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

[generals3]

I've never played the MGS series besides a long time ago when I was younger and I don't remember it much besides the camera alarm sound, so I can't really speak to this example. However, it's a side-topic, but would you recommend the MGS series for play today? Do all the games hold up or are there some that should be skipped?

Also, as far as this particular trope not being used, I would put up the Mass Effect series, which I have the feeling is going to cause consternation among some simply because it's Mass Effect, but since I'm about to go do laundry and go running, I'll get more into it when I get back. To give a short synopsis, I find that the games do some things that appear to be damsel in distressy, but either it's just a facade or it slips in and out of it in a way that makes it so it's not really being used as a trope.

Well being a huge MGS fan i'd say, off course it's worth. But more objectively it depends. If you like 3rd person shooters with stealth elements and don't mind spending half your time watching cutscenes or listening to codec conversations than definitely. Otherwise maybe not. Personally i loved them all and playing them all actually increases the joy (to have a full grasp of the sometimes insanely complex story). I'd suggest to start with MGS3 though (my favorite but also the one which story-wise happens first (with the exceptions of the PSP MGS's and the two Metal Gears).

 

[blackdwarf]

This video was a improvement compared to the first, because she gave better and more recent examples of her points. Although she has a point overall, there is still a lot I disagree with.

I find the idea of tropes really shortsighted, because they only look for parts of a certain trope, but don't consider the whole context of the game. Yeah, there is a moment in the game where the female character is captured and imprisoned for awhile, so this game has the damsel trope. Doesn't matter the female character is awesome the rest of the game or making the choices herself, the points of the trope are present and tropes are bad!

I also find that some examples are more based of upon her interpretation of a situation, which she pushes forward as the way it is meant to be interpreted. Max Payne is crying about the lost if his family, which happened to be both female, and is beating himself up because he couldn't perform according social-norm of protecting his female companions in life? Why would he think that? I see it more as hating the fact he lost his family. Like he is really the character that cares what society thinks about him.

And lastly I find the "violence against women" issue too easily used. I find it a bit double standard of saying that the social norm of male protecting wife is weakening the female image, but at the same time saying that violence against women is wrong just because they are female. AND I WANT TO MAKE CLEAR THAT AGREE WITH BOTH THESE SOCIAL NORMS MENTIONED, but you shouldn't use it as a argument then, especially if you act all knowing about it. and again, once any form of violence is used against a character that happens to be female, suddenly it is wrong, even though their gender can be completely irrelevant to the reason of the violence.

 

[The Lyre]

First off, the whole flagging thing is nothing new, on either side of the issue. The whole Feminism vs MRA thing is particularly rife with this - people who are seen as radicals of either side frequently have their videos flagged for inciting hatred or, even more bizarrely, privacy violations, but it happens to pretty much every channel that discusses gender issues at some point - they're always doing it to each other.

Related to the video, I'm still really confused by this woman's views;

Spoiler: Rather long, spoiler'd to save thread space

She doesn't seem to understand why a game series called Max Payne is about the life of Max Payne, from the point of view of Max Payne. She frequently points out how supporting characters are merely used as tools to move the plot along for the sake of the protagonist or main cast, but I fail to see how this isn't true of every story ever written - this isn't specific to gender; the supporting cast, the setting and any events that occur within that setting are all there to frame the narrative of the main cast, to act as catalysts that move that main plot onwards.

If her problem is that, in her opinion, secondary characters die too often or are killed in cheap, obvious ways, then isn't her problem with bad writing in general - why is it so specific to female characters dying? Just looking at my shelves, I'm pretty damn confident that more male supporting characters die per game/movie/novel/comic than female supporting characters, so why is cheaply killing characters for plot development specifically misogynist, rather than simply bad writing?

Furthermore, on a more fundamental level - what does any of this have to do with women?

I'm seriously asking this, I'm not trying to be idiotic, or ironic; since when did fictional characters represent an entire gender in the real world?

When did this happen? When did Peach suddenly become the official videogame-realworld ambassador for females everywhere? Does Kratos now represent my gender, too? I don't want Kratos as my ambassador, can I have a new one? Since when did fictional characters - pixels on a monitor, no less - suddenly become representative of over half of the human race?

When women are killed by demons or men are killed by xenomorphs, I do not immediately think to myself "Yes, this is how the world works. This is what actually happens. This is what is supposed to happen This is how the developer wants me to see humanity, myself, and the world in general."

I just find this whole thing so confusing. I understand and agree that many of these examples display cheap, obvious cliches, even outright bad writing in some cases, but I don't understand why that means video game developers secretly want me to hate women. In most of these games the male protagonists are just as vapid, shallow and meaningless as the supporting cast, but I don't take that to mean that as a man, I am being called vapid, shallow, and meaningless.

Individuals in real life do not represent genders. Why are fictional individuals now representatives of our genders?

Edit; watched the last five minutes of the video. She claims to be aware of the fact that the huge majority of humans do not replicate immoral acts they see on television or in video games.
She then says that it's going to make men aggressive and dominant anyway because there's a lot of it. Okay.

She also says that male characters are sad when female characters die because the men see the dead women as possessions wrongfully taken from them and this means that they are not masculine and must get their masculinity back by killing things.

So, don't worry, I get it now - this woman is a sociopath.

 

[LetalisK]

I've never played the MGS series besides a long time ago when I was younger and I don't remember it much besides the camera alarm sound, so I can't really speak to this example. However, it's a side-topic, but would you recommend the MGS series for play today? Do all the games hold up or are there some that should be skipped?

Also, as far as this particular trope not being used, I would put up the Mass Effect series, which I have the feeling is going to cause consternation among some simply because it's Mass Effect, but since I'm about to go do laundry and go running, I'll get more into it when I get back. To give a short synopsis, I find that the games do some things that appear to be damsel in distressy, but either it's just a facade or it slips in and out of it in a way that makes it so it's not really being used as a trope.

Well being a huge MGS fan i'd say, off course it's worth. But more objectively it depends. If you like 3rd person shooters with stealth elements and don't mind spending half your time watching cutscenes or listening to codec conversations than definitely. Otherwise maybe not. Personally i loved them all and playing them all actually increases the joy (to have a full grasp of the sometimes insanely complex story). I'd suggest to start with MGS3 though (my favorite but also the one which story-wise happens first (with the exceptions of the PSP MGS's and the two Metal Gears).

I generally enjoy stealth games like Splinter Cell, Thief, etc and tend to play games as a stealthy and/or long range sniper-like characters if given the chance, ie Alpha Protocol, Hitman series, Dishonored, etc. Though I couldn't make it through Mark of the Ninja, I just didn't enjoy it. I might give it a second chance, though.

In an amendment to my previous post, I'll throw out that I'll address Mass Effect if anyone cares, and it may not be a controversial opinion that Mass Effect doesn't cow-tow to the DiD trope. I'll think of some more games on my run.

 

[Auron]

She criticises that many video game damsels aren't real female characters in a meaningful sense, they're just stereotyped and two-dimensonal caricatures of femininity that serve as a plot device. I agree. But this also holds true for the male characters, often including the damn protagonist. Video games, especially FPS and action ones, aren't known for their intelligently and meaningfully-developed characters. Surely a "lifelong video game buff" like Sarkeesian realises this?

Publicly admitting to that would undermine her meaningless campaign she would never do that, male characters don't require a debate because they're all awesome and that's it.

The ad-hoc suggestion that violence against women in games is in any way linked to domestic abuse is a cheap shot and needs a huge *CITATION REQUIRED* sign in flashing neon. I could use the same shitty logic to tar a genre with real-world grime to support an agenda. Watch:

The GTA series has sold nearly 100 million games[footnote]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_%28series%29#Sales[/footnote] (look, I'm citing my sources and everything, that makes me a respected academic, right?). These games glorify car chases, speeding in urban areas and vehicular destruction. Every 30 seconds, somebody is killed in a road traffic accident[footnote]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate[/footnote]. Is this OK? Is this amusing entertainment? We feminists condemn this "Automobile death culture" and encourage games that promote safe driving, following traffic signals, and maybe even exploring non-vehicular modes of transport. Here's a great indie game about walking on a sidewalk and only crossing the street at designated crossing points, doesn't it look fun! I wouldn't know as I haven't played the cruddy thing, but neither have 99% of my viewership so nobody will call me out on it. Oh yeah, here's the donate button, peace out motherf*ckers, see you in another two months.

Couldn't be more right.

She calls the damsel trope an "easy default motivation" for the male protagonist. Yes, that's exactly what it is. However I don't agree with her conclusion that this taps into the male player's "desire" to possess, control, beat up or otherwise Patriarchally oppress women - isn't it more reasonable to think that maybe it provides the protagonist with a context for embarking on the perilous adventure (because caring about and wanting to protect your loved ones is, y'know, quite admirable) and handily demarcates the villain (because kidnap and murder are quite clearly bad things to do).

Modern relativism allows her to analyse the situation from her own point of view and background which apparently relates everything to power struggles and rape. It's the rational individual's responsibility to call her out on that or just not care about it, either would do. Sadly the people who disagree with her point of view are all branded senseless haters and the ones who agree throw money at her on kickstarter so she got two awesome incentives to keep doing it, sticking it to the men everywhere while profitting sounds awesome. She chooses to showcase as "anti-feminist" tropes many story elements that from my point of view are timeless conventions of fantasy storytelling for a variety of historical reasons that should be studied and understood instead of demonized for example. The only really valid point she has by now is about female characters with no depth but like you pointed out it holds pretty strongly for male characters as well, but she would never notice that.

That said, considering the amount of devotion this topic gets over here, shouldn't it be in religion and politics by now? Or perhaps we need a forum just for feminism threads.

 

[ShiningAmber]

I thought it was well done.

Bring on the raging males.

 

[Commissar Sae]

She did a much better job with this video than what we saw in the last one and her usual videos. She clearly put a lot of thought into it and did her research well, exploring several facets and interpretations of the trope. While it isn't perfect it does show quite a bit of promise.

I honestly think a lot of the "damsel in distress" trope comes down to lazy writing, but as a character motivation it is time honoured.

 

[Raioken18]

Tag, I'll watch this later and make my own judgement. But from what I've heard so far it sounds like it could be interesting. I'm interested in this topic because I have a hobby of drawing manga and I'm wondering if there is a way to depict women in the "Correct" way without it seeming unnatural or forced. Recently I quite enjoyed Attack on Titan's (It's an anime) depiction of women though it did have a moment where the heroine needed to be saved, but... she wasn't defined by that moment, and subsequently kicked ass.

I suppose that's the thing I fail to understand about some of the examples from the first video, it took single moments and defined characters entirely by those moments and not as a whole. Anyway when I get time to watch this vid I shall, though I would love if we only had a single thread about it this time...

 

[Yuuki]

Ah, so finally she progresses past just pointing-out tropes and actually tries to give a reason as to WHY these tropes should change - because violence against women happens in real-life, and video games aren't helping the situation so it's a developers' responsibility to make sure that they don't keep following the trope otherwise...they'll make...real life violence...worse...?

Am I getting that correctly??

Because I'm not really bothered by any of these tropes since they exist to serve an audience which (overall) seems to respond well to such a thing, and more importantly they're entirely fictional. If the Damsel In Distress trope is really supposed to be a relic of the past and is perpetuating violence against women in real life (I know, bear with me), then why is it still working for the industry? How are games that use that trope even remotely capable of getting positive reviews and positive feedback?

Otherwise said tropes would've never even exist in the first place, creators/developers aren't going to repeatedly keep using something that doesn't WORK (logical, duh). Proof is in the pudding.

Also a huge number of games today actually don't follow any of these formulae so before someone comes along and says "but EVERY game is like that!!", come out of your cave, these games are not as common as Anita has you think. Look up the last 100 games released across all platforms if you want, I'm willing to bet the majority of them are free of these tropes which means developers ARE trying different shit.

Also, incoming 20-page thread, heeeeere we go!

She isn't wrong about things, I mean women are almost entirely used for motivation in games.

Urgh, it's like people are only just realizing this. See above, I'm well past the "realization" stage

 

[Worgen]

She isn't wrong about things, I mean women are almost entirely used for motivation in games.

 

[Worgen]

She isn't wrong about things, I mean women are almost entirely used for motivation in games.

You might want to rethink that statement. I mean the sheer of games I and many others could mention could just BURY your opinion.

Also that's a very heavy handed statement as well because you can just expand it to be people are almost entirely used for motivation in games. And that's exactly a bad think how? I mean that is how ART works. People are motivated by other people and actually act upon it. People are motivated all the time by their loved ones for good or even for ill.

Also rhoro lazer boom? Really captcha?

I don't think I need to, it seems like if a woman is characterized in a game she will most likely need to be saved at some point or be killed to show that 'Oh SHIT, THINGS JUST GOT REEEEAAAAAALLLLL.'

 

[Yuuki]

She isn't wrong about things, I mean women are almost entirely used for motivation in games.

c

You might want to rethink that statement. I mean the sheer of games I and many others could mention could just BURY your opinion.

Also that's a very heavy handed statement as well because you can just expand it to be people are almost entirely used for motivation in games. And that's exactly a bad think how? I mean that is how ART works. People are motivated by other people and actually act upon it. People are motivated all the time by their loved ones for good or even for ill.

Also rhoro lazer boom? Really captcha?

I don't think I need to, it seems like if a woman is charaterized in a game she will most likely need to be saved at some point or be killed to show that 'Oh SHIT, THINGS JUST GOT REEEEAAAAAALLLLL.'

Did you actually read his post

He's pointing out that the proportion of games that have that happening only make up a small fraction of games overall, (look up the last 100 games released, tell me what you see), and also that there is nothing inherently "evil" about using females as a plot device in fantasy/fiction because it if were really such a wrong thing then there wouldn't be such a huge market existing for them.

And before some twat brings up "well the heroin market is pretty huge and that's evil", I meant a completely harmless market based on fiction where people purely have a choice whether or not to buy the product and don't murder each other over it.

The primary drives behind Anita's stuff has finally been uncovered as:

> Storytelling in games is getting stale (yes and no, firstly games have never been good at telling stories so developers need to get over that hurdle first, secondly using tropes is only a tiny part of storytelling)

> It is linked to violence against women in real life and developers should feel somewhat responsible when they make a game that features such a thing happening (LOL nice proof you have there Anita of how gaming and domestic violence/rape against women is related...oh wait...yeah, feel free to join the tinfoil-hat wearing club that also said first person shooters are responsible for gun crime)

 

[Caiphus]

Was watching the video, not really affected by it; I don't think I've played a single game in this video (aside from To The Moon, which she covered favourably so yay)... Which probably shows how much of a gamer I am.

She then brought it all together at arooound 18:30 and I was impressed.
So yeah, good video.
And a lot more modern and relevant than the last one. So yeah.

I don't think the games themselves encourage violence against women; they're probably a symptom/indication of the bigger picture of society. But that was probably half of her point anyway.

Using violence for reward/progression is probably the closest she gets to showing that it might support real life violence, but hmmm. It's a bit of a tough row to hoe. I don't think that the guys who hit their wives do it because they played Pandora's Tower. But there is absolutely a significant segment of the population that believes that violence is a justifiable response to someone annoying or disobeying you. So it does reflect society in that way.

Most of those stories do seem just lamentably lazily written though. I don't really get the feeling that the writers were misogynistic in the sense that they wanted to shoehorn in violence against women any way possible, but that it was 4:30 and they wanted to figure out how to get an emotional response from a male gamer before they left the office.

 

[Silvanus]

She brings up some good points, & she backs them up.


That said, I didn't like her use of ICO as an example. ICO isn't about a man saving a woman, and it's certainly not a male power fantasy. It's about two children escaping from their prison. The fact that they are children is so much more important, thematically, than the gender of the hero.

 

[aguspal]

it seems once again the comments have been disabled on this new video too.

So the ONE interesting part is removed?

Thats it, I officially have nothing to do with this random woman. I thougt she might had a chance. But I guess not.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

But more than anything, these videos are really valuable to me, because they do a great job, with so much footage, of confirming my suspicion that almost all video games made in the last decade or so are just really disturbing ugly things populated with freak show characters unworthy of even a split second of your time. It would be nice if so many man hours and money could be put to better use than this (making and marketing these games.)

Almost all in the last decade? She shows maybe two dozen games and that represents a decades worth of titles? Almost all being "disturbing ugly things populated with freak show characters" and all it took was one 25 minute video to convince you this is true.

So basically, it boils down to the fact that you don't like games like this, so none like it should be made, put the money to "better" use.

While I don't think using the trope is always a bad thing, this doesn't mean everything that does is evil. That would be a very closed minded way to think as well.