Lovers of cinematic catastrophe, rejoice!
Facing accusations of fraud, douchebaggery, and skull abandonment in the wake of a split with his estranged “filmmaking” partner Jordan Owen, the formerly bald film auteur Davis Aurini has released a 38-minute “Rough Draft Preview” of his version of The Sarkeesian effect.
I have not yet had a chance to watch the whole thing, but from the brief bits I have seen it more than lives up to the hype, if by “hype” you mean “the general consensus that Davis Aurini cannot possibly produce anything but poop.”
In the first 4 minutes alone, Aurini uses narration and music from Owen that he clearly doesn’t have permission to use; the rest of the footage is also “borrowed” from others, and the much ballyhooed “Animated Title Sequence” consists of the words “Animated Title Sequence” over a still image.
Watching this, it is important to remember that this film was not edited by a 5-year-old on a budget of one juice box, but by an actual adult human being who considers himself something of a filmmaking pro, with a budget in the tens of thousands of dollars.
So let’s watch this together. I will offer more extended notes once I’ve had a chance to stop giggling and digest the rest.
EDITED TO ADD: Ok, I finally made it all the way through and, wow, it’s even worse than I expected.
Where even to start? There’s no real narrative; none of this will make much sense to anyone who hasn’t been following the whole #Gamergate thing already.
The “argument,” when it’s not completely incoherent, is thoroughly dishonest and (when it comes to criticizing Sarkeesian’s actual videos) ridiculously petty. The film makes repeated assertions about Sarkeesian (that she’s a “bully,” that she wants to censor video games) without any evidence at all.
When we finally get around to the interviews — there is no original footage at all in the first 18 or so minutes of the “film” — the argument is simply laughable. Essentially, Davis says “SJWs claim to speak for women and minorities, so here’s a … WOMAN (dramatic pause) who disagrees!”
It’s not explained why they’re interviewing a sex worker, much less this particular woman. In fact, she made webcam videos parodying Sarkeesian, but this is never mentioned. (Also not mentioned: the fact that she’s the wife of the “mediator” involved in trying to get the film made.) Why is she talking about Gail Dines? Has Sarkeesian ever spoke in favor of censorship?
And then we get the “Honey Badgers” complaining about “damseling,” followed by Paul Elam … damseling. (What relevance he has to a discussion of Sarkeesian isn’t clear.) Then Alison Tieman damseling.
Oh, and then there’s Davis complaining that when Sarkeesian gets threats, she gets money from it! Never mind the $30,000 collected by AVFM last year ostensibly to pay for security. Or that the Owen and Aurini are basically living off of people’s hatred of Sarkeesian, as are a number of bloggers and youtubers .
Other, er, highlights:
- Terrible fonts (an Aurini trademark)
- That stupid grid of YouTube videos that Aurini uses when he’s got no actual filmed footage or stock photos or anything else to use for a visual
- The terrible sound, with volume changing radically from clip to clip
- Terrible lighting in many of the clips
- The lengthy segments with no visuals at all, just a black screen
- Various people shown without introductions or subtitles to explain who they are
- Even when people are identified, no real effort to explain why on earth they would be relevant
Probably not a good idea to include so much footage of Owen, given that he. you know, has publicly said that Aurini is a fraud who doesn’t have permission to use any of the film footage
It’s striking how much more professional the clips from Sarkeesian videos are when compared with everything Owen and Aurini filmed.
Now, obviously, this is a rough cut. Real filmmakers often make rough cuts missing elements from the final film — music, cgi special effects, etc.
But they generally don’t release these to the public in advance of the film’s release, because they generally look terrible. The footage they use to promote the films prior to release are designed to make the film in question look awesome, not to prove, yes we have some footage.
The only reason Aurini has to release this is to “prove” that he actually has been putting in some work on the “film.” But what it really shows is how little work he’s done. I mean, take a couple of hours and clean up the fucking audio a little. At least make sure the volume is consistent within shots and from clip to clip.
The “quality” here is less than the quality of many unprofessional youtube videos that are slapped together in a day.
Also, it’s kind of amazing that he had no original footage at all to use in the first 18 minutes. Did they film nothing but the interviews themselves? Not even some footage of, I dunno, someone watching YouTube or pretending to type something on their computer?
@Paradoxical Intention
Thanks for the teal deer. <3 Took the words right out of my keyboard. I was side eying the fuck out of that myself.
There is a law that even people who claim to support Anita are required to preface their support by mentioning that this one time she brought up a game that had some detail that was maybe not exactly the way she portrayed it, depending on who you ask.
Yeah, I find myself doing it from time to time. 😛
I think that it’s just me getting defensive over the “You just blindly support her and never question her!” accusations, which are false as hell, but I still feel the need to prove the accuser wrong? (Kind of like that accusation that “all feminsts are fat and ugly!” ‘argument’ from MRAs.)
I’m trying to wean myself away from doing so.
First of all Paradoxical Intention,
One million thank yous for this: http://s.mlkshk-cdn.com/r/3ZZ4
I have so much to say, and surprisingly to actually add to what’s been said, but my coffee is making me shake. I’ll just quickly talk about this hitman nonsense. It was in a video Anita made about women as background decorations. Were they background decorations?
Check.
Also that is significant because women are not present in these games. And then there are the dehumanizing tropes. That’s why it’s important. We’re not talking about a word, “In a world…” … where there are full rich female characters doing their thing, we are in a world where these female characters are basically completely absent (Anita points out when they are not),
But on to more points about her hitman bit. So first of all they are decorations. Second of all yes, you can do terrible things to them. People have said you are not “encouraged” to do said and bluderboob even went was far as to say gamers would NEVER do that. Again, one more non gamer chiming in. Yet someone came along and easily debunked that by showing a screen shot of all the videos on youtube made with gamers doing just that, “fun with hookers” etc. They claim that you lose points doing this, but someone else has pointed out that no, if you hide the bodies you do NOT lose your points.
None of these people have watched her videos.
I doubt the veracity of AnitaFan, I think it’s some manosphere type that thinks he can get us to see “their side” but either he understood none of what he was watching, or he’s a liar.
I also don’t see many good defenses of Sarkeseesian out there, which is disappointing. It would be so simple to demonstrate these people have not watched her videos. “Anitafan” saying she was ham fisted raises a red flag with me. He’s lying. She presents all context and the large systemic perspective. She defines all her tropes and her internal logic is flawless. Nobody has come close to discussing her premises.
Example- when she defines a trope, and says ‘this trope Damsel sometimes does rescue other characters’ – then no, it’s not valid to say “SHE IS LYING BECAUSE THIS CHARACTER SHE IS CLAIMING AS A DAMSEL RESCUES SOMEONE’ – I’m looking at you Repzion.
They simply have not watched these videos. I suggest everyone does, because I suspect from viewing comments around town that even supporters have not because they appear to not know how to respond.
ugh, sorry about all those typos, what the heck?
Off Topic (though related to the afformentioned fun on reddit) but is this the greatest Freeze Peach post ever ?
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/content_policy_update_ama_thursday_july_16th_1pm/ct4hpr0
I’ve found that it’s easiest to just not bother either way past a simple “No,” since it’s nothing more than irrelevant sealioning that they’re not going to read, and just focus on the harassment and how she could bite the heads off chickens in her spare time and still not deserve it.
*Not going to read your answer to. I bit the head off my sentence.
Holy crap, I can’t believe I actually watched the whole thing!
I used davidknewton summary as a guide, and it’s so spot on! All emergency editions, terrible sudden changes in sound and screen blackouts are perfectly accounted for.
So great job there! I don’t know if I would have made it without you!
I can’t really add much except that the Honey Badger part was the most WTF of all. Really guys, what the actual fuck?
I also particularly despised whoever it was who equated Anita not wanting harassment with her wanting “special treatment”. Fuck you all the way to the bottom of Reddit and back again, asshole.
Just realised I didn’t use No Participation mode on that link, whoops.
It should of course have been
https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/content_policy_update_ama_thursday_july_16th_1pm/ct4hpr0
Sorry
It’s a really easy mindset to fall into, but after all, it’s just a derailing tactic, because whether or not there’s something else you disagree with her about is irrelevant to whether she’s right about the particular thing you’re talking about.
Oh man, can I just take a minute to rant about the Hitman thing? Full disclosure: I haven’t actually played the game, so correct me if I’m wrong here, but…
What can you, as the player, actually do with these strippers you encounter? Can you sit down and talk with them about their jobs? Can you order them a pizza? Can you pull out a sketchbook and draw a picture of them? Can you put on their outfits and do a sexy dance with them? Can you put some old-timey music on the stereo and invite them to waltz with you? No… I’m gonna go ahead and assume that basically, you can walk by them, or brutally attack them; that’s pretty much it. People act as if the player is the only one responsible for activating this particular part of the game – as if attacking the strippers is just one of the infinite array of choices that someone could make in the real world – when actually, brutalizing the strippers is one of the relatively limited options available to the player, and is something that was carefully and deliberately added into the game by the developers. Granted, this subject – interactive media and personal choice – is a complex one, but still: it seems ridiculous to me when people say that it’s somehow unfairly manipulating or ‘breaking’ the game when you do something that’s been intentionally designed within the experience of said game.
Also (and again I must stress that I haven’t actually played the game) my understanding is that in this particular game, the point is to sneak around unnoticed and if certain people notice you, you have to kill them in order to continue. So, if you’re not successful in sneaking past these strippers, the game actually DOES require you to kill them (or maybe at least knock them unconscious…?) in order to advance the narrative. In other words, brutalizing the strippers isn’t just something that a tiny handful of players will do for kicks, but is instead something that many players will do to advance the game.
(Of course, not that any of this matters that much in context of Sarkeesian’s videos, but still.)
@SFHC
I’d just like to mention that I find this attitude discouraging. Yes, I think it’s important to support Anita as a human being and a woman who didn’t deserve the treatment she received, but to do so while basically discounting the importance or relevance of her actual work seems a bit underwhelming in terms of support for her.
I’ll agree that in most contexts, it’s banging your head against a wall to try and talk about her work, and that most of her critics aren’t really interested in such discussion (or academically sophisticated enough to have them, for that matter), but as someone who has wanted to see discourse about sexism in video games since I started playing them, one thing I’m saddened about in this whole thing is that it’s basically cut off the possibility of discussing Anita’s actual points in most forums. So, you know, we can’t have actual academic discourse on the issue of sexism in video games. Which kind of undermines the whole point of what Anita was trying to do.
Although, you know, thanks, indifferentsky!
Um, I think the section titled “The Outright Lie” would be more effective if there were a lie in it.
I don’t think it’s fair of you to say that our attitude about this whole thing is discouraging, considering that you just agreed that most of her “critics” don’t even want to have a rational discussion about her work. : / How is it our fault that we’re tired of dealing with their bullshit?
There are plenty of people who we can talk about Anita’s work within the feminist community (that are critical about her work) without having to resort to the frothing hate-mob that is Anita’s “critics”.
I was discussing the derailing tactic that these particular people have, which is to claim that anyone who defends Anita in any way is one of the hive-mind Ess-Jay-Dubbyas who are out to destroy vidya games.
I have an unprofessional YT channel and had very little practice with it so far and I’m pretty sure everything I made is fifteen thousand times better than what these clowns put together… for FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS a month!
You misunderstood me, PI. I wasn’t blaming you or judging you for not wanting to have such discussions. I am just personally discouraged and sad that such discussions aren’t usually possible online. I imagine I phrased it poorly. It’s not anyone here’s attitude I find discouraging It’s the general atmosphere where her “frothing hate-mob” critics are vocal and use the derailing tactics you mentioned (which I was, more or less referring to when I mentioned that they were not academically sophisticated enough to engage in discussion).
Anyway, I agree with you and apologize that I offended.
I actually kind of liked the opening! The 2 minutes before the Animated Title Sequence were kind of engaging! But that might be because my spirit hadn’t yet been hammered to death by the ensuing 15 minutes of Aurini talking over endless youtube clips.
So I skipped that part and went to the first interview. Jordan, get the fuck out of the shot and stop “mmhmm”ing and “yeah”ing!
But anyway, yeah, some feminists (including possibly Anita Sarkeesian — she uses some controversial language like “prostituted women” in some of her videos) have views towards sex work that a lot of sex workers criticize. But… I don’t see how that means that Sarkeesian is…. wait, what was the thesis of this documentary again?
Er… Yeah, like PI said, I’m not discounting her work at all, just refusing to go around in Möbius strips with boring-ass #GamerGate sealions. ^^; I’ll discuss it elsewhere with people talking in good faith, certainly, just not with trolls and not here (because of the trolls).
Oops, slow posting. Understood, then, sorry! ^__^;;
Omg, female characters in video games are not like porn stars because THEY ARE NOT REAL PEOPLE.
I think maybe we’re misunderstanding each other here? I (I won’t put words in other people’s mouths) wasn’t talking about actual critical discussion of her work, but rather about situations where you really do agree with her but feel like you need to preface it by mentioning something she was wrong about, to avoid being called a sycophant.
Although the flip side is that, even when I do want to discuss something I disagree with her about, I’m reluctant to do so because it can so quickly get hijacked into an admission that she’s wrong about everything, always.
@deniseeliza
Or they are in that the men watching them don’t care about them and are only using them for their own sexual enjoyment.
I’ll have to second this, that gif is amazing 😀
“It’s not explained why they’re interviewing a sex worker” … really? you can’t think of any reason why some guys who clearly want to hurt feminism would choose to push that button. I think we all can figure that move out.