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

[taciturnCandid]

The Darkness examples really sickens me as she simplifies Jackie's loss as "OH NO I LOST MY WOMAN, MUST KILL EVERYTHING."

I really hate how she showed darkness 1 footage and labeled it as 2. In fact, it is a huge spoiler and ruins an really really emotional point in the game.

Simplifying that moment down to it being because he lost his woman really ruins the whole point of the scene. IT wasn't that she was just a woman, she was his childhood friend. she is the only source of joy in his life and the only thing he really cared about. It really really hits hard on the player. I put down the controller in shock and almost cried and I still have a hard time watching that scene.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

First of all I don't agree with her on the part of games having problem portraying women, because some of my favourite games (Baldur's Gate, Guild Wars, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, Final Fantasy X, Skyrim, World of Warcraft, Bioshock, Silent Hill series etc.) include so many well written female characters.

We think alike

Rpgs where the main char isnt written: skyrim, WOw
dragon age&mass effect are from a studio which is known for their way of progressiveness and good characterization-so ther is nothinc to critizise-and she does not. These tropes (euthanized girlfriend, murdered and stolen girlfriend etc) arent in this games, so you i thing you just missed the point.

and-its not about one game or another-ist about all, ist about the prevalence of this kidn of tropes in games in general.
she eeven named/showd mirrors edge as a good example for good characterization of women (with-a female player character AND a PoC player character. which isnt very often the case.Soo remember me)

 

[noahd]

she lives in a bubble where there are no real women, and every great women are either flawed, very few or don't exist.

she believes that it's up to men to do everything, even some of these so called damsels in distressed are saved by women. she thinks that many cases that the writers just so happens to have a women lead, that has some injustice done to her, or some tragic scene cut to end off a game or a chapter, just so the story doesn't lead on and on... she think's it's all pony's and butterflies.

there have been many times where the opposite has happened and it's the female lead that has to save everyone, but she doesn't see it. sometimes it's the men that's the damsel in distressed and you must save, escort, kill off, watch die, etc... sometimes there's an bittersweet ending, sometimes it's melancholy, sometimes it' sad, even happy at times.

but she's hooked on the fact that women are portrayed at all. if a women dies saving her kid, that's wrong to her. if a women is kidnapped because of the work she's in, that's wrong. if a women is beaten by a bunch of bad guys because what she either said, did, or other.(meaning if she stabbed one of the bad guys and was beaten up for it. they'd still be in the wrong, even if they are bad guys to begin with.)

she keeps bringing up the same trope in many different forms and is stuck on it, like it's her guilty pleasure. she doesn't understand that the same trope can be placed in anything. such as a guy leaving his wife at home and going to war, in that sense, it's used as the same trope. she's fighting against. things that can be pretty normal to women and men that aren't in her bubble, are outrageous to her.

there have been deaths of females back in the 80-90's, but like many things, she can't see them. she's put in a position where it seems like she just got into the games in the 2k's and ignores anything that can be a trope for the opposite gender. aka, instead of a male fantasy, a female fantasy. instead of a female in trouble, it's a male. instead of anything in the story you'd say; "yes, that's the only way i could end." or "this is all the could do in this world to continue the story." as to say, if you don't put something to gear the main character towards something, he might just go back to sleep. instead of going on a journey.

just like many things, you could have a game where everything around you gets sort of a shock value, friends, random strangers, teammates around you get killed off either in front of you or in mentioned. and it still be a damsel in a refrigerator. because of one out of 100 ppl is a female.

--

she doesn't like female characters both of passive and aggressive. because aggressive is just a men clocked with a female body, and passive is a misrepresention of women. and she likes misogyny, either in games she "reviews" or just to say that things are misogynistic. and it doesn't matter about how many men get murdered in front of you, to her - they were asking for it. that isn't misogynistic to her, it's just the way things work in her bubble.

i keep trying and trying to get where she could get all of the things she's filling thoughts with. but it keeps going towards the wonder amazonian women agenda. there's no mercy, or anything to the common or higher up people. everything is Misogynistic, submissive, weak, property of a men, can't do anything themselves, is only meant to be a thing. this is the world she sees. she sees her world in a bad s&m movie. one fault in a women in a game collapse the whole game's story in her mind. even if she wasn't a women to be cared about in her story. even if that women's part in the story is 5% of it, it's enough to ruin everything of it to her. because she lives in a world where no women need help from anyone and their at fault if they do.

if she makes 10-12 of these she'll repeat the same things she did in the first 2 videos. and all could be summarized in one video, but will be lengthened from 1-2 paragraphs to 10-12, with no golf clap for heroic heroins in games, just debby downer, putting a 'what's wrong with women, needing help, dying, sacrificing, putting themselves in danger, holding any feminine traits that's kind, rather than the 'stuck up b*'. all i can think of is anything feminine to her is a fault in her eyes. whether it's the character's choice, or forced into it.

she looks down on feminism, but at the same time says she's rooting for it. i know, i'm over analytical of her. but it's more of how she portrays herself, and thinks of others, and would be considered a bigot if she was ever in any place of the characters she looks down on. and is another reason why i don't like people talking about character's and not going through any hardships in life. to the point everything is outlandish and unrelatable. kinda like a rich person talking down to a poor person. these traits of her will show more and more as she shows herself. but she's a victim of her own problems and can only find problems with others. even if some of these tropes are thousands of years old and readable in history books, and not in anyway wrong, but just bad to happen.

in a game where you are forced to play the male fantasy as she would say; i'm always compelled to try and save everyone, whether they're savable or not. often, the bad guys are often the victims. but you don't hear her complaining about that.

 

[The Lyre]

You don't understand the point she's making. She's not saying that the issue is trivialised in-game. She's saying that the overuse of the trope trivialises a real-world issue. When it's used so thoughtlessly and often, without care, respect or gravity, developers get across the feeling that they think violence against women is no big deal. "Oh, we need a motivation for the hero? Meh, just kill his wife." "We have a sequel? Meh, kill the mother." "Another sequel? Meh, kill the daughter." And so on. That's where the trivialisation lies, in the way the game industry gives off the impression that it thinks women are not only almost never protagonists, but also thinks they're good only as prizes and/or victims.

Except that these aren't real people - they are video game characters. Their lives don't have value because they don't have lives. Clichés might be awful, obvious and easy but they cannot be used to discern the psychology and intent of faceless game developers and character designers, because these designers aren't making decisions that affect the lives of real people. They are constructing stories - badly, perhaps, but they certainly aren't making life and death decisions with the bodies of real, live women. You are making serious accusations towards developers who are not actually dealing with real world issues. They are making a video game, not attempting to represent real world problems.

This is one of my major problems with this series; why on earth is it based around tropes? Why couldn't she have researched interviews with game developers, character designers and writers? Gotten it directly from the horse's mouth, instead of trying to armchair psychologist her way through common video game character archetypes.

We have no idea why these tropes are used. Intent is very important, here - it's the difference between genuine sexism and plain lazy storytelling. One is intentionally harmful to people, the other is just lame. If people are taking offence from female characters in video games, when developers have no intent to portray real women as inferior to real men, then there isn't any actual 'sexism' going on here - it's just a lazy, accidental faux pas that's offending people without meaning to, and that's very different from intentionally dismissing the issue of violence against women.

We have no idea what the context or intent behind these design choices are, and I highly doubt that any of these developers are actively attempting to make men view any kind of real-world violence as acceptable. At most, you can claim that this is an accidental phenomenon - well, you can't really, because no one so far has proven that this is even happening or having the effect Anita says it is. It's all just speculation - and terrible, half-assed speculation at that.

So as it stands, all we have is this;

"Video game characters get hurt a lot and maybe this might be accidentally convincing gamers that getting hurt isn't a bad thing perhaps through lazy storytelling, we're not really sure but it's probably not on purpose. Did we mention we're aware that modern controlled scientific studies have found that video games do not provide any kind of marked, prolonged increase in aggression in gamers?"

Edit; to clarify - if Anita or whoever believes that this subtle brainwashing is an accident, then she should not be calling developers 'irresponsible' or their writing 'insidious'. She should not be accusing them of wrongdoing, but pointing out that in her opinion, they have made mistakes and it is causing accidental harm.

But Anita does not discuss this issue in this manner. The last five minutes of the video are particularly accusatory and wildly speculative. I believe the intent is to blame and shame here, and that suggests she believes this is done intentionally, across the board.

 

[Beretta]

Oh, and while I agree with the interpretation of the Euthanized Damsel, I also think it worthwhile to mention that another point to the trope beyond "she's asking for it" is Duty's Burden. That for the player/character doing the unthinkable and cruel is a matter of cruel necessity, an uncontrollable vicissitude of fate.
It is, to me anyway, beyond merely shocking and into the terrain of emotionally hollowing. Angel's death, in Borderlands 2, turns the already grim and bitter setting into a (very symbolic) death march. Handsome Jack various betrays, tortures and murders other people while the game slogs on, but I don't give a fuck. He's past the moral event horizon, the rest is just killing time before killing Jack. I just want to blow his brains out, preferably after a prolonged session of torture, and watch the credits roll.
(I keep wondering if BL2 was developed by two totally different teams working off the same blueprint. It's alternately whacky!11 (Tiny Tina!) and then it's grimdark (Tiny Tina's backstory) in spasmic amounts.)

Ditto Gears of War 2. Dom loses everything...although for a cast-iron Action Hero such as himself and his mates that's not really a new idea. If Maria had survived Dom would be pressured to split caring for her with his military duties, and I doubt GB wanted to tell that story. Euthanized Damsel indeed.

 

[Beretta]

The point about men's responses being culturally proscribed is 100% true, unfortunately.
That Real Manly Men are balls of spectacular rage in the face of being powerless is practically a universal human cultural constant.
But...maybe it's not so useful now. That caveman crap ages badly as Smart increasingly bests Strong.
I do think it's as much a matter of biology (Testosterone!) and psychological evolution as cultural influences, but it's rough to see it all exposed to the light as this series does.

So, thanks again Anita.
Food for thought, indeed.

 

[Darken12]

Except that these aren't real people - they are video game characters. Their lives don't have value because they don't have lives. Clichés might be awful, obvious and easy but they cannot be used to discern the psychology and intent of faceless game developers and character designers, because these designers aren't making decisions that affect the lives of real people. They are constructing stories - badly, perhaps, but they certainly aren't making life and death decisions with the bodies of real, live women. You are making serious accusations towards developers who are not actually dealing with real world issues. They are making a video game, not attempting to represent real world problems.

Nobody is saying that they are doing anything to real life people. What is being said is that these issues are A) handled thoughtlessly; B) very gendered; and C) putting off women from becoming part of the community/industry.

The problem is not with the trope itself, with the idea that one character is being kidnapped or murdered, the problem is with how gendered the trope is, and the impact that this genderedness has on the industry and the people who might potentially consume it. Whether the industry likes it or not, it sends an image to potential consumers. It doesn't matter if that image is intentional or not, or if it's completely innocent, the image still exists and it's still being perceived by society. As an LGBT gamer, I get an image from the industry based on the way it handles LGBT characters (or its lack thereof), and I'm sure the game developers have absolutely nothing against LGBT people, but the image I perceive from them exists whether they like it or not.

 

[Nepukadnezzar]

On the topic that those are tropes and I do not quite agree with Zelda in Twilight Princess to be an "Euthanized Damsel" (you only realize she has been damseled until you get to the throne room, although it is hinted) I genuinely agree with her on this episode.

She may have her usual slips I think are a bit extreme, but overall it was one of her best (and therefore nearly no bullshit and a lot of stuff to think about) shows

I did not watch all of them, just 5 or 6 FYI

The Damsel in Distress trope and the reason that there are few examples of the Dude in Distress counter-trope is because of that view of women=valuable and men=disposable.

I try to paraphrase you on this one, because I do not agree completely.
Weak men = disposable; women (regardless of skill or whatsoever) = valuable; Strong men = best fucking shit ever ...
But I think I get where you want to go with this, and I have to agree.

 

[LetalisK]

That's actually one the best counterarguments to Anita's criticism of Ico, I've seen. You deserve your awesome Monarch avatar. Wear it with pride.

Who are you talking to?

Hey, if anyone wants to have a clam and rational discussion on the issue, I'll be willing to talk to you. Just reply to me or send me a PM.

For some reason this makes me feel like a colossal dick. ._.

 

[The Lyre]

Nobody is saying that they are doing anything to real life people.

Demonstrably false;

She's saying that the overuse of the trope trivialises a real-world issue.

Your assertion, Anita's assertion, and that made by many others here, is that this is demeaning real-world victims of violence, by somehow trivialising the issue.

That's doing something to real people. Something harmful - recklessly so, according to Anita.

That's why this is a very, very serious accusation, especially from a legal standpoint.

Anita even goes so far as to label developers 'irresponsible'.

It doesn't matter if that image is intentional or not, or if it's completely innocent, the image still exists and it's still being perceived by society.

Actually it matters a Hell of a lot. This is the difference between you simply being offended by something and a group of developers inciting hatred and violence. There's a pretty colossal difference there. If you're offended or hurt by something, that does genuinely suck, but it's not evidence of genuine wrongdoing.

People get offended all the time by 'edgy' comedians like Ricky Gervais but this does not prove that Ricky Gervais is a hateful, harmful person. It just means that people interpret his content in a way that does not appeal to them, or that they personally find the subject to too sensitive. This doesn't prove that the content is unappealing to everyone, or genuinely meant to cause harm, however.

You have every right to be offended but this is not evidence for why that content should be abandoned or censored or whittled out of existence. You either need to show that it is unbearably offensive to the majority of users, or you have to show that it is being done intentionally. Otherwise you cannot in any reasonable manner ask for the content to be changed. One lone offended person without evidence cannot reasonably ask to censor content of any kind. You can't expect the world to move around you.

You are not the thought police. Accidental offence is not the same as sexist acts and policies.

There's a big difference between sloppy, lazy, clichéd writing that is offensive to some individuals, and hate-speech that is attempting to demean or incite harm against real people.

Your claim is that this trivialises violence against women. The natural conclusion to this is that trivialising this violence will make it easier for people to justify harming women.

That is an incredibly serious accusation to make. It's not shit you just throw around in a video about video game tropes.

 

[Vegosiux]

The problem is not with the trope itself, with the idea that one character is being kidnapped or murdered, the problem is with how gendered the trope is, and the impact that this genderedness has on the industry and the people who might potentially consume it.

Even that is not a problem. Tropes are tools, no more. The problem is the frequency with which it occurrs, which I agree is too damn high.

There's just a buttload of gendered tropes. Both for male [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysMale] and female [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysFemale] characters, both sympathetic and unsympathetic, and even neutral ones. Now when one of them is used just so often that it steals the stage before the rest of them even got their shoes on, that's a problem, but inherently, in and of themselves, tropes are not bad.

Whether the industry likes it or not, it sends an image to potential consumers. It doesn't matter if that image is intentional or not, or if it's completely innocent, the image still exists and it's still being perceived by society. As an LGBT gamer, I get an image from the industry based on the way it handles LGBT characters (or its lack thereof), and I'm sure the game developers have absolutely nothing against LGBT people, but the image I perceive from them exists whether they like it or not.

My opinion, mind, is that the the state of society reflects in its entertainment, not the other way around. These problems, the problem with this prevalence of damsel in distress, it's not a problem caused by the industry, it's a problem that reflects in the industry, because the state of society says there's nothing "abnormal" about it, and really, DiD is older than dirt. I mean Orpheus had Eurydice (and he also completely failed to save her in the end as I recall).

So, you can't solve this problem if you focus solely on one subset of the entertainment industry. The change has to come from the society. Now of course the two are intertwined, and pointing out the problems in the gaming industry is a way to make the society realize there's something rotten in the land of Denmark, but then the society needs to achieve a paradigm shift for that to change.

Gah, I'm really mincing words here.

 

[JudgeGame]

I think the video is brilliant in its simplicity. Instead of digging deep and constructing a huge argument against these tropes, she just shows how ridiculously prevailing and boring it is. Eventually, everyone has to start asking themselves why every other game has to have a woman as the motivation and why so many people never get tired of it.

And instead of trying to cause a confrontation by taking jabs at how stupid videogames look, she just shows what videogames look like and let's each person make up their own mind.

 

[JudgeGame]

The problem is not with the trope itself, with the idea that one character is being kidnapped or murdered, the problem is with how gendered the trope is, and the impact that this genderedness has on the industry and the people who might potentially consume it.

Even that is not a problem. Tropes are tools, no more. The problem is the frequency with which it occurrs, which I agree is too damn high.

I'd just like to point out that a trope is inherently overused and it doesn't necessarily have to be used as a tool.

 

[Darken12]

Your assertion, Anita's assertion, and that made by many others here, is that this is demeaning real-world victims of violence, by somehow trivialising the issue.

That's doing something to real people. Something harmful - recklessly so, according to Anita.

No. That's where you go off the rails into make-believe land. Nobody is saying that real people are being harmed by the actions of developers. The trivialisation is, at worst, disrespect towards victims of gendered violence. At worst. There is nothing legal about this. People are legally allowed to be disrespectful towards the victims of serious crimes. It's reprehensible, sure, but not illegal. Her point is that violence against women is being used thoughtlessly to advance the narratives of male characters.

You have every right to be offended but this is not evidence for why that content should be abandoned or censored or whittled out of existence. You either need to show that it is unbearably offensive to the majority of users, or you have to show that it is being done intentionally. Otherwise you cannot in any reasonable manner ask for the content to be changed. One lone offended person without evidence cannot reasonably ask to censor content of any kind. You can't expect the world to move around you.

You are not the thought police. Accidental offence is not the same as sexist acts and policies.

Listen very carefully. I have repeatedly stated in this very thread that nobody wants to censor or content-control. Nobody is talking about being the thought police. What Anita is trying to do is to shed light on an issue so that others may decide for themselves if they agree with her or not. You don't agree with her? That's perfectly fine.

Your claim is that this trivialises violence against women. The natural conclusion to this is that trivialising this violence will make it easier for people to justify harming women.

No. That is not what is being concluded. That is not stated or implied at all. Please stop deliberately or inadvertently sensationalising the issue.

 

[Westaway]

Why was this lady given $150,000 to read a TVTropes pages?

Because we wanted to. Frankly, it was our money and we were entitled to fund her cause if we wanted. If you want to be outraged by what people do with *your* money, feel free, but there is absolutely no need to take Anita to task on our behalf. If we feel she's not doing what she said she would, we can tell her ourselves.

Relax, bro. I never said I was outraged- I'm more amused by the whole situation. All I asked was why people thought giving money to a lady to read a TVTropes page was worthwhile.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

And yes, men's lives are portrayed as less important. That's quite obvious by how trivial a man's death is in games compared to a woman's death. (in general)

Well, which mens Life?
The damsel is usually some npc which has emotional worth for the main-charaq If there were a men which were as relevant to him as the damsele the death would not been irrelevant-irrelevant death are the dead enemies which are usually male cuz of the notions(made by largely male writerse programmers etc) that wmen( eg damsel du jour) is pure, nice and lovely and violence and aggression are considered male traits(well exempt fallout and elder scrolls were female baddies exists and i cant remember anita or other to complain bout female raiders or such getting killed in fallout or TES.

But the damseled or killed girlfriend is more often then killed Bro-or, more often the dead father figure which let the hero takes his place or something like that.

So this is again-mostly male victims because women are to nice and weak for being terrorist in fps or such(another counterexample-metal gear solid. Snake kills women-not really considered problematic.

So if we do something agains women=weak&nice, get more women into the army maybe there will be more generic female badredshirts..

 

[generals3]

I think the video is brilliant in its simplicity. Instead of digging deep and constructing a huge argument against these tropes, she just shows how ridiculously prevailing and boring it is. Eventually, everyone has to start asking themselves why every other game has to have a woman as the motivation and why so many people never get tired of it.

And instead of trying to cause a confrontation by taking jabs at how stupid videogames look, she just shows what videogames look like and let's each person make up their own mind.

You would have a point if her video didn't contain silly unfounded claims about the effects of the tropes on society... Or sometimes have some really twisted interpretations, which i could expect Glen Beck to come up with after filling his chalk board, of the tropes. Actually she has proven once more she's either selling propaganda, has been brainwashed to see the world in some very twisted way, has some wires not crossed correctly or has been touched by the patriarchy on the wrong places... Because rationality cannot lead to the crazy interpretations she comes up with.

And the reason why people probably never get tired of it is because they don't care that much about the story. It's just a packaging to give sense to their actions. It's comparable with the 90's action movies with their simplistic stories which can be resumed as "an acceptable reason for the hero to blow stuff up and kill lots of people". And just like the action movie type has evolved into a more story-driven genre (with stories trying to at least appear sophisticated) the game genre will probably follow the same road. And heck who knows Hideo Kojima might even be right and the video game genre and movie genre might someday merge into one. (well not entirely obviously...)

 

[Darken12]

Even that is not a problem. Tropes are tools, no more. The problem is the frequency with which it occurrs, which I agree is too damn high.

Yes, that's the problem. The problem is that the trope is both gendered and overused, leading to an unpalatable image (which is probably completely unintentional, but still exists).

Now of course the two are intertwined, and pointing out the problems in the gaming industry is a way to make the society realize there's something rotten in the land of Denmark, but then the society needs to achieve a paradigm shift for that to change.

I believe that's the idea, yes.

That said, the media (and by extension, art) definitely has the power to inspire members of a society. It has the power to empower them, to make them feel capable and strong, to tell them that their goals can be achieved and that their dreams can be fulfilled. This makes efforts to change media/art very important, because they can generate positive change in society (by inspiring individuals), which in turn can further progress.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

I do think Sarkeesian is doing the right thing here, making a video series that doesn't out-and-out demonize mediums for using tropes like this but going after the tropes themselves, but I do sort of wish that she'd go after more mediums than just video games. Again, games aren't the only perpetrator
s.

Duh..the series is called "Tropes vs Women IN GAMING"
Obviously its about games..this misses the point.
I am sure she will make more stuff about movies and advertising and such if the series is done. But until then, its about t
Bad trope-writing in games...