Damsel in Distress Part 2

edited in General


After some delay, and being briefly pulled off Youtube after enough viewers flagged it as offensive, the second part (of three) to Anita Sarkeesian's analysis of the Damsel in Distress trope in video games.

Comments

  • haters on the internet... *bangs head on desk* ... I shouldn't get angry about this, right? I'd live in perpetual anger if I paid heed to internet haters...
  • Very interesting, eye-opening for a lot of people I hope, and hugely documented !
    Also, her definition of the Damsel in the Fridge made me think of the Orpheus myth.
  • When I heard Damsel in the fridge I thought of the last Indiana Jones.....

    But very good video. Nothing to contend or dispute really, just good info.
  • I also think that she is doing well with the series. She is opening a lot for discussion in a very accessible way, which is highly commendable.

    Wrt the Orpheus myth; that's it exactly. The tropes she is addressing are not new, nor are they confined to games. Quite a lot of work has been done on these tropes in classic narrative as well as current film and literature studies. What is innovative about her work is not the theory, nor the application to games (which has also received increasing academic attention over the past decade) but in the way she is making it accessible to audiences outside of the academy.

    Orpheus is a prime example of the trope in action in classics. The damsel in distress has always been a commonly used narrative device, dating to pre-Greek mythologies as well. The narrative arch as described in Aristotalian theory, and more currently in Campbell's monomyth is inextricably linked to many of the tropes she intends to cover; the femme-fatal, the fallen woman, and the waif (damsel in distress).

    They have become what are called meta-narratives. These are the unconsciously re-enforced 'stories' that society relies on for structure. In the broadest, reductive, sense these include the patriarchy, religion and hegemonic identification. Part of the difficulty in addressing these issues is exactly this: they are embedded in the cultural discourse, unconsciously structuring our views of the world and our place in it. Analysing and deconstructing these meta-narratives therefore poses a fundamental challenge to the ways in which we perceive ourselves as agents in society. Even though most people would say they believe in the points that are raised, awareness of these issues of representation often slips under the radar due to this cultural conditioning. Pointing them out in a structured form, like these analyses are doing, therefore meets with resistance, simply because it makes us uncomfortable with ourselves.

    I would therefore argue that haters-on-the-interwebs are not just assholes, (although many are that too), but are an internet amplified symptom of the fundamental destabilisation many people experience when forced to re-examine the subconscious foundational principles of cultural representation.

    ^ Sorry about that, I can't help myself.
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    PS: there are of course many meta-narratives that fall outside of gender. Not all meta-narrative is under the same level of scrutiny, and if all meta-narrative is destabilised fundamental social interaction would, theoretically, be reduced to anarchy. It can also be convincingly argued that meta-narrative is impossible to identify and challenge until it is fundamentally already shifted toward a new foundational narrative, leaving the one that is being challenged in the last stages of rejection. (so in essence the reason we are able to analyse and deconstruct this at all is because society has begun to shift away from these views already)
  • Great analysis of a good dataset :) Those combo tropes are indeed really interesting. I do really think games in general need less "physical mechanics" so as to move away from physically interacting (i.e. usually violence) with their environment.

    I guess that's why I enjoy board/card games so much, it's much less about aiming and shooting :)

    The shoutout to Indie games is promising :)
  • @hanli Thanks for the explanation!

    @Tuism Yeah, I thought it was super cool as well that she highlighted some Indie games. I'm now looking forward to the third installment where she (apparently) will discuss more games that subvert or avoid the Damsel in Distress trope in interesting ways.
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    I just want to ask if I'm the only person that thinks the inclusion of Hotline Miami in the Damsel pt 2 video is unfair on the game?

    Hotline Miami is a deep examination of violence and tropes in games that masquerades as the very thing its critiquing at the start, yet gradually reveals the horrifying nature of the things you've been doing in the game as you progress through it. It's a trojan discussion that hits those most attuned to enacting violence in games the hardest. I feel like the game uses the trope of the rescued woman in full awareness of what people expect it to be.

    The woman isn't even a damsel in that she's not a motivation at all, your character simply finds her in a level, acquires her like this is a normal thing to do and heads home - later on you question WTF was going on there and why on earth you were simply ok with that... but, yeah, complex. The whole point of Hotline Miami is my mind is to present players with choices that they wouldn't think twice about in games at first and then slowly peel back the motivations behind those choices until the same player has to examine how utterly indefensible those actions are in the first place. But it does it so well because it communicates without judgement, the player ends up judging themselves. It's a great study in cognitive dissonance boiling frogs - there were very, very solid reasons for it to be an IGF design nominee.

    I feel like it's a disservice to indie games that try to broach subjects like this one to not encourage people to engage with them fully. Yes, Hotline Miami looks like a prime example of the issues that Anita's trying to highlight, it has to in order to get the people it's trying to reach to sit down and play it.
  • If Hotline Miami's presentation of a battered woman who the protagonist "acquires her like this is a normal thing to do and heads home" can be excused, can it not be said of just about any game that, once you delve into its creation and talk to its creators, there would be a reason to anything?

    In Sarkeesian's own words, just because something makes sense in the game's world and narrative, that doesn't make it right. Even if that world and narrative was aimed at "peeling back" and "criticising" that.

    At least that's what I think she would say anyway.

    To be honest I agree with @dislekcia mostly, in that there are many works that can be seen as supporting the evidence of misogyny, but isn't just about that when some kind of defence is offered up. Hotline Miami is but one of them.

    I think in general there are basically things that can always be taken wrong about great many deal of things, and there are basically things that can defend it as well. Taking either extreme views of any single thing boils down to what one person believes vs what another believes.

    But that doesn't make what she says less true, nor does it make what others say less true.
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    I was a bit surprised by Hotline Miami's inclusion. I don't think I have actually played to that part in the game yet so I can't properly comment.

    Although I'm not sure if I'd be on the side of Hotline Miami not using the Damsel in Distress trope, just like I'm not convinced that Lolipop Chainsaw being self-aware of its sexualization excuses itself from that sexualization.

    But I'll have to play further in Hotline Miami. I got to the point where I found a girl in distress and she passed out in my (?) apartment. If that is the instance in question then it really isn't a motivation device (though then why would they stick her in their marketing material?).
    Dislekcia said:
    The woman isn't even a damsel in that she's not a motivation at all
    I'm not certain it matters whether she is motivation or not for the player for the trope to exist. The motivation aspect is the reason for including the Damsel in Distress in narratives, not the trope itself, nor the problems with representation the trope gives rise to.

    I will say that as far as I've played the only representation of women in Hotline Miami is as a distressed woman that you save (the saving is certainly portrayed as weird, though the distressed woman part is played straight). If there isn't more to the female representation in Hotline Miami than that then I'd think it's reasonably fair to include it in the Damsel in Distress video (though it isn't a great fit).

    From what I've played so far I'd say that Hotline Miami is critical of players' motives for saving women who are in distress, it certainly is critical of white knighting (which I think is pretty fricken awesome of the Cactus), but Hotline Miami still portrays women as being in distress and incapable of saving themselves. Like I say, I think it's a weird fit. Though I need to play more.

    I should be playing the game anyway. I don't know, maybe Hotline Miami goes on to round out and humanize the damsel, or show alternatives to women being in distress or alternatives to women being reliant on male protagonists.

    Also, Anita does stress that it is okay to enjoy a game that has uses a questionable trope. It isn't a automatic: "This is a bad game" if it has a Damsel in Distress in it.
  • Maddox has also offered his 2c:
    http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=sexism_videogames

    as usual he is way off the mark but entertaining nontheless.
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    Wow. Maddox is such a tool :( "Sexism is okay because men only like/make men-things and women only like/make women-things! Here, let me substantiate my argument by parading sexist stuff that society seemingly accepts for no apparent reason!" ... If Cosmopolitan is a core part of your argument that sexism isn't a problem, you may not correctly understand the issue.
    From what I've played so far I'd say that Hotline Miami is critical of players' motives for saving women who are in distress, it certainly is critical of white knighting (which I think is pretty fricken awesome of the Cactus), but Hotline Miami still portrays women as being in distress and incapable of saving themselves. Like I say, I think it's a weird fit. Though I need to play more.

    I should be playing the game anyway. I don't know, maybe Hotline Miami goes on to round out and humanize the damsel, or show alternatives to women being in distress or alternatives to women being reliant on male protagonists.
    Except the rescued woman is a basket-case drug addict. That's what she was doing there, tripping, not unable to escape. The game portrays women as normal people in the pizza joint, in fact, the pizza joint is the only place where people are portrayed normally at all in the game. It's a hint that you're the one behaving strangely before the game turns around and makes that obvious.
  • @dislekcia I'm going to have to play a bit further. But that's cool to hear.
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    @BlackShipsFilltheSky: It gets pretty harrowing.

    I felt well and truly harrowed.
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