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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?
It must be a good ad. It got lashdot and other news sites posting about it. Remember: "there is no such thing as bad publicity."
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
It's neither.
People like to be shocked and outraged first. For some reason Americans (and people in general, but it seems more uptight here) tend to get all worked up over things that don't matter. 1980's it was "Eat my shorts" (in retrospect was Bart Simpson that bad?) in the 1990's we had the outrage over South Park and their social commentary (continuing through to today) and now we have people freaking out about some hacked nude scene in GTA.
Who gives a fuck?
In a world with famine, disease, tyranny, rape, murder, etcetera, we have people concerned more with TV, Video games and their own righteousness, than with the actual suffering of others. If the Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, or whatever the fuck god[s] one believes in takes more comfort in his/her/it/their followers indignation at make believe situations than real ones, I would be quite shocked.
Focus on reality and there is no need for the acrimony toward fantasy land.
[/end rant]
In the Hitman games, you play a stealthy killer. Now, so far, I've only played part two (it's the one that is out for Gamecube). The point of the game is that you have a target, you get to the target a sneakily as possible, kill him/her and then sneak out again as sneakily as possible. In part two, you even have the option of knocking people out with cloroform if you need them out of the way and they aren't your target. In other words, unlike a lot of action games, where your goal is to rack up kills, you purpose is just to take out one target without anyone knowing you did it. (I found the second level of part two to be very tough, any pointers?) You get scored on this, the more sneakily efficient you are, the better you do. (In other words, heading in with guns blazing is a way to get a bad score.)
Anyway, the AD isn't intended to be sexist, indeed I think the argument against the AD that I'm seeing is that it should have been sexist.
I.e. if it was a male character, dead in some museum in front of some spectacular work of art and they used "Beautifully Executed," there would have been no controversy for this effective AD campaign. So, the problem is, the AD campaign was insufficiently sexist, not that it was too sexist. Or do people think anyone would have raised such controversy about the other two ADs?
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
But you have to remember, it's a woman getting shot here. And that's a no-no.
Sure, you can have all the violence you want, if it's directed towards men. It's actually seen as 'better' if a woman is attacking men. Remember that Madonna music video where she and an old woman drove around and ran over men? It was three minutes of Y-chromosome roadkill. No one said shit about it. But if it had been a man running down a woman (even just once) it would've made the news.
I'm all for equal rights - and if you too think woman should be treated the same as men, do what I do: treat them the same as men.
Violence against woman is as violence against men - there is no difference. And if you think there is you're sexist.
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