Tropes vs Women SECOND VIDEO - "Damsel in Distress: Part 2"

[mecegirl]

I have several questions about the "What about the male victims?" thing. It keeps coming up in discussions like this and it boggles my mind.

Why aren't men speaking out about this? Or rather, why do men wait until a woman speaks up about what she feels is distasteful before voicing their own complaints?
Why should it be a feminists job to speak about it? As a feminist her main concern will be women, anyway. Yes she may dabble in how the situations that "harm" women can negatively effect men but...she's a feminist. To be female centric is in the name.
If these games are made by men for men what does that say about what men think about men?
If men keep buying these games what does that say about what the men who buy such games think about men?
And finally, since these games are made by men for men shouldn't men already have the power to change what they dislike about depictions of violence against men?

 

[Madgamer13]

This is a good video, I'm starting to understand the time Anita requires to make an elaborate point. While her logic is still focused on women, their treatment and roles in computer games, she has mentioned a link to the male side of the argument. I particularly liked the part of the video when she mentioned the patriarchal duties of males, as well as inadequacy within their own role.

I've observed this myself, where there is a damsel in distress, there is usually a failed male involved which may be the protagonist. I also agree on the cultural ramifications, but I would wish to elaborate that such tropes are also influenced by culture. The damsel in distress trope exists not solely because developers need an excuse to send your character somewhere, but that culture may more readily accept the concept of failed males and powerless females.

Of course, changing a cultural influence tends to take far more than informing game developers about what their own storylines may mean. Clearly though, that is not somewhere Anita wishes to go, as of the moment she is merely attempting to make a point. It may be because this is only the second video in this particular part of the series. Feel free to give her more time to present more videoes before you jump to conclusions.

I'm looking forward to the next video, I very much want to see her points on the exampled breaking of the trope and the elusive dude in distress reversal.

 

[Legion]

Trope: a common or overused theme or device.

*****

You want to refute / agree with her?

You are gamers, are you not?

Then start a project for ALL the videogames in existence using a table of data:

TITLE(year)
Protagonist gender
Gender of main quest to be saved
Gender of side-quest to save

ex:
Tetris(Renaissance)
nil
nil
nil

////

Call of Duty X (200x)
Male
nil
MALES: Y
FEMALES: Z



Imagine a nice database/excel table describing ALL the videogames by year and lets see if Sarkeesian is either cherry-picking examples or if her argument warrants the word TROPE. Hell, we could even grade each game based on their sells for a more comprehensive idea on this whole debate.

But no, this is the Internet... ;oP

An interesting idea, but the problem I see is that what counts as the "Damsel in Distress" trope is far too encompassing. If a male character has to save both a male and a female for the same reasons, the woman would count as a damsel in distress, but the man wouldn't.

A game such as Deus Ex Human Revolution requires you to save four scientists, two male and two female. It also has two side missions that involve saving both a man and a woman. That game, despite having you save both still uses the DiD trope, and therefore would be an example of "proving" her point that the trope is used. Despite in the context of the game, it's not singling out women, nor making them victims. It has both men and women in the same role.

Using statistics is useful for proving how common the trope is, but it does nothing for the discussion about the actual trope itself.

 

[mistahzig1]

good point, but we could expand on data categories where all this would be reflected. I agree that the interpretations would cause a problem, but at least we'd have the closest thing to FACT as realistically possible, no?

 

[Fappy]

I thought this episode was definitely an improvement over the last, but I have two main points of criticism.

1. Again, I don't feel she elaborated enough on the tropes. She gave a lot of examples of their existence, yeah, but she only skimmed the surface on explaining the ramifications of the bulk of them.

2. I think it was a bit of a stretch to connect the trope of a protagonist killing a possessed loved one to that of domestic abuse. I don't really think it's a trope that, in of itself, is in any way sexist... hell, it's pretty gender neutral as far as I can tell (happens to male characters all the time, too). Paired with a damsel trope, yeah... I might see where you're going with that, but I think that's more an issue with the damsel trope than it is with the "loved one gets possessed, you must now kill them" trope.

That said... I'm outta here!

 

[romxxii]

Trope: a common or overused theme or device.

A trope is not overused; you're thinking of a cliche. A trope is (and I quote TV Tropes on this) "a conceptual figure of speech, a storytelling shorthand for a concept that the audience will recognize and understand instantly." In other words, a trope is a narrative tool; it's only as good or bad as the person using it. Hell, even Sarkeesian points out that there are well-rounded implementations of the Distressed Damsel trope.

 

[Legion]

good point, but we could expand on data categories where all this would be reflected. I agree that the interpretations would cause a problem, but at least we'd have the closest thing to FACT as realistically possible, no?

The data would certainly be interesting.

Then again, what games would count?

Would it be all games?
Only games with human men and women?
Only games with genders, including alien species?

Personally I'd say that it should be all games, seeing as her argument seems to revolve around how common it is to the medium overall. But to be honest the sheer amount of games where gender isn't there, is unknown or characters have no personality (racing and sports games for example) I'd imagine the data would show it to be minuscule at best.

If we looked at games with only human men and women, I think her point would have a lot more truth to it, but even then, outside of violent action games, it's not a common trope. Most of the games she uses in her examples tend to be either FPS or Third person action/adventure.

Games with genders including aliens depends on how much a person likes looking into things. Some people see the Asari in Mass Effect as "human enough" to discuss them in relation to gender roles, but when it comes down to it, they are not human, so should they really count? That's down to opinion really.

Either way, if somebody took the time or effort to do it, I think it'd make for an interesting read.

 

[Bluestorm83]

While I generally agree with the sentiment of the points she raises, not all of them are always valid. While lots of tropes are overused, you can't remove them altogether, or you cripple the ability to write a story. I also disagree with many of her sentiments, merely because she is thinking them through from a female perspective (she can do nothing else,) and what is actually wrong is trying to rationalize from her female perspective what a male perspective is. This is as successful as when we men try to understand how a woman thinks. Yeah.

Not to get into too many details, I would just like to reply to one thing, the whole "Women need their men to protect and save them," angle she speaks a bit about. Not so. Since games are marketed mostly to men (statistical fact) the psyche of what a woman wants or needs doesn't enter into the Male Market Mindset at all. Rather, they are looking to the psyche of what MEN want and need. Or more accurately, what Male GAMERS want and or need. And let me tell you, what at least I want and or need is a woman who I could take care of. It has nothing to do with whether or not she needs me to take care of her; it is 100% about what I need. And, speaking only for myself, I have a need to expend time, energy, and money on someone that I have some form of attachment to, who is female, to reach my goal of being a Man. That is my psyche, and I can only assume that it is the psyche of a large enough portion of the gaming populace for marketing to focus on it.

So to be blunt, it's actually slightly worse than what she's thinking. It's not that this is how game marketing/creation VIEWS women, it's that they aren't even thinking of women because (SOME TIME, NOT ALL THE TIME) they're just trying to bring in money that is currently in the pockets of Male Gamers.

 

[romxxii]

If we looked at games with only human men and women, I think her point would have a lot more truth to it, but even then, outside of violent action games, it's not a common trope.

There are enough examples to warrant an entire page on TV Tropes [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DamselInDistress/VideoGames]:

 

[repeating integers]

To be fair, she shouldn't include the original Duke Nukem and Dante's Inferno.
Duke Nukem is a spoof on every other game of the same type by turning everything up to 11. Oh this shooter has a little misogyny? Ours has super misogyny! You have to kill demons? You have to kill super demons! It's a parody and a villification of the system. It'd be like yelling at Bayonetta for being against women; It's the point.

I will never understand why people a) see Bayonetta as being "against women" and b) think it's a parody. I've played it and it seemed completely obvious to me that it was neither - it had its parodic elements, sure, but in the end it's gaming finally managing to get the "strength from sexuality" strong female archetype right after decades of failing miserably. It's a damn empowering game, IMO.

 

[LAGG]

The violence inflicted against the woman is treated as a terrible thing for the male protagonist, not for the woman. Whatever the woman feels or does in response to this violence is given a token representation, depending on the game, and then you're supposed to fill in the blanks on your own; while the male hero gets to monologue about his manpain to a greater or lesser extent.

Well, I'd argue that the cause of that is that she isn't the protagonist, not that she's a woman. It's obviously a terrible thing for both. In and of itself, this isn't a problem, after all, the protagonist is the focus of the story, naturally the impact on them will be the one in the spotlight and the plight of others will act more as a plot device.

The problem with this is that the same set of circumstances keeps popping up all the freakin' time. I really want to see a protagonist that's going through a trauma because they couldn't protect their family's priceless Ming vase or something. As long as it's different.

Protagonist's friends and NPCs in stats position (the kind, the mayor, the general) die all the time in games. The clear thing happening is when an NPC is a women it's a common trope to make her a love-interest/girlfriend/wife of the protagonist, simply because it makes the connection step up from friendship to family.

She's looking at it from the opposite way of what happens in the "creative" process. First, one or more NPCs close to the protagonist has to die, then the NPCs are created with that purpose, and very often "close" ends up as father/mother, brother/sister, wife or daughter, or a dog... When they try to appeal and overstate the "emotional" baggage of the loss, it'll most often be one of the female cases wife/mother/sister, unless the brother is very young and enthusiastic.

Mostly, not always. The weird consumer idea of basing a game's worth on their length makes it so one or more of those has to be used through most game campaigns. How many options are actually possible to choose from and how many games with violence/deaths there exist? It's not hard to show 10 games with a same trope when there are 10.000 games around.

 

[Piorn]

Haven't watched the video yet, but we already KNOW stories are getting stale and formulaic.
We don't need more people to point it out, we need more people who do something against it.

 

[Tony2077]

Haven't watched the video yet, but we already KNOW stories are getting stale and formulaic.
We don't need more people to point it out, we need more people who do something against it.

that is true but if you watch the video she brings in stuff that has nothing what so ever to do with the trope

 

[Vegosiux]

Well the videos (so far) aren't saying anything remotely controversial or novel or even difficult to follow. So if you dispute it, you are probably just a know it all young buck or a wily conservative old coot.

I'm sorry, I don't see how that follows. There's a certain leap of logic in there that just makes no sense. Why does "not controversial" and "not difficult to follow" make it "indisputable"?

To me it simply looks like you're going ad hominem against people who disagree with your position, and that's not a particularly good standard of discussion.

And no, documentaries aren't supposed to push anything new. They just document. So things are not forgotten. And are easily accessible.

I'm sorry, but where did I say documentaries are supposed to push anything new?

 

[klaynexas3]

Here's my major beef with her videos so far. She gives plenty of evidence that the trope exists, but then when she actually starts to even allude to a point, she jumps to her next part about the trope or a related trope. When it finally ends, I have no idea what her major point was, besides maybe that the industry lacks creativity. We got evidence last time, and had she done her job well, that evidence should have sufficed. It didn't because most of it was talking about just a few select series, so we got more evidence this time instead of a legitimate point. We could watch this video as a part 1, forget the last one, and most likely get the idea of the part in the series in which we actually get a total point to it all(which I'm doubting will be any time soon). Seriously Anita, I can't agree or disagree with your damn point until you get to the damn point.

Actually I thought the point was pretty clear. That, by themselves as isolated incidents, they are lazy writing driving male power fantasies. But when taken together we see a rich tapestry of women are helpless, you need to protect them, that's your job, even if it entails brutalizing or even killing them because it's for their own good. Because no male power fantasy is complete without that feeling of protectorship or domination over a helpless, stupid, over emotional woman.

And that's... kinda a problem.

Maybe I didn't listen properly, but any time that she ever did start to mention something like that it seemed like she jumped to another part of her segment. I never got a point to actually swallow what she was trying to say, until the very end where she did start to basically address counter arguments to an argument that I clearly missed.

I'm not saying I would disagree with those points other people have so far pulled out, like the women basically being turned into objects and the like, but I had trouble following some of the points because most of the games she showed us I had never played. I had only played Kingdom Hearts, but even that has started to move away from these tropes, though it does stumble every now and then.

I do think all mediums should move away from these tropes, partially in that they are simply lazy writing, partially in that it is a bit unfriendly to women, but I don't see it as something that will perpetuate violence against women or anything. Take the woman in the fridge trope she discussed. On many occasions is it a father instead of a woman, but I don't see patricide rates skyrocketing. I see these tropes as a problem in terms of being a barrier for female gamers to play games, but it's not causing real world violence. But that's another topic this forum has discussed before, so I don't feel like dragging it back out again until we get another story about the media attacking games.

 

[kailus13]

If we looked at games with only human men and women, I think her point would have a lot more truth to it, but even then, outside of violent action games, it's not a common trope.

There are enough examples to warrant an entire page on TV Tropes [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DamselInDistress/VideoGames]:

Yes, but there's an entire page on TVTropes dedicated to giant cats [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MegaNeko]. Talking about the Damsel in Distress trope is still valid, but not because it on TVTropes, for TVTropes covers everything.

Anita Sarkeesian is a horrible teacher. She has no charisma, and her voice is monotonous. Is she deliberately wearing the same clothes as part 1, or did she film both parts back-to-back and delayed releasing part 2 for some reason?

 

[numbersix1979]

Can someone just tell me what troops and what games she addresses?
I'd rather be able to make a counter argument (if I feel the need to) without grinding my teeth into dust.

I'm sorry I realize this has already been addressed but seriously? You've already formed an opinion about something you can't bother to watch and want someone ELSE to take the time to dictate it to you so you can go on about it? Wow. Just wow.