Toscano, Aaron Antonio (Author)
Lexington Books
Publication date: 2019
Language: English
Physical Details: 162
Digital media are immersive technologies reflecting behaviors, attitudes, and values. The engrossing, entertaining virtual worlds video games provide are important sites for 21st century research. This book moves beyond assertions that video games cause violence by analyzing the culture that produces such material. While some popular media reinforce the idea that video games lead to violence, this book uses a cultural studies lens to reveal a more complex situation. Video games do not lead to violence, sexism, and chauvinism. Rather, Toscano argues, a violent, sexist, chauvinistic culture reproduces texts that reflect these values. Although video games have a worldwide audience, this book focuses on American culture and how this multi-billion dollar industry entertains us in our leisure time (and sometimes at work), bringing us into virtual environments where we have fun learning, fighting, discovering, and acquiring bragging rights. When politicians and moral crusaders push agendas that claim video games cause a range of social ills from obesity to mass shooting, these perspectives fail to recognize that video games reproduce hegemonic American values. This book, in contrast, focuses on what these highly entertaining cultural products tell us about who we are.
...MoreReview Mark T. DiMauro (2023) Review of "Video Games and American Culture: How Ideology Influences Virtual Worlds". Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology (pp. 190-193).
Similar Citations
Book
Michael Z. Newman;
(2017)
Atari Age: The emergence of video games in America
Book
Melissinos, Chris;
O'Rourke, Patrick;
(2013)
The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect
Book
Lu Zhouxiang;
(2022)
A History of Competitive Gaming
Article
Jiow, Hee Jhee;
Lim, Sun Sun;
(2012)
The Evolution of Video Game Affordances and Implications for Parental Mediation
Book
Anna McFarlane;
Lars Schmeink;
Graham Murphy;
(2019)
The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture
Book
Aubrey Anable;
(2018)
Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect
Book
Bonnie Ruberg;
(2019)
Video Games Have Always Been Queer
Book
Bo Ruberg;
(2020)
The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games
Article
Yasushi Sato;
(2017)
Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) in Human Spaceflight: Technical, Cultural, Political, and Economic Factors Behind NASA's Stance to Risk
Book
Jenkins, Henry;
(2006)
Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide
Book
Caleb Wellum;
(2023)
Energizing Neoliberalism: The 1970s Energy Crisis and the Making of Modern America
Article
Jessica Fitts Willoughby;
Hollie Smith;
(August 2016)
Communication Strategies and New Media Platforms: Exploring the Synergistic Potential of Health and Environmental Communication
Article
Sims, Christo;
(2014)
Video Game Culture, Contentious Masculinities, and Reproducing Racialized Social Class Divisions in Middle School
Book
George Ogola;
(2023)
The Future of Television in the Global South: Reflections from Selected Countries
Book
Will Rollason;
(2019)
Motorbike People: Power and Politics on Rwandan Streets
Book
Mark Wolverton;
(2022)
Nuclear Weapons
Book
Poster, Mark;
(2006)
Information Please: Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital Machines
Article
Moon, Suzanne;
(2010)
Introduction
Book
James Leach;
Lee Wilson;
(2014)
Subversion, Conversion, Development: Cross-Cultural Knowledge Exchange and the Politics of Design
Book
Dr Martin Halliwell;
(2024)
Transformed States: Medicine, Biotechnology, and American Culture, 1990–2020
Be the first to comment!