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Tropes vs. Women, the Anita Sarkeesian video series
NickTheNewbie
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Anita Sarkeesian has, to date, released two videos in her "Tropes vs. Women" series
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toa_vH6xGqs
This is not a thread to discuss her kickstarter, nor is this is a #1reasonwhy thread. We will talk about the points raised in this video series in a calm and mature manner.
I personally feel that she has raised a very good point that the role of female characters in games is often as little more than an objective. The princess to rescue, the wife to avenge, yadda yadda. When the main character is a female, its often a sexually exaggerated female with non-realistic/non-proportional features. While I think she does a good job pointing out the pervasiveness of this trend, I think her lack of positive female portrayal examples is somewhat slowing down the delivery of the point she's trying to make. I watch the videos and think "yeah, that's true, I guess the medium is fucked, so what are we supposed to do about it?" If the videos gave more time showcasing those few positive examples, then it can give us concrete examples of how things SHOULD work, rather then just telling us why things currently DON'T work.
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_QPart 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toa_vH6xGqsThis is not a thread to discuss her kickstarter, nor is this is a #1reasonwhy thread. We will talk about the points raised in this video series in a calm and mature manner.
I personally feel that she has raised a very good point that the role of female characters in games is often as little more than an objective. The princess to rescue, the wife to avenge, yadda yadda. When the main character is a female, its often a sexually exaggerated female with non-realistic/non-proportional features. While I think she does a good job pointing out the pervasiveness of this trend, I think her lack of positive female portrayal examples is somewhat slowing down the delivery of the point she's trying to make. I watch the videos and think "yeah, that's true, I guess the medium is fucked, so what are we supposed to do about it?" If the videos gave more time showcasing those few positive examples, then it can give us concrete examples of how things SHOULD work, rather then just telling us why things currently DON'T work.
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grumble.
Edit: and done watching the second one. Skipped around a lot.
Aside from the massive damsel in distress thing, most of this boils down to:
1) Video games are largely aimed at males.
2) Video games are largely poorly written.
3) As video games are largely aimed at heteronormative men, having a woman being endangered is a easy way to ratchet up the emotional response from the player. Something poor writers will seek.
4) Violence is typically the only method of conflict resolution in video games.
The creation of games with a gender neutral targeted audience, written by people with more talent who don't need to rely on sex make relationships have emotional weight, with the option for or even necessity of non-violent conflict and plot resolution, would lead to games which are less sexist(and probably a hell of a lot more interesting).
I don't disagree with any of this.
Like, there are a lot of gender value neutral games out there. Some of them do involve non-sexualized female characters not acting to save a man.
I sort of wish i had played through the translated versions of the touhou project games. apparently despite all the creepy fan art they generate, they are not nightmarishly sexist.
Too many examples. It will bore the choir and ehh, well... I don't know how people who disagree with her feel, but I don't know if they would be much more receptive to ~35 minutes of examples of the exact same thing.
Like, I think if you are going to have that many examples, a funny catchy infographic is going to be more effective than a youTube video and a half constantly driving home the same point.
I have to say, I've been disappointed by Anita so far. It has taken her an absurdly long time to produce these videos, especially given their production quality, after receiving such a huge windfall on her campaign. I also think she delivers the content competently, but can't help but feel she's just throwing meat to crowd, so to speak.
I'm hoping some of the topics I'm more interested in - like the Fighting Fuck Toy trope - cover new ground and are better produced. There is no reason we should be given such low fidelity video samples with the amount of money at the author's disposal.
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I think her videos are pretty good, not very informative for someone who has even dipped their toes into the subject, but good at provoking discussion. The reactions against them prove the necessity of these points to be repeated over and over
My only real issue is with the hinted link between violence against women around the world, that society blames women for being beaten in too many places, and fiction of any kind. If I run over a hooker or twelve in GTA it doesn't say anything about me as a person, at all. GTA's writing of female characters says something about the developers though, I think.
Joke cross post from another thread: I feel like You people don't want any women showing off their tits in a videogame and that's censorship!
you owe me three nickels enmememe
really more of a 'don't want every woman showing off tits in every videogame, unless they are supposed to be unattractive.'
But, that hasn't really come up yet.
The thing is: you can never reach those people anyway, just like you could never convince VenomFangX or his fanclub that the world is more than a few thousand years old. Anita's probably aiming at anyone 'on the fence' or anyone with the, "I'm for women's rights but oh noes not FEMINISTS!" outlook, which is usually temporary pending hearing out someone like Anita.
I understand that this attitude is basically gospel here, but it doesn't fly with me (depending somewhat on context). I think if you actively seek out and kill women in GTA, that does say something about you & your preferences. It doesn't make you a serial murderer, but it certainly does say something about you.
It's easy to nitpick about examples, and I'd agree not all of them are equally strong, but the point of the video isn't to tell single developers that they did something wrong, it's to point out that in general the move towards a helpless female in videogames as a motivation for the main character is cheap, overdone, and due to it's prevalence creates a bad association in people who consume this type of media a lot.
Being more aware of what media you consume, what the thoughtprocesses between these character designs are, and being openly critical of design decisions that you disagree with is the path that leads to better games for everyone, more diverse and more aligned with real life, and would also help with destigmatization of games as being 'for kids' and more specificially 'for boys.'
*Assuming he didn't just run away with some indiegogo cash instead.
I think it depends a fuck load more than "somewhat" on context
Edit: or rather, it should
The strongest theme in the first videos for me, so far, has been Anita's criticisms of The Holy Nintendo and everyone's favorite game designer. I mean, Mario and Zelda represent some of the most profound benchmarks in gaming and this is one of the only times I've seen their central conflicts dissected and unapologetically displayed as negative examples. The language is never couched in, "These were good games, but..." hand-wringing: the nitty-gritty is that the games feature regressive themes and these themes have had a regressive impact.
The problem with her argument is that she is wading in to attack video games, while in fact video games are just doing what EVERY media source does. Provide wish fulfillment in some form for its primary audience, often in the easiest way possible. She's attacking games, when they just 'learned it watching you!'
In fact, by presenting a simple, overly trite series of examples of how games are sexist and hurt people, targeted mainly at an audience of people who want to see examples of how they are right that games are sexist and hurt people she is doing EXACTLY the same thing that she says games are bad for doing.
Games provide burly men and barely clothed women in need of saving, because that's the easiest thing to give the perceived largest market for the media
She provides pictures of games providing barely clothed women in need of saving, because that the easiest thing to give perceived largest market for HER media
She's doing the same damn thing she's complaining about. If she wants to change games, then she needs to change EVERYTHING about the relationship between media and it's consumers. Or, if she simply wants games to change, then the way to do so is to persuade game makers that they are wrong about what their perceived market IS or WANTS. An interesting line for her to take would be her interviewing men 13-25 (the perceived target of all these tight bikini tops in distress) to see if they actually like all that nonsense (my bet is, yes kinda, but also no because it makes playing games embarrassing. Could game companies please mix it up a bit so they could have some games to play with their girlfriends and wives?)
Hopefully the quality of her own videos will do what she wants video games to do, and present a more interesting angle on the issue.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Talking about how a thing is bad and showing that thing is just as bad as the thing itself?
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
This is almost the most fatuous criticism of the video series possible.
Here kid, go buy yourself a soda. Adults are talking.
And if you care so much about getting clean drinking water to people why don't you actually do something about it rather than frittering away your time campaigning against people "wasting their time"?
Why don't you do something really important?
This just in: sexism does not affect people at large.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
These are the issues her contributors decided to support. While there are other problems in the world, this is the one they have chosen to work on. Addressing this issue will, one hopes, help to improve gender relations and the image of gaming in the public. Her work on this does not prevent other people, such as yourself, from tackling those other issues.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Sorry.
EDIT: there are three links in the above post
She's not attacking video games. She likes video games. She's a fan. One of the opening bits in the second video is about being a fan of media that can be considered problematic. It's fully possible to enjoy something and still recognize it has problematic elements. In fact, I think one of the biggest things I'm noticing as I watch people discuss her work and her videos is that criticism is conflated with "attack" all the damn time. I'm not sure where this came from, but it's a misrepresentation of what she's trying to do as a cultural critic, and it's a misrepresentation of what most critics do. Taking a feminist stance or using feminist theory on a work to expose elements of sexism and misogyny doesn't mean the person making the critique is attempting to invalidate the work itself. It doesn't work that way.
As far as the "they're just giving gamers what they want" thing, I don't think that even deserves a response. You think that she's making a trite argument, well...
I've only watched the first so far. For me personally it ran a bit long. But I agree that at least part of the idea was to simply bombard people with the actual sheer number of examples available which actually did surprise me when laid out one after the other. Which I can't think of a non monotonous way to do.
Really. What does it say? What about when I kill lizard people? Or ninjas? Or zombies? What does that say about me then?
Yes, this is a debate. You are not contributing.
While everything you have brought up are important, you have not brought up for example Clean Drinking water because you think its an important issue. Rather I suspect you brought it up so you can avoid having a debate on how sexism in media permeates society and how such sexism benefits men. Men like you. Because if women are considered inferior by their very sex, the standards by which men are judge as winners is lower. Less competition for the golden prizes as it where.
However if you feel that all the issues you brought up are so important, why are you spending time here in a site dedicated to gaming? Should you be out there digging wells or something? Considering your posting history and self-proclaimed background, I find the idea of you doing physical labor amusing.
It says you're the type of person who prefers to hurt specifically women.
It says that you're eliminating obstacles that are standing between you and the goal.
If you then stick around and meticulously begin stabbing and slicing apart the corpses, well...
This is basically a repost and summation of my discussions of not only Sarkeesian's "Tropes vs Women" series, but also her channel (Feminist Frequency) at large.
In short- the biggest, and really most glaring problem with the series' (serieses? multiple video episodes!) is this
They really still don't know who they are for, exactly. As others have said, if one knows more than a basic level of feminism and/or critical theory, her videos will either be preaching to the choir, or enough of a reduction to annoy. (The phenomena wherein a knowledgeable person is irritated by reducing arguments has to have a name, I am sure...)
However, if one doesn't know word one about either feminism or critical theory, the videos (while enlightening potentially) will probably go over the viewer's head. She asserts some things that are not Common Sense or Common Knowledge, but that are rather well supported both in feminist thinking or in other disciplines. The biggest example of this is her assertion that the mystical pregnancy trope has stuck around as a way to enforce reproductive control over women is...spurious if one does not know that there is a decent amount of anthropological and feminist justification for the statement.
So for the lay audience, she makes some seemingly bold and radical proclamations, that really aren't. The more educated viewers, however, will be able to spot flaws in her arguments, or things she leaves out for either space or ease of communication, and be either annoyed or confused.
Neither of these are ideal.
That isn't to say all her videos are like this, or that they are worthless, or stupid, or pointless. They are certainly informative, well-written, and well-presented, even if their intended audience is unclear.
If you are interested in watching more, her videos on menstrual products, and LEGO's rebrand are both excellent starts.
And of course, the amount of outrage a woman talking slowly and calmly about sexism can encourage is justification enough for their existence.
My point is that the 'real problem' with video games is that all they often do is play to the lowest perceived common denominator of their target market. So if you want to attract attention, showing some women in need of rescuing who have made poor clothing choices is some low hanging fruit. ALL MEDIA IS GUILTY OF THIS. Porn contains many negative images of women, because producers think thats what porn watchers want. Post apocalyptic literature contains many idiotic liberals getting shot because they weren't manly enough to buy guns, because that what writers think their audience wants. Romance drama contains a lot of sensitive dudes with dark secrets who reveal themselves to be assertive in the bedroom, because ....
By making her show nothing but a montage of 'low hanging fruit' arguments then she is making the same fundamental mistake.
How can she expect video games to change, if she herself can't address the problem of the relationship between audience and creator?
If she doesn't plan to address the relationship, then how does simply showing that video games do what we know they do help anyone?
If the work has no purpose other than to confirm the stereotypes of people watching it, then it's no better than the worst pulp fiction. A documentary should have a higher goal, espescially when trying to expose how another media has failed to reach a higher goal.
(And sure, video games can be pretty darn sexist, and sexism is a bad thing which (even if you believe nothing else about it) prevents us being comfortable sharing our media with others in our lives)
It is indeed. However it is one about her videos, and not about how to solve problems in other countries.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of her videos.
Probably because I'm not her target audience.
The most interesting thing to me about her particular videos, is the coverage they get tend to generate some interesting discussions.
Looking forward to that (once some blog/news site sifts out the non-horrible parts)
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious