Revealing the differences: Resexualization in the textual pluralities of video games
Article

Video games can be graphically or narratively overhauled through remasters, remakes, or other forms of textual pluralities to adjust to current game platforms. One of the adjustments is resexualization, narrative and mechanical transformations of bodily and gendered identities of the revisited characters. Drawing upon Gill’s (2003) resexualization of women’s bodies in media, Klein and Palmer’s (2016) textual pluralities, Purnomo et al. (2019) intertextual losses, and Krauss’ (2006) narrative negotiation on a corpus of games along with their textual pluralities, we attempted to explain resexualization in games by classifying resexualization, intertextual losses, and strategies to prevent intertextual losses. Spradleyan domain, taxonomy, componential, and cultural theme analyses were applied in the study. We formulated two types of resexualization namely resexualization type 1 (RT1) and type 2 (RT2) with the former related to gender-bending and latter to sexual objectification and de-objectification. These resexualizations trigger intertextual losses on identity and belonging. To prevent intertextual losses, three strategies are also formulated namely signaturization, alternation, and intratextualization. Game developers could employ the results of this study as a consideration when deciding to resexualize their characters in the context of textual pluralities.

Rituals of motherwork through conversations regarding social media use: A feminist re-imagination of mothering
Article

This study rests on the premise that motherwork is primarily embodied invisible work resonating with a sociological concept of articulation work. Articulation work as originally posited by Strauss (1985) considers social worlds in negotiated orders of managing and making-do with discontinuities. This involves conversations, often difficult to facilitate, that mothers do in their attempts to regulate their adolescent children’s social media use.

Using an exploratory interpretivist approach to communication research and using the tools of feminist interviewing and focus group discussion (FGD) facilitating, this paper examined how authentic connections between mothers and their adolescent children are made possible in parental regulation of social media use. Thirty (30) mother informants were selected using intensity sampling.

Guided by Carey’s (2009) Communication as Ritual Model and Kramarae’s (2005) Muted Group Theory, data revealed how authentic connections between mothers and their adolescent children emerge in conversations that covered following: a.) body, voice, and sexuality—a bridge over muddy waters; b.) housework, productivity, and functionality—a challenge to old paradigms; c.) happiness and success—the convolution between the now and the future; d.) community, parenting, and family—the ambivalent “village”; and e.) influence, purpose, and value—the anxiety to matter.

Volume 21 Issue 02 · December 2024 · Reflections and Reflexivities · Main Article