Tropes vs Women SECOND VIDEO - "Damsel in Distress: Part 2"
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I'm not terribly impressed with the naming of her own tropes, or the lack of citations for her statistics (regardless of how accurate they may or may not be). She has a nasty habit of making good points and not refuting the counter-argument, such as how video games do not exist within a vacuum. Of course they don't! They are media to be consumed for entertainment, just as books, movies, and television are. We could all argue whether or not art imitates life (or vice versa) until the cows not only come home, but they are turned into all-beef patties. What she blatantly ignores is how video games are an interactive media, and not a passive one. The introspection often found in "art house" films or typical Oscar contenders just wouldn't cut it in a media dependent on players pressing buttons to make the game do something.
To quote civil-rights activist Audre Lorde, "There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt." Tropes such as the DiD are ancient. They resonate with us on a level we, as a people, can't quite comprehend. Is it old? Yes. Tired? Definitely. Does any of this matter so long as it serves the overall narrative? Heck no. I don't mind that Kratos murdered his wife and daughter because the same thing happened to Heracles, and both were punished by the Gods as a result. In the end, both still elevated themselves to heroes by gaining kleos, and eventually reached godhood. I don't play God of War for romance or deep characterization (that's what Catherine is for); I play it because the guy on the cover is a big enough badass to give Ares a run for his drachma.
What miss Sarkeesian fails to realize is that video games are only a medium. They are easily subdivided into varying genres, each subject to their own tropes. Many of those genres are also found in other media, such as Noir crime films and novels. I'm not sure there's enough time or people to find all of the detrimental portrayals of women (and men) in all the dime-store novels published over the years, but I'd bet dollars to donuts they far outweigh those found in video games. Even if we just compared the past 30 years, I wouldn't be surprised if they still managed to beat out video games.
It's just sad that someone with her intelligence doesn't realize most people can differentiate between fiction and reality. As a rational adult, I know action scenes and motivations for John McClain in Die Hard are unrealistic. I still watch it every Christmas because, well, it's a Christmas movie. As I stated before, it's all entertainment; and the developers and publishers know this. They design and market everything right down to the box art. Authors and play/screenwriters, distributors and studios, they're all guilty of it.
At the end of the day, all we've ever done is judge a book by its cover.
To quote civil-rights activist Audre Lorde, "There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt." Tropes such as the DiD are ancient. They resonate with us on a level we, as a people, can't quite comprehend. Is it old? Yes. Tired? Definitely. Does any of this matter so long as it serves the overall narrative? Heck no. I don't mind that Kratos murdered his wife and daughter because the same thing happened to Heracles, and both were punished by the Gods as a result. In the end, both still elevated themselves to heroes by gaining kleos, and eventually reached godhood. I don't play God of War for romance or deep characterization (that's what Catherine is for); I play it because the guy on the cover is a big enough badass to give Ares a run for his drachma.
What miss Sarkeesian fails to realize is that video games are only a medium. They are easily subdivided into varying genres, each subject to their own tropes. Many of those genres are also found in other media, such as Noir crime films and novels. I'm not sure there's enough time or people to find all of the detrimental portrayals of women (and men) in all the dime-store novels published over the years, but I'd bet dollars to donuts they far outweigh those found in video games. Even if we just compared the past 30 years, I wouldn't be surprised if they still managed to beat out video games.
It's just sad that someone with her intelligence doesn't realize most people can differentiate between fiction and reality. As a rational adult, I know action scenes and motivations for John McClain in Die Hard are unrealistic. I still watch it every Christmas because, well, it's a Christmas movie. As I stated before, it's all entertainment; and the developers and publishers know this. They design and market everything right down to the box art. Authors and play/screenwriters, distributors and studios, they're all guilty of it.
At the end of the day, all we've ever done is judge a book by its cover.
Except the point she's making is that it's not completely harmless, because it potentially affects some of the social values that people might acquire. Yeah, I know it's a first world problem, but assuming that because there's no physical harm being done to anyone that a market must clearly be self-regulating for only good issues strikes me as a little naive.Yuuki said:
But congratulations for snaring me in the trap, nonetheless. I had a good laugh when I realised I missed that part of your post.
If you don't mean it as a Ad hominem then I have to wonder why you put it in? Just to be a dick? Well that's not helpful at all. It's needless and only serves to divide.ThrobbingEgo said:
Second It's something called a bias. If you attack someone flat out by insulting them they are more likely to hold to the original belief. I want to say it's the "backfire effect" although I am not sure. Simply put people are swayed by rhetoric. Should they be? Irrelevant they are.
Look if it's working for you fine you can continue to act how you will. But I am willing to guess you are causing more harm then good.
Except this third part will be about female characters that subvert the trope, and she has mentioned that these tropes don't carry across every game ever, and the fact that violence towards women in of itself in games isn't the issue; rather its the context as a plot device and the underlying things it suggests. Not only that, but she did state how some of these tropes also depict negative connotations towards men.Tenmar said:
Anyway, I'm enjoying these so far. Can't wait for the third one.
Great, at least the "villain status" of those disputing her narrative has been reduced from "bloodthirsty woman-haters" to "know-it-alls". I suppose that's at least some progress in crushing this annoying polarization thing that has been going on around the topic.Mick P. said:
Still, if "insights and solutions" aren't the point of her videos, what is? I mean, isn't it the point of documentaries generally to at least provide new insights? I'm not going to get into that "indisputable narrative" thing, because you can't know anything is indestructible before you've done your damnest to destroy it, basically.
That's something that was promised for the second part (this one), actually, so I won't hold my breath. But, well I did say this is less "part 2" than it is "part 1, v2.0", on the other hand...Voulan said:
Well i watched the vid and here's what i thoughts; Beginning was benign and a bit bland, middle was a tad odd (it felt less like reason and more like condemnation, especially when she tries to be snarky at that one point), and the end brought it to a satisfying conclusion. She makes valid points, and provides a host of examples to reiterate her point (i enjoyed the use of repetition. It was actually kind of funny). Her videos are a nice sum of to everyone else's points in this topic (becuase i feel like she doesn't add new information to a topic that has already been beaten to a pulp by many before her). It puts a lot of good points in one place to mull over, and her third part seems promising. One thing a lot of Anita's other videos lack is a positive example..... That and im a bit of a governor Marley Fan =)
No. No no no no no. I call false equivalency, false equivalency. You can't just go and compare a trope in a creative medium to the selling and owning of Human beings. They're two different things.Shamanic Rhythm said:
Watching this video I get the impression she just now noticed the mainstream videogame industry is just a bunch of lazy hacks who keep churning out the same cliche stories over and over to show off their new shiny graphics engines.
As a side note, I kind of object to bringing up any individual from Psychonauts as 'giving a damsel in distress characterization doesn't make them better'. *EVERYONE* in that game got abducted. the girls, the boys, the ultra badass teaching staff...the game wasn't singling out a woman/women for distressing.
As a side note, I kind of object to bringing up any individual from Psychonauts as 'giving a damsel in distress characterization doesn't make them better'. *EVERYONE* in that game got abducted. the girls, the boys, the ultra badass teaching staff...the game wasn't singling out a woman/women for distressing.
So you would consider that the torture porn genre and the diverse horror exploitation films represent a take on violence and death that is full of gravity and respect? Because I don't consider "Oh, we need something shocking in this part of the game. Uh... just slice open a girl and call it a day" to be respectful at all.Father Time said:
Shock is not a synonym of respect. I can jump out of a closet to shock you, or I can say the world's longest string of profanity. Neither imply any degree of respect or gravity whatsoever. To shock, something must be very sudden and very vulgar. It has to be violence, death, sex, profanity, things that are shocking because they are not commonly spoken of in public (and whose overuse leads to desensitisation). The essence of shock is the portrayal of the vulgar in an unexpectedly crude manner.
The game isn't acting like it's a big deal for the woman. It acts like it's a big deal to the male protagonist. Anita makes an excellent point when she says that the games frame the context of violence against women not as a terrible thing unto itself, but as an attack on the player's sense of masculinity, due to the patriarchal ideas of "men as the protector" that are still clinging in most people's heads. 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.Father Time said:
The reason it's trivialised is because it's thrown in as a go-to way to give the male hero a motivation, some emotional resonance, and player empathy. The women (and the violence/death inflicted upon them) become tools that serve the male hero and his presumably male player (which is why we rarely see a male character trying to save his friend/brother/father, unless the friend/brother is very young and can fit under the "under my protection" umbrella, much like sons).
There is very much a problem with the game industry's archaic and formulaic storytelling, and this is one of them.
In all seriousness, I liked the video. It's a HUGE improvement over the last one. Her first video left me frustrated because she didn't really touch on the issue. She just made broad generalizations about Zelda and Peach while misrepresenting them in the process. It was absurdly mediocre with the exception of her bit on "Dinosaur Planet".
This one, however, had support through video examples, had through variety, wasn't hostile towards its audience, cited games outside of my general knowledge base, and taught me something new. She learned from her past as is making quality products. Let's hope it stays that way.
Not comparing the two explicitly - more just pointing out that I find the idea that large markets self-regulate on any level to be absurd.erttheking said:
Well, I'm still not sold on this one. I mean, of course having a loved one pummeled and kidnapped is going to be a horrible thing to you. Gender-flip it, and I'm pretty sure in case a female protagonist getting her boyfriend pummeled and kidnapped is a horrible thing for her.Darken12 said:
I don't even see that as an attack on anyone's masculinity, I mean, what? If I see a woman that's close to me physically abused, my first thought won't be that I'm less of a man for it, but that something really bad happened to her and because I care for her deeply, I can't stay indifferent, it will pain me too, naturally. It's not about me, but I will not be unaffected.
And to go on on this...
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.
Agreed on this point.
I didn't really see this as 'Tropes Vs Women', but more 'shitty overused plot devices in modern gaming'. It was certainly better than the last video, which came out so long ago that I barely remember most of it. Her arguments seemed to be backed up better too. But I'd like to hear her talk about something that isn't bloody damsels in distress! I'm starting a kickstarter for my video series "Tropes in 'Tropes Vs Women' Vs Viewers", who's in?
"Because if there's one thing we at DOW want you to remember today, it's that the only good skeleton is a gold skeleton."Shamanic Rhythm said:
What's most shocking about this Yes Men stunt isn't that they're using a gold skeleton in the closet to sell an 'Acceptable Risk Management' financial tool for human lives, but that investors were actually interested in the product.
But I digress...
Her delivery is much better and she did good research. I'm about half-way through but just a couple comments:
"Euthanized Damsel" It is a very common trope for a man to kill his suffering and dying buddy or comrade in a game/movie. This is especially prevalent in war genres. This is very common for male characters and is so rare for female characters that it doesn't qualify as a trope. And its definitely not misogyny or it would be used as a plot device for women more often.
Facepalm and laughter after making a comment about bionic commando was forced and cringe-worthy. it should have been cut as it didn't fit the tone at all. If it is meant as educational, facial gestures and laughter don't count as commentary.
"Euthanized Damsel" It is a very common trope for a man to kill his suffering and dying buddy or comrade in a game/movie. This is especially prevalent in war genres. This is very common for male characters and is so rare for female characters that it doesn't qualify as a trope. And its definitely not misogyny or it would be used as a plot device for women more often.
Facepalm and laughter after making a comment about bionic commando was forced and cringe-worthy. it should have been cut as it didn't fit the tone at all. If it is meant as educational, facial gestures and laughter don't count as commentary.
pewdiepie has every other video flagged. Get a grip.Ronack said:
So tired of an entire community being blamed for the actions of idiot youtube trolls. Even Anita claims victim-hood in her tweet about her video being flagged. Every popular youtuber gets flagged all the time. Amazing Atheist is constantly being reported for terrorism. Should he claim that all feminists are to blame since many of his videos are anti-feminist?
That's the point, though. It doesn't happen nearly as often. It's very rare that a man has to rescue a male loved one (and I've yet to see a single case where that man isn't a son or much younger brother), or a woman has to rescue a man (especially with the dearth of female protagonists). The tool becomes a trope because it has so many examples backing it up, and she specifically points out Wreck-It Ralph's case as an example where the gender subversion itself is the punchline of the joke, because it happens so rarely so as to be funny when it comes up.Vegosiux said:
Pay attention to the actual game examples. There are plenty of cases where some bad guy taunts the male hero as if the woman was a possession that he has just stolen or destroyed. There are also plenty of examples in the video where the male hero says something along the lines of "it was my job to protect her/keep her safe". That's where the "attack on the character's masculinity" comes from, it's either subtext or even sometimes explicitly stated by the game.Vegosiux said:
Most games who use the resource do not linger on the woman's reaction, or the way she deals with what happened to her. Everything she says and does is directly related to the male hero. Some try to reassure/thank him, others ask for his help, others plead him to take care of their daughter; but in all cases, the woman is used as a tool to drive the male hero's narrative. She becomes an object, devoid of true personality of her own, who serves exclusively as motivation for the male hero.
Yes, but when the protagonist is almost always male and the character who gets kidnapped, murdered and so on, is almost always female, that's a problem. I personally don't much care for the fact that it's poor storytelling, my main concern is that the genders of these two character archetypes are distressingly unchanging. This whole issue wouldn't be a problem if we had a more or less equal distribution of stories where a man rescues another man, a woman rescues a man, a man rescues a woman, and a woman rescues another woman. While I would agree that the overuse of the trope itself is trite storytelling, the main problem is that it continues to be used in overwhelmingly gendered ways.Vegosiux said: