When Guitar Hero III came out, I expressed a lot of dismay at the way the new team that designed it caved into the urge to defang the female characters from the earlier games that apparently, despite being animated beings that don’t exist in the real world, were too much of a threat to anxious masculinity and had to be pornified in order to calm anxieties. Ethereal and cold Pandora was eliminated completely, hellbeast Casey Lynch was femmed-up and bleached blonde with explicit language about how she learned her lesson about being such a scary lady before, and Judy Nails, the pop punk goofball somehow gained 3 cups sizes, lost half her shirt and instead of having animations like smashing her guitar or hopping around with excitement, just vamped around stage instead. Violet nailed this tendency to put threatening female characters in their place in these sorts of entertainments:
The unwritten but unsecret rule in Hollywood, as in the rest of contemporary Western culture, is that if it’s female, it’s gotta be fuckable. Exceptions can be made, such as in the case of outer space creatures (Alien, for example, and while I haven’t seen the sequels I don’t believe the alien ever appears in stilettos and thong to do battle with Sigourney Weaver in a vat of baby oil, though I could be wrong), but these are rare. A powerful female who can’t be reduced to a butt naked fuck-me Barbie doll is a noxious and unnatural thing, too awful to contemplate, like Hillary Clinton or Janet Reno. So instead of Grendel’s Mother the Monster of the Mere, we get Grendel’s Mother the Super-Hot Naked MILF with Huge Breasts and Stiletto Heels That Appear To Be Growing Right Out Of Her Feet.*
What was frustrating was that the first Guitar Hero games really avoided this tendency; the women were (well, some were) attractive, but they had personality and clearly had pleasures and a reason to exist outside of taking it off for the wankers out there. If it seems weird to dwell on this, think of how rare it is for women to have the opportunity to get attached to an avatar that doesn’t insult your intelligence with this pornifying tendency, and how much a disappointment it is to have that taken from you. There were other issues that cropped up after I wrote that post: The animation in Guitar Hero III was cold and strange (even though the sets were pretty cool), the guitar options leaned more towards silly than cool and had a couple that were made to look like women’s disembodied body parts, and there were fucking dancing girl/groupies during the vast majority of sets. And this last example really points to a certain lack of understanding of the je nais se qua of rock culture that made the earlier games fun even for rock snobs—it was clear that the new programmers didn’t really get rock culture and it showed in the outfits, the animations, some of the character choices, and definitely in the dancing girls, an element that only exists in the fantasies of guys who don’t get out much and the few bands crafted to their tastes, i.e. the hair metal bands of the 80s. Still, if you ignored all that and concentrated on the truly awesome setlist, it was a lot of fun.
All this is prelude to saying that we got a copy of Rock Band and stayed up a bit late playing last night, and the irritating issues with Guitar Hero III are fixed, on overdrive no less. It’s the team that did the first two Guitar Hero games, and it really shows. No stupid dancing girls, the animation is amazing, there’s scenes that turn grainy and black and white for the extra pizazz you see in some concert videos. The shows have a real rock show feel, and there’s no vamping for the female characters, just rocking out like the guys do. Plus, the avatar generator is leaps and bounds above the pick-a-character strategy in Guitar Hero. You have three genuinely different skin tones, so there’s racial diversity, and you can be a variety of weights and heights. Female characters can be downright voluptuous; the bassist generated for our band Shitbird looks like Amy Winehouse before she went on the pills-and-booze rapid weight loss plan. Tits are proportionate to body size, even. It’s very exciting. While you can be sexed up (our bassist unbuttons her shirt to the belly button), it’s done in a way that sort of fits the excessive rock culture, not in that non-threatening pornified way. And it doesn’t reserve the sexy clothes only for the size zero female characters. Plus, there’s all sorts of genuinely subversive options. I designed my guitarist character Pandass so that she’s totally bald and wears British-esque punked out clothes.
The game is heavy on cooperation, so it seems to me that it would be a great game to buy kids, since most games lean heavily on competition. Which is fine, but it’s nice to balance it out with a game that encourages cooperation and teamwork. In Shitbird, I play guitar and Marc plays drums, and you have to do things like rescue each other when someone is flailing, get unison points, and time your overdrives together. When you’re on fire, it’s really exciting (at times, you know you’re kicking ass because the crowd starts to sing along, a nice touch), and you get to share that excitement.
*She really does. Seriously, WTF?
117 Responses to “Review: Rock Band”
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I don’t believe the alien ever appears in stilettos and thong
What about MIBII?
So far Rockband is awesome because former Marching Band freaks like myself find ourselves in demand to fill out the band because we understand things like rhythms and scale progressions. We are made cool.
The character generator in Rockband is awesome. I’m very excited to give it a turn.
It really is. My guitarist is a cross between Sinead O’Connor and Ari Up from The Slits.
As an aside, I’m glad these games offer a creative, fun outlet for people, and they’re a nice change from the kill-’em-all first-person shooter games.
That said, I’ve never really gotten into the whole computer games thing. For one thing, I rarely had the hardware to run them. Second, I never had the patience to get good at them. I’d get frustrated and the game wouldn’t be fun anymore.
There are a few exceptions. I like sports games (NHL Hockey, NCAA Football, etc.) and - how’s this for a blast from the past? - the old-school text adventures from Infocom. If it tells a good story, then the game will suck me in.
Hooray!
I’ve been so annoyed by the bad animation and ridiculous character presentations in GH3 that I’ve just stopped playing it. It’s good to know that Rock Band fixes these issues, and I’m a total sucker for character generation modes.
One thing, though- how does the set list compare?
I’ll check it out, but I never completely trust a video game that has been contaminated by that work of Satan known as MTV.
It’s OK, Ray Winstone doesn’t really have cheese-grater abs either.
I saw Beowulf last night, in German. When that scene rolled around, I learned Schwabisch slang for “What the fuck?!”
This thread makes me wonder…are there ANY good female characters in video games? I can think of ones that are athletic, strong-willed, and intelligent, but I still get the feeling that their presence in the game is basically porn in that those attributes are used to make them “attractive” instead of integral to the plot, if there is one.
Maybe it’s me reading into the game, I dunno.
Anyway, so, Rock Band instead of GH3 for my sister for Christmas. Got it
This thread makes me wonder…are there ANY good female characters in video games?
Samus Aran from Metroid? Shes in a suit most of the time so I don’t see how she could be seen as a sex object.
My guitarist is a cross between Sinead O’Connor and Ari Up from The Slits.
Destroy it; enjoy it!
Petey, they’re out there. For a quick shameless self-promotion: My site has started a semi-regular feature introducing women characters in videogames. We’re trying to show the positive characters as well as the characters that annoy us.
I’m looking forward to getting a 360 for a lot of reasons, and this sounds fun, but I can’t hack games based on “Simon” mechanics. Despite the fact that I’m fine on other twitch games, any time I have to follow colors or shapes and repeat them I turn into fumblefingers. I’m fairly depressed about that because I’m dying to play Guitar Hero III just for the track list, and I know ten or twenty ultimate fails as I try to play Sunshine of Your Love would wreck any of my remaining cool.
Sexualized female avatars are the bane of my gaming existence. I only get a break from them occasionally, and never to the point where I can make a truly butch woman. Lesbian Gamers has an article about making butch characters with the Oblivion engine that I thought was neat, which demonstrates some of the massive problems with trying to break away from the femme or hyper-sexualized mold in video gaming.
I’ve stopped trying for the most part, I’m sticking to character classes in WoW that wear shapeless clothing and avoiding games where I might have to take an enpornulated character into online play. I don’t have the energy anymore to get the message through a game developer’s thick skull, and I certainly don’t have the energy to put up with every J. Random Asshole online treating my character like wank fodder. Forget it, I’m saving up my pennies for Spore.
One annoying bit you didn’t raise: In co-op mode at least, the animated sequences between stages have the story two generic male rockers. It’s not like the animation is all that fancy or long, how hard would it have been to substitute in images of the characters that you’re playing with. I mean, sure don’t do the unlockable characters, but the basics should be easy enough.
I think this can basically be described as a reversion to industry average in terms of art design. They cut corners and stopped thinking about art design and instead just went with the default objectification. In other ways, the design also just seemed cheaper. Star power no longer gets special animations and I don’t think there’s really any end song animations of note. Not just are guitars not smashed, they don’t do much anything else instead.
That said, it still does have some good additions for fans of the series. The co-op career mode is a nice edition and one my girlfriend and I (it’s her game) have been exploiting. As you’d mentioned in a previous post, the song selection is pretty good and you get a lot (unlike Guitar Hero 80s. ::grumble::). That said, it sounds like Rock Band is a revolutionary improvement that far surpasses the evolutionary changes from 2 to 3.
Oh and Linnaeus: If you’re an Infocom fan, you might want to check out the adventure game genre of computer games (RPGs are also often story oriented, but they don’t really follow the old Infocom puzzle solving model). Sadly adventure games are fairly sickly genre-wise and so don’t come out all that often, but there’s a lot of classics that were published after text-based games went out of vogue. Since many have been out for years, they should be cheap and aren’t likely to challenge your hardware. (I do enjoy FPSes (some of the have stories) but many gamers I respect don’t really have fun playing them). Lucasarts and Sierra were the big adventure game makers back in the day, although there are some more recent series including ones with female protaganists.
The character design in GHIII IS just awful..it’s not just the female characters either…the male characters all look crazy or over the top or stupid or all of the above. It’s rock stereotypes is what it is.
Considering that Neversoft programmed it, it REALLY could have used a Create-A-Guitarist mode…it’s unthinkable that it didn’t make it in.
But that said, GHIII is a better solo-game than Rock Band. As someone who likely won’t ever play outside of my wife and myself, from everything from the note charts to the song selection, GHIII is better IMO. Of course, all this stuff is completely subjective. These things are always a personal choice type of thing.
While both share some of my favorite songs…”When You Were Young”, and “Cherub Rock”, and from what I’ve seen the note-chart in GHIII has Rock Band beat. It’s not even close.
And I’ll be blunt. You can rip “Avalancha” out of my cold, dead hands.
I think Jade from Beyond Good and Evil is a fine example of a capable, intelligent heroine who isn’t ovesexed in the game. She’s also a journalist uncovering a vast military conspiracy !
Unfortunately, she’s not typical, either.
other orange, I was just about to hop on to mention Jade from BG&E. Badass, cute but not a sexbot, ethnically ambiguous–she was an awesome character.
ckquote>AtomicFruitbat
Samus Aran from Metroid? Shes in a suit most of the time so I don’t see how she could be seen as a sex object.
The operative term is “most of the time.” Samus gets naked at the end of every game and that alone is the driving force behind accomplishing every minute detail.
This is the problem…Samus is a badass because some guys (probably the overwhelming majority of men playing video games) get off on the idea of dominant women. It’s an issue of identifying with the character.
When I play Gears of War I can imagine myself into the role of an ass-kicking soldier who eats bullets and shits ice cream. What do women experience when they play? Do they slide into the same role or do they need a female avatar (or a mute one, a la Half Life)? I don’t doubt that women like kicking ass and taking names as much as dudes, but it also seems like all the strong females are basically dudes with tits, there to titillate the male audience.
Ah, I’m so glad that you wrote about this. I don’t have Rock Band yet because I only have a PS2, but I stayed up late last night playing my brothers’ game and I have to say that it kicked ass. I was very pleased with the character options — I was kind of disappointed that you really only get one female body type, and you can just enlarge or shrink that size, but it’s the same for the male characters, which means it’s sill but I can live with it. I also loved the different “attitudes” that you can give to the characters — and none of those attitudes are “look at me boys, hehe! aren’t I pretty?” They instead ranged from pensive to hyper to looks like she’s going to kick your ass. I also love that they give you so many different hairstyles and I can’t wait to unlock the clothes.
And other than that, well, the game is just fucking awesome. It was so fun, it really does feel like you’re in a little rock band, and quite frankly it’s the most fun I’ve had hanging out with my two younger brothers (20 and 16) in several years.
The moral of the story? Harmonix rules and Activision drools.
Godless, I think there’s a definite possibility of getting very butch on the female characters in Rock Band. Like I said, mine is bald and wears a tie, but with a mini-skirt. You could substitute pants, make her face a little more masculine, there’s a lot of possibilities there.
Oh, and Roy, I personally think that the setlist is great. And most of the songs are original, which immediately gives them an advantage.
The operative term is “most of the time.” Samus gets naked at the end of every game and that alone is the driving force behind accomplishing every minute detail.
She didn’t in the NES or SNES Metroid, and even if she did I can’t imagine 8-bits of that to be very exciting.
I always thought I was playing the game because it was fun and had a good story. I guess if I was 14 years old with no girlfriend it might be exciting, but when you’re 26 and have a girlfriend you love very much, not so exciting.
I don’t doubt that women like kicking ass and taking names as much as dudes, but it also seems like all the strong females are basically dudes with tits, there to titillate the male audience.
That seems to big a big problem in Japanese RPGs especially.
The easiest way to get around all these issues is when the game revolves around aliens or anthropomorphic animals (this was done especially in the 8 and 16-bit eras), but that brings in the weird-ass furry stuff now.
My wife has a suit of armour, custom made for her (she actually had a hand in making it). Full gothic plate, from when she used to do heavy fighting in the SCA. It has no molded breast cups. When she puts her helmet on, it’s impossible to tell she’s a woman.
Why mention this? It’s one of my favourite aspects of Morrowind. I have seen no other video game that did not have molded breast cups for women’s armour; in real life there is no armour for women that has them. Does not exist, would be a very bad idea. When your female Morrowind character is wearing full armour, looks like a person wearing full armour; not possible to tell sex. Which is as it should be.
On the setlist: There’s not a lot of songs and it’s hard to unlock a number of them. But, there are a gazillion downloads and they’ve promised at least three new songs available for download a week. Granted, it’ll cost you, $2 for one, $5.50 for a pack of three. Clever, aren’t they? But on my immediate To-Download list is the Bowie pack, “Fortunate Son”, “Bang A Gong”, and probably “Cherry Bomb”.
Yeaaaaahhh….no. That’s the assumption that the game manufacturers and the more immature members of the audience make about female characters, but that isn’t why women gravitate towards female characters. See, the character, or the avatar, is how you get the player to invest emotionally in the game and identify with the protagonist’s mission. That’s why the majority of avatars are male, because the designers have decided that the likely audience is a male audience. The avatars are strong, capable, and non-sexualized because that’s what the developer knows the male player will identify with.
Here’s a little tip, most women don’t go about their lives simpering, mincing, and striking uncomfortable Playboy poses. Strong, capable, non-sexualized female characters should exist to give female players a way to invest emotionally in the game. Women are a little less than half of the audience for games (I’m having a brain fart, or I’d have a link to the studies that show women make up 40 some odd percent of the game market) and yet we’re given very few female characters that act like people, as opposed to digital sex-bots.
And of course the punk pack:
“Rockaway Beach”–Ramones
“I Fought the Law”–The Clash
“Ever Fallen In Love” The Buzzcocks
AtomicFruitbat
Well, she does get naked in the NES version with the oh-so-naughty JUSTIN BAILEY code. But both of those were basically stock platformers where Samus IS the suit; they’re outside the conversation because she wasn’t a developed character.
The problem is that now they have started to develop her as a character and the direction Samus is going is to be a CILF (Cyborg I’d…well).
Here’s the thing. One of my good friends over here in Germany is a female retired Navy pilot. She’s a strong person but it has nothing to do with her former job, which she says comes down to kinaesthetic sense and knowing what button to push. What’s strong is that when she argues a point she does it really well and never backs down.
I might be guilty of some kind of double standard here, but I want to see a woman in a video game who is strong not because “she does what a guy does,” but in some other more meaningful way. Amanda, please feel free to smack me down on this, maybe it’s another teachable moment
But both of those were basically stock platformers where Samus IS the suit; they’re outside the conversation because she wasn’t a developed character.
I think it deserves credit for being a stock platformer without the over-used “save the princess” story line. I’m guessing the folks on this site aren’t crazy about a game with that kind of narrative, either.
Godless Heathen
With you so far…I get the impression you meant to disagree with me or shoot down some point I was trying to make, but if you did, I missed it.
Uhh…exactly? This is why I identified it as a problem that most female characters in video games are sexualized (whereas men are not, as you pointed out) or else simply “damsels in distress.”
Yeah, I agree. But, again, when strong women are in games, I get the impression they are still “sexualized” because the developers think the audience will find strong women sexy. Example…Lara Croft can cartwheel and backflip and wrap her legs around a pole and bullseye a womp rat or whatever with her huge guns. Do women identify with this at all? Probably not, but guys sure do dig the hourglass figure and unrealistic boobage and when you throw in the guns, well, I guess it’s supposed to be hot.It seems to me that pretty soon there ought to be cross-game characters where you develop you avatar outside of any particular game and import it into the game you’re playing, so you Rock Band guitarist can ditch the guitar, pick up her BFG and slaughter people in Doom, f’rex. There would obviously be limitations imposed by the game, but since we’re really just talking about choosing the color of pixels at some level it ought to be possible to carry the essence of the avatar over from one game to another.
I’m not sure if it’s been brought up here, but part of the reason that Judy Nails had been altered in GH3 was because they removed Pandora and fused some of that into Judy. I don’t think that excuses them, however. In general I think they did a horrible job with their decision for art direction. And hearing about some of the other little touches they added disappoints me.
As a man, I had picked Judy because the commentary on her character in the first GH game was that she ended up being designed after the woman they hired to do the mocap for the female rockers. They had liked her mannerisms so much that they created Judy Nails to more emulate an ‘authentic’ rocker. Plus, her little Bio reeked of pure win.
For Rock Band, I look forward to attempting to re-create Judy based on how she appeared in the first GH game.
I was wondering about the breakdown of female-voiced songs to male-voiced songs. I don’t mind singing along to either, but I wonder how comfortable your average Rock Band player would be singing a song that’s usually vocalized by a member of the opposite sex.
I think that stepping up to the mic takes a certain amount of chutzpa as it is, so this might be a non-issue.
That Beowulf thing weirded me the hell out when I saw that shot, too. You can make an argument for the sex thing–god knows the lit professor who did the class on early northern lit did, in detailed metaphoric glory–but who the hell decided that she needed to be in stilettos? Not only are they ridiculously not-period, but yeah, she’s not supposed to be wearing any clothes. The whole thing winds up with her having an anachronistic sexualized article of clothing as an anatomical feature. Wtf, indeed.
Alien, ironically enough, was a perverse creation perveted by Hollywood. Keep in mind, after those fuckers got done violating Gigers’s masterpiece, they actually had an Alien with a gigantic vagina, if not vulva, in the last bit of crap that profanes the Alien-Aliens duology (there’s only two Aliens movies, dammit). So, it is arguable that after Giger’s influence was thoroughly purged, Aliens became “fuckable.”
Samus’ gender was a surprise to the old-school 8-bit-ers. The fact that she’s in an exoskeletal battlesuit is probably why no sexual subtext was added.
Princess was the best character in Super Mario 2, but she’s a useless McGuffin in the other games, so that’s a weak example.
Perfect Dark experienced some of this. Joanna Dark was, of course, perfectly proportioned, but the emphasis in the first game was upon how amazingly deadly she was. Like an avatar of Kali-Ma you slaughtered your way through ridiculously tough levels with nary a thought towards recreational procreation. The prequel changed hair color, skin tone and eye shape, turning Jo into an elf, an inflatable doll with a gun.
But, anyway, Jo in Perfect Dark was a good female character. No time wasted on sexual tension: one of her first lines is, “Are all of the guards expendible?”
Hell. Yes.
And this should set the irony meter off. The video game Heavy Metal FAKK 2, based on the blatantly hypersexual Heavy Metal 2 cartoon, which is based on the hypersexual Heavy Metal magazine, actually gives a positive protrayal of the main character! Well, some. Her starting costume is unrevealing, though it quickly moves into cheesecake. Still, it’s a) far less skimpy than in the actual movie, from the shots I’ve seen (and the movie included vamping) and b) the game doesn’t consider the protagonist’s sexuality at all. Instead, she’s the most — the only — competent character in a village full of perpetual victims (seriously — everyone but her is a complete wuss, including the buff male characters). So that could count.
The game has naked male genetalia (in the form of statuary) but no naked female genetalia.
And the final battle is against a misogynistic asshole.
“The unwritten but unsecret rule in Hollywood, as in the rest of contemporary Western culture, is that if it’s female, it’s gotta be fuckable.”
Bullshit -
Not fuckable (in the classic sense) powerful women in entertainment:
Oprah
Ellen
Catie Couric
Barbara Walters and everyone else on the view
Martha Stewart
Meredith Viera
I mean, come on. This is a pretty serious list of women with clout who appear on screen every day. Maybe in the movies it’s different, but not all entertainment fits this description.
“Not fuckable (in the classic sense) powerful women in entertainment:
Oprah
Ellen
Catie Couric
Barbara Walters and everyone else on the view
Martha Stewart
Meredith Viera”
Ellen has been in a few movies, as has Oprah. The rest are television people.
“Maybe in the movies it’s different”
Boy, you can say that again. The money involved makes the process of creating a movie a generally conservative experience. Got a new idea? Want to do unconventional casting or storyline? Better take it elsewhere…
“…but not all entertainment fits this description.”
True, and that’s one of the rays of hope…
But don’t men in movies (generally) also have to be “fuckable”? I don’t think there are many ugly movie stars, period.
“I don’t think there are many ugly movie stars, period.”
Not usually in leading roles. About the closest they get is the Sean Connery / Harrison Ford “He’s 60/70 but still really handsome so we’ll pair him with a 25-year-old” phenomenon…
Well, men stars get more range, and they can last a heck of a lot longer than women stars do. Can you imagine a woman starring regularly in movies if she looked like Chris Farley or was as old as Harrison Ford?
The only game I really play is WoW, and I’ve just given up on having female avatars and stick with males on the Horde (besides Blood Elves). Honestly, anyone who can find something sexy about an undead priest needs to reevaluate their life. Although, I heard tell about an animated porn with a female Tauren, so who knows.
“Can you imagine a woman starring regularly in movies if she looked like Chris Farley or was as old as Harrison Ford?”
I know its not the same, but I have to say that the casting of Dame Judy Dench as “M” in the recent James Bond films is fantastic. You get the feeling she can really kick ass, and it would be great if they would flesh out her backstory…
“But don’t men in movies (generally) also have to be “fuckable”? ”
The difference is “fuckable” for men does not also equal emaciated, anatomically impossible breasts, or having no other point then being wank fodder.
Among other things.
The difference is “fuckable” for men does not also equal emaciated, anatomically impossible breasts, or having no other point then being wank fodder.
No, it generally means being jacked up on roids.
For good female characters there are embarrassingly few that comes to mind. There’s Jade in Beyond Good and Evil (who is always brought up), Grace in the Gabriel Knight series (though I don’t know if her efforts are denigrated by the fact that Gabriel ALWAYS fucks up and ends up in the place Grace just managed to find by painstaking research), playing KOTOR and Jade Empire as a female character is always a blast. The female character in Mercenaries is strong and capable.
Atomic: sorry, try again. Harrison Ford wasn’t jacked up on roids, nor was Orlando Bloom, nor was Johnny Depp, or Alan Rickman. Matt Damon’s cut but not beefcake. Ditto Toby McGuire.
Very few male moviestars are musclemen, and you don’t see much of that anymore beyond Vin Deisel and Teh Rawk. Guys like Ahnuld and Sly have retreated from their more Herculean roles of the 80’s.
Atomic: sorry, try again. Harrison Ford wasn’t jacked up on roids, nor was Orlando Bloom, nor was Johnny Depp, or Alan Rickman. Matt Damon’s cut but not beefcake. Ditto Toby McGuire.
My point is, normal looking people like you see on the street generally aren’t movie stars. This is true for both genders. Go out on the street and count the number of men that look like Matt Damon.
I think theres a bigger case to be made for a double-standard in tv news. You do see older, overweight, balding men as news anchors. You don’t see too many women who don’t look like bimbos.
“My point is, normal looking people like you see on the street generally aren’t movie stars. This is true for both genders.”
Agreed. Movies, after all, as supposed to escapism. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to see someone who looks like my mailman playing Mr. Darcy.
That said, you can’t blame women for the roided 80’s action heros (not that you are, btw) - that’s clearly men’s fantasies about the perfect men.
Ultimately though, while I am not denying that such a picture of maleness can have negative effects on men seeing it, its no where near the grief, torture and scorn heaped on women who don’t meet the sexbot mandate.
That Grendel’s mother thing really, really bothers me. We just read Beowulf in one of my English courses and the professor concluded by saying, “Don’t go see the new movie.” I mean, Angelina Jolie as the evil, swamp-dwelling descendant of Cain? Okay, Hollywood. It’a appalling.
Man, I saw this Rock Band thing at Best Buy the other day, and I stood there for like 45 minutes playing with the drums. It was so fucking fun.
“Go out on the street and count the number of men that look like Matt Damon.”
????????? Aren’t there dozens? Since when has Matt Damon got impossibly perfect features? Johnny Depp, ok: there really aren’t many people out there who are that pretty. And of course there are a small number of others like him, but the majority of male film stars aren’t that spectacular looking. I honestly believe that they are considered so gorgeous because they’re in films, not that they’re in films because they’re so gorgeous.
Dr T, Oprah and Katie Couric are constantly subject to (veiled) discussion of how fuckable they are. Oprah has publicly dieted many, many times. Couric’s outfits used to be discussed ad nauseam, and Dan Rather said her presence “tarted up” the news. Just because some powerful women don’t start out “classically fuckable,” whatever that means, doesn’t mean they aren’t expected to achieve fuckability for America’s viewing pleasure.
“…doesn’t mean they aren’t expected to achieve fuckability for America’s viewing pleasure.”
I’m pretty sure that’s a sentence I never thought I read in my lifetime. But it is sadly true…
Isn’t it that movies (and video games) are made BY men FOR men, period? The women in movies are there to be fuck objects for the male viewer. The men in movies are there to be the person the male view imagines himself being. If male movie start dude is no longer a roided musclefreak, then it’s just that male viewer no longer is in the mood to imagine himself as a block of muscle with gritted teeth and a gun.
Same for video games, I’d say. Made by men for men. The player is always assumed to be male. The male player wants to see guys who he wants to be and fuck objects. Period. Women who are not fuck objects and show disturbing elements of personhood are- as Amanda stated- VERY SCARY to Male Player. So they are porned out and lobotomized. ‘Defanged’ is a good term for it.
This defeats the argument being made about normal men not looking like movie stars. Firstly, the looks of male movie stars are not really at issue since they are people- active agents. The women are all fuck objects (or mother objects, or plot objects, or virility objects. But generally fucktoyable in all cases regardless.) The male viewer watching the movie always knows that he is a person and he matters. The female viewer always knows, conversely, that she is a fucktoy and therefore good only for how much she can look like a photoshopped silcon-boobed starved painted animated RealDoll.
Secondly, I would say that since the men on the street are considered to be human beings with minds, souls, dreams and value, they don’t HAVE to look like Matt Damon. It’s probably nice for them if they do, but it’s not really important. Whereas the woman on the street is considered to have no mind, soul, dream or value. She is an object, and is judged by her fuck object market value. Period.
I don’t know if people in other comments have mentioned how media producers are generally uninterested in women’s entertainment dollar. Do they maybe think that women, being fuck objects, will just watch anything served to them? I’ve heard evidence supporting this.
Sidebar: I write comics and fiction. I am told quite often that female characters that are character rather then wank fodder are very off-putting to men. I’m usually requested to defang them. So the male viewer will be comfy.
Heh, AtomicFruitbat is just making themselves look like a dumbass. Keep trying to deny attractiveness double-standards, buddy…it’s good for a laugh at least.
I will never, ever get why so many guys feel the need to troll feminist blogs and tell us that our life experiences (i.e. what we actually live and see with our own eyes) are somehow invalid.
AtomicFruitbat
My point is, normal looking people like you see on the street generally aren’t movie stars. This is true for both genders. Go out on the street and count the number of men that look like Matt Damon.
An excellent point but it really belongs to a different conversation.
The point under discussion is that when men are portrayed in entertainment–movies, video games–their attractiveness revolves around the fact that they save the day. We are suave, witty, cool, intelligent, etc. When women play a central role, their attractiveness equates to sexiness: waist-hip ratio, cup size, how high are their heels, how low it is the blouse cut.
Both are pretty much received gender roles. Yeah, women get turned on by good-looking guys (hetero ones, anyhow) and yeah, a lot of women like cool save-the-day types. But how come we don’t have a female cool save-the-day type? If we replaced Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead with Steve Buscemi, you really don’t lose a lot. What if we replaced him with Ellen Degeneres?
If you have a heroine in movies or games, the heroism is an aside to the fact that you can admire her curves. That’s pretty much the only role they play; you can’t discount it by pointing to himbos specifically because of the Sean Connery types.
(this spam filter sucks ass, and not in a good way)
DrT: perhaps you missed this story last month?
http://showbizblog.ctv.ca/blog/_archives/2007/10/9/3280385.html
“It’s a man’s world, or so says Warner Bros. president of production Jeff Robinov. Reportedly, the rabid Robinov has just issued this new studio edict: “We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead.”"
Then there was this thread here a few weeks ago:
http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2007/11/10/6306/
Wherein I learned of the Bechdel Movie Measure, which a movie passes if:
1. There are 2 or more women in it.
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something other than a man.
The thread that follows is great. Though the focus of that post is on children’s movies, the gist is pretty clear. Think of your favorite movies; how many of them meet those criteria?
sweet machine
Just because some powerful women don’t start out “classically fuckable,” whatever that means, doesn’t mean they aren’t expected to achieve fuckability for America’s viewing pleasure.
You. Newsletter?
Readers, fuckable men and women are put on the screen. But men’s fuckability is a tangent to their main role, whereas for women, fuckability IS the role. Capisce?
we replaced Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead with Steve Buscemi, you really don’t lose a lot. What if we replaced him with Ellen Degeneres?
You know, I haven’t been to a cinema since some jerk insisted on talking on his cell phone all through Syriana.
But I would go back to see that.
“Aren’t there dozens? Since when has Matt Damon got impossibly perfect features?”
He doesn’t. Most guys in the movies, even the big names, are good-looking but hardly Adonises. They’re generally nothing that an above-average (but not really remarkably above-average) man couldn’t be given a stylist, personal trainer, and a forgiving camera. And when they are really, really good-looking (Orlando Bloom, for instance) in addition to the rest of it, it tends to get a fair amount of attention.
Contrast that to women in movies. I can’t think of the last time I saw a woman in a non-indie film who was just sort of meh who a) had any lines and b) wasn’t in a comedy. And in the comedies, the less-than-superhot female characters’ lack of superhotness tends to be joke material. It’s not for nothing that we have the term “movie-ugly.”
we replaced Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead with Steve Buscemi, you really don’t lose a lot. What if we replaced him with Ellen Degeneres?
It would at least be an original idea, a lot more than you can say about 99% of the movies that come out lately.
I always disliked the guy-saves-the-damsel-in-distress narrative not because I thought about how it was sexist, but just because its so boring. I guess this gives me another reason not to care for it.
Uh, no. All game engines are proprietary for good reasons and even games that use common rendering solutions, such as the Unreal engine, are frequently so different in animation, skeletons, skinning and texture packing that you are not going to get a conversion tool to work.
Really? I seem to recall a lot of effort was put into rendering her nail polish.
I’d be interested in the view here of the female characters in Clive Barker’s Jericho game. At least one cardboard lesbian, but very punk and scary, I thought.
I saw Beowulf in 3D the other night and while it was very pretty the movie over all wasn’t really any good. And count me among the people going WTF when Anglina Jolie’s mother steps out of the bog in stilettos, which are about a thousand years off.
Another thing that pissed me off was that we never saw her character as a monster. We got hints of what she really looked like, but unlike Grendal and the dragon we never saw the real monster mother, only the fuckable one.
Add to that, the film jumped about 10-20 years ahead when Beowulf is king and while Beowulf and his men aged severely, they only gave the queen gray hair and a *few* wrinkles. She still looked like she was in her 20s. I found it sad that they couldn’t let her look as close to a female human being as possible, but reading your post put it in perspective as to the “women have to be fuckable,” after the film I was talking to about seven of my guy friends and not one of them could tell me what happened but they sure remembered Angelina Jolie’s golden boobs, and that was probably the point. *sigh*
Alyx from Half Life 2?
The subject of Samus and the “naked ending” (which is actually more of a bikini ending) in the original Metroid could probably fill an entire thesis. I’ve heard a lot of misogynists players basically say that Samus is only female because that way players get rewarded with boobies; I think that’s pretty contrary to the text. I believe there was a shock factor involved in learning her identity - “Oh my god, dude, it’s a chick!” as Wil Wheaton said. I think there was a gender equality message in that - especially since, being genderless and presumed male, the player would have related to her like a normal avatar throughout the game - immunizing her from the weird abuses female characters sometimes take in games where the players know their gender. (Simulated abuse of female characters could fill yet another paper.)
The newest game is interesting in that, for the first time, we see other people interacting with Samus and its clear they respect her, and because her gender is revealed many times throughout the game. You also play from her point of view, which makes it hard to do anything but identify with her. All of those are Good Things when it comes to women in games; more overtly female main characters would be better, of course.
Nintendo has actually done some really interesting things with their female characters; take Princess Zelda for example; there’s a clear progression from object to person across the games, until she eventually breaks the princess persona altogether and becomes a Ninja/Pirate captain. On the other hand, we have Princess Peach being spied on in the shower by a lovestruck A.I. One step forward, etc.
realityfighter, my husband was very disappointed in TYD when Mario finally makes it to Peach’s prison.
“Aw, I can’t take a shower with the old sailor?”
Really like the blog and generally have nothing to add to the discussions that you haven’t all thought of and dissected before, but on a small point of pedantry, it’s “je ne sais quoi”…
“But don’t men in movies (generally) also have to be “fuckable”? ”
“Generally” might offer you an out but until you show me the romantic comedy that has the female equivalent of Kevin James as the successful love interest, I cannot accept your thesis.
It seems to me that pretty soon there ought to be cross-game characters where you develop you avatar outside of any particular game and import it into the game you’re playing, so you Rock Band guitarist can ditch the guitar, pick up her BFG and slaughter people in Doom, f’rex. There would obviously be limitations imposed by the game, but since we’re really just talking about choosing the color of pixels at some level it ought to be possible to carry the essence of the avatar over from one game to another.
That’s basically the idea behind the Mii, isn’t it?
Ultra Magnus, I thought there were some redeeming qualities to the story. Hrothgar’s and Beowulf’s sons are extreme representations of the worst of their characters. Hrothgar is basically an overgrown spoiled child who can’t control his impulses. Beowulf is violent and lusts after power and glory. Thus Hrothgar’s son is a sould tortured by its own lack of control (over its senses as well as its reactions–I thought Grendel’s “There is no demon here!” was pretty poignant) and Beowulf’s son is a physically perfect murder machine that overpowers anything and everything because it can.
Of course, Neil Gaiman worked on the script, we can probably ascribe a lot of this to him and John Gardner.
OTOH women in this story are either mother-figures, sex symbols, or exist to entrap and corrupt men. Not so great.
Isn’t it that movies (and video games) are made BY men FOR men, period? The women in movies are there to be fuck objects for the male viewer. The men in movies are there to be the person the male view imagines himself being. If male movie start dude is no longer a roided musclefreak, then it’s just that male viewer no longer is in the mood to imagine himself as a block of muscle with gritted teeth and a gun.
Let’s see -
Top ten grossing films (2006, Wikipedia):
1 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
2 The Da Vinci Code
3 Ice Age: The Meltdown
4 Casino Royale
5 Night at the Museum
6 Cars
7 X-Men: The Last Stand
8 Mission: Impossible III
9 Superman Returns
10 Happy Feet
So four of them were family/children’s movies. I would argue that “Pirates” and “X-Men” had eye-candy for both genders (don’t get me started on seeing the latter in the company of someone with a crush on Hugh Jackman), “Casino” and “MI:III” were as you say, and it’s difficult to assign “Da Vinci” and “Superman Returns”, although they probably tend towards the “female as weaker character” side of the spectrum.
Petey, I must say, I have no idea what you’re trying to say in comment #56. Or rather, I understand and basically agree with what you’re saying in your second paragraph, but I have no idea why it’s framed as a response to my comment to Dr T.
Petey, please try to remember that the original authors of the Beowulf story were Christian monks from about 900 ad. What hurts is that we apparently haven’t advanced much from then.
I like the characters in the Suikoden series. In the 108 there is usually a good mix of sexes, ages, sizes and abilities, Jeanne may live only in gauze and chains but she is a scary character with some major skills. Of course, with one exception, the lead character is a young male off to discover his mission in life but encounters the mean world instead. I like RPGs over first person shooters and I’m all thumbs with the twitchy games like Guitar Hero. I leave those to my son, he rocks.
“If we replaced Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead with Steve Buscemi, you really don’t lose a lot.”
Blasphemer! There is no Ash but Campbell.
“Blasphemer! There is no Ash but Campbell.”
…do I hear rumblings from the creation of The Church of Ash The Immortal?…
“Hail to the king, baby…”
I like Yuna from Final Fantasy X. She’s strong-willed, independent and brave, and she wasn’t all tarted up in some unrealistic, impractical hawt outfit (well, the sleeves looked impractical, but those weren’t for sex appeal). She was the romantic interest for the main character, but she was a full person with her own interests and her decisions were very crucial to the story. Acutally, you could have made FFX without Tidus (the lead), but FFX without Yuna would have been Tidus sitting on a beach with his ball.
I also like Marle from Chrono Trigger. She’s spunky.
Really? I seem to recall a lot of effort was put into rendering her [Joanna Dark’s] nail polish.
The N64 can barely render hair; extremities are pretty much a non-starter.
Besides, minor examples of vanity like shiny nails aren’t too bad. Keep in mind, like most real fighters, she keeps her hair short to keep it out of the way. Still seems better than most.
And, seriously, replace Bruce Campbell? That’s just crazy-talk. There isn’t even a male that could replace Campbell.
Waiting for the Wii version… It’s a good thing because my budget is dry after getting Super Mario Galaxy.
BTW, any problems with the peripherals? I’ve seen MANY complaints on forums about guitars, drums, etc… that broke after very little play. I’m guessing they had to cut costs *somewhere* to allow this to sell for less than 400$…
Cae Archer from No One Lives Forever is rad ass. The game’s dialogue is also freaking hilarious.
Not to speak for Petey, but I’ll speak for Petey, if only because his comment was clever and deserves to be understood as such.
“You. Newsletter?” was, IINM, shorthand for “Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter”, a compliment meaning “nice comment” and which was originally spoken by Homer Simpson to son Bart regarding how teamwork, sharing and tolerance are all “overrated…crap.” I don’t think you should take that last part to heart, though, since it’s been shed from most references to it.
Marie: If you’re willing to ignore the costume (and hooboy, do you have to ignore the costume) Lulu from the same game has a pretty powerful, kickass personality. Not to mention powerful, kickass spellcasting.
On the Nintendo side of things, I’ve always been fond of the female characters in Fire Emblem. How much you find out about them depends on what conversations you have, of course, which is just Nintendo’s cunning plan to make you play the game again and again and again. (Besides which, it’s hella tough, so don’t get sucked in unless you have time to burn.)
For anyone who’s really interested in the subject, mightyponygirl’s site seems to be the place to go. I don’t comment there, but I do watch the recommendations.
Irene
Nintendo has actually done some really interesting things with their female characters; take Princess Zelda for example; there’s a clear progression from object to person across the games, until she eventually breaks the princess persona altogether and becomes a Ninja/Pirate captain. On the other hand, we have Princess Peach being spied on in the shower by a lovestruck A.I. One step forward, etc.
It is actually kind of strange…
Nintendo does seem to have been doing their best with time to make Zelda progressively more independent over the course of the series (although the demands of the plot the series has stuck itself with mean that there always has to be some point where her independence is suddenly made irrelevant and all of a sudden Ganon has her trapped in a crystal to be rescued. From this perspective Midna is probably a better role model, considering there’s never really a point where she’s implied to be inferior to Link, and in fact she spends a good half of the game riding him like a dog… literally).
At the same time though, with every single game that passes they’ve been making Princess Peach less independent, more submissive, more and more just window dressing and less and less any kind of actual person. The thing that’s weird about this? As Princess Peach becomes weaker and weaker as a character, she continually becomes more blonde. You can actually plot a nice linear relationship between Peach’s blondness and her submissivity with time. Way back in Super Mario Bros. 2 she’s a full-featured character running around and doing stuff (and actually more useful than mario); and in this game she is outright a brunette. And then things just slide downhill until in the last couple of games she appears to have gradually transformed into just a living barbie doll, as reflected in both function and near-neon hair color.
I would like the have a real guitar one day.
But it is nice to see that we can make both female and male characters very toned down on Rock Band.
I don’t have any of the new systems yet outside of the DS.
Oh and yeah, Rock Band has something that the Guitar Hero series currently don’t have: rock epics.
Atomic, you’re flailing at a strawman. I don’t take issue with the fact that Angelina Jolie is beautiful. I take issue with the fact that the scary sea monster was turned into a naked woman with stilettos for feet. Whether or not male movie stars are beautiful is irrelevant; they aren’t having stilettos installed into their feet a la Barbie dolls, especially to play scary man-eating monsters.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that Lara Croft is a good strong female video game character. I avoided Tomb Raider games for a long time because the way she’s depicted in all the marketing materials doesn’t say ’strong female’ so much as ‘look! breasts!’. Recently I picked up Legend and frankly she seems like a female Indiana Jones. Sure she is attractive, but her appearance isn’t something that defines her. I loved that when a fight broke out in the party scene, the first thing she did was take off the damn high heeled shoes.
When I was tween, Chun-Li was actually one of my favorite game characters precisely because she was a woman who could kick ass, and had the most noble reason to be fighting (if I recall correctly she was trying to avenge her father’s death, most of the other character were basically in it for the money or the glory, yes I read the booklet that came with the game so I could learn the character’s back-stories). I’ve known at least one guy who couldn’t understand why anyone would ever play as Chun-Li because he couldn’t see past her boobs. Just because a woman is conventionally attractive doesn’t automatically discount her ability to be a strong character.
I find it a bit odd that most people just assume that one can’t become properly immersed in a game if the avatar isn’t a miniature version of yourself. Frankly I have about as much in common with Master Chief as the males I know who play Halo. And when games give you the option to pick a character, I don’t always pick the small brown-haired woman! In Super Smash Brothers Melee, I play as Marth (granted, he’s probably the prettiest character in the game, sorry Peach and Zelda); in Golden Eye multi-player, I played as James Bond. It does bother me when they don’t give you a female option *coughcrackdowncough*, but that doesn’t mean I feel compelled to play as the female characters when they are there.
In fact, Marle, Yuna’s decisions are *more* crucial for the plot: if FFX were chess, Yuna would be the King. And then there’s FFX-2, in which *all* the player-characters are female. And in FFXII, the highest-ranking PC around whom the others revolve is female.
mcc, I agree. Our culture, and the Japanese, are doing really unpleasant things to the image of blondes.
Incidentally, one aspect of the eternal victimhood of women is documented here. No matter how competent the heroine, a shitty writer always has the option of turning her into instant McGuffin by having the villain grab her arm.
For female characters, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic isn’t bad. Bastila Shan is in her underwear at one point, and carries on a romance with the player character if the character is male, but Carth Onasi also is in his underwear at that point, and carries on a romance with the player character if the character is female. The heteronormativity is another matter. And then there’s Mission Vao, who is an awesome NPC to have in the party and, while conventionally attractive (for a Twilek) she’s nonsexualized. The player character avatars in KotOR are all thin, but other than that span a fairly wide range of looks.
Matthew, Patron Saint of Affogato
… in real life there is no armour for women that has them. Does not exist, would be a very bad idea. When your female Morrowind character is wearing full armour, looks like a person wearing full armour; not possible to tell sex. Which is as it should be.
That actually really depends on the build of the woman.
There are actually quite a few armorers who include such breastplates.
Example 1
This one carries breast plates for women both with molded cups, and without.
Other examples, how-to instructions from female heavy fighters on adapting armor.
Lyanna
From Swordmaiden.com
Of course, for female fencers and martial arts, there’s molded chest protection, too.
Ultimately, it comes down to the period being emulated, and the build of the wearer.
Yuna from FFX is pretty cool too, yes she’s the Self-Sacrificng Chaste Priestess Maiden, BUT
— she’s egregiously more powerful than the other characters, in storyline and in battle. (This MAY justify the rescue sequence as a device for making players not rely on her)
— she’s got real strength of character and is not actually particularly chaste
— the story makes very clear how much it sucks to be the maiden priestess
her romantic plotline is rather forced, but… she’s a huge improvement over Rinoa or Aeris.
Apologies. I was getting mixed up with the next-gen sequel, where a lot of effort had been expended on details such as nail polish.
…and in which all the characters change clothes (and by extension their fighting modes) via suggestively nude transformation sequences. Come to think of it, some of those costumes are hardly fighting gear.
Another thing that grates is the FF series tendency to use voice talent that makes many of the women sound like squeaky cheerleaders.
What? No one’s mentioned Portal?
Portal is a great game, and certainly the player avatar looks like a real human being (save for the strange leg calipers). But she can hardly be called a character.
That said, the homicidal feminine-voice computer is characterful and very entertaining.
mcc,
Zelda is supposed to have amazing magical abilities and yet she always needs Link to rescue her.
I take this as shorthand for “Women are smart and capable, but they always will need a man.”
As an aside, I’m suprised nobody has posted this yet. (SFW)
Sorry, this was a long-winded way of saying that one of the core game mechanics was about playing with dress-up dollies.
Yuna is a good character, but far from perfect. SPOILERS!!
In short, Yuna is manipulated by another character (Auron) to give up her religious beliefs in order to stop the cycle of Sin. In short, she was supposed to sacrifice the one she loves the most (Tidus) to create a new Aeon to combat Sin, then that Aeon BECOMES Sin 20 years down the road or so. Oh. And the new Aeon kills the summoner as well.
Well, she said fuck that noise, we’ll find another way, they used the fact that Sin was actually Tidus’s father this go around to get inside of him and kill the core (who is actually the namesake of said religion). However, Tidus’s only link to the world was his father, so he disappeared after the death of Sin.
FFX-2 was about Yuna finding a sphere (like a recording device) with an image of Tidus being held captive, and she was looking for him trying to save him. As well, as she was somewhat of a hero, the girl who had to sacrifice everything, now deserved to have everything.
The reality is that the pop-show image of FFX-2 is all about putting on airs. Yuna is actually horribly depressed and lonely, and has to act fun-loving and carefree.
I couldn’t play FFX-2. It was too fucking sad.
And yes. Portal’s Chell was a great character as well, in the Link style of say nothing but actions mean everything. Her choice to break her brainwashing and not be baked in a fire like so much cake is one of the best moments of gaming IMO.
Karamakin, the cake is a lie.
That said, I did think the character was a cipher.
Maybe so…
But to be honest, it’s something to have a female cipher for a change.
Portal is a fab game. It didn’t outstay its welcome. It’s very cheap too, if purchased through Steam.
I don’t have time to read all the comments but from what I glanced over in the Metroid thing: She does strip to a leotard in the NES and SNES games, and it’s based upon “how fast you are”…yeah. Again, it’s at least an improvement on “Mario saving the princess.”
I thought Final Fantasy VI (III in the first USA release in 1994, because Square skipped a few localizations the first time around) was one of the first really solid major games at good gender representations. Unlike the previous games, most of the female characters weren’t weaker in attack points/stronger in magic points, and while there wasn’t a “main character” per se, Terra and Celes could be argued as such. Only disappointment is they had to “sexualize” Terra a bit (she becomes nude, even if the character is too small to see anything, in the Esper morph.)
Well Terra and Celes WERE the main characters, Terra for the first half of the game and Celes for the second. And in terms of attack power they were right up there with all the other characters. Actually, Final Fantasy games were pretty good in not always keeping to the female as mage standard of RPGs. IV all females were mages (where the whole thing probably came from), V had 3 females, but the classes/stats were changable, VI had Terra and Celes, VI had Aeris who was a mage, but Tifa and Yuffie were not. VIII had flexible stats, but I’d say that Riona and Quistis were both mage design in weapons and Limit Breaks. IX had Beatrix and Freya as non-mages and Garnet and Yuko as summoners. X just had Yuna who was a summoner, and XII (XI was a MMORPG) had Penelo as a theif and Ashe as an all-around character (but XII had flexible stats, no set class as well)
*ahem*
So it’s not as cut and dried as it seems. The Dragon Quest games were a bit more into that stereotype, but it isn’t a hard fast rule.
Beowulf really disappointed me because I could tell where Gaiman was trying to take the story by mixing it with the Rhinegold and giving Grendel’s Mother and Wealthow more agency. Because let’s face it, a story about a guy who kills three monsters isn’t that much of a story these days. So Gaiman and Avary look into the gaps of the narrative to find more drama. Why don’t Hrothgar and Beowulf have heirs? Because Wealthow refuses to accept their betrayal? Where is Grendel’s father? And why does the dragon appear from nowhere? Gaiman and Avary were trying to tie the pieces together and ended up with a rather half-hearted examination of gender roles.
But it was mostly undone by the character design of GM. The heels especially were a missed opportunity as that could be one place where they could have emphasized her monstrosity and provided the link back to the siren/mermaid of Beowulf’s memory. The desperate need to show Beowulf’s nudity without showing penis turns a fight scene into slapstick, but we can have GM clothed in nothing but mud.
The end result is that I’m willing to give Beowulf a few points for the attempt, but feel very disappointed in the execution.
Well I meant in the sense that they weren’t active 99% of the time akin to Cecil or Cloud, and that you could make a case for the Figaro brothers and thie–er, treasure hunter Locke as comparably integral to the story.
Yeah, the Dragon Quest games were a few years behind; one thing is they drew much more inspiration from anime (which has its own field of debate re: gender.)
I’m surprised that there have been so many mentions of Portal here, and not one of Alyx Vance from the HL2 games. Yes, she is attractive, but never aggressively sexualized, and her relationship with Gordon is about as believable as a relationship with someone who never speaks CAN be.
(Certainly the actress who plays her identifies with her, as anybody who’s listened to the excellent commentaries on the “episodes” shows.)
And, barring Jade, she’s probably the most competent female character in modern gaming. She was the first companion character I’ve ever had in a game where I could totally trust her to take care of herself, her first appearance showed her saving Gordon’s life, she’s probably more competent at handling the various denizens of the setting than Gordon, and she’s a VERY handy shot with a sniper rifle.
To respond to something upthread: yes, Samus Aran does have those silly (though ultra-mild) bikini pics if you finish the game in a certain amount of time. Saying that totally disqualifies her as a good female character is an enormous case of “perfect as the enemy of the good”.
For 99.9% of the game, and all of it for almost everybody who plays a Metroid game, she’s an incredibly powerful and capable character, striking more terror in the hearts of her opponents than that weak little simp “Master Chief” could on his best day.
(FFX-2 is a much stranger case, though. Most men and boys who expected it to be titillating found it surprisingly not so, and many thoroughly disliked it, whereas several women players I’ve met liked the outfits and the playful tone. Horses for courses, I suppose.)
“BTW, any problems with the peripherals? I’ve seen MANY complaints on forums about guitars, drums, etc… that broke after very little play.”
Joystiq.com Kotaku.com have reports on it and how to get replacements. I suspect a number of complaints are due to the old pushing stuff on the controller while the game is loading error. Pretty much every console game over the last ten years has warned against pushing the joysticks while loading since it makes the game think the new joystick position is the default one.
“yes, Samus Aran does have those silly (though ultra-mild) bikini pics”
Only in one game she also quite the six pack. She is also in a leotard, tankini, and skintight bodysuit for the Metroid Prime games.
Most fictional representations of powersuits have their users using skintight bodysuits or formfitting uniforms.
There is a site with images from the endings of the metroid games. http://mdb.classicgaming.gamespy.com/?g=sm&p=endings each Metroid game has a seperate section. Just click the icons at the top of the page corresponding to the initials of each of the games.
As for why a female would have revealing armor or breast cups in the armor you have to consider comfort as well as how heavy the armor would be.
A woman due to different body proportions in the hips and chest would likely find armor meant for men incredibly uncomfortable as well as limiting in movement. There are biological differences in strength between men and women. How many women could lug plate armor on them like a man could? Not many the woman would likely be slower. A woman with armor suited meaning a lot less could move far more freely and waltz around a male in plate armor.
If you have played the Fire Emblem games the women in plate armor are rare and usually mounted on horses or pegasi or wyverns. While the men using the plate armor are bulky and so massive in it that the ground shakes when they move in combat. The women fighters are portrayed as moving a lot faster. The armor is quite attractive in comparison to most of the armor the male fighters weild.
Also certain women would want the armor to be stylish or have a unique look. There could be several reasons for this from the vain to the practical. Most men would underestimate a female foe especially if her armor was revealing or flashy giving the woman an advantage. Also the armor could tell her foes who she was since the description would empathisize the armor.
Except for the one at #64?
How many men could lug plate armour like a man could? Very few. Physical fitness and endurance seems to have been a much more important determinant than strength. Historically, plate and mail would wear a person out just from the exertion and only an athlete could handle it for long.
Uh, go and check out some of the historical plate armour worn by teh menz in the middle ages. No shortage of vanity or style in many of the patterns and designs.
I have played, in the not too distant past, an awful lot of World of Warcraft and geez their female character formation is awful. The “chainmail bikini” archetype looms sadly large.
“Historically, plate and mail would wear a person out just from the exertion and only an athlete could handle it for long.”
Full plate armor wasn’t found on your common soldier since it was expensive to produce. It was for the nobles or the soldiers who would be paid to wear it. Such people would be the ones who were fit and had trained to wear it for years at a time. They would be the ones who wouldn’t fit the common medieval European height and weight. They would be taller and more heavy due to increased nutrition.
“historical plate armour”
Often parade armour instead of armour meant for battle.
“Often parade armour instead of armour meant for battle.”
That would just mean that there must have been practical reasons why style and customization were toned down in actual battle armor, not a lack of motivating vanity or sense of style.
A woman due to different body proportions in the hips and chest would likely find armor meant for men incredibly uncomfortable as well as limiting in movement. There are biological differences in strength between men and women.
It always cracks me up when male gamers whip out the Reality Arguments to explain why they can’t stand the thought of female avatars who don’t look like they stepped out of a porn video. We’re perfectly willing to imagine people having the power to shoot fireballs from their hands, and meteor showers that kill only hostile enemies but not allies standing right next to them, and soldiers with enough hitpoints to stand up to automatic machine-gun fire, sure. And yeah, it’s fine that these games are not historically accurate, and we’re mixing up armor, weapons and battle tactics that didn’t co-exist in the real world, if they existed at all, because weapons that crackle with green fire are cool even if they’re imaginary.
But a woman wearing plate armor? A female soldier whose tits are proportional to the rest of her body? ZOMFG! YOU HAVE JUST RUINED ALL SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF, YOU CRAZY UNREALIST!
mythago, are you suggesting that most women aren’t proportioned as 46-16-28? Well, if they were, they certainly would need some hinky, odd armor, to help keep their spine from cracking in half if nothing else.
mcc: I loathe the people who translated Super Princess Peach for the DS. Finally, a game where Peach saves Mario, and they have to go fucking it up by naming her powers “vibes” in some weird sexualization that was completely uncalled for. Not that the game wasn’t sexist to begin with - I mean, her powers are *emotions*, for God’s sake, but turning them into sex toys is going a little far.
On Zelda, I really liked the world in Wind Waker because they basically admitted that Saving The Princess was merely pageantry, and it felt like they were actually trying to wean us off it. Unfortunately, that didn’t sit well with players, so we got more Save the Princess crap in the next game. (And Tetra seems to be demoted from Pirate Captain to Link’s Friend in Phantom Hourglass, which is disheartening.)
By the way, Majora’s Mask is my favorite Zelda, probably partly because you don’t have to save any friggin princess to save the world. Instead, you have four giants throw away the moon. That’s real epic.
mythago, are you suggesting that most women aren’t proportioned as 46-16-28?
The two-dimensional ones on my video game posters all are! So it must be true.
As for why a female would have revealing armor or breast cups in the armor you have to consider comfort as well as how heavy the armor would be.
Why? Armor isn’t supposed to be comfortable- it’s supposed to be functional. Kevlar isn’t exactly peaches and cream to wear, and a suit of armor- even on a guy- is uncomfortable as hell. It’s heavy, retains heat, restricts movement, and all the layers of padding would have been uncomfortable as hell. They’d be hot, sweaty, and smelly. Not comfortable.
A woman due to different body proportions in the hips and chest would likely find armor meant for men incredibly uncomfortable as well as limiting in movement.
There’s a difference between making a suit of armor that fits the wearer, and making a suit of armor that is completely different in design just because the wearer is a woman. A suit of armor designed for my father to wear wouldn’t fit me at all- I’m taller and thinner than my father, which would make armor made for me unwearable by him, and armor made for him unwearable by me.
There are biological differences in strength between men and women. How many women could lug plate armor on them like a man could? Not many the woman would likely be slower. A woman with armor suited meaning a lot less could move far more freely and waltz around a male in plate armor.
The average person of either sex couldn’t run around in armor without getting tired. But, then, the average person doesn’t wear armor- warriors do. So, why do we care what the average person can do? We’re talking about extraordinary people. I don’t see any reason to believe that a woman like Tonya Knight couldn’t lug around armor every bit as effectively as a male could.
Most men would underestimate a female foe especially if her armor was revealing or flashy giving the woman an advantage. Also the armor could tell her foes who she was since the description would empathisize the armor.
Your claim- and correct me if I’ve got this wrong- is that a guy, in the middle of a battle, facing a foe that wants to kill him, is going to be distracted by the sight of a woman’s cleavage- even if that woman is the person trying to kill him? And that the potential for distracting a foe makes up for the lack of physical protection that armor would provide?
Really?
I’m with mythago- why in the world should we care what “real” life armor was like in worlds that are populated by characters who throw fireballs and carry and use swords that are upwards of six feet long, with one hand?
You said:
“It was clear that the new programmers didn’t really get rock culture…”
This was an interesting read and all, but I’m not sure what sexless rock culture you’re thinking of. In simplest terms, “Rock Culture” is all about sex.
Of sex and rock…
David Lee Roth said:
You know what rock musicians are? They are hung up, neurotic, over-weight hippies with sex problems.
Camille Paglia said:
If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn’t repel them.
And we can’t forget Gene Simmons who said:
The notion is that if you want to welcome me with open arms, I’m afraid you’re also going to have to welcome me with open legs.
-ColbyCheese
Okay, now that they got the girl’s right, do you think maybe Rock Band could include some black musicians on their set list? Apparently Rock and Roll has nothing to do with African Americans according to the game Rock Band.