BLOG 5

I am choosing Henry Jenkins strategy on my paper about Mario Kart, the video game.  He is an expertise in gender and video game culture.  Many believe that children should not be allowed to sit in front of a TV or computer and play video games for any extended period of time, that children should be outside playing whenever time allows.  This may have been true years ago, but we live in a different time now and things have definitely changed over the years.  It is not as easy to just let your child run the streets as they use to. I think that Jenkins says it best when describing the changes in our society.  He explains how many kids do not have a backyard to play in, many children grow up in big cities living in high rises, they can not just walk out their back doors and play in a luscious back yard.  The use of playing video games gives them the opportunity to experience situations that they may not have been able to otherwise. The can play soccer, football, find prince charming or even chase villains.  He also talks about boy space and girl space.  One can easily argue that the more violent games would be geared to the boys and the more brightly colored less violent would be for the girls.  The games that are more of a fairy tale like story would be categorized a girl space, while a game involving racing may be considered boy space.  The game I have chosen is Mario Kart.  I believe that this game is appealing to both boys and girls of any age.  It has both racing and fantasy.  With that said I would right my paper on the claim that Mario Kart is a game geared towards both male and female genders.