Comments on "Ideological Frames"

Had I purchased Persuasive Games as an expose of the vast rightwing conspiracy at work in the world of videogames, no doubt my expectations would be satisfied. But having bought the book out of a scholarly interest in game studies I must confess, after three chapters, my general disappointment thus far.

Following a promising first chapter in which Bogost begins to set forth his case for a new domain of "procedural rhetoric," the second chapter reports that videogames can be rhetorical (was there any doubt?) and the third critiques three games (Tax invaders, Vigilance 1.0, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas).

Premature Move to Criticism

But the move toward criticism, before theory has been more fully articulated and research conducted, raises a problem cited by Messaris in his 2003 article "Visual Communication: Theory and Research." Referring to Van Leeuwen and Jewitt's 2001 book, Handbook of Visual Analysis, he observes:

Most of the book’s chapters are based on actual studies conducted by their respective authors, and although the descriptions of these studies are typically accompanied by methodological comments, in almost all cases it is the studies themselves that will be of most use to readers looking for guidance or inspiration. . . . [T]he types of research covered in this book do not lend themselves very well to systematic procedural rules (p. 553).

Although these analyses, and others in the book, are grounded in fairly detailed dissections of the visual images to which they are addressed, they all raise what is arguably the thorniest problem in visual research, namely, how we judge the validity of the analyst’s, or anyone else’s, interpretation. . . . How do we know that [researchers'] claims are adequate reflections of how other viewers would respond to the same images? . . . One of these ways is [to build on] . . . well-understood conventions whose functions have been studied systematically in the past, not only by other scholarly writers but also by media practitioners. When that is the case, and when an interpretation stays close to those conventions, the reader may perhaps have greater confidence that the meaning inferred by the writer is likely to be shared by an image’s intended viewers (p. 554).

Of course, the most straightforward way of validating an interpretation is to ask a representative group of viewers for their own responses to an image or set of images . . . [although] this kind of research does not receive much attention in Van Leeuwen and Jewitt’s book (pp. 554-555).

In the same way I am disappointed by Bogost's premature move toward criticism in his third chapter, before his theory of a new rhetorical domain has been more fully articulated, before he has meaningfully foregrounded his claim in "well-understood conventions" of visual and digital rhetorics, and before he has produced research. Without these we are left, like Messaris, to wonder "how we judge the validity of the analyst's, or anyone else's, interpretation."

As it stands, Bogost's third chapter offers only a polemic: conservative paranoia about thieving government, conservative obsession with moral policing, conservative callousness toward the less fortunate. But perhaps this is a shrewd double-move by the author. Maybe he intends for the perceptive reader to realize that, because Persuasive Games is presented in the conventions of a scholarly tome, the author's own ideological frame can slip through unnoticed. Touche!

Cursory Treatment of Lakoff

Finally, I'm disappointed by Bogost's shallow treatment of Lakoff's early and important work in the cultural-cognitive role of metaphor. I have more than a passing acquaintance with Lakoff's research since his work shows up in a chapter of my master's thesis and also figures in an article I had published last month in the Journal of Holocaust Studies (where I used schema theory as a framework for analyzing how perpetrators cognized their social world).

Lakoff's work is far too detailed and nuanced to adequately treat here. But in my view, Bogost mentioned Lakoff's seminal Metaphors We Live By (1980) only in passing to establish the bona fides of his argument, and then appropriates Lakoff's later "self-professed liberal" writing to bolster his critique of Tax Invaders, Vigilance 1.0, and GTA: San Andreas.

Again in my view, Bogost would have strengthened his case better by referencing Lakoff's earlier work on metaphor and cognition to offer his own discourse analysis of an actual videogame. Lakoff himself provides a nice model for such an analysis in his 1987 study, co-authored with Kovecses, on "The Cognitive Model of Anger Inherent in American English."

But then, if Bogost's case turns to cognitivism and discourse analysis, are we getting away from his claims regarding procedural rhetoric? It's been a couple of years, but I don't remember that Lakoff was a rhetorician or was much concerned about rhetorical theory in his 1980s works. That is, he was (if I remember rightly) primarily concerned with metaphor as a cultural-cognitive phenomenon rather than as a rhetorical trope. Thus invoking Lakoff may take us away from rhetoric and into another analytical framework altogether.

Alternate Approaches?

After the first three chapters I begin to wonder if Bogost would have been better served by another approach. For example, a couple of years ago I picked up Pratkanis and Aronson's (1992) classic Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion. The book didn't pretend to break new theoretical ground but usefully synthesized existing theories (such as cognitive dissonance and elaboration likelihood) and demonstrated how propaganda (which they defined as "mindless persuasion") techniques occur in everyday life. Persuasive Games could have succeeded with a similar approach. Or as I mentioned at the outset of this posting, a straightforward polemic could be effective.

But if I'm going to accept the claim that the author has identified a new rhetorical domain, then I need more substantiation than Persuasive Games has presented so far. My mind remains open, and perhaps succeeeding chapter retreat from the premature rush to criticism and instead continue the promising theory development begun in the first chapter. But I'm not yet seeing how, say, Tax Invaders is anything more than "computer-assisted rhetoric" rather than an entirely new domain.

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REFERENCES

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, G., & Kovecses, Z. (1987). The cognitive model of anger inherent in American English. In D. Holland & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural models in language and thought. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Messaris, P. (2003). Visual communication: Theory and research. Journal of Communication, September 2003, 551-556.

Pratkanis, A. R., & Aronson, E. (2001). Age of propaganda: The everyday use and abuse of persuasion (Rev. ed.). New York: Owl Books.

Van Leeuwen, T., & Jewitt, C. (Eds.) (2001). Handbook of visual analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.