Heavens, this turned out to be a long post.
3quency said:
I think I'd have to disagree here. It implies an ideal of attractiveness in the same way that earlier programs (e.g. Father Knows Best) implied an ideal of female behaviour. Creating female characters with attributes that fit in with how a certain group of heterosexual men feel they should look/act is always going to be inherently sexist.
In response to the points of skill and talent for male/female figures, ultimately most media falls into a very specific stereotype - men should be judged by their actions, women by their static attributes. This has become less true over the years, but is still a prevailing attitude.
I would agree with you entirely if you had written "want them to look/act" rather than should. A matter of preference is different to a matter of a standard. Many guys would love to date Megan Fox (not to claim that everyone finds her attractive, I certainly don't) but they appreciate that whilst they would like their girlfriend to be very hot, they don't judge a woman as somehow defective if they're not, just sexually/romantically uninteresting. This in the same way that women have their idea of what kind of man they want but they don't devalue men who aren't like that.
If you're making a game targeted towards the typical heterosexual male and you for whatever reason aren't going to do it properly, the hot girl stereotype might well be employed. I can't bring myself to accepting this as sexism, that seems to be a rather gross exaggeration. The problem is rather a misunderstanding of the audience. In other words, the assumption that the hot girl stereotype is the way to go is no longer true, both because there are now a lot of female gamers and because a lot of the men are more mature.
3quency said:
In response to the points of skill and talent for male/female figures, ultimately most media falls into a very specific stereotype - men should be judged by their actions, women by their static attributes. This has become less true over the years, but is still a prevailing attitude.
This is largely true. It doesn't excuse it, but it's arguably inherent to our biology that men are pragmatically judged and women are physically judged. For this reason, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to get rid of it. Women might always be judged by their appearance more than men are. Whether this will be something humanity grows out of or another one of those things that our nature won't let us get rid of, only time will tell.
Personally, I find that sexuality is separate from respect. In other words, I judge a woman's sexual attractiveness separate from their merits as a person, as I consider the former to be largely chemical and the latter to be intellectual.
3quency said:
I can see the point you're making here. As a straight guy who only just turned 20, I'd be lying if I said that I had never been attracted to a woman solely for her figure.
However, I feel this returns to a very important point: women in fiction are being created to fit in with the ideals of men. Straight White Males are not the only people interested in the medium. They never have been and never will be. Women make up half the population. Passing something off as "appealing to the audience" just doesn't cut it for me, because that audience is so diverse. Therefore, I would still argue that over-sexualised women are an aspect of sexism in media, if only because they assume that women don't watch/play/read this stuff.
Whilst I'd argue that for some time, white males made up the vast majority of gamers, they don't any longer. I covered this just above, I think.
3quency said:
I agree that celebrity-culture is a problem. It does spread wrong messages and it is exclusive and judgemental. But it is a societal issue unique to our particular culture. Sexism is a problem that has been part of our culture as long as we have been recording history. Celebrity is a comparatively new and small issue. And both need addressing, to suggest one is more important does not mean the other is irrelevant, or wrongfully concentrated on.
Sexism itself isn't a smaller issue than celebrity-culture, but I think that sexism in media is a smaller problem than celebrity-culture. It spreads a different type of inequality and furthers the ideals that sexism preys on. Moreover, it furthers ideals based on the inherent worth of human beings. Comparatively, ideals about attractiveness are minor when put against the ideal of plainly being a better and more valuable person because of fame, and fame because of relatively useless achievements at that. It puts entire persons on pedestals and they're given more authority for no sensible reason and it teaches us to believe in others rather than ourselves.
At any rate, the difference in significance, subjective as it is, doesn't make either problem less worth dealing with. It was not my intent to suggest otherwise.
3quency said:
Now this really is a different matter entirely. I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree more. Yes, pornography is demeaning. It's crude, objectifying and sometimes downright disturbing. But it is designed entirely to tittilate. That is it's sole purpose. Video-games are not porn (for the sake of the argument, can we ignore visual novels?), and by and large really shouldn't be using any ideals associated with porn. There is nothing wrong with using sexuality in gaming, as there is nothing wrong with it in film or literature. But as a media form, it has responsibilities that porn does not. You said it yourself, each media services a particular need. And videogames serve more, and a wider range of people than Redhead Sluts 4.
It was not my intent to equate video games with porn outside of principle. I'll elaborate.
Here is where I think you're handing out the same kind of sensationalist and over-sensitive type of judgements as those people who see racism in RE5. You're reading far more than what is actually tangible into fictional media. A work has to be able to depict a person or group, be it a race, culture, sex or otherwise, in a particular way without it being judged as an outwards statement or reflection on reality. It can be, but it doesn't have to be.
For example, The Matrix was intended to be and is often seen as a commentary on modern society and the average person's ignorance of their own strength and potential and how they're constantly distracted by a lot of information, social norms and what have you, very little of which actually matters at all. You can wake up and have your "mind freed" and realise the self-hypnosis you've been under your entire life.
By contrast, Redhead Sluts 4 can depict a couple of females to be used and abused by a household of horny men without it in any way implying any kind of statement on reality whatsoever. It's merely a fictional "story," if you will, made to arouse people with a certain kind of sexuality. Many men have fantasies about sexually subjugating a woman and many women have fantasies about being sexually subjugated. It's perfectly natural, it's not crude or degrading to either gender.
Both of these examples require external interpretation. Nothing is inherent to the work itself. Now, take a film like Zeitgeist. This documentary clearly expresses statements on reality. It's shown and told overtly. This is the only circumstance in which a work can be judged to be explicitly racist, sexist and so on.
It's very important to point out that this does not preclude works of media from clearly expressing racist or sexist themes. This is a fine line to walk, but as an example, consider how the Jews are depicted in Schindler's List. They're being treated by the Germans basically as trash, as worthless bits of organic matter to be abused and exposed of at will without any moral consequences. This is perfectly acceptable, as it is the characters in the film (that are effectively fictional as this judgement would apply in the exact same fashion even if WW2 had never happened) that are displaying this attitude and the work clearly sympathises with the Jews.
I've mentioned RE5 a few times now so let's cover that one as well. The game sympathises with the protagonists. It's also clearly against the antagonists and against the virus that is the cause of the zombies. Not a single time in the game is an enemy killed or harmed in any way because of their race, or anything at all to do with them other than the fact that a virus has turned them into blood-thirsty monsters. The fact that the people are mostly black is completely irrelevant outside of the narrative and story. A lot of people complain about the tribal villagers but it's not much of a stretch that there would be some amongst the infected. Also, the decision to make the helpless girl at the start into a while girl is obviously done for narrative contrast. The black men weren't chasing her for any other reason than because they were zombies and wanted to infect her, and when she turned into a zombie, the protagonists killed her all the same.
As a final example, Call of Juarez: The Cartel, often called one of the most racist games ever made. With this one, it's not as easy since the very lazy design doesn't show enough clear emphasising for the killing of minorities to be judged solely on the merits of its narrative value. I don't think it's intentionally racist, but it's so shoddily made that it can easily be seen as such. Personally, I say that it's so poorly made that it's bordering on being racist (a judgement that to me is very harsh; I don't make it nearly as lightly as everyone else seems to).
Without this distinction between what is and isn't inherent to media, it's impossible to have any kind of negative theme without the maker(s) suffering all sorts of accusations ranging from racism to sexism. Almost the only areas in which this distinction is not always made are depictions of minorities and female characters. Both of these share a strong historical precedence of subjugation. No one cared when Leon Kennedy massacred hordes of Spanish people in RE4. No one cares when white protagonists mow down throngs of Russian soldiers in modern warfare game X.
Change the enemies to blacks and it becomes a different story. Now, all of sudden it's racist. Given the historical precedence, I can understand this tendency, but unlike MovieBob I don't think double standards are good ways of solving past unbecoming attitudes. All races should be treated equally.
As for women, men have been and still do show a lot of misogynist tendencies. Not unlike many other men, I have a severe distaste for it. My (female) best friend has suffered a lot because of a certain misogynist wanker, and it still disappoints me fiercely whenever I meet yet another woman with such experiences. Does this mean we should hold off on all female stereotypes in media until attitudes have improved? I can't get behind that. I believe free speech is absolute and that taking offence amounts to nothing and should be shunned entirely.
My opinions on this matter are usually very unpopular, especially on this forum since they go against Yahtzee, MovieBob and Extra Credits (though they've left, I reckon everyone here still follows them on Penny Arcade).
