What Do You Think of the 'Hitman' Ad?

GamePolitics brings up a topic well worth discussion, the ad for Hitman currently making the rounds in gaming magazines. Their question is: Sexy or Sexist? From the article: "Her well-kept body lies on a bed of gold satin sheets; her pose is deliberately enticing -- until you realize there is a bullet hole in the middle of her forehead. Then you notice the pool of blood spreading around her pillow. At at first glance, however, the blood seems to be just more accessorizing; it matches her lingerie and high heels. Regardless of your reaction to the photo, one thing is abundantly clear. The ad itself has nothing to do with the game its pimping. Nada. Zippo. Just visit the site for Hitman: Blood Money, and you'll see what I mean." What do you think?

Comments

I don't see what they mean

[mshurpik]

I went to Hitman.com and watched half of a trailer where a guy in a suit walks around looking like he's gonna shoot someone. Meanwhile, the ad in question is a person who was shot. Maybe I've been out of the gaming loop too long to understand why these things are not related.

An appropriate quote:

[Chemisor]

From The Romantic Manifesto:

If one saw, in real life, a beautiful woman wearing an exquisite evening gown, with a cold sore on her lips, the blemish would mean nothing but a minor affliction and one would ignore it. But a painting of such a woman would be a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values -- and one would experience a feeling of immense disgust and indignation at the artist. (There are also those who would feel something like approval and who would belong to the same moral category as the artist)

And on the purpose of such art:

Since man lives by reshaping his physical background to serve his purpose, since he must first define and then create his values -- a rational man needs a concretized projection of these values, an image in whose likeness he will reshape the world and himself. Art gives him that image; it gives him the experience of seeing the full, immediate, concrete reality of his distant goals.

I'll finish with a definition of art according to the author:

Art is a selective recreation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgements.

Once you understand these things, seeing the purpose and the nature of the Hitman ad is trivial.

Re:hrm...

[goofyheadedpunk]

One of my hobbies happens to be ancient writings. More specifically, one of my hobbies happens to be the translation of personal writtings very akin to what we now call essays or diaries. I find it more than humorous that men have been noting the massive shift in behavior and values, with emphasis on this being a bad thing, since writing became cheap enough to be a viable method for recording one's thoughts.

Long term societies change though time and there's nothing that can be done about that. (Societies that do not change are stagnate, and tend to die out quickly.) None is any more justifiably worse than another, just different. Hell, I'm sure if I looked I'd find people in 1890 bemoaning the sad state of affairs as compared to their own childhood.

So, in closing, keep up the good work. It has a long, proud (myopic) tradition!