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

[VondeVon]

Very interesting. I like the point she made about developers being boxed in by their gameplay.

Me too. I hadn't thought of it that way before. Shooting a damsel because she's been half-transformed and I'm too lazy to try science (and also the plot forces me to) has always made me rail at the lack of choice more than anything else.

Her theatrical performance to the bit about Bionic Commando's arm kind of annoyed me, though.

Most male gamers are heterosexual and thus more likely to identify with the pain felt by the loss of a female partner than a male one. That's just marketing (making a story more likely to work with the main demograhic).

Aren't current statistics something close to 50/50 for male and female gamers?

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)

I hadn't seen this sort of notion before, that a woman's suffering/death is considered more emotionally devastating (and thus the woman more valuable) because (shall we say, 'traditionally'?) a heterosexual male will generally value their partner more than anyone or anything else. It does make sense. It's also an interesting point that you'll often see men dying by the bucket loads in games as opposed to women.

This is exactly why I'd like to see something like Anita's show examining what notions games are reinforcing about men as well.

I remember being quite surprised to hear women dying/shouting orders when I was gunning down soldiers in Bioshock Infinite. Partly because I didn't visually notice that they were women prior to opening fire and mostly because it seemed massively out of place in a game set during an age where army-women were permitted to be nurses and clerks at best. But, when considering it in light of your comment, there may have also been some surprise because hearing female enemies die is just plain uncommon. At least, in the games I play.

It does highlight one of the conflict points, though. It might be argued that women are more valued (hence not being canon fodder, or ever put into games as canon fodder) but at the exact same time feminists like Anita are saying 'why'? What makes women so special that they shouldn't be mowed down alongside the men? Why are wives and daughters threatened instead of brothers or sons? (And that being so valued is just a flipside of inequality.)

It's this underlying element whereby women are somehow considered more worthy (or in need of) love/protection than men which is problematic. I think Anita said outright that in isolation, it's not a bad thing at all. Each story makes sense, is rational, isn't anti-female etc. What she's pointing out is that the element is repeated over and over in the industry to the point where it's hard to find a story that doesn't reinforce the message. She's not accusing the industry of being misogynistic either, just thoughtless or lazy when it comes to churning out such stock-standard stories over and over again.

Just watched it. My first thought is that it doesn't need a trigger warning, it needs a damn spoiler warning.

At about 0:27 there's a box in the top left of the screen that warns for spoilers. I always notice that stuff because I hate crap cluttering up my video, but I understand that some people just don't notice that sort of thing and she probably should have added a verbal warning too.

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.

I don't disagree with you, but one of her points is that the industry doesn't do this stuff on purpose. You're absolutely right in that the story isn't about a man saving a woman, it's not about gender. But, it represents the industry default - a male main character who, in the example she showed, was leading the female character by the hand as he charged ahead. Not only could the female apparently not manage to run on her own, but her other hand flaps daintily in the air behind her. Now put a male in her place. If it then feels weird, it's saying something about gender roles.

 

[bafrali]

Well I didn't watch the video as

1. I am familiar with the tropes and do believe that there should be some restructring as far as the treatment of women is concerned and no we can't achieve that by applying role reversal or rule 63 haphazardly in the established franchises.

2. She has that special kind of smug face that says "Punch me" and I value my teeth.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Snip.

Thanks for fleshing out what you meant I understand what people post is their own perspective etc, I was just having trouble understanding yours, since you didn't go into great detail in your first post.

I didn't mean the selection wasn't representative, but that I don't think it's large enough to create a blanket statement about the medium as a whole is all.

The main problem with what she showed, to me, was that she didn't explain the context of most of them. I've played both of The Darkness games and while I could see a little of what she meant, she didn't really give any of the titles the chance to have their reasons shown. Which is unfortunate, because she could have presented some really bad ones, context included and then at least presented one or two in a better light due to how they are handled. Instead we just get a video pointing out this is bad and this, and this, and this one too. With not much of an in depth look as how to improve it or suggest anything helpful at all.

While the video seems to be well researched, and has some great points, I wish she would have spent more time on how these tropes limit males too. Actually, just broaden it to people in general. I do not respect women because "woman-ness" deserves respect. I respect women because they are people, and people deserve respect.

I wish the youtube comments were open, so I could ask her to focus on how these tropes are bad for EVERYONE.

Something i have to say that I fully agree with. I quite often dislike how the male gender is represented too, but since it's made to appeal to the "male power fantasy" and I am male, I'm not allowed to consider it a bad thing for some reason. At least that's what some people give me the impression of.

 

[Worgen]

Also, you apparently didn't watch the end of the video, she actually said the opposite of what your saying at the end and that there isn't a solid link behind this in media and it happening in real life and that there isn't some shadowy cabal trying to only portray women this way. She talks about that about 20:50 in the video.

Yes, she did say that. And then at 21:10 she says "...however, media narratives do have a powerful cultivation effect, helping to shape attitudes and opinions".

She IS drawing a link, no matter how subtle she says the link is.

So in her world it's entirely plausible for a guy to brutalize his girlfriend because subliminally he had been playing videogames where he saw that happening...and I call bullshit, because if he was that kind of guy then something like videogames wouldn't really be the tipping point between him and what he wanted to do. See above example of gun crime.

And if there really ISN'T a solid link, then the primary motivation behind Anita's goals is gone - why should tropes change? "To liven-up storytelling" is hardly a strong leg to stand on, linking it to real-life violence against women is far more attention-grabbing and gives a far more concrete motive behind these videos.

Sounds like your putting words in her mouth. I got that she was saying there is no direct correlation between the two but the constant violence and portrayal of violence against women in things can make it seem more acceptable. Want to know something creepy, for awhile I knew more women who had been sexually assaulted in some way than hadn't, the only reason I say had, is because it hasn't come up in conversation with the one I know now.

 

[dragonswarrior]

I like how the only way the people afraid of these videos can respond is to silence the woman making them.

And folks say that sexism in games and game culture isn't an issue... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

 

[BNguyen]

Well certainly, when a woman turns into a bloodthirsty monster bent on killing everything in her path without a second thought, why not sit down and invite her to tea instead of stopping her in one of the quickest and most humane ways possible given the situation, it's not like the character has some tranquilizer and cure all for the woman's condition.
You might not be able to read that sometimes I get a little bored of the trope, I see why writers can't still use it - in most games where it is used, it works and often times, the woman captive cannot escape her fate because her captor is on a god-like level compared to her, thus she wouldn't be able to escape or fight back so why not rely on somebody that has the means and power to fight for you?
In a lot of the examples she gave, the entire trope could be turned around from mercy killings and heroic rescues to a woman using a man for her benefit such as not lifting a finger to escape or not committing suicide but rather putting murderer on the hero's resume.
Well, whatever. I'm sure my post will be ripped to shreds by somebody on here regardless of what I want to write and what others want me to think, so, flameshield up to full power and prepare for incoming barrage.

 

[Raggedstar]

I was ready to get good and angry about how she might totally gloss over the point in both Ico and SOTC games (whether of her fault or being out of time). Didn't talk a whole lot about Ico directly (though she did say the game was horribly sexist last year in a tweet, while I think there's a whole lot more to it than that), but when she was talking about the damsel in the fridge I knew Shadow of the Colossus was a clear example. Not to mention her followers were wanting her to skewer it (in ways like saying Wander should've been a woman trying to revive her dead boyfriend and how it would be somehow all better outside of superficial, meaningless role reversal). But nope, she didn't. Well played, and I'm intrigued whether it'll show up eventually.

I think SOTC twists the trope in a particularly interesting way that I hope gets mentioned later. I guess the short way of putting it is that Wander's story isn't a power fantasy in the slightest. He has godly wrist strength and a lot of determination, but he's really flawed and human (...and the game's controls are shit). Even when you fight the colossi, he's slow, stumbling, and has a physical limit. His act of killing the colossi is seen as evil (both because of it helping an assumed evil deity and because you kill 16 creatures that weren't doing any harm). Then we get to the implication that Wander is possibly clingy, unaccepting of fate, unable to live without someone, feels little worth of his own life, depressed, unable to cope with guilt, stuff like that. We also don't even have any indication of Mono being a love interest or otherwise "property". A popular fan theory is that Wander was involved in her innocent death and feels guilty enough to go to great lengths to undo it. Wander is beaten, broken, and ultimately doesn't get a happy ending (and is turned into something that is the opposite of power, a child. You can also turn that into a perspective of Wander being reduced to something that NEEDS emotional and physical support to survive). While Mono is "in the fridge" and is there to drive Wander's plot, it doesn't make sense to ignore Wander's plot after all.

Also found it unusual that she didn't mention the ending of God of War and I hope she does at some point. She has said men aren't shown to have debilitating negative traits, yet there he is (...in the first one at least). Kratos is brutal and violent, causes him to accidentally kill his wife and daughter as well as numerous villages and cities, and his way of repenting? KILLING MORE! And his reward? Being miserable for the rest of his (now immortal) life for being such a violent git. The point that the game tried to hammer home is that violent revenge quests don't make you feel better or undo all the horrible things you did. It's a flawed execution, but it's still worthy of mention at some point if we're talking about gender characteristics in media.

EDIT: This is my 333rd post. Am I a bad person for giggling at that idea that I get #333 in THIS of all threads because it looks like 3 pairs of boobs or bum-cheeks?
I'm also a woman

 

[Vegosiux]

I like how the only way the people afraid of these videos can respond is to silence the woman making them.

And folks say that sexism in games and game culture isn't an issue... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

That's, um, okay, that you like that, I suppose?

What did you think about the actual video though, and the responses around here, because, for the life of me, I didn't see anyone try to silence her in this thread...?

 

[vortexgods]

It seems like the point of Shadows of the Damned was completely missed. suda expects people to read between the lines, and it's not exactly subtle. I mean the subtext isn't exactly well hidden.

Spoiler

Garcia is a needy, codependent man who puts up a lot of macho posturing but is totally under the thumb of his abusive, self-destructive girlfriend. Much like the intimate partner of any addict, he rails with hatred at the demons who are controlling his girlfriend, only to find out that she is really destroying herself (which he decides he can't handle as soon as he figures it out, goes back to being an enabler who pretends everything is just fine and who has to put up with her stabbing him occasionally). It's a metaphor for anyone who has been in love with an alcoholic, a drug addict, or a compulsive gambler.

If this were spelled out any further, it would have to be some clunky dream narrative where it turns out the demons represent the narcotics Paula is abusing and would show just how needy, dependent and enabling Garcia is. Suda, however, expects people to get his metaphors without such clunky hand holding.

Now, it's not my favorite Suda game, but I thought this was so obvious not to need an explanation.

However, I reckoned without Sarkeesian.

In the future, games like Shadows of the Damned, will need to have Johnson turn directly to the camera and say things like, "Winners don't use drugs" and say, "If a loved one is in the grip of drug addiction, please seek help from your local Narcotics Anonymous group."

 

[LAGG]

Video is full of spoilers for many titles...

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

I've noticed something weird: the universe doesn't alter itself to make what I think less correct when I casually insult someone. Freaky, right?

What you mean like ignoring what I said, doesn't make what I said wrong? You're still using an "ad hominem" fallacy witch doesn't help your point at all. And your still being confrontational witch causes people to become stronger in there options. So at best you're not helping and at worst you're a causing harm to your own cause.

You're correct to say it doesn't make you any less right, but your not demonstrating your right with ad hominem attacks.

What on earth are you talking about? A fallacy is a mistake in logic. Ad hominem is only a fallacy if I say someone's argument is wrong BECAUSE they are stupid. It's not a fallacy if I infer that someone is stupid BECAUSE of something they say. The second case would just be drawing conclusions on someone based on their actions, which in many cases is valid.

Second, why should it not help my case if I'm just as likely to be correct while being confrontational as if I were not? It should only matter if you can't follow an argument and are easily swayed by rhetoric.

Edit: Anyway, 'which' doesn't have a t.

 

[anthony87]

Oh yay, bunch of trolls get the videos taken down and instead of some people thinking "Dem trolls" we've got some people thinking "Sexist people are trying to silence her, therefore she must be right!".

Anyways, I don't suppose someone could be kind enough to mention exactly what games she spoils? I'd hate to have something spoiled that I've yet to play.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

She seems like she pulled the stick out of her ass a bit in this one. She's taken a lot of opposing opinions into account, and adresses (and sometimes even to some extent agrees with) them. I'm not sure if it was lip service or not when she said that games with (what she views to be) sexist themes aren't part of a propaganda war waged by the patriarchy, but hey at least it was in there.

Anyways, I think naturally I'm going to fundamentally disagree with what she thinks because I like to view games as art, and I don't think it's in the best interest of artistic integrity to start drawing narrative boundaries to soullessly try to represent and pander to everyone equally. That said, a lot of what she says isn't necessarily wrong, I just don't agree with her in the significance of it.

The key thing I disagreed with in this is where she says something like "when taking into account the full context of the narrative some of these might make perfect sense, but that doesn't change anything." Yes it does. Maybe not for, say, princess peach, but for Angel?

Spoiler: Borderlands 2 spoiler

The vindictive daughter of the main bad guy who fully orchestrates his downfall by manipulating both him and the main characters and is so determined that she's even willing to die for it is a character that Anita considers helpless and disempowered?

I don't buy it. If a character only does one thing, yes you can define that character by that one thing. In cases of more complex storytelling taking ALL of a character's defining traits and actions into account is important. If you only take one facet of something that you're analyzing into account, it makes you a bad analyst.

 

[Vegosiux]

Second, why should it not help my case if I'm just as likely to be correct while being confrontational as if I were not? It should only matter if you can't follow an argument and are easily swayed by rhetoric.

Well, before someone considers what you said, it's important that they want to consider it. If you are too confrontational, you simply put people off, fact of life. Your chances will be better if you come across as someone people like to listen to. Of course, there's no obligation for you to not be confrontational, but not being confrontational when trying to make someone else see your point is the smart thing to do, since it's smart to do anything that will make it more likely that whoever you're talking to will take your position into consideration. On the other hand, belittling them makes it less likely that they will listen to you.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

Anyways, I think naturally I'm going to fundamentally disagree with what she thinks because I like to view games as art, and I don't think it's in the best interest of artistic integrity to start drawing narrative boundaries to soullessly try to represent and pander to everyone equally. That said, a lot of what she says isn't necessarily wrong, I just don't agree with her in the significance of it.

I view games as art, therefore I think games should be open to criticism, like all art is. Anita isn't running for dictator of Earth. She is a feminist critic, who is providing speech in the form of criticism to people who play games as well as make them. In feminist theory there is something called dedoxifying: it basically means that if you can point out naturalized oppression and make people aware of it, then it loses some of its power. Oppression works when people believe that it has to work that way.

What she said isn't lip service. The problem isn't that any one game is sexist patriarchal propaganda. The problem is game developers can't help but imagine women in roles like these. They're as stuck in this mess as the society they're surrounded in. The problem is they're also the ones with the power to present different roles and stories to the public imagination.

If you believe that games can be art, then you should believe that art can be more than artifice.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

Second, why should it not help my case if I'm just as likely to be correct while being confrontational as if I were not? It should only matter if you can't follow an argument and are easily swayed by rhetoric.

Well, before someone considers what you said, it's important that they want to consider it. If you are too confrontational, you simply put people off, fact of life. Your chances will be better if you come across as someone people like to listen to. Of course, there's no obligation for you to not be confrontational, but not being confrontational when trying to make someone else see your point is the smart thing to do, since it's smart to do anything that will make it more likely that whoever you're talking to will take your position into consideration. On the other hand, belittling them makes it less likely that they will listen to you.

There are plenty of underhanded ways to persuade people. Personally, I'd rather be an asshole than a sycophant, so long as it allows me to be honest.

Besides, I've already got you to believe that I'd be right regardless of whether I'm an asshole. That proves that I can convey information and change attitudes while still being an asshole. All you're stuck on now is a minor quibble on whether I can convince people while I'm an asshole (and I seem to have done so, so fuck it).

 

[LetalisK]

I think in reality the majority of them were AAA games, and really the writing in those games are just considered to be shit in general, not just when it comes to women. People may praise those games, but it's not usually for the story, it's more about the gameplay.

Ok let me think. Well there's Mass Effect, Fallout, Skyrim, the Walking Dead (I guess you could count Clementine but I let her off the hook on account of being nine) the Halo games, the two Bioshock games, Persona 4, my friend has been showing me Suikoden II and so far I haven't seen anything like that there. It's funny because most of these games (I said most Skyrim) are the ones that tended to get praised for stories. Really I think the problem is less that there's a stigma against women in the industry (Although that one Jim episode showed that that IS a problem) I think it's just more of a problem of video games still being only a couple of decades old and many developers are still learning to write good stories. I don't like the Damsel in Distress trope either, but not because it's misogynistic. It's just plain lazy. I'm sure a talented writer could pull it off in an interesting way, but most AAA game writers kinda phone it in.

I would concur with Walking Dead, but it's still possible for a nine year old to be a damsel in distress. Rather, I don't think she qualifies because she is a very fleshed out character with agency and isn't just there to provide motivation. Even if she didn't exist, there would still be lots of motivation for Lee within the story, her existence simply adds a new layer of depth to the story. As for Bioshock, I would disagree. The Big Daddy - Little Sister relationship is the quintessential damsel in distress trope and almost makes me think it's intentional so as to be a commentary on the large, grunting, unquestioning, faceless protector(the protagonist in many games) - weak female dynamic that seems to be accepted as sensible by default(which seems even more likely considering the game's twist). (Edit: Snipped because I got my tropes, or themes or whatever, mixed up) I think Bioshock 2 tried to develop more with the unquestioning protector and weak female dynamic, but I don't think it was handled well. Mind you, I'm not saying it's bad that they employed the trope. Even if it wasn't their intention to add a level of commentary to the game via the trope, there are only so many hours in a day and sometimes you need to just settle with "Because" so you can move the story along.

My biggest criticism of Anita'a work comes from that last sentence, actually. She sees the DiD trope being born mostly out of casual misogyny, I see it being born mostly out of a mixture of tradition and, like you said, sometimes laziness. Back in the ye olde days of games, you didn't have a whole lot of time or resources, if any at all, to set up an epic story with intricate and involved backdrops and motivations. You had to get up and go, thus enter the quick fix of DiD. Those making games today are those that grew up with those older games and DiD is what they know. The good developers expand beyond it and explore other things while other ones simply stick with what they know or just don't want to devote resources to it. From my perspective, I see less and less of blatant DiD as the years go by as the writing ability of game companies gets more and more sophisticated.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Her videos are bad in that "No good for anything" way, but I love to watch the response videos to her tripe. Those are funny as fuck.


I feel like pointing out, she's not wrong... she's just stupid.

 

[Zaire_Zero]

I dunno. One thing I felt uncertain about was the idea that they're more desirable because they're disempowered. Like they're sexier by being locked up. And I was always neutral about it because I understood early games needed to set arbitrary goals for conflict. And at some point I can sympathize with saving a person's life... She could've been my sister or mother I had no context for Pauline actually it's kind of funny in retrospect(I probably just have issues?
She mentions it's important to enjoy these works but still think about them critically but I still feel like she paints games in a bad light even like how she singled out Faith and Jade as like the only two good female protagonists but I feel like femshep and player created female characters are ignored entirely. I dunno. I've tried and failed to say this before but it's the presentation of the message I've always taken issue with. I mean like, I've seen this with the amazing atheist and the vlog brothers alike, where sometimes they get "too passionate" and or sometimes angry or serious and emotionally close to the material at hand creating a fundamental and undefinable bias that borderlines sensationalism. The same reason I feel like she get's this wrong is the same reason there's so much backlash against her even. People favor idealising their nostalgia and this threatens that picture perfect innocence. And somehow I feel like it's that innocence and purity of the nostalgia, like mario doesn't have to be a part of this discussion because it's mario and it's an exception, an anomaly of popular culture and is thus exempt from critical analysis. But I feel like that's true more because there's nothing really critical to analyze.
So I'm not saying she has no point, there's kind of no denying it, that's one of the things that I felt a little annoyed by but I guess her audience is larger than just us, but I feel like saying "thanks captain obvious." But I want less sensationalist montages and warnings for the children. I feel like at the end of the day she wants to create change. And people are typically resistant to change. However the trick here is discerning the type of change and just how much change she'll actually make if any. (of that type...) If she's shooting for awareness, she's got that. If she want's the game industry to change, that's like throwing sand at a boulder. And again what type of change. Is she want's peach in overalls I'm not so sure that's going to happen. If she want's to see more games with female protagonists well, she's welcome to kick start them herself. If she wants no more damsels, well, there's too much deep human psychology to be found in saving women and that's never going to change, never mind those concepts individually. I honestly don't feel like it's bad in the wrong hands, and it goes back to the disempowerment and objectification. But again, when you're trapped there's not much you can do, and I'm all for saving lives as an objective, and if that's a female I'm emotionally connected to; this does make for an extra emotionally potent motivation? Right? I can follow that train of thought... But I really want to stress that doesn't, or rather shouldn't make the person more attractive sexually. Peach being in a tower doesn't fetishize anything, but I'd still rather she's not in the tower and it's not like Luigi or Bowser are going to do it for you. But it is worth saying this has happened and happened wrongly, like that star fox moment was really freaking painful. And I guess it is worth looking at this to know how to avoid it but I don't quite feel like that's how the information is being presented, just my take away. Again. I just feel like she's talking down to me, and I feel degraded listening to her, like she knew all of those trolls would watch so she's got this annoying smug arrogance that I can't help but pick up on I mean I love these messages so much I just fucking hate the messenger. Or the Woman in the refrigerator bit; I think I'd be fine if it was just the "person in the refrigerator" But the "no one in the refrigerator" killing off a partner in deliberate intentional hands could be a powerful and defining moment of a character and their arch regardless of where it is. It doesn't matter if that's the hook, or the grand finale, both would work; it is the plot it doesn't exist "only there to move the plot along" And it'd work just fine with the roles reversed. "Your husband is brutally murdered and you have to rescue your son." Well goddammit at least he died like a real man. And I would like to see that, and again, she's right about the over saturation, but I get mad at something when I head "and brutally murdered" like a broken record for that long. I just.
GAH.
IT's like Hank said. Anger feeds only more anger. And I'm just bored with her one sided "discussion" it's still "entertainment" and I can "analyze it critically" as much as I want.