A week or so ago, YouTuber Kevin Logan, known for some pretty hilarious takedowns of some of the manosphere’s, er, leading lights, put up the first installment of what was intended to be a 2 1/2 hour long “review” of Jordan Owen’s The Sarkeesian Effect that consisted basically of him making snotty remarks as he watched the terrible, terrible film.
Owen sent a DMCA takedown notice, claiming (and I suppose he was right) that Logan’s video showed a lot more of his movie than “fair use” would allow. Like pretty much the entire first 25 minutes of it. So it was removed from YouTube.
Logan has returned with a couple of new videos that solve that whole “fair use” problem in a novel way.
Instead of talking over Owen’s film, he has instead chosen to do a sort of parodic re-enactment of it, which alternates clips from the film (or at least the footage that Owen “borrowed” for the film and that he doesn’t actually have rights to) with droning fake narration, weird “puppet” shows, and some distinctly unprofessional vocal versions of Owen’s music for the film.
“Davis Aurini” makes intermittent appearances, in the form of an egg with a face drawn on it.
As one of the few people who’s actually seen Owen’s terrible film, I have to say that Logan’s parody is pretty much spot on, and is about a hundred times more entertaining to watch than the plodding original.
Then again, he’s only made it through about a quarter of the film so far.
Without further ado, the first two installments of What Can Only Be Called Kevin Logan’s The Sarkeesian Effect.
It’s crude and deliberately stupid but I enjoyed it.
*Sigh*.
I’m watching The Sarkeesian Effect. Pray for Mojo.
I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH how hilarious the parts are where Owen’s various bits and bobs come into shot. It’s like anticipating a skull in an Aurini video…. You’re waiting…waiting….. it’s going to happen any second, right? Then you start to get disappointed that it hasn’t happened and then YAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!! *THERE* it is!!!!!
There’s one part where he’s ‘interviewing’ someone and BOTH his hands are in shot and waggling about and suddenly the scene is cropped, possibly to remove his body parts. But wait for it, wait for it…. YAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!! It’s about two seconds before his hands suddenly pop back into shot.
Seriously, do not make a drinking game out of this because you will instantly die.
There’s one interview with what appears to be Frasier’s dad but is actually Jack Thompson which goes on for minutes without Owen popping into shot and then BAM! There’s his hand. I was a fool to disbelieve. And then I realised his knee had been in shot all along, which made it even more hilarious. The sound is at least as bad as everyone has made out, but it’s important to note that the lighting is also terrible. I wouldn’t want that to go unreported.
All the bits with Thunderf00t have a DNA-looking model (and, for some reason, a model tank) in the background and a FUCK OFF EIGHT FOOT ROCKET. He doesn’t *actually* say “I’m a scientist”, but he may as well have. And the way he sidles from a thing that actually happened to a gross misrepresentation of that same event is classic TF. He neatly steps from Rebecca Watson explaining why she felt uncomfortable to her vilifying all men as sexist with a curiously long and involved diversion about the idea that we don’t even know if Elevator Guy was an atheist. And then talks about how it Elevator Guy was ‘asking her out’ in ‘a bar’ rather than propositioning her for sex in a lift, actions that seem kind of different to me. And then the movie talks to someone in a hat (both of Owen’s hands in shot, needless to say) saying that the only thing anyone gets to complain about is actual real scary violence involving bullets brain surgery and public crucifixion. Accordingly, nobody should ever politely say they’re uncomfortable with certain kinds of behaviour.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with Anita Sarkeesian.
Anyway, as much as I’d love to do a PBPR, it would take me about a year. Suffice to say that the content is even worse than the presentation. And people have some *really* bad furniture.
Picture Owen with a few beers in him. Something tells me he’d be somewhat intolerable.
This is the finest thing that any human has ever done. I’ve laughed harder at this than I did at anything else this week, except maybe the Hameron story.
Here’s another one of Kevin’s videos relevant to this story:
The main point is that Owen issued a DMCA claim against Kevin for using the whole of “The Sarkeesian Effect”, then offered to recut Kevin’s video, effectively just cutting all TSE footage.
He then made a video about Kevin in which he [Owen] claimed the right to show other people’s videos as part of his response videos. Fully uncut. Because he’s anti-censorship, you know?
Unless he’s the censor, of course.
Yeah, I did. I watched it. I fucking watched it. Holy fuck.
@LinuxLea: I started watching Jordan Owen’s video on Kevin Logan. He wasn’t even looking at the camera. What the fuck, dude. No wonder FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS the Sarkeesian Effect is such a piece of shit.
So I got to the part of the remix where Owen pearl-clutches over Anita “thinking she kinda likes” a fanfic in which she shoots and kills Randy Pitchford in retribution for Aliens: Colonial Marines. (I’m pretty sure actually doing this in real life would make Anita’s popularity soar among gamers, but whatever.)
I found this puzzling. Why would Sarkeesian, of all people, gun down Pitchford over such a thing, even fictionally? Sounds more than a little strange. So I googled it. Sorry, this is gonna be a long comment.
Sarkeesian’s summary of the fanfic: “Spider-man recruits the help of Anita Sarkeesian to stop Randy Pitchford and the Green Goblin from resurrecting Duke Nukem”.
I’ll say that again. “Spider-man recruits the help of Anita Sarkeesian to stop Randy Pitchford and the Green Goblin from resurrecting Duke Nukem”.
Like, literally resurrecting, using necromancy on the skeletal corpse of Duke. And yes Randy recruits the Green Goblin to defend his nefarious scheme, using pumpkin bombs lobbed at Spider-man. Spider-man distracts the Goblin while Anita slips past the Gearbox magical barriers and activates the magical torches illuminating Pitchford’s throne room, and then kills the guards (psycho bandits from Borderlands) using a gold-plated pistol (also from Borderlands). Randy cowers and admits he’s made mistakes in depicting women and in trying to bring Duke back, and Anita agrees that he doesn’t deserve to die for those mistakes. That’s when she kills him for Colonial Marines. As Pitchford’s body returns to “the daemonic warp”, Anita seizes control of the Throne of Gearbox (made entirely of gold plated Borderlands 2 guns) and gains power over the entire studio and its surviving minions.
It was found and reblogged by Sarkeesian two years ago, who said “I think I kinda like it” even though it was “surreal and bizarre” and “written in the hyperviolent style typical of all Gearbox Software game narratives.” Needless to say, Anita’s “critics” took it all EXTREMELY SERIOUSLY as a very GRIM and GRITTY and SERIOUS depiction of WHOLEHEARTEDLY ENDORSED MURDER.
Strangely, Owen’s own depiction seems to have neglected to include Randy’s golden-gun throne (which he’s lying in as he dies), or the magical torches, or the bodies of the psycho bandit guards, or Anita’s own gold-plated gun, or the disappearance of Randy’s body into the “daemonic warp” after death, or the pile of necromantic dust on Randy’s left that used to be Duke Nukem, or the PC and desk on Randy’s right that Anthony Burch is chained to. In fact, Owen’s depiction is pretty much just Anita Sarkeesian shooting Randy Pitchford in a fairly ordinary-looking office hallway over the sound of Owen’s grimly monotone narration.
Owen, your movie would have been SO much cooler if you’d included all that wacky stuff! Of course, you would have also undermined your intended point about this being a grisly and monstrous and disturbing scene that no decent person could find any amusement or enjoyment from. Hmm. Well, I’m sure Owen had sound reasons for his decisions that were totally not disingenuous or deceptive in any way.
P.S.: Owen, try finding a good place to pause the narration for a quarter second while the gunshots are playing, or at least lower the volume of the gunshots so they aren’t drowning out your own fucking narration, dumbass.
Ok, I don’t really want to be THAT guy, but the New Vegas clip is kinda misleading. You can massacre an entire gang of good Karma NPC’s and come out with that rank of you’re high enough in Reputation for a settlement.
@Cyberwolf: That seems to be his latest thing: Writing his speeches beforehand and then reading them on the screen.
Upside: He stays a bit more on track than usual.
Downside: He looks like a hybrid from Battlestar Galactica. Especially since he still spouts basically gibberish.
I sometimes feel a bit guilty laughing about him, but then he says something so stupid and insincere, and all the guilt is gone.
Anyone notice that he left out the bit in Mr Logan’s video where he explains that taking away a school’s accreditation EFFECTIVELY means shutting down that school?
Instead he accuses Mr Logan of lying about him wanting to shut down schools outright.
Piece of shit.
He mentions that “Sargon of akkad” (pretentious deluxe) in that video. Now, he is a GG supporting wanker, so i wonder why have you never covered anything by him?
@Josh
The thing is, Owen mischaracterizes that part of Sarkeesian’s video. Owen claims that Sarkeesian is showing that footage as an example of the player being directly rewarded for killing a prostitute, and then goes on to point out that this rank was bestowed as a sort of punishment or demotion, rather than as a reward. But, in Sarkeesian’s video, she’s clearly using the footage as an example of an in-game punishment; specifically, as an example of how games might ostensibly punish the player for this kind of behavior, but they do so in ways that tend to be fairly insignificant or superficial. This is what she says immediately before showing that game footage:
“In-game consequences for these violations are trivial at best and rarely lead to any sort of “fail state” or “game over”.”
So, her point is that the game does punish you for murdering scantily-clad prostitutes, but it doesn’t punish you THAT much. And, that seems to be true. Owen completely misrepresents Sarkeesian’s argument and then has the gall to accuse her of misrepresentation – I guess that takes chutzpah, if nothing else…
Anyway, I’d just like to note that in writing this, I’m leaving a blog comment in response to a blog comment in response to a section of a video in response to a section of a movie in response to a section of a video in response to a piece of footage from a video game which is the third sequel to another game. I think I deserve some sort of internet merit badge.
@Mike
Here you go
http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/eln-badge.jpg
@RosaDeLava – Finally! Some respect from those Earthlink jerks. It’s gonna be so awesome when I tell everyone on Prodigy about this; I just hope I have time to type everything before my sister picks up the phone…
Do they ever define “The Sarkeesian Effect”? Yes, I know it’s a documentary about how criticizing video games is the first step in the feminazi Man-Holocaust, but I assume it also refers to some sociological phenomenon involving video games, feminazis and the Man-Holocaust.
But after all these months, I still really have no idea what this “Sarkeesian Effect” is.
Maybe it’s as simple as “Criticism causes pretentious man-babies to film themselves interviewing misogynists, Islamophobes and sex workers.”
But I’m not sure there’s any kind of a desperate need for a documentary about THAT.
The only real thing I wasn’t a fan of from the videos was Mr Logan using the term “cunt” to describe the TSE makers. It’s a relatively minor quibble and there’s no doubt that Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini are absolute scumbags, but using the term “cunt” as criticism isn’t helpful. We take other people to task for usage of that work, and I don’t think Kevin should be exempt from such criticism.
Otherwise, solid vid.
@LinuxLea – well, we can’t expect Jordan to do a perfect forty-minute take without crib notes. Oh, if only there was some magical way you could shoot footage of yourself saying what you want to say, and then take that footage and cut out all the bits where you made a mistake and then splice it all back together to make one cohesive, nearly flawless whole!
I forget. It was either (a) the kickstarter version of the Streisand effect, where complaining about a project increases its funding or (b) the success of her videos inspiring a wave of similar writing by other critics, plus some people in the industry taking her recommendations to heart. Maybe both.
Allo, my name is Tundahf00t, and I’m going to talk about Ani-TER SAH-keesian and I won’t be done till your Marathon Civilization V game is a nucleah wasteland!
His stuff is so hilarious. I don’t know if you’ve seen his Descent of Man-O-Sphere videos yet, especially the ones of Roosh and Davis Aurini. Amazing.
@ Mike. Thank you, I was hoping it was something like that, but I didn’t really know how to put it into words so I left it out, since I tend to sound like an idiot when I have to try to articulate stuff like that.
Though again, the game doesn’t really punish you for killing much of anyone. Hell, at first I was shocked thinking that the karma system had kicked in, until I saw it was just reputation.
I mean, hell, you can flat out murder at least five people in any given faction/settlement before they even think of turning you away.
You transcribed that so beautifully. 🙂
Minus points for use of the word “twat” [henceforth Twizzlers!]. I stopped watching after that. I get that these guys are jerks, but it surprises me how often even the readers of this blog result to namecalling and stoop to using slurs about female genitalia, hygiene products, etc. that are deeply steeped in misogyny. In my mind, calling someone a Twizzlers is no different than calling them a bundtcake: civilized people don’t use that kind of language. And if we aren’t aiming to be civilized, how are we materially any different than MRAs? We are just hooting down and jeering at a different crowd of people using the same crude and vulgar tactics. Same crap, different rear end, so to speak. :
If you haven’t checked out Logan’s other videos on The Sarkeesian Effect, they’re pretty interesting. Particularly the the video examining the trailer, that trailer might have had better production then the film. Didn’t know that was even possible.
I’m looking forward to see how big this train wreck gets in part 3 and the depiction of Thompson in this thing.
…calling people bundt cakes isn’t civilised? I thought it was a statement of affection. I really like bundt cake. For example:
“Hey, kirbywarp? You’re my bundt cake, sweety.”
Less facetiously: Our problem with MRAs is not just them calling people douchenozzles. It’s the fact that they actively promote rape and domestic abuse. No matter how much bad language someone uses, that’s a vastly different and more serious matter. As such, can you see why I disagree with your argument that “using bad languages makes us materially indistinguishable from the MRAs”?