Critical Investigation Proposal

working title

1) Are games such as GTA 5 racist and harmful? 

2) What effect do the racial stereotypes in GTA V have on the younger generation?

3) To what extent do the racial stereotypes in GTA V effect the younger generation? 

Angle

Is the use of racial stereotypes in video games such as GTA V having a negative effect on the young generation that are playing these games, or are they used simply to create a interesting character. 

Hypothesis

Games such as GTA V have a negative effect on the younger generation, due to the high level of violence and racial stereotypes that are enforced through the characters, settings, and lifestyle.  

Linked production

Spin off movie to GTA V. Three characters coming together in order to complete something. Add humor to this, as my initial idea was to create a comedy/parody film/production. The production will be heavily based on racism/racist stereotypes.

Migrain

Institution - Rockstar Games - Rockstar Games is a multinational video game developer and publisher based in New York City, owned by Take-Two Interactive following its purchase of British video game publisher BMG Interactive.[2] The publisher is known for the Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, L.A. Noire, The Warriors, Bully, Manhunt, Midnight Club and Red Dead games as well the use of open world, free roaming settings in their games. It comprises studios that have been acquired and renamed as well as others that have been created internally. While many of the studios Take-Two Interactive has acquired have been merged into the Rockstar brand, several other recent ones have retained their previous identities and have become part of the company's 2K Games division. The Rockstar Games label was founded in New York City in 1998[3] by the Britishvideo game producers Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, Jamie King and Gary Foreman.[4]

(wikipedia)

Genre - The genre of the media text is a game, GTA V (5). The game is available across three different gaming consoles; PS3, XBox, and PC.  

The GTA series has always allowed the players to free roam in the game, it allows them to play games within the game, as they can do a range of other activities once they have completed missions or the whole game, whereas others games only allow the gamer to complete the missions and once the game is completed, there isn't much to do. 

Furthermore looking at the GTA series there has always been a high level of violence, sexual content and explicit scenes. From the first GTA that was released, the game was set from a birds eye POV, the character was set missions such as bank robberies and assassinations, the character was also given the chance to free roam in the game. After the success of GTA 1 the series of GTA had started, but it was only until the release of GTA 3 when the game became a 3D, giving the game a whole new dimension of gaming. Although the game has had a lot of changes through the years of its release, it's always been consistent with its violent aspects and the story line always leads to people being killed, involvement of drugs or dirty.   

Representation

Black males - There is a negative representation of balk males in the game, as they are shown as being violent and reckless, as they are shown committing crimes, doing drugs and being very violent. They are also shown in the 'hood' as this is where black people are stereo-typically thought to live. 

Whits males - The white males that are featured in the game are shown as being quite high up in the game, Micheal is on the white main characters in the game, he calls a lot of the shots in the game and he tells the other two what to do. He is also quite rich and well known. Compared to Franklin and Trevor, Micheal  is shown to have more power, i believe that this has been done due to the fact that he a white upper middle class male. 

Females - The females shown in the game are all shown in a negative way, as they are shown as being hookers, prostitutes, strippers or cheating on their husbands. Although when the game is loading, a female character is shown as a police woman, however in the actual game their are no female officers, in fact their are no females that work in any public service field, they are all shown working are 'hoes'  and strippers. 

Audience - The social group that GTA V would fit would be 14 - 25, 75% male 25% female, BC1 socio demographic.This would be the main secondary social group that the game would fall in to, as the age rating of the game is 18 however the game is predominantly owned by younger audiences. 

Narrative - The narrative of GTA V is not set on a specific character or place. You play as three different characters that have totally different lifestyles, however they all end up together. Trevor and Micheal know each other from committing a robbery in the past. Micheal meets Franklin, when Franklin is sent to steal his car. In the end they all end up coming together in order to commit another robbery.  

Young and Rubicam

Explorers - There would be some 'explorers' in this group as they would like the concept of being challenged and as the game provides challenges through three different game characters and an array of different setting to play in, this group would be attracted to a game such as GTA V. 

Aspirers -  Aspirers are seen to be materialistic and they look for status, therefore they would follow others in what they buy and what they do in order to fit into society. And as GTA V was one most successful games to be sold. 3.6 million copies were sold with the first 24 hours of the game being released, coming to approximately $310 million (£194 million)  in revenue within a week. What these statistics show are that a incredibly large majority of people purchased this game, which in return comes back to 'aspirers' as they would purchase things that a vast amount of people are buying. 

Society

We are currently living in a low economical society, it means that spending is on a how time low, as people are more weary of how they spend their money. However people have still spent a lot of money on gaming. For the UK it was the fastest selling game of all time, it sold over 631,000 copies in just 24 hours and in the 5 day period that the game was available it sold over 927,000 copies. This shows that even though people are being very careful where they spend there money, they still have a need for gaming. This may be due to the fact they have can have a 'escape' or 'diversion' (Blumber & Kattz). It allows people to get away from the real world and play a life out of someone else, in this case they have three totally different lifestyles to choose from. We also live in a multicultural society, and England is one of the worlds most multicultural countries, this means that when media products are released they should be able to appeal to all of these (most of these) audiences. This can be seen in GTA V as they have created three characters in the game, each with their own separate lifestyle. This would appeal to the British market as people would be able to see the portrayal of real people in the game, thus making the game more life  like and enjoyable. One way in which the characters have been made to seem more life like is through the racial stereotypes that have been used. For example, Franklin the black male in the game has been shown as being very 'gangster' and 'hood', this is one of the greatest stereotypes that are enforced on black people. He is also shown as being quite illiterate, "I thought we is tryna get out the bullshit." This is one of the lines that Franklin says in his characters trailer, adding to another stereotype that black males are uneducated.  

Historical 

These are all the Rockstar Games logos:

- Rockstar Japan 

- Rockstar Toronto 

- Rockstar New England

- Rockstar Vienna

- Rockstar North

- Rockstar London 

- Rockstar Vancouver

- Rockstar Leeds

- Rockstar San Diego 

- Rockstar Lincoln

Racial Stereotypes in history based that are in the game: 

Micheal - White rich male

- Rich 

- Big house 

- Well educated 

- Has a whole family 

- Is well connected 

These are all aspects that we would tend to associate to a white male, as these are the positive stereotypes that are enforced upon them. This has been done for years, as white people have always been in power in some form, for example the Queen of England is white. By using stereotypes that we would associate white people, with a character in a game allows that character to come to life.  

Franklin - Black male from the hood

 - From the hood 

 - A 'gang banger' 

 - Uneducated 

 - Sells drugs 

 - Steals 

 - Wears gang related colors (green) 

These are all stereotypes that we would associate with black males as these are the stereotypes that are enforced upon this ethnic group in society. However the audience find this amusing as they get to play with a character that has life like features, this gives the gamer a whole new world to play in. These are all also stereotypes that have been built upon the years and they have originated from thousands of years ago. 


Trevor - White 'hillbilly' male

 - Lives in a broken rough home 
 - Doesn't take much care of himself
 - Is very aggressive 
 - Uneducated 

Once again very stereotypical aspects have been applied to this character, Trevor is the most violent, disrespectful character in the game. 

The term 'hillbilly' was fist seen in the 1900, in a York Journal article, it read "a Hill-Billie is a free and untrammeled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him." This is the definition that was given to the word Hillbilly. I believe that it is from definitions like this and assumptions made by people that have created this stereotype. However through it we are able to recognize characters, thus making the game much more interesting.

History of video games?

Economical

Economical factors that concern GTA V are that people think that games such as GTA V have a great affect on young kids that play the, as it causes them to behave violently and could lead to much more. However I disagree, as we are in an society where some parents/guardians may not know what the game is about and they would go and buy the game. And as business want to make profits they would sell the game to the parent knowing that its not suitable for the child. However as we are in low economical state, business need to make profits.  

Political

The political factors that surround the game link in with the economical factors as there have been stories that the game have influenced young kids/teens to commit crimes that they ma have not done if they hadn't played the game. 

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/gta-5-14-year-old-boy-kills-father-brother-inspired-by-violent-character-trevor-1442418

This is a story of a young boy who killed his farther and brother. The police have said that he had committed the crime after being inspired by the game GTA V. However i believe that the police have added the fact that he was inspired by the game in order to create a panic about the game. As there are thousands of young people that play the game and they have not been involved in any crime/killing based activities. 

Issues/Debates

Representation and stereotyping
Media effects
Reality TV
News Values
Moral Panics
Post 9/11 and the media
Ownership and control
Regulation and censorship
Media technology and the digital revolution – changing technologies in the 21st century
The effect of globalisation on the media

Theories

Moral Panics - The Game has been seen on the news as it is believed that the game has a negative effect on children that play the game. Thus when people see this it creates a panic, as parents would be worried about their kids being influenced by the game. 

Semiotics - Throughout the game there are a range of signs that are shown and have been placed in order to make the audience think and engage. For example there have been 'Illuminati' (triangle with eye) placed throughout the game. This makes the audience think as some people may believe that it has been there as a subliminal message, whereas others see it as an easter egg. 

Gender and ethnicity - The males and females in the game have been represented very differently from one another, for example all the females are shown either as whores or as vulnerable. Whereas the males have been shown with power and authority. There is a male gaze in the game (Luara Mulvey) as females have specifically been placed in the game for males look at e.g. when the game is loading there is a image of a women bending over a car being arrested by a female officer. The look in the woman's eye can be seen as being quite sexual. 

Marxism and hegemony 

Liberal Pluralism 

Colonialism and Post-colonialism 

Audience theories 

Genre theories 

Contemporary Media Landscape 

Media texts

The main media text that I am going to be focusing on is GTA V, as this is the main text that I am going to focus on I will be looking in to how the game was marketed and what was done in order for the game to become such a great success. 

Articles

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/21/grand-theft-auto-5-women-misogynistic-violent

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/31/grand-theft-auto-5-torture-violence-video-games

Ignite PP - Anuvahood

Grade - C- 

EBI

- I need to go in to more detail with why the racial stereotypes are used. 
- I need to add more theories in to the presentation. 
- I need to be careful with how little/how much information I add to the slides. 
- I need to add more images to the presentation. 
- Use knowledge of media. 

WWW

- I had good presentation skills. 
- I had good time management. 
- I didn't used notes when presenting.
- I had good interaction with my audience. 

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/feb/19/adam-deacon-interview-bafta

This article is on how Adam Deacon won a Bafta award, and how he was up against actors like Tom Hiddleston (Thor) . Adam talks about how he felt and what it meant to him, how it you don't need a lot of money or the greatest actors to having a award winning film. he also talks about why he had racial stereotypes, and what the deeper meaning to it was. 

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/10/urban-film-spoof-anuvahood-kidulthood

This article is based on how Urban British films have changed from what they used to be, nitty gritty films about how council estate youths were. It looks at how the audiences demand has changed. People see different views on humor now, having racial stereotypes enforced in the film enables it to have a humorous side to it.  

"It's very much about peer recommendation," says Taussig.
"Scoring highly on Facebook 'likes' probably means more than what a newspaper says." 
This quote shows why Anuvahood got such bad reviews from film critics, one being that they are usually quiet old, and two being that they cannot relate to what is being shown in the film. thus they have very narrow mind on what a film should be about. However, if there was to be a younger candidate that was chosen t write a review on the film, the review would be much different. 

http://www.theguardian.com/film/movie/140811/anuvahood

This was one of the shortest and most pathetic reviews I read on the film. It simply said, "A British urban spoof that is irredeemably lame and unfunny" A film review should contain more than a single sentence even if you thought the film wasn't great, there should be an explanation to why you thought this. However i think that the person that wrote this review is very narrow minded and doesn't have much knowledge of different film types. As if he/she did, they would know that a 'spoof' is meant to be silly and stupid. 

These are the only articles that i thought were relevant to the film and what I found interesting, thus I only have three from five articles. 























  

Anuvahood - Summer Research

Media summer project – Anuvahood

For my summer research project I have been focusing on the film ‘Anuvahood’, I choose to look at this media production as after watching the film I came to find that the film had a vast amount of racial stereotypes that are enforced, furthermore most of the stereotypes that are shown are negative. This can have a range of different effects on different audiences, thus I feel that this would be an appropriate medium for me to focus upon.

Actors

Adam Deacon – Kenneth

The film stars a range of different actors from different ethnic back grounds, a lot of the actors are British and aren’t very well known world-wide, but are significantly popular within the British film and music industry. For example, Adam Deacon an actor and rapper from Hackney, East London. His father is from Morocco, and walked out on the family when Adam was just 2 years old. At the age of 12 Deacon began to act and trained at the Anna Scher Theatre. His early career included work with Y Touring Theatre Company, with whom he appeared in a number of tours including Cracked by Nicola Baldwin. He’s stared in movies such as ‘Kidulthood’, he’s also starred in  'Bones' in an MTV show called Dubplate Drama. His next role was in 4.3.2.1, a heist movie, released in June 2010.

Recently Adam co-wrote, co-directed and played the lead role in Anuvahood, which was released on March 18 2011. The film is described as, "A pulls-no-punches, coming-of-age story, centering on one directionless hopeless 'shotter', who finds his true worth in the face of urban adversity."

Adam has featured in various music videos including; Bashy's "Who wants to be a millionaire" and Chipmunk's Chip Diddy Chip. He is also a musician and musical performer most noted for his two tracks on the soundtrack to Adulthood. The tracks are: 'Adamhood' and 'On It 08'

Richie Campbell – Tyrone

Richie’s career began at the age of 13 when he attended the famous Anna Scher Stage School in Islington. It was there where he found his love for acting on stage and quickly established himself as a great young talent with leading roles in stage plays Eugene Onegin, Slamdunk, Cutter and Little Sweet Thing. But it was his standout performance in 93.2 at the Royal Court theatre as the ‘Bitter but likeable’ Boss man that got the ball rolling. He was singled out and shortlisted for the what’s on stage theatre choice award for ‘Best Actor’.

Richie’s film career has recently gone from strength beginning with in Nick Loves 2009 film The Firm playing Snowy a cockney firm member becoming brave enough to leave to most recently he starred in Anuvahood playing Tyrone. It is indeed this film that has proved that Richie can turn his hand to just about anything stepping out of his serious acting to conquer the world of comedy which he mastered. Since then he has starred in Victim, Sket and Top Boy.

News Articles & Reviews

Triple threat writer/director/actor Adam Deacon stars as K (real name Kenneth), a wannabe MC who disastrously turns to dealing weed after his family loses nearly all their possessions to bailiffs. He and his equally hopeless crew get into all kinds of scrapes with the local criminals. Oh, and it's a comedy. Hopelessly broad and almost continually annoying, it's a film that it's hard to imagine even the target audience warming to. It's really just a torrent of age-old gags and clumsy, pointless situations dressed up with street slang. At least they didn't appear to have wasted much money on this, which is one of the few plus points.

(http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/17/anuvahood-film-review)   

The article above was taken from the online version of the Guardian newspaper. The feedback that was given of the film was very negative and harsh, this may be due to the fact that the film was targeted at a younger audience, whereas the person that has written the review, most probably did not fit this target audience, thus he was not able to relate and understand a lot of the humerous aspects of the film. However after reading a few of the comments that were left on the page, it was evident that people that meet the target audience arte able to enjoy the film, for example “I have to disagree with this review. I found the film hilarious, well directed and exciting. If you can't relate to this type of film you will hate it. My problem with film critics is that it is really just one persons opinion. I guess that is why I don't really read them. The Black Swan was praised by so many people this year but I found it to be over hyped, boring, hard to follow and lacking in a decent plot. Yet everyone was raving about it. My advice would be to go and watch the movie and decide for yourself. I think that you might disagree with Philem O'Niell and may like it.”

(http://www.wannagotothemovies.com/lovefilm-review-anuvahood-2011/)

Utter dog shite. Sorry for being so blunt and crass.

I just hated it. I’m not sure if it is actually meant to poke fun at films like it (Adulthood and Kidulthood) – if it is then i didn’t laugh each way. I thought it was offensive and racist. I was literally counting down the minutes. Interesting the ‘Five star reviews’ listed on the front poster are from publications I’ve never heard of.

Once again the review given on the film was very negative and it also says, “it was offensive and racist”, I believe the racist aspect of the film was intentional as the racial stereotypes that were used in the film were very strong and some people may of found it offensive, however I believe the main purpose to have such strong racial stereotypes was simply used for humour, for example having an extremely built black male, named Tyrone as the villain can be seen as being very racial. However to a young urban audience this would be seen as being very funny.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzDWevrtRX4 – You Tube link

In this short clip we get to hear why Adam Deacon made this film and what his purpose was behind it, and he clearly states that he wanted to show what life is like on a estate but in a humorous way, whereas usually council estates are shown as very bad places to be. This creates a folk devil as through films such as Adulthood and Kidulthood, society starts to see kids from estates as being very dangerous, and thus it creates a division between society and people that live on estates.

Narrative:

The narrative of the film is of a character called Kenneth, he is a wannabe bad boy that is trying to pursue his career with music, as he wants to become a rap artist. Once he realises that he is not able to go forward with that career he vows to become a respected gangster or “cry trying”. He starts to sell drugs (marijuana) and begins to make some small time money before he is robbed by the estate bully, Tyrone. Kenneth then decides to rob everything back from Tyrone, but he makes the mistake of being seen by Tyrones gang. The result of Kenneth’s slip up leads to an epic fight between Tyrone and Kenneth, where Kenneth eventually beats Tyrone and becomes the hero of the estate. Kenneth then becomes a new person and returns to his job at ‘Laimsbury’.

Genre:

British urban comedy – The comedy aspect of the film appeals to a very niche market and only the target audience of 15 years seem to find the content funny. This is because the comedy that has been added to film is mainly understood by this specific market, people that ca relate to the characters are able to enjoy the film more than a random person that may be selected to see the film.

Crime – There isn’t any major crime that takes place in the film, however there is drug use and weapons are shown. The amount of crime shown is controlled because of the age rating, whereas if the film was an 18, there may have been more horrific scenes shown and much greater use of weapons, violence and drugs.

Media institutions:

Production – Gunslinger

Distribution – Revolver

Media values and ideology:

From my point of view I believe that there are many different values and ideologies that are trying to be represented in this film. For example, you should be more careful before making decisions, as a lot of the decisions ‘Kay’ makes leads to him getting in to trouble. Another one is that you should think of the consequences, as Kay does a range of things without thinking of the outcome e.g. stealing from Tyrone, this situation leads to Key almost being killed. Finally at the end of the film Kenneth says, “I’m choosing life, it’s all about enlightenment.”  Although this scene was also added for comedic purposes, I believe it has another meaning, as it shows a person that came from an estate, who was in a bad environment and he seemed to change his life, ‘ we should look at the brighter things in life’.

Media Audiences:

The primary audience would be 15 year olds as that is who the film has been targeted at, however I believe that there is a much larger audience, as people that are able to relate to the characters and their stories would also be appealed to the film. Also an older audience would also watch the film as they may want to watch the film before they let their children watch the film. The demographic for this film would be C2, D, E 15 – 25 male and female.