Critiques are something young art students are typically very uncomfortable with. They will often invent all sorts of justifications for minimizing the importance of critiques, frequently characterizing themselves as unconventional and misunderstood. Students who simply cannot adjust to the idea that art is an extremely subjective effort that requires quite objective mastery of a skill set ultimately drop out of school to fill some critical role in society. Something like… handing out credit card applications at a the local big box retail outlet. In their new role as a productive member of their community they learn, “Surprise!” that being critiqued is a part of life. Only once you’re out in the real world, people aren’t so nice about things and their critiques often sounds a lot like judgment, condemnation and excellent reasons to withhold your annual performance-based raise in salary. If only these students had learned about critiques from me early on, they could have saved themselves from a lot of nasty surprises. *kniw*

Critiques are a semi-formal process that require, at minimum, two fully involved people. There is the Transmitter, the person giving the critique, and the Receiver, the person who is having their work critiqued.The Transmitter’s job is by far the easier of the two and can be performed by following a few simple rules.

Avoid “You” Statements. Critiques are not a judgment on the person–they are an assessment of output. It doesn’t matter if the output is work performance or a painting. “You” statements put the Receiver on the defensive and seriously skews their reaction to what you’re saying. If that’s your intent, then you really shouldn’t be part of the critique in the first place. Seriously. Keep your focus on the work you’re critiquing and you’ll be heard a lot more easily.

Bad: “You used too many colors.”
Good: “I feel that the number of colors in the piece might be a bit excessive.”

Ask Questions If you find it difficult to avoid a “you” statement, turn it into a question and get the Receiver talking. Invariably, they will shed light on what they were attempting to do and you’ll have more information to work with. Be sure to ask real questions, not rhetorical ones.

Bad: “What are you, stupid?”
Good: “What sort of book are you intending to write?”

Don’t Tell Them How To Do It This is one of the most commonly broken rules in the critiques I’ve sat through. The intention is usually to help, but it rarely does. The Transmitter must understand that the Receiver has their own style, their own technique, their own specific skill sets and that if they did thing just like you, well… they aren’t going to so it’s no use speculating about it.

Bad: “If you want the guy to look really cool, you should give him giant metal bat wings. That’d be awesome!”
Good: “I’m not getting a strong impression of the character from this sketch.”

Be Intentionally Helpful A genuinely helpful spirit goes a long way. The benefit to this rule is that the more helpful a Transmitter you are, the better Transmitter your Receiver is going to be when it’s your turn in the hot seat. Or, if you’re a manager critiquing performance, the more helpful you are with your criticism, the more likely you are to see the sort of improvement you’re expecting from the Receiver.

Bad: “I don’t care for you and you’re not getting a raise. Ever.”
Good: “I can’t justify giving you a raise until we deal with some of these issues. Let’s put together a plan of action.”

A Receiver, on the other hand, has a Herculean task and the rules are much more difficult to master, although there are really only two of them.

Don’t Take it Personally This is the buzz phrase of every insensitive jerk out there, isn’t it? They land into you with both fists swinging and laugh when they blacken your eye, expecting you to shrug it off and not take it personally. But it really is an important rule. You should assume, no matter the intention of the Transmitter, that the critique is there to help you clarify your message, improve the effectiveness of your output. Also recognize that the Transmitter is basing everything they say on their own experiences in life, and that their own preferences and beliefs often get in the way of their communication. If you don’t like the feedback you’re getting, recognize that the Transmitter’s own personal bias is coloring their reaction and work with them to better understand their criticism. It’s possible they’re having the reaction you’re looking to inspire, but they aren’t comfortable with it.

Bad: “Why do you hate my work so much?!”
Good: “What sort of emotional reaction are you having to the use of color?”

Be Willing to Grow No one is perfect. Even if you have perfected your craft to a near inhuman level, not every Transmitter is going to respond to it in the same way. Be willing, particularly if the Transmitter is part of your target audience, to make changes to your output. If your boss thinks you’re being lazy, figure out what you’re doing to give them that impression, or what you can do to alleviate it. If your character design class thinks your anti-hero looks like a wimp, figure out how to redesign the character to make her more appealing. If your writing group feels your use of IM chatter reduces the emotional impact of your historic novel, learn to write in the style of the period you’re focusing on.

Bad: “Well, if you don’t think he’s a cool looking character, you’re just not getting my vision.”
Good: “What about him strikes you as particularly ineffective?”

There are, of course, all sorts of subsets of these skills. For example–A Receiver ought to ask questions of the Transmitter–in essence becoming the Transmitter in a critique of the original Transmitter’s critiquing ability. It should also be noted that the adjective “cool” is overused. Find better, more descriptive, words to use. But examining all of the myriad communication skills in detail is far beyond the scope of this post. If you’re really interested in being better at critiques, you should read books on communication and language. The detail you should focus on is that the critique exists to benefit the Receiver, to help them refine their output so that it more successfully communicates what they’re trying to get across.

This approach to the critique is very dependent upon the idea that the artist (the critique’s receiver) may control the plot and narrative of their output, but the audience (the critique’s transmitter) is fully in charge of the story–that is, the experience of the output. The critique reverses the creative process, allowing the audience to explain their story in direct contrast to the inspiring work so that the artist can witness, first hand, their (in)ability to achieve their goals. In other words, the critique is a formal dialog specifically designed to help you master your output so that you stand a much better chance of communicating the type of story you’re aiming for.

What are your experiences (good or bad) with critiques? Any helpful tips you care to share? Do you see a correlation between formal critiques and the feedback you receive from managers and/or clients? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

So when Iroquois Pliskin and Michael Abbott started having a really interesting conversation about Braid, I had little trouble leaning over, clearing my throat and wading into the conversational fray. Fortunately, these aren’t the sort of people that recoil in discomfort, or stare at me blankly, wondering how the old guy with the moustache could even hear a conversation happening that far away.

Hey guys, I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation about Braid. Hope I’m not stepping on any toes by sticking my nose in and adding a few thoughts of my own. I’m going to try and remain objective, because it’s not enough for me to simply say, “I hated it.” Instead, I want to get at why we might have found it unsatisfying and why, perhaps, so many others didn’t.

Braid promises a lot. Some of those promises appear to have been made by Jonathan Blow himself. His excellent talks over the last two years, his advocacy for independent games and games as narrative have been a shining point in an industry that often seems overly focused on polygons and profit margins. The other promises are less explicit and consist of the game’s lovely artwork and music. Thanks to these combined elements, I expected a thoughtful and moving game experience.

What we got instead, however, was a brittle platformer with dreams of being much more. Dreams, I feel, that have gone mostly unrealized. Now, I must confess that I’ve never been a big fan of the platformer. In fact, I have yet to really enjoy a Mario game. I find them to be a futile exercise in frustration. What Braid does do is remove the futility–you’re playing to uncover a story, you’re exploring the psyche of the main character. What Braid does not do is remove the frustration. In fact, it seems to increase it dramatically. There are a great many levels in the game that require you to perform in precisely the manner intended by the designer. If you do not somehow intuit his intent, the level breaks. This is what I mean by brittle. If you don’t play Braid “correctly” your experience, your potential enjoyment, is shattered. So, rather than presenting a compelling storyscape to experience, the game becomes a “learn how the designer thinks” style of game. Hardly the meditative experience promised by the opening hub level. I didn’t like that approach to game design when I played Hitman, I don’t like it here.

Michael, I know you and I share a similar expectation of video games as a storytelling medium. This is likely due to our common theatrical background and understanding of the importance of an audience. What brought me to video games as a medium (I’m not adverse to that term, by the way. It’s one commonly understood by a great many people and clearly communicates a lot of information) is the power of storytelling experience where the audience has quite a lot of agency. Braid takes this agency and uses it in a punative fashion–explore outside the exact path intended by the narrative and you’re “doing it wrong.” To my mind, this dramatically reduces the power of a video game’s storytelling potential.

When I cannot finish a novel, I do not read the Cliff’s Notes, or go to the internet to learn the ending. Usually, if I care about the ending enough, I wade through the impenetrable text. The strongest literary correlation to Braid I can think of at the moment was Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled. It was difficult to read, difficult to process, and difficult to discuss. But it’s a book that contains passages that still haunt me to this day, some five years after reading it. It’s also a book I still struggle to untangle in my mind. That is an extremely flattering comparison, even though I feel Braid fell far, far short of Ishiguro’s mark. Why does it fall far short? Primarily because The Unconsoled does not require you to unlock the author’s exact intent in order to draw meaning from it, while Braid most certainly does.

The point of mentioning this is that I will not rely on walkthroughs to finish Braid. I will continue to load the game every few days and try my hand at one of the levels I’ve not finished. I managed to grab several extra pieces this weekend relatively easily after taking a bit of a break. At some point, I will eventually have either finished the game or, unlike The Unconsoled, Braid will have lost what small measure of interest it still holds for me. I’m not sure if I’m honoring Jonathan Blow’s wishes by this bit of stubbornness, or throwing his failure to reach me back in his face. Perhaps the true reason contains a bit of both attitudes.

I want to conclude by making another favorable, and perhaps more familiar, comparison. Like Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts, Braid seeks to elevate the experience of a traditional video game genre into something more powerful, something with depth and meaning, something worth being passionate over, something worth talking about, worth arguing about, worth being angry about. And that, regardless of how you feel about the game itself, is to be respected and supported.

While I do not care for Braid in the least, I find that I must congratulate its creator. Not just because the game is doing well on Live Arcade, or that it’s raising awareness of indie game development, or inspiring such in-depth conversation across the web, but because the game itself has challenged me to question my own assumptions about video games as a storytelling medium.

So well done, Mr. Blow (I see you at the next table, listening in). I must say that I look forward to seeing the next game you put your hand to. Who knows? By the time it’s done, I may have even finished your first.

August ‘08
That’ll Larn Me Do video games teach socially responsible lessons? There is a commonly held belief that videogames are not the equal of literature and film. One conservative acquaintance of mine on Facebook doesn’t even consider them on par with “public speech and music.” On the other hand, we have anti-video game activists claiming that video games have the power to train children to be emotionless assassins. Even within the video game community I’ve often heard the reaction, “they’re just video games.” This month’s Round Table invites you to prove all of these positions wrong by sharing something positive you’ve learned from a video game. It can be something you learned about yourself, a friend, your culture, history, science, or something completely different. It can be a direct and intentional lesson presented by the game itself (Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego come to mind), or something in a video game that inspired you to do some research on your own. It can also be an inferred lesson from a gameplay experience, video game plot, or discussion you’ve had about the medium. Conversely, you could argue from one of the opposing perspectives and try to convince us that video games can’t really teach us anything positive at all.

As always, check out the FAQ to find out how to submit your post to the Round Table and if you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. Please don’t submit your posts in the comments, but email links to me (if you already have my address) or use the contact form linked above. And, if you’re going to link directly to this month’s Round Table, please don’t link to this post, but to the entry on the Round Table page at http://blog.pjsattic.com/corvus/round-table/#0808.

Aug. 1 - Drugstore Space Cowboy of Mahogany Finish not only closed out July’s Round Table, he’s launched August’s with a decade of lesson learned from video games in Games I Learned Stuff From.

Aug. 1 - Keira of Write the Game takes a look at two different perspectives on a video game city and talks about what do we learn, don’t learn, and maybe ought to learn in That’ll Larn Me.

Aug. 3 - Max of Worldmaker shares a bit of his personal history and relationship with video games in I Survived the Edutainment Boom of the 90s.

Aug. 4 - David of the blog Davidus has submitted his first entry to the Round Table! In his post he discusses both the positive and negative lessons video games have taught him and his friends. Be sure to stop by his Round Table entry and welcome him to the discussion.

Aug. 9 - Josh of Mind’s Eye shares with us a few lessons video games have inspired him to learn in Because fighting aliens can’t be applied to real life… yet.

Aug. 9 - William of H.T. Parnell’s discusses the true “socially responsible” benefits of video games in Common Thread

Aug. 11 - Line of All Right All Ready! challenges the need for games that teach socially responsible lessons in Questioning Edifying Games.

Aug. 11 - Denis of Vorpal Bunny Ranch talks about the game that sparked his ongoing quest for knowledge in Ewigkeit.

Aug. 12 - Diego of Indigo Static talks about the game that first set its hooks in him and what her learned from it in The Adventure of Learning.

Aug. 12 - Dan of Cruise Elroy hits The Oregon Trhttp://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2008/08/what-i-learned-from-not-playing-civ.htmlail and talks about the lesson he didn’t learn from this educational game in Learning.

Aug 12 - I posted my entry–titled Internal Lessons Turned Outward

Aug. 13 - Chris of Only a Game weighs in with a unique perspective in What I Learned From Not playing Civ.

Aug. 14 - Jason of ProbablyNot.com talks about the lessons, both real and imaginary, that he’s learned from video games in Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from Video Games.

UPDATE

Aug. 17th - Dierdra Kiai has joined in with a post that breaks down this month’s topic into three questions and answers each of them quite satisfactorily in Deirdra, you’re overthinking again!

Got a moment to help me out? I was talking about 3rd person games vs. 1st person games with a lay person (gentlemen in his upper 40s who plays with his teenaged son) the other week. It got me to thinking about the various reasons people give for their preference and I started wondering about the possible correlations between personality and perspective preference.

What I would like to hear from you is your Myers Briggs personality type (if you don’t know off the top of your head, you can take a short version of the test at HumanMetrics), and your whether you prefer 1st or 3rd person video games (and why if you’re so inclined). If your MB personality profile tends to fluctuate–let me know, and if you don’t really have a preference–let me know that as well. Feel free to leave your answer in the comments, post on your own blog, share this link, etc. Obviously, the more answers I get the more fun we’ll all have sifting through the collected data. *kniw*

Here’s my answer:

INTJ/INFJ, 3rd Person
I tend to shift pretty evenly between thinking and feeling, depending on my mood and energy level when I take the test.

I prefer 3rd person games for two reasons. Firstly, I find it easier to empathize with a character I can see on screen and that creates a greater sense of immersion for me. Secondly, I feel that the 3rd person camera more successfully compensates for a lack of body awareness and peripheral vision.

I’m pretty excited about my upcoming project with PoBros Inc. While we wait for the publisher to blot their drool stains off the contract and get it back to us, we’ve been having a lot of conversations about our expectations for the game–particularly regarding the role of writing and interstitial static screens and their usefulness in advancing the plot. There are various “rules” about writing for casual game cut scenes such as–cut the text in half, and cut it in half again. I get that the point of this rule is to force the designers to put as much information into the visuals as they can, but from what I’ve seen, it just results in awkward and unnatural sounding dialog. So we’ve agreed to follow this rule instead: Every line of dialog must stand up to the question, “How can we do that with game mechanics or visuals instead?” If the answer is undeniably, “We can’t,” then we ask, “Do we really need it?” Then only if the answer is a resounding, “Yes,” do we keep it.

Notice the inclusion of the term “game mechanics” in this approach. Rather than simply pack plot details into cut scene visuals, we’re going to first try and move them into the gameplay itself. Now, we’re working with a pretty conventional style of casual game^, but rather than assume we’re limited to the same expression of the gameplay we’ve seen in other games of the same type, we’re going to try and elevate them into something more expressive, more crucial to the player’s sense of the story.

There are a few other reasons I’m excited as well. This is the first project in which I’ve had direct influence over the game’s direction from the ground up. The core game mechanic itself was settled upon^, but the story suggested to me was open for a complete overhaul and I gave it one^–elevating it (I hope) out of the mundane into something “with legs” as they say. The second point of excitement is that the game has a female lead. True, Alice’s Magical Mahjong had a female lead, and the contract I’m just finishing up with them^ has a female lead–but this is the first title where I’ve been responsible for defining the lead’s past, present, and future. I am hopeful, given the publisher involved ^, and the level of trust the brothers (yes, the PoBros are actually brothers) and I have established, to keep her as a strong female character throughout, without relying on any of the cliche traps some casual games do.

The third shiver up my spine is that the word “sequel” has evidently been bandied about during contract negotiations. This, based primarily on a short demo we put together to show at Casual Connect. The thought that I may be creating a character and world that we can explore over multiple games is very humbling and inspiring.

Finally, I’m not just filling the role of writer on this game, but producer as well. Based upon my work and commitment level on the last contract ^, I was retroactively given a producer credit. But it is this title, which I am helping shape all aspects of, it is this title that I feel will earn me my producer bragging rights. With this title under my belt, I am confident that I will be able to successfully expand my current list of services and move my career to the next level.

I want to start a cross-media gender discussion group. With you. And all of your friends. And a whole lot of people I don’t know yet. And all of their friends. And I don’t want it to be just an online discussion–I want local groups getting together once a month for discussion as well. The long and short of it is that I want to help foster the intelligent and productive discussion of gender portrayal in popular media, world wide. Among men and women, seniors and youth.

Obviously that is a huge task.

It’s also a task that a single man should not be in charge of exclusively. So I contacted the ladies of Bookish Dark and asked if they’d be willing to host and co-manage the project with me and to my delight they both replied with a resounding, “YES!” [1] The Bookish Dark team is a perfect complement to project, they’re intelligent, well-read, geeks (literary, comic, sci-fi, science, movie, knitting, fantasy, & television), strong, and charming women. I cannot imagine anyone better to balance out the leadership.

We’re planning a limited time-frame for the project initially–say, three months–but if it goes well, we’d like to keep going it until it runs out of steam on its own. There is a lot of work to do in order to make this successful. Not only do we have to review the suggested media and narrow down the list to three games, three movies, and three books (a process that will be carried out transparently–probably here at MBB for now), [2] but there are also decisions to make about the software platform(s), promotion, and financing. There are interviews to arrange with authors, directors and experts. Plus, two-thirds of our leadership is moving across the country next month and one-third of us will be job hunting when we get there. With all of that in mind–we’re aiming for a late winter/early spring launch, so we’ll see how that goes.

We know it’s an ambitious task. Two weeks ago, I didn’t imagine anything other than an informal sort of chat here at MBB. It was your overwhelming and passionate response that led me to see the potential for a much larger conversation. I am proud to call you my community. And since we want to do this to foster and grow that community, we’ll likely have questions for you about what sorts of features you’d like to see in a discussion group as we move forward (in fact if you’re chomping at the bit, please feel free to start providing feedback and ideas here in the comments).

Speaking of community–this project is not being planned as a super centralized, jealously horded discussion. We’re going to work to ensure that the conversation can roam freely flow across your blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else you tend to gather and talk about things that are important to you. We’re excited by the potential and hopefully you are too.

Stay tuned for more details over the coming months!

[1] In the interest of complete transparency, I am married to one of the Bookish Dark bloggers and have been friends with the other since 1991. [return]

[2] Participants will be encouraged to play/read/watch at least 2 of the 3 media selections, but may feel free to only play/read/watch 1 if they aren’t gamers/readers or don’t have time for more. [return]

I considered talking about the how and why of video game’s educational effectiveness. But that is a significant portion of the book I’m sloooowly hacking away at and I didn’t feel like trying to cram it all into a single Round Table post.

I considered playing devil’s advocate and arguing that video games are socially bankrupt examples of disposable culture and therefore incapable of any sort of socially responsible message. But while that may be majoratively true, it isn’t entirely true, and I’ve been feeling more hopeful than cynical lately, so I I don’t particularly feel like taking a ride on that train.

So after reading the previous entries, I thought I’d take a slightly more personal tack and talk about a couple of lessons I’ve learned about myself from playing video games and how they have improved my life and my dealings with others.

The first lesson I’d like to talk about is that of Patience. I am an extraordinarily self critical person. Since childhood, corrective voices have run through my head in a near constant stream of negative self talk. These voices weren’t always so negative. Because a great many things come easily to me, this voices initially kept me moving forward, never satisfied with my accomplishments, urging me to try harder, do better. They did their job well and I became someone who sought out new challenges and pushed himself to grow on a daily basis. At this point, once I’d developed the behavior pattern, the voices lost their effectiveness. Instead of inspiring, they became belittling, undermining, counter productive. So persistent, so demeaning, were these voices that they actually began to have the opposite of their original effect. I struggled with my self worth and my ability to take on new challenges. Some things still came easy to me, but if they became difficult, I often found that too daunting to consider.

Then came video games–initially in the form of Infocom’s text adventure games. These were an ideal escape in my troubled youth. They were other worlds I could visit and I came to rely on them to help relieve the pressures of my daily life. But they weren’t always easy. The solutions to the problems they posed didn’t always come easily to me. They often required new ways of thinking, new ways of approaching problems, new means of interpreting the authors’ intent. As I broadened my gaming tastes, they required better hand-eye coordination than I had needed previously, new patterns of thought, a balance of logic and intuition.

And because they escape they represented was so important to me, I found I needed to have patience with my inability to always quickly grasp the solutions to the game. Playing video games became something of a meditation for me and I quickly learned that when I started playing, the critical voices dimmed. I learned that when I was patient with myself the answers came more quickly, the dexterity challenges were more easily met. Video games would remain this self-criticism free zone for me through most of my 20s, as I slowly learned to apply the same patience with myself to the rest of my life.

I still use video games as a meditation and I still struggle with a lack of patience with myself. But overall, I am able to listen to those voices of self-criticism and maintain my perspective and patience. They are, after all, just trying to help.

Hand in hand with learning to be more patient with myself, came the skills to be more patient with others. A dear friend recently told me that they could be more themselves with me than anyone else they know. When I asked them why they felt that was, they replied that they believed I had never judged them. We’re all at different stages of development and we all have different lessons to learn. If we’re patient with ourselves about the difficulties on our paths, why shouldn’t we also be patient with other people’s difficulties on their paths? This is not a lesson I learned directly from a video game, but video games certainly played a critical role in my discovering the benefits of patience.

Another lesson I learned from video games is a little more direct–that of Persistence. Solutions to video game challenges aren’t always immediately apparent. Even if the solution is apparent, the act of solving it can be challenging in and of itself. The ability to relax and explore all the avenues of possibility, to try new approaches, look at the problem from a new perspective, to try and try again–all these tools of persistence are invaluable when playing a video game. Because video games represented such a mentally relaxed space for me, I was able to reap the rewards of persistence and it didn’t take me very long to apply that to the rest of my life.

Both my personal and my professional life have benefited tremendously from persistence. When coupled with the patience to accept that progress can be slow, or individual efforts unsuccessful, persistence is an excellent tool in an auteur’s arsenal. Again, this is a lesson I likely would have learned without the influence of video games, but video games provided me with a safe space to challenge myself in this way.

And that, I believe, is one of the key strengths of the video games. Unlike a book or movie, a video game can act as a test bed for personal experimentation. Not just through the act of role playing a character, but how you approach being a player. Are you tenacious about beating difficult games, or do you prefer to play games well within the reach of your skills? Do you skip the cutscenes, or consider them the rewards of progress? Do you aim to get your name on the leaderboards, or do you barely notice the achievements you’ve unlocked? Video games are a safe place to experiment, try new approach, wear new personalities. And that, allows us to learn lessons more deeply personal than any a designer could come up with for us.

One of the problems is that we rarely see males use [sexuality] because we seem to still be of the opinion (or at least the media would have us believe) that women are not as interested in sex as men are–therefore, sexuality is a tool women can use. Perhaps were we able to break from this trend we could see a broader use of sexuality to include men, whereby the use of a female’s sexuality would not seem so out of place.

I think what Denis is trying to say is that male characters aren’t often depicted using the seductive arts to attract a woman’s attention, or influence her behavior. But there are two traps inherent to this argument. The first is that not all female sexuality falls under the umbrella of seduction. To limit female characters’ sexual expression to manipulation of men through the application of, or withholding of, sex is a misogynist representation of women.

Yes, I do mean misogynist. To imply that women exclusively use sex to get what they want from men is a hateful and misguided accusation.

The second fallacy here is that for a man to use his sexuality he must do so overtly through the act of seduction, like we’ve come to expect from female characters. I would argue that there are very few male heroes in the sci-fi/fantasy/action genres that aren’t saturated with an equally misguided stereotypical sexuality–that of universal appeal.

Every woman wants James Bond. Even Dame Densch’s M wasn’t immune to the charms of Pierce Brosnin’s vapid man-whore of a spy. Every woman wants Conan. Oh sure, some of them have to be convinced by his inability to perceive their denials as anything other than playing coy, but they eventually come around. Every woman wants Captain Kirk. It doesn’t matter if they’re alien, human, married, or the childhood loves of his officers–none of them can resist his passionate approach to life and his come-hither eye-light.

The flawed portrayal of male sexuality in this media is the flip side of the coin from the flawed portrayal of female sexuality. Women must dress up, act nice, be tough (but not too tough), strong (but not too strong), be physically flawless, and blond if they hope to attract a man. That’s not all, they also have to work at it. Seduce them, go the extra mile to get their attention. Male characters, on the other hand, most often have to do no work at all. All they need do is settle their eye upon one of the many eager and willing women who breathlessly await their notice.

The bravado, the swagger, the total self assurance–these are all trademarks of the portrayal of male sexuality in these films. I would argue that this is equally as harmful as the portrayal of female sexuality, if not more so. Not just harmful to women either, harmful to women and men.

To see a dramatic interpretation of the sort of male behavior that results from saturation in such media, watch any episode of the first season of Mad Men. It seems almost like a parody that these men assume that any woman they care to notice will want them. They casually degrade any woman who isn’t tall enough, busty enough or thin enough, despite being short, scrawny or hefty themselves. It seems like a parody, but I have been expected to join in a great many conversations just like these over the course of my life. I have watched women react negatively to the arrogant sexual advances and listened as the men, moments after, brag about how impressed she was with them. I have spent more time than I care to think about in the company of men who were raised to believe this is how they need to behave in order to be considered men.

And I honestly don’t think any of them like acting that way any more than I enjoy watching it, or women enjoy being on the receiving end of it. There is a desperation and loneliness inherent in these attempt to live up to a ridiculously inflated self image. Most of them didn’t really believe their self-deception and the ones that did were a sincere danger–if not to the women around them, than to themselves.

So while we discuss the portrayal of women in media, and focus on the harmful portrayals of female sexuality, it’s important to realize that there’s a flip side to this coin. Male characters are being equally poorly portrayed, even if that portrayal makes them appear to be the victors of the “war of the sexes.” Because it shouldn’t be a war. It’s not a war and it’s not a game. It’s a conversation. It’s a partnership. It’s a cooperative venture. Both sexes are being disadvantaged by the dismal portrayal of gender and sexuality in the media.

Why then do we need to focus so predominately on the representation of women in the media, if men are also getting short shrift? Because, to be completely honest, they have received the short end of the cultural stick for generations upon generations. Theirs’ is the greater complaint and the greater harm. Young boys today may be somewhat disadvantaged by the grotesque musculature of male heroes in their media, but if you look at the physical variance of male heroes compared to the physical variance of female heroes, I think you’ll see a much wider range of features among the men. Plus, young men have been culturally encouraged to explore their sexuality, while women are expected to remain chaste until marriage. Men have encouraged to try their hand at any career, while women have been trapped in the role of homemaker and often actively discouraged from pursuing what have traditionally been masculine pursuits.

We start by healing the greatest hurt and righting the gravest wrong. In the process, we’ll learn more about both genders’ sexuality, both genders’ insecurities, both genders’ strengths. We’ll learn our point of commonality and learn to recognize and appreciate our differences. Stay open, stay honest, and great things will come of it.