Machines
The Magic Circle and the Modern Gamer
Introduction The magic circle has been described as a sacred space that separates play from the seriousness of ordinary life (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004; Huizinga, 1955). The concept has been used by early and contemporary games scholars as a way of explaining the allure, uncommon pleasure and immersion experienced by players of analog, digital and … Continue reading The Magic Circle and the Modern Gamer
‘The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Mechanism’: Does Digital Technology Create Anxiety?
Introduction Have digital technologies created greater individual or cultural anxieties? I will argue that the blame can not be heaped at the doorstep of technology. Hegemonic dynamics and neo-capitalist imperatives have hijacked every aspect of our lives, including the creation, dissemination, adoption of media technologies. Rather than putting digital technologies, and in this case specifically, … Continue reading ‘The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Mechanism’: Does Digital Technology Create Anxiety?