CRACKED: "6 Sexist Video Game Problems Even Bigger Than the Breasts"

[Bocaj2000]

This is simply some radical feminist BS. Despite being a feminist myself, I disagree with many of these points, and I cannot bear to let this represent all of us:

5: Damsel- Yes, I get it. The damsel is bad writing. The industry is doing everything in its power to progress past this embarrassment of a plot. We're working on it.

Is it really being worked on? This seems more like a hand wave at the issue then it being addressed. Also, I really didn't see this trope addressed until Sarkeesian brought it up. Hell, I was blissfully unaware of it until her muckraking began.

Back when gaming was seen as a children's toy instead of legitimate interactive media, the trope was obnoxiously common. Now that the industry has evolved beyond that point, the trope is seen with scorn and is generally accepted as bad writing. It should still have attention brought to it and be remembered as part of our history, much like early films that involved a mustached man tying a woman to train tracks, but it must be seen as what it is: bad writing.

3: Rape- The writer simply complains that it exists in games without analyzing how it is used. This is a new concept to gaming and is never treated casually when it is implemented.

Analyzed how it is used? Hotline Miami 2 uses rape as a gag. It isn't something joke about, and here it is used as a punchline. With Heavy Rain, the attack occurs while she is wearing bra and panties. I played the scene, and the writer has merit to question why it is done in that manner.

You're not analysing. In Heavy Rain, it wasn't supposed to be sexy, and in Hotline Miami 2, it wasn't supposed to be funny. Nudity symbolizes vulnerability. This can be seen in Metal Gear Solid 2 in which Raiden is fully nude and must avoid guards without any equipment or way to defend himself. Heavy Rain used this symbolism effectively. Hotline Miami 2 didn't even come out yet, and the scene was out of context.

1: Real world- Yes, the video game community can be despicable. As time passes, the community will mature.

The gaming community is not going to mature on it's own. You seems to think that it will take zero effort on anyone's part and that tomorrow or the next day we will all suddenly be treating women better. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen on it's own. It takes people to stand up and say something is not alright. For example, fully grown adults use rape as a term of absolute defeat like "The Alliance keeps getting raped by the Horde on the Battlegrounds." That is not ok, and a couple of years ago, that made me an unpopular person to point that out as pretty fucking offensive. It takes articles to be written and people to actively speak out about it, all of which get mocked and shouted down because they dare challenge the status quo.

I say this because gaming culture is still young. Compare our industry to the film industry. Films went from being toys to being borderline pornographic and absurdly violent (then the Hays Code kicked in and blah blah blah). Now, we have films that actively push the status quo and the idea of what a film even is. This happened through natural evolution. People who were disgusted by how things were going made revolutionary pieces that changed everything. Yes, external articles and loud individuals can make a difference, but internal articles and direct action will make a difference.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Back when gaming was seen as a children's toy instead of legitimate interactive media, the trope was obnoxiously common. Now that the industry has evolved beyond that point, the trope is seen with scorn and is generally accepted as bad writing. It should still have attention brought to it and be remembered as part of our history, much like early films that involved a mustached man tying a woman to train tracks, but it must be seen as what it is: bad writing.

Is it necessarily bad writing though? In every circumstance? I keep reading this, and I just don't think it's true. It's "bad/lazy writing", maybe that's bad/lazy analysis. Personally, I love Django Unchained. That's a good rescue-story, to my mind. It's not bad writing because Django rescues a woman. I think the prevalence in early games had more to do with technological limitations than everything just being aimed at children.

I think that the moustache twirling villain tying the damsel to the tracks in silent film was parody of earlier stage productions. It was hackneyed by the time we were making films.

 

[tyriless]

This is simply some radical feminist BS. Despite being a feminist myself, I disagree with many of these points, and I cannot bear to let this represent all of us:


I say this because gaming culture is still young. Compare our industry to the film industry. Films went from being toys to being borderline pornographic and absurdly violent (then the Hays Code kicked in and blah blah blah). Now, we have films that actively push the status quo and the idea of what a film even is. This happened through natural evolution. People who were disgusted by how things were going made revolutionary pieces that changed everything. Yes, external articles and loud individuals can make a difference, but internal articles and direct action will make a difference.

However, it is unreasonable to expect to industry to mature on it's own, it takes outside criticism too. We and media critics like Jim Sterling, Adam Sessler, and yes, Anita Sarkeesian, push the industry to change for the better. It was our backlash of the dumping of Elizabeth off the box art that the industry took notice of. Ken Levine went ahead and developed a reversible cover for Infinite. It was a small change, but it was something he noted and addressed, and he will keep in mind when he has to deal with the pressure 2k puts on him. Yes, there are incredible artist that push the medium forward, but they work for producers who are all too willing to placate to the lowest common denominator of gamer culture: teenage boys. Businesses want their money, and will do pretty much anything allowed to get it whether it's pushing for a male protagonist (Remember Me) or trying to dump the female protagonist off the box (Last of Us). Because it's their money, they are always going to swerve for the more conservative and regressive option. It's what they're sure is going to sell.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Don't count? Didn't mean to imply that, but lets look at the ease in guys finding games with guy only protagonists vs the ease of finding games with a female only protagonist without having to buy several game systems.
And consider the effort you're asking people go through to find games to play when the vast majority of the catered to, and pandered to guys.

Giant bomb is a frikking mess that goes back to the dawn of gaming with no sorting, and I'd be hard pressed to imagine they have fact checking.

I might be moving the goal posts here, but I don't see the problem in looking at the past few years of gaming instead of having someone come in, demand I, and others go retro to get our fix. And Hell, I have gone retro some, and bought games well after release date to get my fix. Lemme tell ya something, it's not the greatest of gaming experiences, and all that research kinda sucks just to get a game?
I research like mad at times, sure, but you're expecting every last person that wants to play as a female, especially a female only to do the same? That's an unfair request.

Consider the fact that not everyone is so hard core they'll import games, buy ancient consoles, emulate Operating systems, or things like that just to play a game. Heck, they prolly won't even go back a genderation because they start with the ps3, or 360, or wii U.

Lets not forget everyone doesn't have a great gaming computer, or even a modest one, so telling them to go PC isn't a sure fire option.

We gotta look at how inviting the gaming industry is to people who want to play as women, and right now it could use improvement.

And importing often means learning other languages. Learning other languages just for a hobby?

Vs the dude bros that just walk into a store, and grab a game coz games that cater, and pander to them are all over the place?

What, exactly, is wrong with wanting to be pandered and/or catered to more in the modern gaming eras, anyhow? Why do people that want to play as women have to research, and find games well off the radar to get more than a handful of games? Why are we forced to rely on indie games (Well, not console gamers like me, they don't get many indie games.), and why do we have to tolerate the stuff that I linked that damages the odds of futire releases of female protagonists? I went back almost as far as you did in examples of, largely, the west getting involved with interfering with female protagonists.

Honestly, demanding people work so much harder to enjoy gaming is just... ludicrous, and honestly, dredging up old games isn't going to heal the wounds of people who're upset at the stuff that I linked to that does lend evidence that the industry, by and large, but not entirely (thank god) is sexist. Not just to women, but to guys, too. But mostly women, it feels like.
Until we can look to the future and see a decent diversity of women in more than a few games (especially vs the games that will come out in a year) these topics aren't going to end.

I don't understand what you're asking? You ask for specifically female leads, if that all a player wants then they'll have to go through different markets and genre to get them. Otherwise why would one complain about it.

That and most of the games listed you can buy over at game-stop, or target, or Walmart or their equivalents, some cases online shopping. Particularly handhelds and the PS3, some on the X-box. I don't know much about the indie or PC scene.

I mean I get it, the male market for gaming is rather diverse, and depending on where you're reside or looking means that you can miss out on a bunch of games. But if you're looking for a specific thing that carries over different markets, you're going to have to go and search for it. It's probably the reason why the feminist debate is so vitriol. Even within the male market of gaming different markets within get cater too, and if you enter the wrong market expect shit to not go your way or find what you are looking for. So yes if you are looking for a specific game or type you are going to have to search different markets to get what you want.

The Zelda commercial is to help show how far back this stuff goes. Well, not even remotely how far back it truely goes, but it's one of the older references I could find to the game industry not being that inviting to women.

The link from the people who made Bastion jsut goes to show that the stuff I link to influences other developers, other producers, and definitely is negative. The development team are less trusting of the industry because of it's interference in developers making a game they want to make. Especially games with female protagonists.

Still evidence that the female presense in a game has a bad rap in the gaming industry. I doubt you were contesting that, though.

I already pointed out that females play different games and have different expectations of what a game should do from males. The game industry doesn't have a problem in getting females, as the game industry realize that females like different shit, so cater to them one way and cater to males the other.
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2010/07/07/study-looks-what-girls-want-out-games
http://usabilitynews.org/video-games-males-prefer-violence-while-females-prefer-social/
Girls like different shit, has that not cross anybody mines when the debate started. I find it frustrating that there is data that points out what females gamer want and what they expect,and people seem to want to ignore it because it runs counter to what their on beliefs are.

Girls like different shit, so they're cater to differently than boys. Does that means that some boys and girls will have to be at the mercy of the dominate sex when it comes to preference is gaming? Yes, but that doesn't make it a problem though.

I have never seen a physical copy of Hyper Dimension Neptunia, or it's sequels. I've barely seen most of those games, and I go to gamestop for my gaming needs, and still look through wal-mart when I go.
Most of those games I've never seen a physical copy of. I dunno where you live that the shelves aren't stuffed with Dudebro games.

Basically what I want is the industry to give developers creative freedom. If developers want to make female protagonists, no one should stand in their way, for better or worse. Ideally, we'll get a mix of reasonably presented women, and characters like the Sorceress from Dragon's crown, and Bayonetta. We'll have an assortment of female characters, and more of them so we don't have lightning rods of anger like The Sorceresss from Dragon's Crown, and Dragon's Crown in general due to the mermaid with the bare butt, bound woman, and nun that people say has her legs spread pretty wide.
A spread of opinions, a wider catering, a wider pandering, and what few games we get where we play as a woman, and games that have women will stop being under the microscope, IMO.

With that creative freedom we might actually see women who actually have relationships with men more often, and see deeper written characters.

I want to have some security that we won't have to worry about if we'll get a female protagonist, or three on a gaming system per gaming season. Between Tomb Raider drying up, and 2013 I sure as hell didn't have that.
Yeah, we had games with gender select, and multiple characters, but like I said, my problem is we had few to zero games exclusively played via a female avatar as games with gender select often blur, or remove the point of gender select. And practically none were well known unless one scoured the internet vs. guys who could easily just saunter up to the new releases display, and see a pretty wide variety of games to play.
Where's the marketing for some of these games?

I want to see the industry be more welcoming to the female gamer. Yeah, some like differnt things, but don't we all? Don't we all enjoy diversity? Don't we all have moods sated by one game over another?
The idea that peopel should have to buy a half dozen gaming systems, old, and new, research games heavily, and hope they can actualy get the games they want is the farthest thing from welcoming.
I understand why you said "depending on where you live." Oddly enough, Japan is lightyears ahead of the western world as far as female protagonists go. This is a nation known for not being all too egalitarian towards women in general, isn't it?

I'm not made of money here. I can't buy every gaming system under the sun to get my fix, or import games, or learn japanese. Few people can, frankly. I mean I certainly would, if I could.
Is it wrong that I want some simplicity in my hobby to the point I can walk into a store and buy a game every now and then, maybe 3? 4? times a year where I can play as a woman in her own story regardless of what gaming system I use?

The industry needs to stop being hostile to female presenses in games. As much as people disliked the article that this thread originates from, there's points to be made.
I'm especially tired of the "female is a class" one, and the general idea that women have to be medics, rogues, archers, mages, and generally can't strap on some armor, then wade into combat. Or just wade into combat, period, and have a reasonable chance to survive compared to the male conterparts.
Koei's practically written the text book on solving that issue with the warriors series (Dynasty, Samurai, Gundam, Pirate, etc.), but they're only one company, and they practically stand alone.
Yeah, the game she used as an example is prety dated. I would've used Borderlands 1 (Rogue), and 2 (Medic), Gotham City impostors (Flimsy, agile character that jumps well), Dead Island (Flimsy characters) and there's prolly a game somewhere I'm forgetting.

What's more annoying is that the limited roles generally means that women get the "afterthought" powers that aren't all that practical in the thick of things, and are generally geared for support and little else.
In general Guys get better durability, better healing, and better up close and personal combat ability while women have to run like hell or get slaughtered, if not killed in one hit.
Guys get he more desireable abilities in general. It's frikking infuriating sometimes.

I don't care about "reality" in games when it interferes with what I want to do in a game sooner or later. Games rarely work on reality, and armor protects women as well as it does guys.

The problem with your links is nothing on you, but:
1: The game industry doesn't seem to care. They've not yet marketed much of anyhing based on these findings.
2: There's always exceptions. There's women that play CoD. I know I gleefully play Saints Row, and to a lesser extent GTA in training for GTAO where I can be a badass criminal woman (hopefully!), Koei games whre I slaughter thousands in under 10 minutes personaly, monster hunter, and and pretty much any game that is inclusive. I look forward to the female character(s) being introduced in Payday 2.
I'm a tomboy, I guess? I mean I like violence. Gns and blades, and bludgeons! I also like the sims, puzzle quest, RPGs, JRPGs, an so forth.
Pretending those studies apply to every last woman on the planet is not going to help. Moreoever even if you pretend they do, and don't act on it, then you're kinda not making money you could be making.

All these people complaining women are "casual gamers" (they exist. I've been nin enough o these threads to know this) and thus shouldn't get catered and/or pandered to don't see that because they aren't catered to, ar pandered to, they don't have a huge choice but to play casual games. Vicious cycle, isn't it?
The Game industry's fallen into the cycle, too, it seems.
Women don't buy their games? Well, they sure as hell haven't tried to entice them to for ages. Alienate a market too long and you'll loose that market.
Perhaps that's why the studies came out that way? Women have Hobbes Choice in gaming in general. Put up with women dressed impractically, presented in a sexualized sometimes objectified manner more oft than not... or just don't game. One or two games a year at best, and even fewer games with remotely normal looking women isn't helping anything, really.

It is a problem because it feels like women, and their representation don't get much of any respect in the gaming industry. Gendered insults and threats from other players, market testers not including women, developers sabotaging eachother into not making female characters, producers doing the same thing, and evidently putting the fear in developers that if they try they'll not have the liberty. The medium can't mature like that.
I mean with your examples, you've assuredly prooven that men can write for women as there's few women in the industry. A variety of women. A fairly sound worry, IMO, is will we ever see that sort of diversity be common? Or will we be doomed to have people demand we go retro, and spend immense amounts of cash to get our fix? And woe to those people who've already gone retro. They're screwed coz there's little in the futire for them.
I've gone as far as I could at times, and been in a position where the future looks effing bleak for my hobby.
My S.O. has been there, too. She's about given up on games entirely.
The both of us played games pretty much all our lives, myself back to the NES, and Atari, and we met through a videogame, and had a relationship for 10 years+ since then. We're pretty intense gamers. We weren't always jaded towards male protagonists either, but the diminishing amount of female protagonists, and the variety of games they're in have taken it's toll on the both of us.
Yeah, it's anectdotal, and likely doesn't mean much that the industry's screwing with the morale of 2 long time, adept, interested gamers, driving us away and stuff, but I gotta wonder if we're nto isolated cases or not?

It's generally "not a problem" to the people that get catered, and pandered to. Huzzah for their "eff you, got mine!" mentality and a general lack of empathy, right? Heaven forbid they realize that their contentment with the way things are isn't universal.
Of course there's a few wonderful people that are catered/pandered to yet still understand where those that aren't are coming from, or at least try to.

Boys generally don't "suffer" from the game industry unless they're the sort that wants to play as women.
What women that don't suffer one bit are the lucky ones, IMO. Prolly new to gaming, or just so numb to the idea of relating to a character, or in the "casual" corner that the industry seems to have herded them into by not being all that welcoming to them in mainsteam hardcore gaming.

From another thread, slightly modified:

Ya know I'm probably going to regret saying this, but wow it must be ever so nice to be pandered/catered to so much that one can't possibly understand, or care to understand the joy others feel when they get pandered/catered to. Especially when they get pandered/catered to despite the industry having a ton of dislike over the gender of the female protagonist.

For all the financial woes the game industry complains about, I've gotta wonder why they don't try to get money from women, a long negleted source of money. I mean, why market to 50% of the population (Less, really, dudebros, and douchebros aren't the entirity of men.) instead of closer to 100%?

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Snip

Your list of links needs amending. I actually bothered to open them up, and read some of the less completely boring ones. Given that I've seen you copy/paste them many times, I figured you think it's important.

You have the same TLOU story linked 3 times, 4 if you count the Beyond: Two souls link that is about wanting "a gun" on the cover to entice buyers (nowt to do with sex)... Before making a very brief nod to the same point about TLOU again...

The Bastion sequel link only serves to make a nod to the Remember Me story that you already have linked (twice), so that's redundant too. (twice over)

I think what the GoW story was saying was that they used the Kratos model as the base for the multiplayer player characters (who all seem to be the same shape, consistent with what he's saying) to save on animations and other assets. The one line that I imagine you're objecting to, I think is him trying to be funny. I can imagine that a female skin stretched over the Kratos model would look weird. At any rate... that story didn't need 2 links.

How much you think a web-comic (with a not completely related joke) and an old trailer help your cause is up to you. I'll just say that I wasn't impressed.

The Kotaku link appears to be about one man who happens to be a dick. Again... up to you. Just doesn't strike me as a video-game problem, so much as a workplace problem that could really come up in any industry.

Fair enough, I'll go through the links. I don't see it being chopped down much, though even with what you pointed out.
I tried to not be redundant, but apparently I wasn't thorough enough. At the time some of the ones you pointed out, TLOU, and Remember me were big news, so some articles have story bleed.

COnsidering the fact that GoW has a -lot- of women in it, most scantily clad, some armored, I find it weird they couldn't use any of those assets to make female multiplayer characters.

The Zelda commercial is to help show how far back this stuff goes. Well, not even remotely how far back it truely goes, but it's one of the older references I could find to the game industry not being that inviting to women.

The link from the people who made Bastion jsut goes to show that the stuff I link to influences other developers, other producers, and definitely is negative. The development team are less trusting of the industry because of it's interference in developers making a game they want to make. Especially games with female protagonists.

Still evidence that the female presense in a game has a bad rap in the gaming industry. I doubt you were contesting that, though.

I appreciate your insight.

GoW has those female models, but they only have a few animations. Kratos, on the other hand has thousands. He's probably being honest when he says new avatars would take a lot of work.

I don't contest that it's harder to get a game with a female protagonist made, I just contest the interpretation. For example, Carolyn Petit boils it down to "cowardice" at the end of one article you linked. That doesn't strike me as fair. I think it's easy for an internet journalist (let's face it, most of them are low rent) to be flippant about such a thing, and not so easy when you're in a position where you have to please buyers, backers and try to create job security for a large team of developers. "If you make it, they will play it" is a silly attitude to adopt, because you don't know that.

I don't understand the need to bombard people with links and slightly wishy-washy (sorry) reasoning. If it boils down to "It's my opinion that it would be good to have more female protagonists, and hopefully some new story ideas", frankly... That's enough. That's fair. That opinion doesn't need heavy substantiation. It needs market testing, and I still don't think it's becoming to label those not doing it cowards. There's a world of responsibility that we don't have to consider, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't.

Those female models in God Of War likely have a skeleton. You fight more than one of them, and pummel one into oblivion. There's gotta be some sorta assets they could've used. Instead it seems like they just gave up.

The reason I pack links is simply because people don't realize what's going on with female protagonists in the industry, and defend it not knowing. I feel like I should inform them of it to back up my point so they can understand where I'm coming from, and maybe I could change their minds.
After that, if they just want to plug their ears, and scream "It ain't happenin'" then that's on them.

Unfair as it is, there's cowardice at play in some cases. Buckling under pressure, fear that the product won't sell coupled with the notion that if the woman is placed with a guy it will sell, fear of trying something new, and so forth.
It's not a universal reason, I know, but discounting it entirely is, well, wrong, IMO. Especially when we have no conversation with these people. Rightfully so, I suppose as dev teams might say something bad. Silence is a double edged sword, though.

Honestly, there's no pleasing buyers, and there is no job security. Look at all the bankruptcies, and layoffs, development teams being scrapped just coz tey're done, and money problems all around. They aren't succeeding at what you think they have to do for the most part.

You have to cultivate your market sometimes. Relying on dudebros is aparently not panning out. Dropping the hostility towards female representation might just help that. Frankly all the bad press on the industry can't be doing them any favors.

 

[Bocaj2000]

Back when gaming was seen as a children's toy instead of legitimate interactive media, the trope was obnoxiously common. Now that the industry has evolved beyond that point, the trope is seen with scorn and is generally accepted as bad writing. It should still have attention brought to it and be remembered as part of our history, much like early films that involved a mustached man tying a woman to train tracks, but it must be seen as what it is: bad writing.

Is it necessarily bad writing though? In every circumstance? I keep reading this, and I just don't think it's true. It's "bad/lazy writing", maybe that's bad/lazy analysis. Personally, I love Django Unchained. That's a good rescue-story, to my mind. It's not bad writing because Django rescues a woman. I think the prevalence in early games had more to do with technological limitations than everything just being aimed at children.

I think that the moustache twirling villain tying the damsel to the tracks in silent film was parody of earlier stage productions. It was hackneyed by the time we were making films.

My analysis stands. This is not a bad thing because "Django rescues a woman". That would be a lazy analysis. I have actually thought this out. Broomhilda has no label besides the label of "wife". The audience has no sense of agency and has no reason to want to see her rescued if it weren't for our attachment to Djengo. She exists solely as a plot device, not as a character. That is bad writing.

Damsels can work. In Djengo, it could've been justified due to the subject of slavery. For example, Djengo was in distress until he got freed by Dr. Shultz. If Broomhilda had characterization beyond torture it could have been seen the same way.

As for the mustache twirling villain... interesting theory. I'll look into that.

 

[Bocaj2000]

This is simply some radical feminist BS. Despite being a feminist myself, I disagree with many of these points, and I cannot bear to let this represent all of us:


I say this because gaming culture is still young. Compare our industry to the film industry. Films went from being toys to being borderline pornographic and absurdly violent (then the Hays Code kicked in and blah blah blah). Now, we have films that actively push the status quo and the idea of what a film even is. This happened through natural evolution. People who were disgusted by how things were going made revolutionary pieces that changed everything. Yes, external articles and loud individuals can make a difference, but internal articles and direct action will make a difference.

However, it is unreasonable to expect to industry to mature on it's own, it takes outside criticism too. We and media critics like Jim Sterling, Adam Sessler, and yes, Anita Sarkeesian, push the industry to change for the better. It was our backlash of the dumping of Elizabeth off the box art that the industry took notice of. Ken Levine went ahead and developed a reversible cover for Infinite. It was a small change, but it was something he noted and addressed, and he will keep in mind when he has to deal with the pressure 2k puts on him. Yes, there are incredible artist that push the medium forward, but they work for producers who are all too willing to placate to the lowest common denominator of gamer culture: teenage boys. Businesses want their money, and will do pretty much anything allowed to get it whether it's pushing for a male protagonist (Remember Me) or trying to dump the female protagonist off the box (Last of Us). Because it's their money, they are always going to swerve for the more conservative and regressive option. It's what they're sure is going to sell.

Yes, external articles and loud individuals can make a difference, but internal articles and direct action will make a difference.

We are agreeing. I have never proposed laissez faire culture. I was only critiquing your call for action for non-gaming related critiques (external articles). Your examples (internal articles) are exactly what I am talking about when I describe natural change. The culture is evolving naturally and people are speaking out because they see a mature industry committing immature acts. We don't need a call to action; it's already here. You underestimate your peers.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Back when gaming was seen as a children's toy instead of legitimate interactive media, the trope was obnoxiously common. Now that the industry has evolved beyond that point, the trope is seen with scorn and is generally accepted as bad writing. It should still have attention brought to it and be remembered as part of our history, much like early films that involved a mustached man tying a woman to train tracks, but it must be seen as what it is: bad writing.

Is it necessarily bad writing though? In every circumstance? I keep reading this, and I just don't think it's true. It's "bad/lazy writing", maybe that's bad/lazy analysis. Personally, I love Django Unchained. That's a good rescue-story, to my mind. It's not bad writing because Django rescues a woman. I think the prevalence in early games had more to do with technological limitations than everything just being aimed at children.

I think that the moustache twirling villain tying the damsel to the tracks in silent film was parody of earlier stage productions. It was hackneyed by the time we were making films.

My analysis stands. This is not a bad thing because "Django rescues a woman". That would be a lazy analysis. I have actually thought this out. Broomhilda has no label besides the label of "wife". The audience has no sense of agency and has no reason to want to see her rescued if it weren't for our attachment to Djengo. She exists solely as a plot device, not as a character. That is bad writing.

Damsels can work. In Djengo, it could've been justified due to the subject of slavery. For example, Djengo was in distress until he got freed by Dr. Shultz. If Broomhilda had characterization beyond torture it could have been seen the same way.

As for the mustache twirling villain... interesting theory. I'll look into that.

Be sure to contact the academy so that they can rescind the award.

She's a character... She has mannerisms and a back-story and everything. I take issue with the idea that the audience only cares about her as an extension of their empathy for Django. I think that's wrong. I think she invokes more sympathy than anyone else in the film, by design... Django is the "one in a million", Broomhilda is what we would be in the film's proposed scenario.

She's not badly written because she's not the focus, that's asinine. There are no moments (that I saw) where her directions or dialogue didn't fit. It felt natural, she came off as very human and relatable (the acting job helped, obviously). Maybe that's good writing.