I'm not down on the humanities - I double majoried in CS and History. I love the humanities - art, literature, history: these things are important.
Women studies are not among the "real" humanities - this is a made up, politically correct, politically slanted body of "study" that, without justification, denies the importance of most of the useful arts and sciences, an simultaneously congratulates itself (and its practitioners) on being far more clever-than-though.
Witness the very first sentence of the review:
> Warning: The text you are about to read contains heady intellectual discourse and is not recommended for anyone made queasy by the discussion of feminist film theory or psychoanalytical signifiers.
Oh, yeah, that review was chock full of "heady" intellectual discourse all right!
In fact, it was filled with the four or five common tropes of feminist / culture studies "deconstruction". I could write this crap in my sleep. Throw around the word "symbol" and "signifier", the word "privelege" or "Other" (must be capitalized) or "hierarchy" (or better yet "hegemony"), and talk about how up "subverts" down, wet "subverts" dry, red "subverts" green, and drop in one or two entirely irrelevant political references to the conservative devil of the hour (in the 1980s, this meant Reagan, in the early 21st century, it meant Rumsfeld or Bush, now it means Cheney or Bush, etc.), mix in a half cup of cheap Freudianism, and away you go.
> Women studies are not among the "real" humanities
It can be, it just depends whether you base conclusions on a respectable level of evidence or non-falsifiable mumbo-jumbo. There's lots of bad work done in more established humanities as well. I'm often entertained by suggestions of such things as "modern techniques in history".
It's clearly a very forced analysis, and, like you said, just drips with cliched, volumeless argument. That being said, I'm pretty sure it was posted with some degree of self-referential humor.
The idea of analyzing Valve games critically is pretty good, though. They're one of the few studios which makes games worth analyzing! I'd like to see articles like those.
I can make a forced analysis of System Shock 2. Starting also with the broken pseudo-maternal AI that guide you through the first half of the game before spoilerspoilerspoiler.
Within my limited experience with talking to artists and poets, I don't think artists deliberately set out to include specific symbols inside a work. Too much left-brained stuff. Which I find funny as a deconstruction essay requires you to spell out exactly what it is you are talking about. Kills the mood.
Yet most artists that are any good at their craft easily tap into something that hits you in the gut. I think Portals is one of those games. I have not played it, but I bet it does mess around in your head in ways beyond just messing with your sense of space-time. I wasn't too hot on playing it, however, after reading the article, I want get a copy now.
I'm not down on the humanities - I double majoried in CS and History. I love the humanities - art, literature, history: these things are important.
Women studies are not among the "real" humanities - this is a made up, politically correct, politically slanted body of "study" that, without justification, denies the importance of most of the useful arts and sciences, an simultaneously congratulates itself (and its practitioners) on being far more clever-than-though.
Witness the very first sentence of the review:
> Warning: The text you are about to read contains heady intellectual discourse and is not recommended for anyone made queasy by the discussion of feminist film theory or psychoanalytical signifiers.
Oh, yeah, that review was chock full of "heady" intellectual discourse all right!
In fact, it was filled with the four or five common tropes of feminist / culture studies "deconstruction". I could write this crap in my sleep. Throw around the word "symbol" and "signifier", the word "privelege" or "Other" (must be capitalized) or "hierarchy" (or better yet "hegemony"), and talk about how up "subverts" down, wet "subverts" dry, red "subverts" green, and drop in one or two entirely irrelevant political references to the conservative devil of the hour (in the 1980s, this meant Reagan, in the early 21st century, it meant Rumsfeld or Bush, now it means Cheney or Bush, etc.), mix in a half cup of cheap Freudianism, and away you go.
Utter, utter, lazy, useless garbage.