NewClassic said:
First sexualization moment is the first disrobe, at 0:42. The entire motion takes a little under one second. Follow-up of an ass shot. Likewise around a second in length. We'll call it two seconds for easy math. Crotch shot (and fishnets, which I honestly wouldn't have noticed were it not for doing this experiment) immediately following. Under a second. The subsequent footage has roughly twelve seconds of slow-down. The nose-breaking (which was highlighted in the original article), takes place in under half of a second. For those keeping score at home, that's two minutes and twenty seconds of trailer, and roughly three to three and a half seconds of that is intentionally sexually charged. And yet this is grotesque violence-porn? Fewer than four seconds with the vaguest of hints of sexualization and this is the straw the broke the camel's back?
I do not think you understand. I am disgusted that there is any sexualization of violence, period. Exactly how much screentime or the exact measurment of 'skimpiness' of the attire is utterly irrelevant to me. I do not believe there is a percentage of a depiction of sexualized violence of women that suddenly makes it okay.
Besides regardless of how much screen time is devoted to the sexual charge the fact remains that the sole reason these outfits existed was to titlate the audience. That's the only reason that they stripped, the only reason why they wore stilleto heels and fishnet stockings and many other things.
My point is that a creator conciously decided at some point to have 47 kill a group of women and in the process decided that the women getting viciously stabbed, strangled, shot etc
needed to be dressed in a sexually provocative way.
No matter how people may slice it, I just find that wrong.
Part of the reason gamers are having a hard time coming to grips with the argument that this is sexual violence-porn is because it doesn't really seem the part.
Odd because, again, the overwhelming majority of cases I've seen is just guys deluding themselves into thinking its an evil anti-male conspiracy. I'm expected to see the phrase 'Gyno-facist' any minute now.
We see far less violence than we would with a Tarantino flick, or even an Uwe Boll movie based on the same property. In terms of sexualization media, this is significantly less sexually charged than games like Bayonetta (in their entirety, much less a single teaser-trailer), X-Blades, or even the sexualization of violence in Silent Hill 2, which was quite rampant.
The problem with that is that Tarantino movies usually have context behind the violence. This scene however (apparently) isn't a representative of what the game is actually going to be like and there isn't any context as to what is going on either. So it's violence that is without any given meaning.
Similarly games like Bayonetta and X-blades are very overt with the sexualization because sexualization is a core part of the game's story or design philosophy. But apparently in Hitman this 47 fellow is asexual and basically just lives to kill and collect his bounty so there's no real contextual reason that makes sense for it to be there.
Finally the sexualization in Silent Hill 2 was between vicious hideous monsters and wasn't being stylish or sleek. It was saying 'this is rape and it is vile and hideous and repulsive'. It acknowledged that the violence was awful and reprehensible and horrific and in a horror game that makes sense.
By comparison this is taking gruesome violence and turning it into a masculine power fantasy.
Instead, we're picking on this trailer because it idolizes and sexualizes violence?
Do the enemies have to be PVC nuns? Not really. Is the trailer tasteless about it? Not hardly.
Again it is not a question of quantity of violence or sex appeal, it's a question of why it's there. As a person who has just done a huge essay on semiotics I need to explain something, everything that is made and created is influenced by some kind of ideology.
There is always some kind of emotional or psychological reasoning behind every image, film, song and painting ever made. That's simple connotation.
That's why this advertisement disturbs me, because the connotations that I denote from it are far worse than the actual product. Maybe it's just a coincidence but this ad really does seem to be saying that they want these women to be killed and they have to look
sexy while being killed.
Am I a misogynist for apparently not noticing the gross sexualization of women? Or are others for seeing sex where almost no one else did?
Seriously?
I'd never call you a misogynist but I can't seriously convince myself that the people who are grossed out and turned off by this are the real misogynists while the people who react like petulant children during this controversy and comparing every feminist woman who comments on it to a certain German military force from back in the 40's aren't.
In short, I think I'll close with a quote directly from the linked IGN article:
She absorbs bullets, and then Agent 47 shoots the final nun square in the forehead before she can fire a round at him.
Square in the forehead, huh? [http://i47.tinypic.com/jfdxlj.png] If you look for the bad expecting to find it, you surely will.
I take it you've never heard of hyperbole? Yes she made a single incorrect overstatement but that pales in comparison to the way people butchered her original argument over and over again when she first made it.
