Black Power Trumps Slugger Power: A Guest Post by Tim Turner

     [Tim sent me this cri de coeur yesterday evening. As I’m a huge baseball fan and have been since 1960, it definitely struck a nerve. -- FWP]

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     Since 2013, the only gaming company that has enjoyed the imprimatur of the Major League Baseball Players' Association is Sony's PS4 platform and its software partner, San Diego Studios', game Major League Baseball, the SHOW. {MLB The Show} This is a big deal to those of us who like to (heck, need to) pretend-manage skillful professionals who successfully do what we mostly did miserably in our youths.

     But, see, that's baseball. There were entire generations of Americans caught up in the mystique of baseball. Not just as players of the game, but as watchers and admirers of the game.

     To some of us, the Kevin Costner film, "Field of Dreams," isn't a euphoric spike of memory. It's just another thread in the ongoing weave of Americana and baseball, as in, "Bang the Drum Slowly," "Angels in the Outfield," "The Pride of the Yankees," "The Natural," The Sandlot," Major League," The Bad News Bears," "The Rookie," "Take Me Out To the Ball Game," "Damn Yankees," "Rookie of the Year," "It Happens Every Spring," "Cobb," Eight Men Out," "For Love of the Game,"

     . . . There are many more, but you get the idea.

     The point is, America's relationship with baseball isn't a unicorn fantasy of anime proportions. It is a working class story of sweating, practicing, trying OVER AND OVER and often losing, but sometimes winning. And the winning meant something, because you were able to work and hone a skill that made a difference, however mundane or small. And an entire country recognized that effort, for not being just participation, but a state of grace that comes from being the absolute best at something so many aspire to, but that so few can do.

     So. The MLBPA (Major League Baseball Player's Association) has the sole right to grant to a game company (ANY company) the use of a United States professional Major League player's name.

     Think of it. The MLBPA was started in 1966, and since then no major league baseball player's name or face can appear in a game or any other money-making regime, without the MLBPA's say-so.

     Ok. Ok, that's kind of odd, but such is the state of so-called capitalism in the West, today. (It isn't "capitalism," but Fran and others can discourse on this much better than I.)

     ANYWAY! The Sony PS4 has licensed San Diego Studios to create the ONLY baseball game that is allowed to use the names of real baseball players. And, thus, it is the ONLY baseball game that actually sells. (Really. No matter how good your graphics or stats, if your teams are all college students, it's not gonna sell. Ask Apple.)

     So. Ok. You get it. Sony, PS4, and San Diego Studios. You gotta go there for your real American baseball fix. Sony's game is called 2020 (or whatever year it is) The Show. As in, "2020 The Show."

     And their website is theshownation.com.

     So. You want to point out a bug in the 2019 version of the game? Or you want to ask when the 2020 version will come out? Or what the Major League Baseball Players' Association [MLBPA] thinks of the lockdown's effect on baseball?

     This is what you will see when you log on to theshownation.com:

     We at San Diego Studio stand in solidarity with our community of Black creators, players, employees, families and friends. We’re working to develop programs and plans that amplify their voices and specifically impact our industry to help address racial and social injustice.
     In addition, we are making donations to the Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholarship Program, Know Your Rights Camp and Urban League of San Diego County.
     This is just the first step we are taking to do our part to work towards a more inclusive and equitable future.
     Black Lives Matter

     Got it now?

     Identity matters. Not your identity. Public, whiny, make-a-fuss, "IMPORTANT" identity.

     You know damn well where this ends and we're all guilty of not knowing how to stop it. It isn't Christian, and it isn't Clint Eastwood or Gary Cooper. It's god-damned violence and I wish we'd figured out something better, but we have not.

Video Games, Movies, And Sex

     The C.S.O. and I went to see the new Tomb Raider movie recently, and enjoyed it. Mind you, it’s not Citizen Kane or Gone With The Wind. It’s an action-adventure movie with a pretty good story embedded in it. Alicia Vikander carries the role of Lara Croft very well, though with less sass than Angeline Jolie brought to it in her two films. The story itself is essentially an “origin” tale that uses elements from the two most recent games in the franchise, A Survivor Is Born and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

     But some people are never satisfied:

     On Friday, Stephen Spielberg's "Ready Player One" hit theaters in the U.S., and it is expected to earn about $50 million at the box office this weekend. Another video game flick, "Tomb Raider," has earned $46 million at the U.S. box office since its debut earlier this month. These video game films seem particularly noteworthy for likely deliberate efforts to minimize the sex appeal often associated with women in video games.

     High levels of sexual content have become the norm in teen entertainment, from movies to television to novels. Video games in particular are infamous for including sex scenes to appeal to young male fantasies.

     More specifically, each of these specific franchises has a more salacious past. When Angelina Jolie played Lara Croft in the original "Tomb Raider" (2001), the directors had her wear a padded bra despite her already large breasts. The book "Ready Player One" includes a sexual encounter between the main character and a sex doll, with masturbation themes.

     These sexual elements did not make the final cut for either of the 2018 films, perhaps due to the influence of GamerGate and the #MeToo movement.

     "Tomb Raider" fans — both those who played the video games and those who loved the 2001 film — complained that the new Lara Croft, Alicia Vikander, does not have the ample breasts of the original franchise. Indeed, this Croft seemed less a sexual object and even more a complete character in her own right, with sexuality an afterthought in the movie.

     Say what?

     I believe I’ve played all the Tomb Raider games. None of them contained anything resembling a sex scene. What the earlier ones – i.e., the ones with the “bustier” Lara Croft – did feature was boobs. Big boobs. Specifically, on Lara. Also, it should be remembered that those earlier games foe PlayStations I and II were light on story and characterization.

     Sexual desire as a noticeable element in the adventures of Lara Croft made its bow in the two movies made by Angelina Jolie. Yet neither of those movies contained a sex scene. The closest either of them came to such was a heated kiss between Jolie and co-star Gerard Butler. So as regards sex qua sex, there’s nothing to miss in the new movie...or the rebooted games.

     Before I go any further, allow me to say this: I like boobs. I’m one of the most pro-boob people you’ll ever meet; just ask the C.S.O. I have no objection to massive melons as an element in a video game character, a movie, or any other form of entertainment. But if I’m compelled to choose between huge jugs and a rollicking good story, I’ll take the story every time.

     The most recent models for Lara Croft can be seen in costume here. They’re beautiful women and no mistake. However, they’re not as busty as the “original” Lara of the PlayStation I and II games. Moreover, the Crystal Dynamics franchise-reboot games were produced with much more emphasis on accurate motion capture and realism – and as any gymnast or ballerina will tell you, athletic gyrations and huge knockers don’t really mix.

     So for the sake of a well made game, the massive, gravity-defying headlights of Lara Croft Mark One had to go. As that was the only sexual or parasexual element in those games, the reboot games could, with minimum plausibility from the perspective of a connoisseur of the English language, be described as having been desexualized.

     In other (and fewer) words: What’s the big deal?

     Lara Croft Mark Two is a beautiful woman, albeit without the mega-rack of her predecessor. She’s also a much more fully developed character with an involving life story. And the games are both excellent and phenomenally popular. If the most recent movie is less so, well, Eidos, Square / Enix, and Crystal Dynamics have already been paid their license fees. They can shrug off the carpings from a few of the less mature video game fans. Not #MeToo but popularity, profit, and the satisfaction that goes with a job well done are what matter to them.

     To a mature gamer – and I feel I speak with authority on this subject – the story and the gameplay are what matter. Gazongas are everywhere. Indeed, there are probably plenty of video games for the dweeb who eats every meal at his local Hooters. But that’s a topic for a much coarser screed.

     (tee hee)

Quickies: Highs And Lows

     Anyone who plays console video games is aware of Sony’s game The Last Of Us, which has won near-universal acclaim from gamers who’ve experienced it. Well, being a gamer of sorts myself, I acquired a copy some time ago, but being a terrible gamer, I quickly grew frustrated with it and set it aside for other, easier games.

     (Yes, I had the difficulty set on “Easy.” Go ahead, laugh.)

     However, I was told repeatedly that the highlight of the game is the embedded story, which was described to me in such glowing tones as to evoke misty notions of Tolkien...if Tolkien wrote survival horror, anyway. So when, in casting about on YouTube a few days ago, I stumbled upon this “extraction” of the story from game form to cinematic form, I immediately fired up the video.

     For the next three and a half hours I was riveted to my computer monitor. To be brief, the praise I’ve heard of this bit of video fiction was not at all excessive.

     However, I rose from that spellbinding experience, in no way lessened by it being a digital-animated production, to learn that Quisling in a black robe John Roberts has once again saved ObamaCare.

     If George W. Bush isn’t tearing his hair out over having nominated that traitor to the Supreme Court, I take back every good thing I’ve ever said about him.

     Perhaps I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I’m in the right mood to shoot up some ragheads. Good thing there are plenty of them.