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Female Characters - Empowering or Endangering Equity?
deacon_jay writes "There's an interesting article from the NY Times (registration required) about what the depiction of female protagonists in video games is doing for female empowerment. Obviously, there are opposing views put forward, such as: 'Women as hypersexualized killers distracts attention from their unequal status' or 'I do not think playing these games encourages women to be victims'. I'm tending to the latter argument, but the article raises some interesting questions." For example, Lara Croft - icon for the power of the female, or created for gamers to goggle at? This is even an academically discussed question.
"Lara Croft - icon for the power of the female, or created for gamers to goggle at?"
Sit down with every version of Tomb Raider ever made. Play them in order from oldest to most recent, and observer the increase in breast size from version to version.
Then, ask that question again with a straight face.
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I hate when women say "empowering". Do women not have power by default? They need something to "empower" them? Empowerment seems sexist to me b/c it implies that women don't naturally have power.
On the one hand, it will be argued that there are not enough female protagonists in video games. So video game companies step up and say, "you're right, we'll put some more female characters out there." Then, the complaint is always made [by someone] that the women are just there to be eye candy and that guys love ogling them. It always makes me wonder if these people want female video game characters to be ugly or if they want them to be dressed in ugly clothes. This despite the fact that women often spend thousands per year trying to look as pretty as they possibly can. I'm a fat, ugly, pasty guy but I'm sure not out there agitating for Kilik of Soul Calibur to gain 50 virtual pounds, nor would I ask that Mario get some warts.
Another drum they like to pound is that women in fighting games send the signal that it's okay to beat up women. This one makes me think that those folks have no problem with assault when a male is the victim. Fighting games, in particular, are completely neutral in terms of gender. It's very rare that a female character is so under-powered that she's going to be beaten by any of the male characters. I can recall several successful sessions where I took on all comers as Sonja in Mortal Kombat or Chun-Li in Street Fighter (I like kicking, what can I say?).
Finally, everybody and their grandmother keeps bringing up the killing of women in Grand Theft Auto. My first response is always that if you follow the storyline missions in GTA3 and Vice City you'll find that you won't have to beat down or kill many women, especially when compared to the number of men you inevitably whack. The natural response of these whiners is "That game encourages you to beat up hookers and other women for money." I then ask what percentage of prostitutes are male, followed by pointing out that it's entirely up to the player whether or not they want to beat up female OR male civilians to get cash. If someone is a mass murderer or huge bully in the GTA games, it's because they wanted to be and not because the game encouraged them in any way.
What all this comes down to is that there are more powerful female characters in games than ever before. Whatever they look like, the message that video game women can be just as capable as video game men is being sent by the video game industry every day. As far as I'm concerned, any feminist who thinks that's a bad thing needs to take a huge pill...I'd recommend estrogen but that might be sexist...
The alternative is Samus from Metroid. Do ya think anyone noticed (that 'it' was female)? Or maybe Dora the Explorer (Dear god why do I know that?) Female characters with ridiculous figures are the only ones that are noticed. There are lots of characters that are not. Samus, Dora, the woman from Zelda, the princess from Mario -- all don't have stylized figures. Hey guess what? Lara Croft was made for the women, like fark's boobies links are for women. (Anyways, I blame Anime, a really, really cool genre with some serious testosterone issues, IMO)
-Sean
It certainly isn't a new phenomenon for boys and men to be fascinated by beautiful women, particularly famous ones. I had a poster of Vanna White (cut-off shorts, work shirt and hay - YAY!) on my wall as a youth and other generations of men have fantasized about Farrah Fawcett, Sophia Loren, Jayne Mansfield and Ingrid Bergman. Are today's boys in more "trouble" simply because Carmen Elektra's bikini is more skimpy than Farrah's was? And what's the difference if that idealized woman is represented through art, either analog or digital? Any way you slice it, real or not, these women aren't average or they wouldn't be so visually fascinating.
Unless these males you're talking about are completely isolated from the rest of society (like NEVER leaving the house/basement), they know exactly what real women look like. I've never met any guy that thinks every woman looks, or should look, like a "perfect 10" - I'm sure they're out there but in my experience they're the minority. Frankly, I've found that concept to be mostly created in the heads of insecure women.
We talked about this on slashdot a couple of weeks ago, but "The Longest Journey" is a great, plot driven adventure game, with a lead female character who:
- is well acted.
- is realistic (or at least naturalistic).
- is not a mere sex object.
- has a journey of discovery that draws strength from a female perspective (I'm a male, so I could be wrong; but the writing and design are good enough that I think I'm not).
- isn't pandering to men.
- isn't pandering to women, either.
- makes you care about her and her plight.
- has LOTS of dialogue, but also good graphics and interesting story, so I wasn't bored.
- couldn't be replaced with a male character without greatly changing the story (ie. isn't a gratuitous female lead character).
- depicts, as part of the game, the complexities of male/female human interactions.
If ANYONE wants to talk about the potential that women have as "lead characters" in computer games, The Longest Journey should be held as the example of how it can be done without fear of alienating all men, and without exploiting male sexual arousal. Probably no coincidence that is was a game designed in Scandinavia. I highly recommend it.
What struck me most, was that this was a BETTER, more interesting, female lead character than ANY recent mainstream Hollywood movie with a lead female character (which are largely either gratuitous, or pandering to the perceived needs of women, or the perceived needs of men). April Ryan is a better role model for women and men, than most "role models" that are normally foisted on us all by the mass-market media.
Lara croft is an unrealistic depiction of womanhood. But male video game action characters are largely unrealistic portayals of men, too. Getting beyond the sexual elements, Lara does succeed (I think) as a character because her womanhood is not gratuitous (she has big juggs; so do some athletic female friends of mine. It isn't like they turn into missles to kill the bad guys), and her scope is limited to an action role (ie. she isn't portraying a societal 'role model', she is portraying a heroine, which are almost always romanticized ideals.)
I'm glad to see there is at least a trend towards women in computer/video games that is less purely sexual. I think, in some large part, it is because the technology is getting better at allowing "substantive" visual depictions (ie. facial expressions and interactions; see Half Life 2 trailer) that were harder to do previously. Whereas hot-looking bodies are relatively easy to do. I hope gamers are progressing towards more substantive portayals of BOTH men and women (at least as an option).
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
The article mentions that if you're going to be spending a lot of time looking at a single character, that character had better be pleasant to the eye. That's probably the number one reason right there.
Most importantly, most characters in video games are male. Of all those male characters, almost all have an impossibly ripped body of unnatural proportions. The torso of the video game male is usually almost double the size of what is possible. And a large majority of the time, the males are scantily clad.
Please note that the depiction of the male is as outlandish as the depiction of the female. This depiction is exploitive of the video game character. Since they're not real, it doesn't matter. It's all about fantasy. If a fantasy isn't intersting or intriguing, nobody wants to see it, let alone play with it.
But it sells games to undersexed adolescent boys, not to anyone else, which reinforces games as an activity for boys and young men. What bugs me about the cheesecake factor isn't so much the "offensive images" aspect of any single game, it's the fact that the grand preponderance of games cater to young straight male desire for ridiculously hypersexualized girls, which when put all together makes gaming less appealing for women. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, too, because then game developers can justify it by saying "women don't play games!"
I don't mind cheesecake as a niche. I just think that the magazine publishing industry would be pretty pathetic if 70% of all magazines were Maxim and GQ. And there's all sorts of games where cheesecake is completely unnecessary, where the gameplay itself shouldn't have anything to do with pandering to someone's sexual frustrations - but the still put in the "fan service" and sex-doll crap just as a ploy for attention.
Interestingly, I'm at E3 now, and the trope of note is the "death of the core gamer:" the consensus is that the market will have to diversify to thrive. The old traditional market has been called the "GWD" market - "guys without dates" - and the feeling is that that market is going to pay a constant amount of money per year on video games without much effort from the industry.