Relentless: The Nature of Chronic Poverty - A Social Issue Video Game

In the process of working towards a minor in International Development, I have read extensively on a large number of social issues, many of which I could have made a game around. I am passionate about all of these issues, from the way that we are treating the environment, to the status of women in many countries around the world. However, the issue that I decided to write about is the relentless nature of chronic poverty. Chronic poverty is simply defined as a phenomenon whereby an individual or group is in a state of poverty over an extended period of time. This is something that has always struck me as a crucial social issue, and is one that scores of people have researched and tried to understand. What frustrates me the most about this issue in the US is that many people still believe that the American Dream is alive and well. Many people still believe that if people would only work harder, they would be able to pull themselves out of poverty. This has led to a belief that people in poverty are lazy, and are not doing enough to pull themselves out of this hard time. Globally, in 2010, 1.22 billion people lived on less than $1.25 per day (World Bank), and the vast majority of these people are hard-working, honest people who cannot just pull themselves out of chronic poverty by their bootstraps. In his book The End of Poverty, economist Jeffrey Sachs discusses what he calls the poverty trap. While it would be difficult to explain in words, here it is in a picture. 

Basically, people who are trapped in poverty are unlikely to be able to get out. This is a problem that spans across many generations, and leaves whole groups of people in cross-generational poverty. The entire field of international development exists for the increasing of quality of life, and for the reduction of chronic poverty, and yet, this issue is much more complex than most politicians and policy makers realized, and the people in poverty continue to suffer. The poverty rate is effected by the economy, by past generations, by access of the individual to opportunities, by policies that are created by various countries, and so many other factors. From class, I was greatly affected by the Ted Talk that we viewed about the danger of the single story. I decided that I wanted to try and give a different perspective of the experience of poverty through a video game. For this game, I decided to try and simulate the way that it would feel to be a person in chronic poverty. To do this, I created a game that is impossible to win. There are many monsters to overcome, to simulate the number of obstacles that people who endure chronic poverty. There are also very few rewards for the things that the player overcomes, which leads to a drain in the ability of the player to continue. Without these rewards for the hard work that is being put forward, the player quickly dies, and there is no chance to overcome the circumstances in which they have been placed. 

Play the Game!!

Citations: 
"Poverty." Overview. The World Bank, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
Sachs, Jeffrey. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. New York: Penguin, 2005. Print.
Shah, Anup. "Causes of Poverty." - Global Issues. N.p., 24 Mar. 2014. Web. 24 Mar. 2014. 

Webspinna Battle Artist Statement

For this assignment, Neil Reed and I decided to battle as masculinity and femininity, with Neil being femininity and I as masculinity. For me, there were many things that influenced our decision to take on these personas. I am currently taking a Sociology of Gender class, so I have been studying gender all semester, and gender issues have been an interest of mine for several years now. Particularly frustrating to me are gender stereotypes, and the expectations that exist for the different genders in our society. My studies in this class, as well as several outside sources, such as the documentary Miss Representation are what influenced me as we came up with these personas. When we decided to take on the opposite persona, it was very interesting for me, as I had never tried to be explicitly masculine before. As I went about preparing for this assignment, I tried to think about the gender expectations for men, and how those expectations and stereotypes are different from the expectations for women. I thought about the societal pressure that I feel as a woman, and the societal pressure that I could potentially feel as a man. I thought about the things that I would be expected to be as a man, and the way that society would expect me to act. For the night of the event, I did not wear any makeup, I went to DI and got a man’s collared shirt, and I borrowed a bow tie from Tree, and I pulled my hair back tight.

Although I knew this implicitly coming into the assignment, there was a plethora of media based on gender stereotypes. I had no trouble at all finding songs about what it means to be a man. These songs, and the other media that I found were very explicit in their discussion of gender norms. Men are strong, muscular, tough, manly men. Women are delicate, emotional, they need to be beautiful, and they need men. I had no trouble finding media that perpetuated these norms. When looking for media, I also tried to find media that was not explicitly talking about men, but implicitly makes us think about men. An example of this was the theme song from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, which is an iconic western song, that for me exemplified the expectations of being manly.

It was a very interesting and fun thing to be able to perform in front of our class. I am usually averse to live performances, but this one turned out to be very enjoyable. I was very influenced in this performance by the things that we discussed in class about glitch art, and the way that it is created. I thought that our performance took a lot from that reading, as we strived to take differing discussions of gender stereotypes, and make a statement about gender equality. Our performance strived to move from the most stereotypical sounds of gender, to less stereotypical, and the dance at the end was meant to say that we are all equal, and that there should not be a dominant gender. I think that the mix and dance aspect of our performance made it so tat it could not have come across the same way if we had not all been in that room making art together. In my opinion, the community aspect of this experience was essential to the meaning of this piece. Overall, this has been one of my favorite assignments so far, and I greatly enjoyed making art together as a class.

Webspinna Battle Links (Masculinity vs. Femininity)

Western Manly Song

Car Engine

Macho Man (Village People)

Eye of the Tiger

Walk Like a Man (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons)

The Man (Aloe Blacc)

I'll Make a Man Out of You

Boys Don't Cry (The Cure)

MAN by Steve Cutts

The Mask You Live In

SLAM POEM 2:32

Where is the love?

World Building Project - A World Without Jazz

Here was my part:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zGRIn4xDgs&list=UU50jG8fgZvCxdVQielQApdQ

In high school, I auditioned for, and was accepted into an extremely competitive and prestigious Jazz choir at my school. After spending a year performing and competing with this group, I fell completely in love with Jazz music, and this love has only grown stronger with time. 

This is what I was thinking about when I first suggested a world without jazz. However, when thinking about the progress of music over time, I realized that Jazz, the Blues, or Ragtime have influenced most modern music in some way. Therefore, for this project, my group decided to create a world where those influences do not exist. In doing some research, we found that classical music from Europe greatly influenced the music being made in the US up until the creation of Ragtime, which then influenced the creation of Blues and Jazz. All of these forms of music were originally influenced by African spirituals, which were brought to the US by slaves. Since that time, this music has gone on to influence the creation of hip-hop, rock, disco, soul, pop, and R&B music. 

When one consider the significant cultural influences that each of these genres have had over the last several decades, it becomes quite apparent that a world without the influence of Ragtime music would look very different from the world we live in today. We surmised that if Ragtime had never been created that much of the music of the US would still be influenced by the music from Europe. Additionally, we concluded that without Ragtime to get the ball rolling, that the music being produced would not have changed very much. From class, we were inspired by drawings shown of costumes from another world that had been designed.  We thought about how music and how it has affected culture. From this we considered the ways that music has had an indirect or direct influence on the way that people dress. We also considered modern pop-culture, and how it would be different if we took out the influences of Ragtime music (as well as Jazz and the Blues).  We concluded that people would pay big money to see musicians like Yo Yo Ma. While he, and other classically trained musicians are already very famous, we concluded that these musicians would be on the same level of fame as celebrities like Kanye West, Beyonce, and Justin Bieber. Without the influence of Ragtime, music would not have changed much over the past 100 years. We would still be listening to classical music, with strong European influences, and the people making that music would be our celebrities.

Piracy Project - Put Your Shoulder to the Beat

For this week’s project, I thought about all of the things that have influenced me through the years. While there were many things to consider, I landed on a juxtaposition that has fascinated me for a long time. Allow me to explain. On my mom’s side of the family, our whole family history is that of pioneers, and people crossing the plains. I come from a long line of Mormon farmers from Idaho, all the way up to my grandparent’s generation. These were hardworking people who were close to the land; the exact type of people that are being discussed in the LDS Hymn “Put your Shoulder to the Wheel.” My extended family is still extremely hard working. My grandfather worked right up until he died of bone cancer, and my grandmother worked into her late 60’s, and still does volunteer work in her late 70’s. I have an aunt who runs a small organic farm in addition to teaching high school full time. The work ethic of these people is inspiring, and it is what I was raised on. In my family, we were expected to work hard, and to work for honorable things. However, I did not grow up in rural Idaho, where my tight knit, Mormon, hardworking extended family lives.

Until I was eleven, I grew up in Southern California, in an area very different from that of my ancestors. Here, the people worked hard too. But they did not live off the land, and they were not always working for honorable things. They simply worked hard to survive. My friends in elementary school went on to get pregnant, join gangs, deal drugs, and so on. I will never forget as a thirteen year old, getting the call that my friend Raphael from elementary school had been killed in a gang fight. He had been shot. We were in middle school.

 I have always found the dichotomy between my upbringing in Southern California, and my Idahoan ancestry to be an interesting mix. They do not match, or even correspond to one another. This piece is to show that juxtaposition between these two cultures. The heavy beats are to represent the culture of LA, and the LDS hymn is to represent the culture of Idaho. The purpose of this piece is to show that both of these groups of people are working incredibly hard, just toward entirely different things. For this assignment, I was inspired by the pictures that we viewed for class, where Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Queen of England were black and Indian. I enjoyed that these pieces questioned our perceptions of famous people, and much race plays a part how we view them. I was also inspired by the media that I had been exposed to as a child growing up in Northern LA, and the media that I had been exposed to while with my extended family in Idaho. Each of these influences played a large role in the choices that were made for this project.

Put Your Shoulder to the Beat