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The thing is, that can be used to justify some of the most offensive lazy tropes in fiction, like the whole "fridging" issue -- i.e. killing a girlfriend or wife to motivate the hero. It's effective, but it's also horrible.
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I've actually found that the whole thing involving Sarkeesian has just been a profound example of male gatekeeping — the organized response on the whole to claim that Sarkeesian "isn't a real gamer" is a very astounding thing which even at one point had one gamer analyzing how she uses her thumbs on a control pad and uses it as proof that she doesn't really a real gamers the video games lol.
"No real gamer presses the A button with the top of their thumb like she does. I can tell she obviously doesn't play a good amount of games just from me seeing this hand motion."
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quote:Originally posted by Destineer: I would also defend the problematic scenes in the original Bioshock, by the way. The game had strong elements of horror, and horror scenes with female victims are very effective. The reasons for this are indeed due to problems with our culture's conception of women. But that is the nature of horror, to lay bare our darker nature and exploit it.
I think you're saying here that the effect is different from the one we'd get if the victims were portrayed as male. I just want to connect the dots a bit...
I think we're horrified no matter the sex or age of the victim, but for a male gamer there might be the following variations on a standard stop the madness game scene with victims of horrible acts:
Helpless children are being unhelped in really bad ways and it's up to me to be the hero, because they are children and they need help! It really sucks to see helpless miniature people being unhelped like that. Now mind the crossfire, poppets.
Helpless lady type people are being unhelped in really bad ways and it's up to me to be the hero, because they are not as strong and helpwise as me and that's why it's me a man doing the saving. Oh man that's pretty creepy how the Badster is all over those lady type people. Time to rocket grenade some benevolence into that mess.
Helpless man dudes are being unhelped in really bad ways and it's up to me to be the hero because I have the good guns and remember to use the health bolstering goodies I find around me unlike those helpless man dudes. Sawblade blaster FTW.
(Same as previous, but with slight additional wrinkle for some, perhaps) Ouch, it tingles bad to identify so much with those helpless man dudes.
All the variations on horribleness are horrible, of course. And many horror games are a mix of all of the above. But I'm not sure that one type of victim is more effective at inspiring horror.
What it might be more effective at is adding some kind of heroic or chivalric flavor to the experience.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: The thing is, that can be used to justify some of the most offensive lazy tropes in fiction, like the whole "fridging" issue -- i.e. killing a girlfriend or wife to motivate the hero. It's effective, but it's also horrible.
Well, note that what I said about female victimhood was restricted to the horror genre. Works outside that genre aren't necessarily as much about drawing out our dark side, and so it's harder to say that moral fault amounts to aesthetic success in those genres.
But it's also very difficult to codify rules for success in fiction. I can think of many works of fiction where "fridging" (never heard that term before) just succeeds and I would not criticize the author/director/whatever for including it.
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For example, how do you feel about the excessive amount of depictions of prostitutes (and violence committed against them) in video games?
Some mature video games have seedy and adult sequences, some of which depict violence against men and women, and the sleazy world of prostitutes. If a game like "Assassin's Creed" or "GTA V" wants to create a Godfather-esque universe, then it makes no sense to omit prostitutes. Moreover, as for the issue of sex/eroticism in video games in general,these sort of video games (and ones that don't even leave room for this sort of sleaze, like "Dark Souls") are mainly consumed and purchased by males, and I see no problem whatsoever with game designers including whatever erotic elements they'd like to better appeal to their overwhelmingly male base.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Note: what I find *pathetic* is not that some people disagree and argue with Sarkessian. It's that some people think that their disagreement with Sarkeesian relegates the nasty crap happening to her to an afterthought. Like this:
"Anita made arguments that were soundly rebutted by many people, also she got some threats"
Nobody has to try to address the threats if they don't want to, but when a discussion *about the threats* gets steered toward the topics of her gamer cred or the fairness of her critiques, it shows that some people think their view of her sincerity has some bearing on whether she deserves the treatment she's getting. And it really, really doesn't.
Well, how about when she uses the threats themselves to buttress those same arguments, which she and her allies are obviously doing? The narrative is "Anita told hard truths and got death threats for it. This is obviously misogyny, not different from the sort of misogyny she was initially describing." The death threat issue and her thesis have been conflated by Sarkeesian's allies specifically as to buttress Sarkeesian's initial laughably weak arguments.
Probably because misogyny when challenged acts in precisely the way those making death threats, dismissing her points, or marginalizing the danger do.
If the boot fits.
Maybe real mysognists threatened her. That doesn't mean the other people who merely disagreed with her are misogynists, a position that's implicitly attributed to those who merely disagree Sarkeesian, especially when the general negative reaction to Sarkeesian keeps getting painted as one of misogyny rather than gamers merely defending their passion from fatuous critiques.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I do think this issue brings up something of interest on any controversial topic, whether it's political, social, economic, religious, cultural, anything contentious I can think of right now in fact.
It's what to do with the fringes of a given movement or idea. I don't think it's a slam dunk to dismiss someone based on idea association, but I also think it can be a useful indicator marking someone out as a sleaze or someone so fanatic useful conversation isn't possible. 'A fanatic is someone who won't change his mind and won't change the subject' I think is close to the exact Churchill quote.
In this instance, sexist and outright misogynistic portrayals are frankly obvious enough that to dismiss them is an indicator. But if you follow that too strictly, you weed out useful discussion such as that offered by MrSquicky and Destineer.
So they get noted, so long as one doesn't associate ideas with fanatics too strictly, as having productive things to say that it's important to hear. But what to do with those really straddling the line of fanaticism? In this case we have a poster who is determined to either minimize the fact of threats of murder and sexual violence, or even to criticize the victim of such threats for complaining.
So I suppose one question is, when faced with someone who is aggressive about offering up something reprehensible that it is actually important to reject publicly, is it better to say 'I'm not discussing this as long as you bring up position x' or is it better to treat it as though they hadn't spoken the fanatic position, and address other points?
I often tend to the former, for a variety of reasons. Anger and distaste, a sort of preemptive weariness, but sometimes fascination (I have been called by one guy in particular both a communist and a royalist, of all things, with the utmost conviction).
But what's the best way to handle that sort of thing? One or the other, or a blend, or something else altogether?
('Fanatic' here is, to some extent, just shorthand. Although in this case I think an unwillingness to say 'threats of murder and sexual violence are unacceptable, those making them ought to be ashamed of themselves and I reject them, even if the person in question DID poke them with a stick beforehand' to be so absurd an so marginal as to be fanatical.)
The problem here is that you're moving from the actual discussion itself to policing the discussing and labeling your opponents as "the fringe." Those who natter on about the "fringe" of the other side tend to almost always be blind to the fringe on their own side. It could just as well be that the real "fringe" here is Sarkeesian and her allies who want to create the equivalent of the Hays code for the video game industry, only in line with 3rd wave sjw feminism.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: All the variations on horribleness are horrible, of course. And many horror games are a mix of all of the above. But I'm not sure that one type of victim is more effective at inspiring horror.
What it might be more effective at is adding some kind of heroic or chivalric flavor to the experience.
My only rejoinder is that, if you follow the works of horror directors like Dario Argento and John Carpenter, you'll find that they make special use of women as victims, and that this is particularly effective on the screen.
In my opinion the reason has something to do with the same phenomenon that made "women and children first" the law of the sea. Consciously or not, we are taught to perceive women as more innocent and vulnerable than men, and so the bloody death of a woman is a more transgressive and disturbing thing to portray on screen than a man's bloody death. Other things being equal. It probably also has a lot to do with the fact that we're taught to see women's bodies as beautiful in a way that men's are not (both women and men are taught to feel this way), so the murder of an attractive woman is tinged with the sense that something beautiful is being destroyed. This probably explains why women are used in these scenes more often than children.
As always, though, there are no hard and fast rules about what works on screen or on the page, so this is just one aspect of what can work in on-screen horror, no doubt analyzed imperfectly by me.
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Anitia Sarkeesian and her allies (such as journalists who champion her) are seeking to gain social status by putting down, insulting and patrionizing gamers and pulling the Superweapon of "misogyny!!" accusations when that schtick is not well received by the people who played the games in question and are far more knowledgable than Anita about the context that the sequences she analyses occur in. To not challenge Anita Sarkeesian is to let her implicitly demean gamers and game designers as sexists.
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But game designers and gamers *are* often misogynistic. The body of work speaks for itself.
This conversation sounds so much like the arguments I have with my parents where I talk about the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and they think I'm talking about them. They do well for themselves, but the difference between what they do and what the upper 1% do is like night and day, and yet they feel a psychological need to associate with those who are called successful by society.
Gamers who are no misogynistic are great! But it's not a blemish on your membership in the fan club if you are willing to call a spade a spade. And when you speak out against mysogeny the overwhelming response is, "Get a load of the white knight loooool."
It's like the only way these people can conceive of relationships between men and women is the exchange of sexual favors. It's little wonder these men don't expect anything else out of the women in the games they play. And games can be *so* much better than that, but they haven't been without any exceptions until very recently. Last of Us, Portal, etc. But those are style outliers, not the norm.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: It's like the only way these people can conceive of relationships between men and women is the exchange of sexual favors.
You know, that's one of the more baffling aspects of the MRA movement, and the way in which is sharply ignores reality. How do they account for the large number of men who are happily married/in committed relationships? Or relationships that are built on love, trust, friendship and mutual respect? Like, I know the MRAs treat the very concept of friendship with women with abject scorn and derision ("friendzoning"), but how do they explain any relationships that aren't transactional? My wife has sex with me because she enjoys it and wants to make me happy, and vice versa. There's no exchange of goods or favors. The idea that a woman is capable of sexual desire and can have sex simply because she wants to seems entirely foreign to them. In fact, they've created an entire system to explain how women trade their sexual "currency" for goods and/or status, which seems to completely ignore reality. At most, it could be an (IMO incorrect) model for explaining one night stands. It completely ignores the experiences of the vast majority of people.
All that being said, "white knighting" is something both Aros and Clive (in several of his iterations) has accused me and others of. Which makes me wonder, where exactly are the females I'm hoping to impress by defending them? My wife doesn't read what I write here, and even if she did, I doubt my opinions on sexist tropes in video games would have any impact on whether or not I have sex. So why would I care?
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I think a lot of the theory is built specifically around "unattainable" women who are sometimes conspicuously attainable by men with a lot of money or status. They think "I'm just as handsome as Donald Trump, therefore <theory>."
And...well, it's reasonably accurate for a very small subset of the population. It just doesn't reflect the majority, like you said, and ignores the whole develop relationships with people who are reciprocally interested strategy.
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I don't think Anitia Sarkeesian is off-base in her critiques. I also don't think it takes away from what are some very good, very worthwhile video games. It's okay to like video games and think that there are also some problematic aspects to them (in fact, Sarkeesian states as much herself, multiple times, in her respective videos) Sometimes the first step to fixing an issue is simply showing others that there is a problem, and if Blackblade and Dogbreath are any indication, I'd say at least a few eyes are being opened as a result of her work, which I'd consider a net positive.
And if some feel that Sarkeesian's credentials, tone, or whatever are not up to snuff, allow me to present a counter example.
Extra Credits is probably the most dude-friendly medium that offers serious critiques of games and game culture. They were hosted on Penny Arcade for ages, for goodness sake. Almost across the board my nerdy, gamer, or game design-leaning friends recommend and enjoy it. I like it too, and I also like how occasionally, they use their considerable influence to really try to encourage players and designers to make games better for everyone. They not only recognize the problematic issues that exist in games and gaming culture, they try to come up with solutions to make gaming more inclusive to women, the LBGT community, and people of differing racial and cultural backgrounds. And they do it with what seems really quite close to an insider's perspective. There's a designer on the staff, and they seem to have the finger on the pulse of the industry to a remarkable degree. They love games, and they want the industry to succeed, and to be respected as a medium the same way film and television are. Part of that, they say over and over, is frankly for the industry to grow up, to stop pandering to the male teenage audience with things like boob physics, to be better about policing bad behavior, and to broaden the pool from which story and character ideas are taken. All steps would make an environment where as many people as possible, regardless of gender or background, can enjoy themselves, which is generally great for the industry and the bottom line of companies who produce games.
So if you don't want to listen to what Anitia Sarkeesian has to say for whatever reason, maybe consider a few of these:
A lot of these touch on Sarkeesian's points, but in a more general way than she does since she hits the specific feminist perspective. Heck, they're all good, and I'd be a bit surprised if most of the posters in this thread hadn't already heard of them, but just in case, here's their videography on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz/videos
quote:Maybe real mysognists threatened her. That doesn't mean the other people who merely disagreed with her are misogynists, a position that's implicitly attributed to those who merely disagree Sarkeesian, especially when the general negative reaction to Sarkeesian keeps getting painted as one of misogyny rather than gamers merely defending their passion from fatuous critiques.
Wrong. There are two examples in this thread of people who disagreed with her, without ever being accused of misogyny. What gets someone an accusation of misogyny is stuff such as labeling death and rape threats as 'unpleasant'.
quote:The problem here is that you're moving from the actual discussion itself to policing the discussing and labeling your opponents as "the fringe." Those who natter on about the "fringe" of the other side tend to almost always be blind to the fringe on their own side. It could just as well be that the real "fringe" here is Sarkeesian and her allies who want to create the equivalent of the Hays code for the video game industry, only in line with 3rd wave sjw feminism.
I was having an additional discussion, not sidestepping this one. And, again, I don't unilaterally label my opponents as the fringe. At this point I'm not sure what purpose is served by nodding to the examples of critics of Sarkeesian in this thread who aren't in any sort of fringe. I suspect you will continue to somehow miss that, again.
quote:Anitia Sarkeesian and her allies (such as journalists who champion her) are seeking to gain social status by putting down, insulting and patrionizing gamers and pulling the Superweapon of "misogyny!!" accusations when that schtick is not well received by the people who played the games in question and are far more knowledgable than Anita about the context that the sequences she analyses occur in. To not challenge Anita Sarkeesian is to let her implicitly demean gamers and game designers as sexists.
If you're going to complain about the unfairness of Sarkeesian attempting to control the debate unfairly, perhaps your best tactic might not be to insist they not express ideas you don't like.
Furthermore, she doesn't demean all gamers or game designers as implicitly sexist. Though some she does call out outright, quite fairly.
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(Hey, objects in a mirror, pay attention, this part of the post is directed to a critic of Sarkeesian who is in no way misogynistic-you could perhaps take a look at his thoughts and see how to do that.)
Destineer,
Of course I agree that there is value in referencing and even featuring uglier aspects of humanity in storytelling and art. Both are supposed to reflect and illustrate and enhance the human condition and all that, so that only makes sense.
I think the trouble comes, though, when a given bit of art or story panders. When it retreads old ground, aiming for the low-hanging fruits of titillation or outrage or self-righteousness, to the point where you can expect a series of things almost by default such as: most mainstream films will fail, and fail badly, the Bechdel test; women in games are much more likely to be either eye candy or motivation-as-victim or prize; that pointing out that these things do, factually, happen will often earn scorn and outrage from the broader community (see objects). So on and so forth.
It's not a case for such art needing to be stopped from being made. But I think things like this are a good basis for questioning its value as art.
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Also, as others have mentioned: stop trying to claim spokesman status for gamers, objects. You don't get to do that. This is not a case of Sarkeesian and outsider journalists rabble-rousing.
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quote:I think the trouble comes, though, when a given bit of art or story panders. When it retreads old ground, aiming for the low-hanging fruits of titillation or outrage or self-righteousness,
A lot of work that does this sort of thing is bad. But the flip side is that a lot of it falls under the category of high-quality exploitation or camp. I'm thinking especially of movies like Sin City, the Dirty Harry trilogy, Showgirls, Django Unchained, most of John Carpenter's movies...
quote: to the point where you can expect a series of things almost by default such as: most mainstream films will fail, and fail badly, the Bechdel test; women in games are much more likely to be either eye candy or motivation-as-victim or prize; that pointing out that these things do, factually, happen will often earn scorn and outrage from the broader community (see objects). So on and so forth.
This is where I think we might have some common ground. I would like to see these things change as well, in terms of how common these tropes are. But I don't think a good way to make progress is by leveling purely moral critiques against good works of art.
To focus on one example, I think the Bechdel test is useful but easy to misuse. In the end, I would like to see way more good movies that pass the Bechdel test. But I would not like to see fewer good movies that fail the test. So if someone says to me, only X percent of movies pass the test, I agree that is a problem that should be changed. But if someone says, Blade Runner fails the Bechdel test, so there's something wrong with Blade Runner, that's where I get off the boat.
Let's focus our specific criticisms on the bad work, and make them artistic criticisms, not just moral ones. Some feminist media critics do this, although I often get the sense that the artistic critique is something they see as tacked-on and only secondarily important. Sarkeesian herself certainly picks some bad games to criticize along with the good, but she never critiques them as art, only purely morally. This is my problem with her approach.
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Actually, it seems that she doesn't really criticize the individual games at all. She uses them as examples of the prevelence of tropes in the media - like, say, testing various toys for traces of lead. You're not so much criticizing the product as the environment that made it.
That being said, afaik, there is no point in Blade Runner where two females speak to one another at all, so maybe it neither passes nor fails???
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quote:A lot of work that does this sort of thing is bad. But the flip side is that a lot of it falls under the category of high-quality exploitation or camp. I'm thinking especially of movies like Sin City, the Dirty Harry trilogy, Showgirls, Django Unchained, most of John Carpenter's movies...
Sure, as with anything cultural, there is no absolutely reliable standard. And many of them are only guidelines at best, with a ton of asterisks after the word. But when for example you look at that list I've seen Sin City, some of the Dirty Harry films, and some of Carpenter's films) you'll find campiness and exploitation of stereotypes and clichés, of course. But what makes them exceptional, really worthwhile on the basis of art? Is it that Dirty Harry is a badass cop sick of bureaucracy, who always gets the bad guy even if he has to break the ruler grrr! Well, that makes it fun-if done well. They story on its own was tedious. You needed those actors, that director, that all the other filmmaking staff, to bring it together.
Django Unchained? Hell, about the only mainstream film cliché that movie had was excessive violence and one-liners-a slave revenge story is hardly a cliché in American filmmaking after all! But plenty of terrible movies have exceptional stories behind them, and that's not enough to make them good. Other elements made that film great, in my opinion.
Perhaps another way to put it is that inclusion of cliché and camp doesn't always equal pandering.
quote:This is where I think we might have some common ground. I would like to see these things change as well, in terms of how common these tropes are. But I don't think a good way to make progress is by leveling purely moral critiques against good works of art.
I think that these critiques are a lot less 'purely moral' than you think they are. For example, mentioning that a story covers extremely well-trodden ground by its reliance on cliché isn't a moral criticism, even if it then goes on to object to the specific ground covered (which could be a moral criticism).
quote:To focus on one example, I think the Bechdel test is useful but easy to misuse. In the end, I would like to see way more good movies that pass the Bechdel test. But I would not like to see fewer good movies that fail the test. So if someone says to me, only X percent of movies pass the test, I agree that is a problem that should be changed. But if someone says, Blade Runner fails the Bechdel test, so there's something wrong with Blade Runner, that's where I get off the boat.
Given that the Bechdel test is much more often used as an indicator for filmmaking as a whole rather than a pass-fail measurement of individual films, well sure, but I'm not aware of many people who actually say 'no women, never seeing it, people who see it shouldn't'. On the other side, though, stories that are mostly or even exclusively about women (as many stories and films are-not just war movies) are marked out as unusual.
quote:Let's focus our specific criticisms on the bad work, and make them artistic criticisms, not just moral ones. Some feminist media critics do this, although I often get the sense that the artistic critique is something they see as tacked-on and only secondarily important. Sarkeesian herself certainly picks some bad games to criticize along with the good, but she never critiques them as art, only purely morally. This is my problem with her approach.
Nah, I'm gonna keep doing both. I don't think you've really made your case for why moral critiques of art ought not be made-rather you've expressed an opinion that they're not to your standards for measuring art. But when you widen the lens and apply that to moral critiques in general, you are in some sense making a moral criticism as well. As for Sarkeesian in particular, well of course she has a much narrower scope for how she evaluates things. That's made explicit right at the start. She isn't intending a standard, comprehensive critique. There's hardly a lack of that for video games, after all.
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: That being said, afaik, there is no point in Blade Runner where two females speak to one another at all, so maybe it neither passes nor fails???
I think it fails because the underlying reason for the test is to measure the presence and importance of female characters to a film. If the females in a film never interact, I think it implicitly fails.
That said, if you believe that Deckard is a replicant, I'm not even sure two (human) male characters ever interact in the film.
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I think the most frustrating thing about sociological or gender discussions is the tendency to take broad statements about general trends and turn them into specific rants about individual works or situations -- rants that don't actually exist. I remember talking to my own brother about lego's branding history and the lack of progress of women in STEM fields and and it somehow got twisted to him accusing me of resenting how our own mother raised me.
But I digress...
Sarkeesian discusses dozens of games that have existed since the 80s, and how together they contribute to a problematic narrative. BioShock (just to continue the example used previously) is a great game, she's not actually making any kind of argument that it isnt. But BioShock does not exist in a world where there are a multitude of different narrative techniques, if it did then there wouldn't be any issue at all -- Sarkeesian even states that theres nothing inherently wrong with women and girls in a dependent or disempowered position in narratives, since that relates to the general experiences of real people. The problem is when that is the only narrative well that designers and consumers ever dip into, making BioShock is just another drop in the sea of problematic depictions of women in all media, not just video games.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Given that the Bechdel test is much more often used as an indicator for filmmaking as a whole rather than a pass-fail measurement of individual films ...
This is how I think about it.
Imagine a similar test for visible minorities or for black people in the US. Can we think of great films without any black people? Of course. Is it a healthy thing for society to across the board never have examples of black people interacting? Not really.
The test is a broad measure to note the rather high percentage of films that fail given that women comprise roughly half the population. It's not really supposed to be a scalpel that denotes films as being "bad" for failing (or "good" for merely passing for that matter).
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I've no problem with what Anita Sarkeesian is trying to do. I've a problem with how she goes about it.
Sometimes she can be extremely over the top. Calling "UP" a sexist movie because it didn't have two or more female characters? Come on.
I suppose she never had the opportunity to play Metroid. Not all video games show women being beaten.
The problem is she is applying the "Bechdel Test" (That is what she calls it) to video games. That being, even if the video game doesn't contain scenes of rape, torture, or violence towards women, the game is still sexist if there aren't two or more strong female characters that do something other than talk to men.
I guess by that test, Metroid is just as sexist, because even though Samus kicks ass, there is only one female character. :/
That doesn't discount the fact that there are real problems in the video game industry. She just has no idea how she should be going about it. Her lack of knowledge of the industry makes her look like a complete fool to those that are more familiar with it.
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Extra credits brings up almost the exact same points, even regarding the bechdel test. EC even had a whole episode ranting specifically about Other M
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: I've no problem with what Anita Sarkeesian is trying to do. I've a problem with how she goes about it.
Sometimes she can be extremely over the top. Calling "UP" a sexist movie because it didn't have two or more female characters? Come on.
I suppose she never had the opportunity to play Metroid. Not all video games show women being beaten.
The problem is she is applying the "Bechdel Test" (That is what she calls it) to video games. That being, even if the video game doesn't contain scenes of rape, torture, or violence towards women, the game is still sexist if there aren't two or more strong female characters that do something other than talk to men.
I guess by that test, Metroid is just as sexist, because even though Samus kicks ass, there is only one female character. :/
That doesn't discount the fact that there are real problems in the video game industry. She just has no idea how she should be going about it. Her lack of knowledge of the industry makes her look like a complete fool to those that are more familiar with it.
As noted by others already, the Bechdel test isn't for assessing individual works. It was never supposed to say that a work that doesn't pass the test is a bad work.
You look at the percentage of works that fail the test, and that tells you something about the society that produced and consumed them.
Did Sarkeesian say Up was a bad movie because it failed the test? I doubt it. Has she said any individual work is bad because it failed the test? I doubt that too.
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
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Well, as for the article mentioned, it's difficult for me to take it seriously because it says right out that 'tropes are unavoidable'. Which is technically true-not every work of art and story can be utterly ground-breaking, after all! But just because they can't be entirely expunged doesn't mean it's a guarantee that they have to be there.
quote:Sometimes she can be extremely over the top. Calling "UP" a sexist movie because it didn't have two or more female characters? Come on.
I suppose she never had the opportunity to play Metroid. Not all video games show women being beaten.
Does she actually say the film is sexist or bad because of this? If she does, I will be surprised and join you in scorning that outlook.
As for Metroid...the existence of a very few games with female protagonists, particularly when they are female basically in the sense that you are told they're female and that's it, hardly disproves or even erodes her thesis.
It's clear you completely misunderstand both what the Bechdel test is, and what it's used for, Geraine.
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I just watched the video where Sarkeesian discusses the Bechdel test, and she quite specifically is talking about how it demonstrates a *systemic* problem. She offers no opinion on the specific qualities of the individual works that fail the test, and says "it's not even a sign of whether it's a feminist movie, or whether it's a good movie".
There appear to be no examples of her applying this test to video games(?).
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This is Sarkeesian talking about the Bechdel test:
quote:Again, to be clear this test does not gauge the quality of a film, it doesn’t determine whether a film is feminist or not, and it doesn’t even determine whether a film is woman centered. Some pretty awful movies including ones that have stereotypical and/or sexist representations of women might pass the test with flying colours. Where really well made films that I would highly recommend might not.
The Bechdel test is best when used as a tool to evaluate Hollywood as an institution, it can be applied to pretty much any grouping of mainstream movies such as the Golden Globes nominees or the top grossing films of any given year, all with similar results. The test helps us identify the lack of relevant and meaningful female roles as a larger pattern in the film industry as a whole. The problem isn’t restricted to any individual movie, director or genre.
posted
OK at this point Geraine I'm just gonna tease you a bit about 'complete lack of knowledge' and then drop it. Because that's a wicked ding, but no need to belabor it;)
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Well, as for the article mentioned, it's difficult for me to take it seriously because it says right out that 'tropes are unavoidable'. Which is technically true-not every work of art and story can be utterly ground-breaking, after all! But just because they can't be entirely expunged doesn't mean it's a guarantee that they have to be there.
quote:Sometimes she can be extremely over the top. Calling "UP" a sexist movie because it didn't have two or more female characters? Come on.
I suppose she never had the opportunity to play Metroid. Not all video games show women being beaten.
Does she actually say the film is sexist or bad because of this? If she does, I will be surprised and join you in scorning that outlook.
As for Metroid...the existence of a very few games with female protagonists, particularly when they are female basically in the sense that you are told they're female and that's it, hardly disproves or even erodes her thesis.
It's clear you completely misunderstand both what the Bechdel test is, and what it's used for, Geraine.
I might have misunderstood it. Her own comments on the Bechdel test though state:
quote: When I call it a systemic problem what I mean by this is that it’s not just a few people here and there that don’t like women, or don’t want women’s stories told, but rather the entire industry is built upon creating films and movies that cater to and are about men.
Next time you go to the movies just ask yourself these few questions. Are there two or more women in it and do they have names? Do they talk to each other? And do they talk to each other about something other then a man?
This right after she listed various movies that didn't pass the test. She is asking the reader to watch a movie and then ask those questions to determine if it is sexist or not. Being that she just listed movies that DIDN'T pass the test, she is pretty much calling them sexist.
Again, I could be misinterpreting or reading into her statement too much. It is just how I read it.
As for games, I am not denying there is a systematic problem with how video games portray women. I DO think that the problem is both better and worse than it used to be. The games that treat women well, such as the Mass Effect Series, couldn't have been done years ago. Likewise, due to technological advancements in gaming, the negative aspects have also been magnified. Twenty years ago you wouldn't be able to make realistic looking female characters being beaten and / or raped. (Grand Theft Auto comes to mind)
There are absolutely issues that need to be addressed. It would just be refreshing if Sarkeesian actually acknowledged that there are some games and companies that are getting it right instead of just pidgeon holing every single game and developer into the same "sexist" category. I've looked and looked but haven't been able to find any game she actually likes.
The fact that she posts on her twitter all of the death threats she receives and then asking for monetary support just smacks of hypocrisy. She posts Youtube videos, gets negative comments, waves them around in front of people to get people to contribute to her kickstarter, and made out like a bandit.
Yes, Mario games are evil when there is a damsel in distress. But I guess it's ok when you damsel for dollars.
The thing is she knows the more controversial she gets, and the more threats she receives, the more support she will get from feminists and white knights. That support translates into money. It is her meal ticket. She's not stupid, she's a friggin genius.
I agree with her message (though she cherry picks like a pro), I don't agree with her method.
Kind of unrelated, but this video made me laugh a bit:
quote:The fact that she posts on her twitter all of the death threats she receives and then asking for monetary support just smacks of hypocrisy. She posts Youtube videos, gets negative comments, waves them around in front of people to get people to contribute to her kickstarter, and made out like a bandit.
Are you sure this is the correct sequence of events?
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Here is the full article from Feminist Frequency, for context.
You skipped over this part:
quote: It’s quite extraordinary actually how many movies don’t pass this test cause it’s not even a sign of whether its a feminist movie or whether its a good movie just that there is female presence in it and that they actually are engaging about things other then men.
Where she very explicitly says that she's NOT saying that these are bad movies or not feminist movies.
The definition of cherry picking is to pick examples to show something that isn't actually true. Since you agree with her message, I'm not sure how you can acuse her of cherry picking.
And she says at the start of every video that the fact that a game has some of these problematic issues does not mean that it's not a good game or she didn't enjoy it. But her videos aren't about her favorite games, they're about systematic issues with the portrayal of women in games. So I don't know why you'd expect to find her talking about games she likes. (I do think I've seen places where she has, though, but I don't have time to go hunting now. Maybe later.)
Your complaints about her retweeting her death threats are just silly, and if you don't understand why that is also something I don't have time for.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Um, the first video I watched by her (the one on violence I think) ended with an "and these are some games that do a really good job of handling this issue" followed by a description of why she liked them.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
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quote:Maybe real mysognists threatened her. That doesn't mean the other people who merely disagreed with her are misogynists, a position that's implicitly attributed to those who merely disagree Sarkeesian, especially when the general negative reaction to Sarkeesian keeps getting painted as one of misogyny rather than gamers merely defending their passion from fatuous critiques.
Wrong. There are two examples in this thread of people who disagreed with her, without ever being accused of misogyny. What gets someone an accusation of misogyny is stuff such as labeling death and rape threats as 'unpleasant'.
You know that Hatrack forums, where it looks like the same people have been posting together for over a decade, aren't the whole world, right? The narrative about Anita Sarkeesian focuses on her victimhood through getting "harrassed" and elides the fact that there's much intelligent rebuttals to her thesis. That some people who object to Sarkeesian are not being chased out of the Hatrack forums as misogynists does not mean that the overall rhetoric about Sarkeesian isn't one where people who disagree with her are implied to be misogynists or reactionary gamers.
quote: I was having an additional discussion, not sidestepping this one. And, again, I don't unilaterally label my opponents as the fringe. At this point I'm not sure what purpose is served by nodding to the examples of critics of Sarkeesian in this thread who aren't in any sort of fringe. I suspect you will continue to somehow miss that, again.
I didn't say that you always did, just that in this instance you seem to be moving the discussion to be about the debate itself and characterizing as "fringe" a hypothetical someone (wink wink). Regardless of whether it was a side discussion or where you want the debate to go, ad hominem is ad hominem.
quote: If you're going to complain about the unfairness of Sarkeesian attempting to control the debate unfairly, perhaps your best tactic might not be to insist they not express ideas you don't like.
Come again? The problem isn't that Sarkeesian is expressing ideas I merely dislike. The problem is that her ideas are wrong and have been soundly refuted and mocked by intelligent gamers, something that gets ignored when the mainstream media covers her. Anita Sarkeesian is someone who can at best be described as "controversial." Instead, she's a Feminist Hero because some dudebros possibly sent mean and threatening messages to her via Twitter.
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that right there is basically the ~intelligent gamers~ version of when george will called being a rape victim a coveted status
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:It would just be refreshing if Sarkeesian actually acknowledged that there are some games and companies that are getting it right instead of just pidgeon holing every single game and developer into the same "sexist" category. I've looked and looked but haven't been able to find any game she actually likes.
so you ... haven't watched her movies, then?
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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At least not Damsels in Distress part three. One of her favorite games is Beyond Good and Evil for the xbox.
And seriously Geraine, either show me the time stamp where she says mario is evil because I'm at a loss to find it, or stop putting words in her mouth. Like I've said before, Mario isn't the problem. The problem is systemic and not to be blamed one one game or even company.
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Django Unchained? Hell, about the only mainstream film cliché that movie had was excessive violence and one-liners-a slave revenge story is hardly a cliché in American filmmaking after all! But plenty of terrible movies have exceptional stories behind them, and that's not enough to make them good. Other elements made that film great, in my opinion.
Are you kidding? The whole initial premise of the movie's main plot is save-the-damsel-in-distress. It only really becomes a revenge movie quite late in the game.
quote:Given that the Bechdel test is much more often used as an indicator for filmmaking as a whole rather than a pass-fail measurement of individual films, well sure, but I'm not aware of many people who actually say 'no women, never seeing it, people who see it shouldn't'.
You don't know enough humanities academics, man. I know so many people who go on FB to say "I'm done seeing movies that fail the Bechdel test" or (this one I see more often) "I'm done seeing movies/shows with all-white casts."
quote:Nah, I'm gonna keep doing both. I don't think you've really made your case for why moral critiques of art ought not be made-rather you've expressed an opinion that they're not to your standards for measuring art. But when you widen the lens and apply that to moral critiques in general, you are in some sense making a moral criticism as well.
I'm not sure I see why I'm making a moral criticism--maybe you can fill in the steps there a bit for me.
But here's the risk you run in focusing on moral problems with good works of art that are not aesthetic problems. You risk convincing the artist who created that work, and any other artists who may be paying attention, that it's more important to morally whitewash their work than it is to create good art.
So the next time they have a great idea for an over-the-top horror game, they'll think, I can't do that because it involves a room full of bloody dead women. Or the next time they have a great idea for a movie that happens to have only male characters, they'll think, I'd better forget about that or else compromise my vision. And the next time a comedian thinks of a really funny joke that happens to mention rape, chances are they'll say forget it, I don't want to face that Jezebel shitstorm.
You will end up with worse art, whitewashed art which is dishonest and untrue to the artists' instincts and visions, and lots of great works of art never made because they didn't fit the SJW criteria of propriety.
I'm sure it's already happened many times.
I am aware, by the way, that the current system already stifles non-traditional voices of many sorts. Much needs to be done, and is being done, to get those voices out there. But I don't believe that making room for those voices should involve stifling the artistic talent we already have by subjecting it to the tut-tutting of moralists.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Posting mobile right now so I'll just say that Django Unchained was a slave revenge movie from the dang opening credits, man. Before we even knew his name. And the damsel being saved was being saved *from slavery*, after all.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:The narrative about Anita Sarkeesian focuses on her victimhood through getting "harrassed" and elides the fact that there's much intelligent rebuttals to her thesis.
I'm genuinely curious, Clive: what would you consider her "thesis?"
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:The narrative about Anita Sarkeesian focuses on her victimhood through getting "harrassed" and elides the fact that there's much intelligent rebuttals to her thesis.
I'm genuinely curious, Clive: what would you consider her "thesis?"
Since we all know it's Clive at this point, I'd appreciate it if we all just stopped talking to him.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Posting mobile right now so I'll just say that Django Unchained was a slave revenge movie from the dang opening credits, man. Before we even knew his name. And the damsel being saved was being saved *from slavery*, after all.
In a sense, I totally agree. It's a great revenge movie. My point was just that it indulges in sexist cliche to a greater extent than you seemed willing to admit earlier.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: I think receiving death threats is sort of positive evidence for the argument she's making.
No, it's not. It's evidence that gamers are like all people everywhere, and a certain percentage of them will make sickening threats in an anonymous internet venue against people they see as attacking them.
I haven't caught up in this thread yet, but this is an important thing to bear in mind.
For example, it's not hard to find some examples of the numerous death threats and, yes, rape threats that Jack Thompson has received from angry gamers. Does anyone know how they stack up compared to Sarkeesian? I'm kinda betting nobody's bothered to look into this, because Jack Thompson isn't really a sympathetic figure. I'm not even sure if he's publicized a significant portion of the threats he's received or not. Probably has, and I just didn't notice. Because again, not a lot of sympathy there.
But it goes to the larger issue of whether or not the harassment she's received is indicative of a hostile climate towards women criticizing games, or just a hostile climate towards anyone who seems to be criticizing games.
Also, what counts as a hostile climate in the first place? If a few hundred, or even a few thousand, people harass someone, that's bad. But if they're some fractional percentage point of an overall group (e.g. people who play games)then it's important to have some perspective.
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