What a lot of people are overlooking is that
everything and anything to subject to criticism, and that's not a bad thing. Criticism has existed as long as books, theatre, art, movies, and and so on, and it's healthy to think critically about what we consume. I love reading, and I just finished a three year university program where we analyzed literature all day. Analyzing literature and finding flaws in it doesn't have to detract from my enjoyment of it. The same goes for movie critics, food critics, whatever.
Really, the people who complain about video game critics sound like the twihards who moan every time anyone has anything critical to say about
Twilight. If we as a community are as bad as twihards of all things (and twihards don't even send
rape threats), then we have a problem.
Like Vern said, the Star Fox thing was complete bull ****. I don't know how it went but from every other story I've heard about Star Fox Adventures was conceived by Miyamoto mentioning that Krystal's partner resembled Fox a lot. That said, money is money so (to the demise of the fans of Star Fox 64) Rare slapped on the Star Fox team and made Krystal a side character giving her more tribal looking clothes. As for the damsel in distress, it's an easy cliche to work off of and you barely think about it in the midst of the game play (which matters the most). This is just the surface and though they are slightly sexist, they aren't sexist enough to make a fuss over.
How is her point about Dinosaur Planet wrong? That is indeed how the game came to be. Her point wasn't that it was bad that Nintendo took over development; her point was that it was unfair to take the character who was previously the hero of the game and let you play as her for all of ten minutes, so you then spend the
entire rest of the game as Fox trying to rescue her. It disempowers the only female character in the game. I love this game and have played it through many times, so trust me: there is no reason Krystal couldn't have been playable for more of it, as originally intended.
Regarding her clothing, they could have made it tribal without making it sexual. Also, "but cliches are so easy to use instead of putting in any effort" isn't an excuse for lazy writing. It's not just about whether or not it affects you during gameplay - it's about creating original stories and interesting characters without having to fall back on tired and overused tropes that a lot of people are sick and tired of. The overused Peach kidnapping plot gets boring after awhile, even if it doesn't affect gameplay.
Last, her point was that the damsel in distress isn't the
only sexist trope in video games. Her point was that this trope, combined with all the other sexist tropes, makes it frustrating for a lot of gamers who want to see better representations of women.
I feel it's addressing an issue that frankly put, only people actually doing the research would care about. I don't mean to be insensitive but everything she says isn't news to anyone who plays on a daily basis.
The fact that not everybody cares doesn't mean that this analysis shouldn't be done. Some people
do care, and some people
do want to see what she has to say and
do want to figure out how we can use this information to change things in the video game industry.
Also, that first line pretty much describes the world of academia. And academia is a pretty huge and well-respected world.
I can't really say for sure if the damsel in distress thing actually does encourage sexism to the extant that it actually makes a difference in sexism....but I do know for sure that too many people make girls out to be helpless. And it's not like only us males do it(and I'm not saying she accused it of it only being us either), as it seems a good handful of girls in real life are dependent on others as well.
You kind of just displayed the sexism you just talked about. Yes, there are handfuls of people are are dependent - including but not limited to women. But these ideas that women as a gender are helpless, frail and vulnerable has been an idea for hundreds of years despite it not being true, and it's popped up in popular culture over and over, in movie after movie, in game after game. And the more an idea gets repeated, the more likely people are to believe it's true and propagate it (just look at how many Americans believe Obama is Muslim thanks to Fox News saying it over and over). So yes, when you keep hearing the message "X is Y" over and over, it does make a difference. All she's saying is that it's time to stop repeating the same messages and ideas.
My thoughts? They're games. They're not meant to be over-analyzed like this. Too many people getting offended by things not worth getting mad over. Is having the majority of women fall into tropes wrong? Many not, maybe so. Is it really worth trying to stop?
Plenty of things get "over-analyzed," but as long as there is content, there will be people there to criticize it. Just because you don't think it's worth making a change, doesn't mean that's actually the case. If you really don't feel it's worth even talking about, then you shouldn't mind if people go ahead and improve it.
To be honest, I don't think this is really exclusively a video game issue. Movies, TV shows, books, comics, and other forms of entertainment all utilize the Damsel in Distress (which I'll just shorten to DiD from here) trope, and have been long before Video Games have existed. It even says that in the video in question. So the point of this isn't "Omg Video games are evil sexist things". Is the trope overused? Definitely. However, I don't think it's quite as damning as they'd have us believe. Media of any sort can influence people, but it's only just that; influence. I believe that's what Jb was implying; just as not all people who play GTA will turn into violent killers, not all girls who play video games will be shoehorned into the traditionally "weak feminine" archetype. Media is just one influence, and it comes down to the individual to accept what they see, or reject it.
The entire point is that these tropes aren't just in video games; we see them over and over in our lives, everywhere from movies to advertisements. It's repetitive and it's frustrating, especially when you want to see your gender being represented in a way that's realistic, original, and not insulting. It's not solely about worrying about how representations of certain groups will affect people's perceptions of those groups - it's also about those groups feeling that they are given a voice and represented fairly and realistically in media.
Some people are more susceptible to the media influences, and they're the ones most susceptible to the effects of stereotypes. Just as many, however, will play the games, and just reject what they see. Not every girl who plays a Mario game is going to suddenly turn around and think "I should be like Princess Peach because that's what this game is telling me".
Except that, as she said,
"A large percentage of the world's population still clings to the deeply sexist belief that women as a group still need to be sheltered, protected and taken care of by men," and it doesn't help when women are constantly portrayed as being weak and in need of saving by men to this day. It's not that every girl wants to emulate Peach, but when most kidnapping plots in any media involve helpless women who need to be freed by a man, you pummel people with the same message over and over about how women are weak and need men. It's just not true, and it's not a message you should be sending in this day and age.
No, you're right. But in the same way people are influenced buy the media, or games for this topic, there are just as many who aren't. The average age gamers is around 30ish. It's safe to assume that people around this age already have their views on women, or any subject in general. I agree that games can influence people but getting rid of the damsel in distress isn't the way to go about it. She didn't even talk about the hundreds upon hundreds of games that portray the female in the same light as the light as the common male.
This video was concentrating specifically on the damsel in distress trope, so she was solely talking about examples of damsels in distress, and was not going to address anything else in that video. Also, there still are plenty of young gamers who
are still forming opinions on women, and between seeing female video game characters portrayed in these ways and hearing adult male gamers harass female players, you don't create an environment for a generation of gamers with particularly high views of or even much respect for women. Is there a correlation between poor representations of women in gaming and how gamers treat women? Possibly.
besides that, if any feminist actually wanted gender equality, why would they call themselves a feminist? why not a name that refers to neither gender so that all people, regardless of sex, could participate, like "equalist" perhaps?
Because feminism has been around for a long time and has made a name for itself by giving women power equal to that of men. We have feminism to thank for the progress of womens' rights, even though "feminism" has since turned into a dirty word because it's automatically associated with radical feminist theory. But I don't disagree that a new name isn't a bad idea.
She has a one-sided view, for starters. From what I had saw, she implied that only females are affected negatively by this consequence. Some tropes would portray women incorrectly as a consequence, but there are other tropes that consequently portray men negatively as well. And there are some tropes that affect both genders in a bad way, albeit differently. For more details, go here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleStandard
It also seems to me that she thinks tropes are inflexible and rigid, in that, for example, the Distressed Damsel is not necessary female. Though
it has a specific male counterpart.
She isn't saying that only women are affected negatively by tropes. She is only focusing on tropes that affect females because
that's what she's interested in and knowledgeable about. It wouldn't be fair to ask one person to look at how tropes affect the dozens of other groups - it's a huge amount of work, and that's not her specialty. If you want to see videos about how men or black people or gay people are affected by tropes, then you'll have to look elsewhere.
I think a lot of people are missing an important point. As Sarkeesian stated, these games
don't exist in a vacuum. They are part of the narratives we tell as a society, and it's ridiculous that in this day and age, these are the types of stories we tell. And to quote her directly,
Anita Sarkeesian said:
A large percentage of the world's population still clings to the deeply sexist belief that women as a group still need to be sheltered, protected and taken care of by men. The belief that women as somehow a weaker gender is a deeply ingrained socially constructed myth which is completely false, but the notion is reinforced and perpetuated when women are portrayed as frail, fragile and vulnerable creatures.
~Psychic
