(Source: www.last.fm.com)
Growing up with two older brothers in an
age where video games became a prominent activity of leisure, majority of the
games we owned for the Playstation were masculine in nature. Tony Hawk Pro
Skater 4 was one of them. The game involves selecting a real life
professional skateboarder protagonist to visit cities where you participate in
competitions against other pro skaters. A major influence over the protagonist
that I chose was the gender. The game only featured one female pro skater,
Elise Steamer, which was evident when I was younger.
Stuart Hill (1973) discusses the audience
reception to this viewing in terms of preferred, or dominant, reading,
negotiated reading, and oppositional reading which can be applied to the game.
A preferred reading is how majority of the
audience 'decode' a particular message. The dominant interpretation
of ProSkater 4 would be the reflection of professional skateboarding, in being
able to mimic the maneuvers that skateboarders attempt and land and being
involved, in a virtual sense, in the skateboarding subculture. It is merely a
sporting game.
The negotiated reading allows for one to
shape the dominant reading in terms of their own social situation (Pillai,
1992). Being a female playing the game I applied a feminist perspective noting
the lack of females in the sport. Research conducted by Kelly,
Pomerantz and Currie (2005) indicated that 'skater
girls saw themselves as participating in an ‘alternative’ girlhood' due to this
male dominance. Negotiated readings can also understand the game through race
involvement. Kareem Campbell was the only male African American included in the
player choice. This could be the result of the skate culture and its appeal to
different races or it could be the result of professional skater selectivity in
the game production.
And finally
the oppositional reading is decoding the game so the audience disagrees with
the hegemonic view. A typical oppositional interpretation of Tony Hawk would be
in the character behaviour and the image association of the skateboarding
culture. A major aspect of the game is in players inflicting pain on themselves
(through falling off the board) and to others. This violent behaviour could be
seen to negatively influence younger players.
I personally
take the preferred reading as the game is a reflection of the skate boarding
culture but does extend it to make it entertaining.
Reference List
Hall, S. 1973, Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Birmingham [England: Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, 1973. 507-17
Kelly, D, Pomerantz, S & Currie, D 2005, 'Skater girlhood and emphasized femininity: ‘you can't land an ollie properly in heels’', Gender and Education, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 229-248, <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540250500145163#.UkKDI4amiZ4>
Pillai, P 1992, 'Rereading Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding Model', Communication Theory, vol. 2, no.3, pp. 221-233, <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1992.tb00040.x/abstract>
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