Via Jessica Valenti:
I think that's more-or-less the last word on that subject. The bit about the etymology of "Pac-Man" is fascinating.
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Ms. Pac-Man as Feminist Icon
24 Feb 2008 08:47 am
Comments (17)
Justice Ginsberg--
Always click the link, eh? MY had nothing to do with it. That's the way it shows up on YouTube.
Tool.
The bit where the reward for the pretzel is "equal pay" is priceless.
MMGood...point taken. My bad, Matt. Guess that was the creator.
Oh and MMGood, certainly you can amuse yourself and come up with something better than "Tool".
Whatcha got?
Interestingly, the original transliteration was "Puck-Man," in reference to the puck-like shape of the main character as well as the pakku-man of the original (wikipedia claims the Japanese original apparently having been omnopoetic for eating, but I don't have an ay additional sources to verify that). It only became "Pac-Man" in the English localization, when Midway feared that vandals would change the "P" to an "F," with obscene results.
Yep the etymology part was pure bullshit.
Is this a response to the "Bitches Get Stuff Done" bit last night on SNL? If so, nicely done.
I've seen some Obama freaks calling for the show to be cancelled.
Justice Ginsberg,
You did such a great job of insulting yourself in a brazen, flamboyant, and full of yourself way that the only option left for MMGood was smug understatement. Also, ironic doesn't mean what you think it means.
Matthew Yglesias,
Of course you know that on the internet there is no such thing as the last word on anything.
”wikipedia claims the Japanese original apparently having been omnopoetic for eating"
That's right- パクパク食べる (pac-pac-eat) means to eat voraciously.
Exactly how do we know the Coulter photo is doctored? I agree, she's always struck me as the white wine type, that's clearly a giveaway. Of course, she could be drinking blood of some sort, pig or sacrificed virgin or something. Hard to say.
One missing note from the video:
Pac Man operated in a deterministic world where the motion of all the ghosts would repeat every time a stage was played, thus allowing an easier way of learning how to clear the level.
Ms. Pac Man had the additional difficulty of having to navigate a world where the motion of ghosts was random, and thus no consistent strategy could be used to defeat the same level twice.
Maybe some commentary on the postindustrial world where nothing was certain and how women would be forced to face greater difficulty to accomplish the same tasks as their male predecessors.
I guess this might help Mark and Ari get dates, but on the downside, those dates will be with humorless feminists. If that's what floats your boat, I guess.
Fred,
I'd think it would help more with humor loving feminists, which sound much more appealing.
I also fail to see what is unfair or inaccurate about Ann Coulter at a white power rally.
"Fred,
I'd think it would help more with humor loving feminists, which sound much more appealing.
Posted by aleks | February 24, 2008 12:01 PM"
To Fred, there is no such thing as a humor-loving feminist, just as there is no such thing as a black person who isn't mentally genetically inferior to him in his head.
"To Fred, there is no such thing as a humor-loving feminist, just as there is no such thing as a black person who isn't mentally genetically inferior to him in his head."
Right on the first clause, wrong on the second. I have no trouble thinking of individual black persons who I'm sure are smarter than me: for example, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Kenneth Chenault, etc. I'm sure there are thousands more brilliant black people smarter than me. That doesn't change the reality that, on average (you do understand that statistical concept, no?), black Americans have significantly lower IQs than whites.
The other interesting thing about Pac-Man is that the development of the original game was a response to the fact that earlier games like Space Invaders and Asteroids proved far more popular with males than with females.
The developer of Pac-Man was tasked with designing a game that would appeal more to girls (i.e. was not based on driving or shooting), and based the game around eating for that reason.
Pac-Man proved to be popular but failed to tilt the gender imbalance, so the sequel made a much more blatant attempt to do so. So Pac-Man is, in a sense, just as much of a feminist icon as his missus.
Comments closed March 09, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Nice touch posting with the freeze frame of the doctored Coulter pic. Class act, Matt. And fair and accurate, too!
Ironic really.
Posted by Justice Ginsberg | February 24, 2008 9:17 AM