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Downtown Browns

How do we move forward right now, when the world is becoming so hostile to the things we care about? Downtown Browns… provides a creative tool for conversations around racism, islamophobia, immigration, discrimination, and self-determination in the months to come.

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Explore, watch, and play at least one of the three episodes from the interactive web series “Downtown Browns”. The creators combine art activism with social encounters the player can explore with an interest in “what people bring to the table when they participate, like what kinds of stories they generate together” (B & Yang, 2020, p. 156). Note that this text was created by an all-women-of-color-crew: Tonia Beglari, Allison Comrie, Jazmin Garcia, Emilia Yang, and Luciana Chamorro.

• Why do you think it was important to have an “all-women-of-color-crew”?
• What connections can you make between this text and Adichie’s TED Talk about “The Danger of a Single Story”?
• Explore the idea of representation and who is telling whose story and why that might be important.

As you Explore, Watch, and Play the three episodes of Downtown Browns, use the Step IN… Step OUT Routine to make your thinking visible. You’ll be sharing your observations in Discussion #14 below.

Step in . . . Step out . . .

• Choose: identify a person or agent in the situation you are examining.
  • Step In: Given what you see and know at this time, what do you think this person might feel, believe, know, or experience?
  • Step Out: What else would you like or need to learn to understand this person’s perspective better?
  • Step Back: Given your exploration of this perspective so far, what do you notice about your own perspective and what it takes to take somebody else’s?

Discussion #14: Step in Step Out Reflection

Use your Step IN… Step OUT annotations to guide your responses to the questions below. Share your thoughts by posting a comment here in our class website at the bottom of this page.

• How does the interactive aspect of these texts allow the reader/viewer to “step in, step out, step back”?
• What did you notice when you “stepped back”?
• What connnections can you make between Downtown Browns and the ideas Chimamanda Adichie expresses in her Ted Talk The Danger of a Single Story?
• How did your choices impact the narrative?
• Analyzing the authors’ craft: point of view, interactivity, visual messaging, characterization, theme
• What do we learn in relation to the idea of identity when we think about all the other terms we have explored thus far (privilege, oppression, equity, equality, personal/social/invisible/visible identities)?
• Draw connections between all three episodes – what is the wider purpose of this text?
  • Who is the target audience?
  • What impact do the creators intend the work will have on this audience?
  • Why didn’t they just write a story or make a movie? What role does interactivity play in their wider purpose?

References

B, T. & Yang, E. (2020). Making games about queer women of color by queer women of color. (pp. 153) Duke University Press. http://doi.org/10.2307/j.c tv1134cq5.21

Beglari, T., Comrie, A., Garcia, J., Yang, E., Chamorro, L. (2016). Downtown Browns [Interactive Web Series]. http://downtownbrowns.weebly.com/