An Across-the-Pond Cultural Query! The BBC takes up the question today: "What does it mean to be Mexican-American?'

More on Video Games and Stereotypes or Why Chicanos Are Not Featured in Pac-Man

This posting is a follow up on this and this post. This NewScientist posting is bracing if not at all surprising.

More Video Game "Literature" at the Border!

My thanks to my friend and amazing artist Izel Vargas for bringing this came to my attention--I can add it to the work I am doing on Borderlands.

On the Verge: Borderlands From Gearbox

In an article published years ago entitled "Artif[r]acture" with MELUS, I argued that literary critics had to update their tools to deal with a literary realm that was increasingly visual and semiotic--if anything the mild jeremiads of that piece need a turboboost in our world today with Kindle, nook (pictured above), and their ilk changing the way folks read and libraries increasingly becoming gold mines of picture/word assemblages.

In that piece (a revised, update version of which appears in Eyegiene, my forthcoming picture-filled tome with UT Press), I wrote about video games being the next form of "the novel."

I wrote that, and I still believe it to be true, but I have never tried it--until now....

Gearbox software just came out with a new game called Borderlands--you can watch a review of it here from Gametime Trailers:

You can get the game specs here or by hitting the image there to your left.

I have written about the demonization and sexualization and the militarization of the border between the US and Mexico for years; I am very curious to see how this TROPE-ic Verge plays out in ultra violent games for the kiddies and others...