In the spring of 2014 before GamerGate, when I was an undergrad in college for communications, I took a class titled 'Rhetoric' at around the entry to mid level for the comms courses, to fulfill a requirement for my degree.
I did not know much about rhetoric at the time, and I fear I still don't, but my assumption was that we would, at the very least, be given be given an overview of what was considered to be cannon in western rhetoric. I had expected to learn something about Plato, and perhaps go over common rhetorical devices, techniques, etc and the like.
What I was not expecting, was on the very first day, for the professor to show us the first 25 minutes of Far Cry 3, and proceed to tell us how exceptional it was because it 'subverts the expectations of games' because you would assume that the player would be playing someone competent like the main character's brother, someone with military training and an understanding of what to do when terrorists take over your vacation spot. But, oh no!, he gets killed in the beginning of the game and you play his incompetent brother! How novel!
Granted this was the very first class, and it was meant to intrigue students and offer a pitch on why you should be coming to class or why you should be invested in this course. And it worked! I definitely wanted to know why I was being shown a video game on the first day instead of just going over the syllabus. I should also mention that I have never played Far Cry 3 and had to look up the synopses to make sure it was even the right game. We never returned to the game after the first day, but given the rest of the course I doubt the prof would have gone into the white savior complex underpinnings of the game, but this was also a rhetoric class, not a class on how to critique media, so who knows if it would have been appropriate. This is merely a setting the stage for what comes next.
Over the course, we explored a lot of new media, some of which I found really interesting. We covered a couple of Hollywood movies and explored how characters were portrayed and their agency. I need to admit that I haven't followed up on any of the professor's claims but the ones that stuck out to me the most that I can remember is how he spoke about the roles of women in two films.
This was before I transitioned and was a little budding baby feminist, just learning about feminism through tumblr and The Mary Sue. Remember, this was at a time when people, mainly women were quick to say, "...but I'm not a feminist" because it was still a dirty word that evoked the caricatures drawn up in the 90s.
The one of two main films I remember were The Best Years of Our Lives which is a movie about 3 servicemen coming home from WWII to their families. One scene in the beginning featured Harold Russell an actor and disability activist who had lost both of his hands in WWII, coming home to his fiance. The scene features him standing still with his duffel bag and her seeing him then running over to greet him.
According to my professor, this was something of note at the time because it featured a woman taking action where as in films before the man would have gone to greet her. I have not followed up to see if any of this is remotely true but I remember the point of the lesson being even small things like this can have greater meaning.
The second film I remember was Rear Window, in which we talked about the contrasting roles of Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. We talked about how Stewart was confined to the home the movie, and mostly in one outfit, while Kelly would walk around the scene in a new outfit each time, and how this showed that she had more agency than him. She had a life and freedom in the outside world and he was confined to the home and how this was contrast to the traditional views of a relationship where the wife stays at home and the man is out in the world.
We also covered newer media such as the citizen journalism in the Arab Springs, and at one point he showed us a music video from India, explaining that with just a glance people who were from India would understand that the man and the woman were in love and when she showed up later with a child that they would know it was his. (He was a white man and he said said partner at the time was Indian, and that she had confirmed this.)
And we also covered a lot of even newer media... such as when he showed us an episode of Freeman's Mind. Which is an old ... Lets Play(?) of Half-Life with an MST3K like voice over of by a man named Ross Scott who is voicing the main character's inner thoughts. The point of showing us this was to tell us 'Scott had to think of what kind of person would survive the events of the game and build a character and personality around that" ???? I guess...?
He also showed us The Angry Video Game Nerd, sort of... He introduced the concept of AVGN, but I don't remember him showing us any episodes, instead he showed us the "Contra Memories" video, which is an out of character video where Rolfe talks about his first time beating Contra. Now, it's also important to remember that this was slightly before the rise of long form video essays on YouTube which made people care about topics they would never have thought of.
Despite using this particular video, this is probably one of the most straightforward lessons. The professor walked us through it explaining how Rolfe used personal experiences and relatable situations to get the audience to care about a game most people probably wouldn't have cared about. And the idea of using a modern video on a (relatively) new platform like YouTube instead of an old text book to walk students through this process is not a bad one I think.
However.
Towards the end of the semester, one day we walked into class and the professor had a PS2 hooked up to the projector. We were going to be playing a video game. A game he thought was perfect at on boarding people who had never played a video game in their life. A game he thought was subversive and employed a variety of different techniques to explore a rich world and add depths to characters. One of his favorite games. This was what we were learning for the next 3 weeks.
Final Fantasy XII.