Shadows On the Screen: The Man Who Told Everything

On a site like ours, where news coverage is the (high-quality) buffer between the feature articles that are our heart and soul, how do we manage the issue of the “I” creeping into our journalism?

I held off on having this discussion with you all until it felt right. And there hasn’t been a better time than now. Over the next days you might notice that there is a more consistent stream of non-news stories by all of our regular writers. And then, get this, next week you’ll see the same thing. On schedule. You’ll always find me on Tuesdays, Phil Caron on Mondays, Richard Feeney on Sundays, and.. well, you get it. So, OLC Faithful, how can you help it if you end up connecting authorial voice with everything we write, once you get used to our mannerisms, beliefs, and style? And how can we maintain journalistic integrity and objectivity if we’re also all focused on editorial opinion pieces? But site changes aside, the honest truth is that after a friendly talk about games writing with the New York circle’s Jedi Master and Sith Lord, I had to sit down and consider some things.

I’m about to step into the realm of the unprofessional, but I do so for effect because to speak in pronouns and hypotheticals would weaken the point. This all started when I heard through a mutual acquaintance that the Editor of Gamepro’s GameGirl.com, Raychul Moore,  had some complaints that she wasn’t being judged on her writing alone. She was being considered only as a sex object, and not as a journalist or critic. Simply put, the room to grow as a writer was capped for her. She’d never be taken seriously. Raychul isn’t alone in our industry. It’s common consideration that Jessica Chobot’s “licking a PSP” photo, and not any piece of writing she did, is what launched her into niche stardom.

There are times when articles write themselves. It would be easy to do that here. It would be easy for me to pick on Raychul (who, in full disclosure, I worked with for about half a year at Gametopius.com.) I could pick out a few articles of Raychul’s that feature pictures of her wearing a plastic guitar and little else, and say “she dug her own grave.” I could even pick out a few pieces she wrote that I didn’t think were very well written, because hell, we all have those. Even easier, I could attack a male dominated industry and say that she’s forced to use her femininity to make any impact at all. She is a product of her environment. But I really hate easy things, and the truth is somewhere in the middle, right?

First, let’s consider an extreme. Let’s say she has been exploiting her sex appeal for attention – this is not an accusation, it’s just a way to explore the issue and our assumptions. It’s presumed that to show a little skin is to your audience is to grab low hanging fruit. We’d call it an “unfair” advantage being used to reach a larger demographic. But is it? We all court an audience. We all step into a stage persona when we write, like a comedian, or magician, or burlesque dancer. I do it by quoting Habermas and Hume, OLC Editor in Chief Phil Caron does it by bashing this generation and demanding a return to PS1 era glory days, and Raychul does it by being the bubbly-meets-hardcore girl friday of gaming. I’m not calling us ingenuous. I’m calling us compositional Casanovas. We have seduced you.

The argument goes “But Austin, the tools you’re using add to the discourse. A little sideboob doesn’t do much but get the masses salivating.” Part of me agrees, but a much more realistic part knows that my audience isn’t hers, and that both demographics deserve to be catered to, so sayeth economics.

There is a second layer to this issue though. If how we seduce our readers isn’t the issue, perhaps it’s that we seduce them. Stephen Totilo told me that when he first started back at MTV, the rule was never to speak as an “I,” because it lets subjectivity encroach into news stories. He eventually managed to change that requirement- critique demands a voice, and all that – but objective reporting is still held onto dearly by many. I’ve managed to surround myself with real journalists, an ex who’s about to graduated from J-School, and a handful more who nabbed undergrad degrees in journalism and went in other directions. And each of them, without fail, will argue that there is such a thing as objective reporting. Hell, I’m not sure I believe in objective observation, let alone talking objectively about observation. (No, this isn’t why my ex and I split… Well…)

Should there not be an “I” here? Outside of editorials, should I speak as if my word is law, objective observation. Assuming that art is subjective (and it is), and that games are art (and they are), then unless I’m telling you that there are X polygons and Y levels (and what counts as a “level” anyway?), then every word I write will hold some involuntary subtext. Why do I call Batman the “Dark Knight” instead of the “Caped Crusader” in the first paragraph. Which pictures did I line up with what sentences (for fun, and effect, you’ll note that this is an ugly, text only piece.) What did I title the article whatever I did? Why is the paragraph about design before the one about aesthetics. All of these choices inject personality, they force the conversation in a certain direction. So long as we’re not typing at random, and maybe even then, the “I” is omnipresent in writing.

Even in a straight news story these choices move us into the realm of subjectivity. You might say that the subjective force journalists are beheld to is “importance.” That the most impactful information, in as clear and clean language as possible, comes first. But while style guides and editors may allow for consistency here, it still comes down to the choice of a person: there is nothing in an event that makes it important. We do that.

So where are we? One, the “I” is unavoidable. Two, we utilize the “I”, even unconsciously, to cultivate an audience and allows us to inform them in what we think is the best way. Three, We do that in different ways, and judgment is out on whether or not “my” way is better than “yours.”  Four, knowing when to embrace the “I” (or deny it) can be the difference between amateur and professional, boring and captivating, trite and meaningful.

But our issue wasn’t just with what makes good writers. It was with what makes writers happy.  I’d argue that a big part of the pursuit of contentment is knowing which “I” to use. Raychul Moore says she wants to be taken seriously as a journalist, and seems to have a portfolio supporting that claim. The portfolio also includes material that would lead a reader to other assumptions about her goals as a journalist and critic.

Suddenly, being memorable reveals that it has two sides. Like Mitchum in Out of the Past, there is no escaping our history. I can wake up tomorrow and decide to write “Top Ten Boobs In Videogames!”, but I can’t be mad if my readers think I’m being ironic or trying to prove a point, because my modus operandi thus far does not support that style. I can’t unwrite this, either.

Maybe the real question here is why, for all of my talk about dialectics, Raychul can’t be a pretty face and also insightful – the Mary Louise Parker of games journalism? Why can’t I be ridiculous and also academic. The answer is that with an active and interested readership we can overcome those extremes, but that tending to that audience is the hardest of all.

And so I’ll retreat to what feels safe for me (and hope that others are stronger.) I quote men greater and older and more dead and thus safer. Heraclitus, a Greek who believed everything was made of fire (and was thus a brilliant thinker) said something like “On those stepping into rivers the same, other and other waters flow.” We never step in the same river twice. Everything changes.

We are all insects in ecdysis, shedding the exoskeleton which will not grow with our bodies. The process of molting is time consuming and leaves us weak, but since we do it, we must believe that it is worth it in the end. Raychul, myself, the writers at OLC. People. We are the bloody transubstantiation.